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Prepare for Takeoff Flyball

2017 - 2018 Season Recap!

10/22/2018

With the last tournament of the season in the books, we would like to take a quick look back on all we accomplished in the 2017-2018 racing season!

We debuted 2 new flyball dogs this year: Fitz & Finnick, who both earned their trifecta in their first tournaments! Many of our dogs raced to new personal bests this year and in total our dogs earned a combined 17 new titles, which is pretty amazing for a club that only has 12 active competing dogs! Congrats to all of our pups and their accomplishments:
Fitz: FD, FDX, FDCh, FDCh-S, FDCH-G, FM
Finnick: FD, FDX, FDCh, FDCh-S
Nika: FMX
Nista: FMX & FMCH
Kynkk: FMCH
Feist: FGDCH
Pongo: FGDCH
Raine: FG70K & #3 Toller in NAFA

We welcomed some new members and pups to our team this year including Robyn & Finnick; Christian & Danika with their pup Sky and of course Rowdy & Lil’ Kimchi! We also said goodbye to one of our vets as Rev left us in April, just before our home tournament.

As a team we had a rough start to our NAFA year last October, but we never gave up and kept clawing back until we reached our turnaround point at the OMG tournament in June. That Sunday we took 1st place in Regular 1 and we captured 1st place the 9 tournament days going forward; to once again earn the Region 10 Regular Championship for a 4th straight year!

We broke our personal best time 5 times this season, with 3 of those times standing as the Region 10 Record. Huge congrats to Nika, Fitz, Callie & Feist on such an impressive year! This was a new line-up for us and they exceeded our expectations. Big congrats also to Maya, Pongo, Raine & Brooke who broke the Vets record with an 18.232 run in June!

We are also super excited to see that we improved from #9 last year to #6 in the overall NAFA Champions Standings! We are in the company of some pretty incredible teams!

Now it’s time for winter training and getting those new pups ready to hit the lanes for the first time! 2019 is shaping up to be a great season for us, but there is lots of work to do before next April! Happy Winter Training everyone!

All Good Things Must Come to an End

7/10/2018

Racing was quite exciting this past weekend at FNF’s annual DogFather’s of Confederation Tournament. We headed to PEI with two teams, one in Regular and the other in Open.

Racing started out great with Aviators posting a 15.61 with almost 20 feet of passing and a not great start! We knew the dogs had more to give, but the best we could do that race was a 15.5. Feist bit her tongue (BAD!) in the second heat, so were we happy to get the win and get her resting for the next race.

On My Go vs MassChaos were up next and OMG put it all together posting a 15.471, which was a new club and regional record. We knew we would have our work cut out for us in Regular 1 this year! The day continued with many tight races, but we clinched 1st in Regular 1 and 3rd in a very tight Open 1.

Sunday, our Aviators dogs came out busting and in our first race we hit a new club PB of 15.476! We were so proud of our dogs, not so much Daniel, as he had a 5+ foot pass! UGH! Oh, well, it was not meant to be on this day.

Aviators went undefeated and took 1st again in Regular 1 and First Class had a great day taking 3rd once again in Open 1. We were very proud of all of our dogs who raced amazing in the heat on Sunday. Aviators was still posting 15.7’s near the end of the day with lots of room on passing.

HUGE thank you to Natalie for boxloading for us and our PFT kids: Kyle, Liz & Braxton for boxloading, ball shagging & running dogs. You guys are the best!

We had one title this weekend with Nika earning her FMX! We also received Rev’s Iron Dog Award. This is given to dogs that have completed 10 years of consecutive racing. Never easy to receive after you have lost that dog, but it was a special moment for sure. We thought we were going to hit another HUGE milestone this weekend for one of our pups, but I guess that will have to wait until Bridgewater in August – stay tuned!

Once again, we would like to congratulate OMG on their new record. It’s insane to think how close our PB’s are, only separated by 0.005 seconds! Racing in Bridgewater should be lots of fun!

Next up is Maple Leap’s Tournament, the long weekend in August in Bridgewater. We can’t wait to hit the lanes and see what will happen at that tournament!

Until then – Cheers!!
Holly

New Season, New Look, New Goals: New Record, New Flyball Dog, New Puppy!

5/17/2018

Been a little behind on this blog, but things have been super busy for everyone on PFT! This will be a short, but super sweet blog post with SO many highlights from our first two tournaments of the season!

Our first tournament was April 14 & 15th, the first tournament of the year and our home tournament! We were really excited to debut our new logo and tournament set-up. Things went well that weekend. Aviators took 2nd both days in Regular 1. First Class ended up 2nd on Saturday but improved to 1st on Sunday in Open 1. Our Green Dogs Rey and Sky, both did awesome on Saturday night at their first Green Dogs! Great job!!! Our dogs earned 2 titles during the weekend. Fitz our awesome little BW earned her 4th title: FDCh-S, in only her second tournament! And our rock steady anchor dog Feist earned her FGDCH, 30,000! Braxton & Corbin were also rpesented with their Jr. Handler pins for 2018. Last but not least, we were very proud to have re-set the Region 10 Regional Record to 15.706! This was the first tournament with the new line-up of Nika, Fitz, Callie & Feist and they were still working things out. WE had a feeling they had more to give…now on to FAME’s tournament!

FAME hosted their tournament May 5 & 6 in Cap Pele. The weekend started out very fun as the team welcomed a new Toller, Rowdy! Rowdy is Rev’s daughter from his last litter, so she is a pretty special girl.
Racing on Saturday started out rough, so when your best time in your first race was a 34.521, you can only go up from there, thankfully we did! On Saturday, Aviators finished 1st in Regular 1, First Class finished 3rd in a very competitive Open 1 and our mixed Vets team finished 2nd. Sunday was exactly the same, except Vets finished 3rd. Thank you to On My Go! for putting a Vets team in with us this weekend and to Krieger from FNF for helping our Open team on Saturday.

HUGE congrats to Robyn & Finnick on Finnick’s amazing debut during this tournament! Finnick earned his FD, FDX & FDCh - the title trifecta! Robyn has worked incredibly hard with Finnick and that hard work paid off! Our rock solid Nitsa also earned her FMX!
Big shout out to our green dogs: Sky & Bond who rocked green dogs on Saturday. These two are improving every week!

Last but not least, we were super stoked to re-set the Regional Record for a second tournament in a row to a 15.552! WOW! We certainly were not expecting that first race on Sunday, but our dogs had other plans!
Up next we head to Debert May 26 & 27th for Paws on Deck’s last tournament. Super sad to hear that this will be Donna & George’s last time hosting.

Until next time,
Holly

Winter is Coming...

10/26/2017

We would like to say a huge thank you to FNF for hosting one last tournament before we all settle in for 5 long months of off-season / winter training.

This last weekend was somewhat of a preview of what the 2018 racing season is going to look like, although on our end, hopefully the results will be a little different :).

For Division 1, we had an inkling that we would see 2 new dogs on OMG’s division 1 team. The name of the team gave away that Axle would be the height dog and we had seen how well Luna was doing in previous tournaments; so when we stepped out on the lanes on Saturday and saw them in the lineup it was no surprise. Racing in Division 1 was very fast and we saw two club’s post new PB’s. Congrats to both Maple Leap’s and OMG for this accomplishment.

Aviators hung in tough; in some races, anything that could go wrong – did! And in other races, we just plain got beat – which is all good! We ended up 3rd on Saturday and improved to a 2nd on Sunday, where 1st was decided by a tie breaker. Racing in this division in 2018 is going to be very interesting!

Red Eye had a great weekend of racing in a very competitive Open 1. They took 3rd on Saturday and 4th (last) on Sunday. This team of veteran dogs (every single one of them is 7 or older) not only raced incredibly well, but they helped debut our newest flyball dog Fitz! Warm-ups were the plan, but Fitz came to play! She showed incredible focus; and we could not have asked for more from this girl who ran consistent 3.6 - 3.7’s and earned her FD, FDX and FDCh. While we still have things to work on, the experience she gained this past weekend was invaluable. We are pretty excited to see what this girl can do in the lanes next year.

We would like to thank everyone who helped our team this weekend and throughout the year. By calling passes, ball shagging, setting jumps, running open with us, etc. We truly appreciate it! Special mention to Jules who helped Aviators all season.

Up next is winter training! We know what we have to work on and our 2018 goals are already set. We are very excited to hit the lanes in 2018 and hopefully welcome back our teammate Christine and her two pups Kynkk & Orbit.

We wish everyone a great off-season and we can’t wait to see everyone in April when we kick off the year at our Spring Back into Action tourney!!

#WinterIsComing #BringOn2018 #Only169DaysToGo

Bye, bye 2016-2017; Hello 2017-2018!

9/28/2017

Well, the last tourney of the NAFA year is in the books. Thank you FAME for making it awesome! From the welcome gifts to the dessert/hospitality table, everything was fantastic! We also enjoyed the food truck, SO good!!

Our teams had great results with Aviators taking 1st both days in Regular 1 and Red Eye placing 2nd on Saturday and improving to 1st on Sunday in Open 2. It was fantastic to race with our friend Donna and her boy Joey. Thanks also to Diane for helping our teams. It was great to have you guys with us this weekend!

Our junior handler Braxton took on the job of running Rev full time on his own and rocked it! He even posted a 0.016 start!! When he was not handling he was an awesome ball shagger. Proud of this boy! #NextGen

Fitz and Bond knocked green dogs out of the park. This was Fitz’s last time sitting out and we are pretty pumped to see her officially hit the lanes in October!

We went into this weekend feeling stress-free, which was a complete change from how the rest of our white-knuckle season had gone. We had clinched the Regional Championship in August, but boy was it a rough and bumpy road to get there this season.

We knew that we would have some growing pains when we débuted our new line-up in April. Nika would be replacing Brooke and those 4 dogs had run together for a while; so we expected the new lineup would need a bit of time to gel. We worked hard over the winter to prepare ourselves for this and everything seemed to be on track. Until we stepped on the lanes in April…it seemed like everything that could go wrong, did. And oh, did we mention that every other team in the Region had awesome new dogs coming up and they were being débuted tournament after tournament? Division 1 was getting faster and we were in trouble!

There were tons of ups and downs, new lineups, training issues, injuries, you name it! Week by week at practices and tournament after tournament, things improved. Gradually it was all starting to come together again. By mid-July we
were feeling hopeful that maybe, just maybe we had things figured out.

Every Championship we earn has special meaning. I think that this one will be remembered for the adversity we faced. My first blog post of the year was titled “Nothing Worth Having Ever Comes Easy” and that has never been more true.

Our dogs had a spectacular year, with all but 3 earning new titles. Brooke earned her 40K, Callie earned her 30K, Maya eanred her ONYX, Nika earned her FDCH-G & FM, Nitsa earned her FM and Rev earned his 40K. Raine, Pongo & Feist are all very close to their next respective titles and they should earn them in early 2018.

Some changes for our dogs this year. Brooke moved to Red Eye where she absolutely loves running anchor. Nika took Brooke’s position on Aviators and is running in second position after Nitsa. Pongo has officially moved to part time; and Rev & Raine are also running a reduced number of races. Look for more changes to these teams in the upcoming season!

October marks a new NAFA year and a clean slate. We are excited to see what the future holds for our team and Region 10. It is pretty impressive that a small region like ours now has 3 of the 4 Division 1 teams who have run in the 15’s. Next season is going to be lots of fun and we can’t wait to get started! Thankfully we only have to wait a few weeks because FnF’s tournament is October 21 & 22!

Until Next Time,
Holly

Back-2-Back-2-Back!

8/29/2017

We had a great time racing at Carleton County’s 2nd annual tournament this past weekend in Florenceville! We love the venue and the hospitality!

Aviators (Nitsa, Nika, Callie, Feist and a little help from Maya) raced in Regular 1 and had an awesome weekend, racing some of the best times they have run all season! We had some super tight racing against FNF and MassChaos. The finals each day came down to us vs MassChaos and what a blast! MC took the win on Saturday, so we finished 2nd and on Sunday we took the win and finished 1st.

I am so proud of these dogs and how much they have come together over this season. Our last heat of the day on Sunday we ran a 15.916, which is our best time of the year! We have had to switch a lot of things around this season and it seems like things are finally starting to come together. Huge thank you to Jules for calling passes for us all weekend, we truly appreciate it!!! We are very excited to see what these 4 dogs can do in Cap Pele in September.

Red Eye (Maya, Pongo, Raine, Brooke & Rev) also had a great weekend in Open 2. They're record matched Aviators, as they took 2nd on Saturday and 1st on Sunday. Unfortunately Rev was not feeling the best end of Sunday, so Pongo & Nika had to pick up his races for him. Total team effort as usual!

One title for us this weekend, as Brooke earned her FGDCH 40,000 title! Good job girlie!!

Lastly, I want to say how incredibly proud I am that my team is once again Region 10 Regular Champions for 2016-2017! We had a lot of challenges this year with our new line-up, but everyone was determined to make it work. I have never met a more dedicated group of people in my life. We expect a lot out of each other. We work hard. We are dedicated to our team goals. It is not easy to find people like that, that put the team first and individual goals second. I am super lucky to have such amazing teammates.

Up next is Cap Pele in September. I am really excited to see how our teams fair at that tournament. We know that Regular 1 racing will be fast and competitive and we can’t wait!

Holly

In Search of Pirate Booty at Pawrates of the Atlantic

8/29/2017

We headed to Bridgewater with a smaller crew than usual and when you only have 5 members, how much smaller can you really get? Well, we had 4, so enough to race our dogs, but we sure needed a lot of help from our friends!

Even though Dave was not able to make it, Daniel and I brought Nika & Callie so we would have our full Aviators team of Nitsa, Nika, Callie & Feist. Our Red Eye team for the weekend consisted of Pongo, Raine, Rev, Brooke and Taz & Pat from FAME ran a couple of races with us as well.

Huge thank you to Natalie & Jules from FAME. Natalie box loaded for Aviators all weekend and did a fantastic job. Jules was our pass caller extraordinaire and we would be lost without his help during our Division 1 races. Thanks also to Pat for running Taz with us on Red Eye, as mentioned above, Amanda from OMG and Sherri from FNF who helped box load for Red Eye. Also to the multitude of people who ball shagged for us – we truly appreciate all of the help we received!!

Despite the heat and some of our dogs being hot and tired, our teams raced well. Aviators took 1st on Saturday and 3rd on Sunday in Division 1. Red Eye placed 5th on Saturday and 6th on Sunday in a very fast Open 1.

Only one title, as Nika eanred her FM. Brooke was set to earn her FGDCH 40,000 title and she decided to spit her ball in the last heat of the last race, lol! I guess she wanted to wait until the Carleton County tournament for her title :)

Until Next Time,
Holly

Living it up on the Island!

7/11/2017

We had a great time at Fast n’ FURious’ annual Dogfathers of Confederation tournament last weekend. It is always one of our favourite tournaments and this year did not disappoint.

We headed to the Island with our 2 normal teams: Aviators who would be in Regular 1 and Red Eye who was seeded in Open 2. We were so happy that Donna and Joey were joining us for the weekend and running on Red Eye with us.

After last tournament, we decided to switch up the lineup on our Aviators team, changing Nika to second and Callie to third. We did not have a lot of practice time to make this switch, but we were hoping it would work out well, and we are happy to say that it did! Aviators had the best weekend of the year, running consistent low 16’s and breaking into the 15’s each day. We also took first both days in Regular 1. It was hot and our dogs were total champs, it was so nice to see those times again! This is a new lineup and we feel like it is finally starting to gel. The switch of Nika & Callie definitely helped our times and even though I still have a lot of work to do, getting my passes with Nika down, I know we are headed in the right direction. Thanks to Jules for calling passes for us all weekend! Regular 1 was on fire this weekend! We would also like to congratulate On My Go on their new PB this weekend. The rest of the racing season should be fun!

Red Eye did great taking 3rd both days in Open 2. Unfortunately Maya came up lame early on Saturday and Pongo was sore on Sunday, so we only had a 4 dog team on Sunday. Rev, Joey, Raine & Brooke ran awesome and came in 3rd, just missing a tie for first by one point!

Callie had a big weekend earning her FDGCh title (30,000) and hitting some 3.8’s in the pack! It was nice to see those times from her. Braxton was our superstar Jr. Handler this weekend and he received his Jr. Handler pin. He was a HUGE help ball shagging and running Rev. Turns out he is a natural in start, we might have to look at him taking Rev over full time; they made a great team!

Our up and comer’s Bond & Fitz did great in Green Dog’s. Still lots of training to do with these two, but we are happy with how things are going so far!

Until Next Time!
Holly

Learn From It & Move Forward

5/31/2017

We would like to send out a HUGE thank you to Donna & George for hosting a great tournament this past weekend in Debert. These two pulled off an excellent tournament, even though they did not have a team entered. I know it must have been a tough weekend not racing, but I hope you know how much everyone in the Region appreciates you hosting. We really hope to see you guys back on the lanes soon!

Heading into this weekend, we knew we would be in tough. Red Eye was seeded last in a very fast Open 1, where we were 3 seconds slower than the top team. Aviators would be facing Fast n’ FURious and On My GO in Regular 1. We had seen how well FNF’s dog Shazam did in April and I was sure he would be on their A team for this tournament, turns out, I was right. We also knew that OMG had a couple of new dogs who could end up on their A team, so it was bound to be tight racing throughout the weekend.

Aviator’s started out okay on Saturday, but then it went downhill from there. We only won one race thanks to a combination of some dogs having issues and being on the wrong side of the inch for passes. Needless to say, we were very disappointed with a third (LAST) place finish in Regular 1 on Saturday. Red Eye raced very well, but as we expected, ended up last in Open 1 as well.

On Sunday we came out hoping to improve on what was a very disappointing Saturday. I am super happy that we did work some things out, and had some success, but unfortunately still had a bit of bad luck (Nitsa bobbling on the box?! That never happens!). Needless to say the flyball Gods were not with us this past weekend! We did improve to a second place finish and had some very exciting racing with FNF, with each of us winning a race against each other on Sunday. Red Eye once again had a great day of racing, but ended up last in Open 1. Simply said, this past weekend was not a good one on the lanes! All we can do now is learn from it and move forward.

We would also like to thank Robyn & Chris for spending the weekend with us. Their dog Finnick did great at green dogs on Saturday night and Robyn was a pro at handling Raine for me on Sunday. Chris has also taken the job of “ball wrangling” to a new level. We hope you guys will be joining us at a few more tournaments this year and we hope to see Finnick on the lanes soon!

Our greenies Fitz & Bond did amazing at green dogs! These pups are showing tons of potential. We are excited to start introducing new distractions at practice.

Congratulations to FNF on your new PB of 15.95 and being the second team ever in our Region to hit 15’s! You guys looked great and we are excited to for some fun, close racing this season!

Up next is On My Go’s tournament, taking place right here in Fredericton on June 17 & 18th. We are looking forward to hitting the mats again in a few weeks!

Until Next Time,
*Holly*

Nothing Worth Having Ever Comes Easy

5/1/2017

This past weekend FAME hosted the first tournament of the year and they did a great job. The treats on the tables were amazing, as was the food prepared by the scouts. As a very small club, not having to worry about box judging is also a huge plus, thank you to all of the volunteers!

This winter we trained hard and tried to put our dogs in any tournament like situation that they may run into, however, no matter how much you try, you can never truly recreate the excitement of a tournament setting, which is exactly what our dogs taught us once again at this tournament, lol!

Our Aviators team had some struggles on Saturday. It was definitely not our best showing, but we all pulled together and we ended up taking first in Division 1. It was a total team effort with all 6 dogs listed on that team running. On Sunday we changed a few things around and had a much better day, once again taking first in Division 1. We would like to say a huge thank you to Jules for calling our passes all weekend, we were very short handed and we really appreciated your help and the help of everyone who stepped in and ball shagged for us! THANK YOU!!!

Our Red Eye team, on the other hand, had an AMAZING weekend! We found out the week before the tournament that our teammate Christine could not attend, as she is suffering from a concussion. We are wishing her a speedy recovery and we hope to see her on the lanes very soon! What this meant for our Red Eye team is that we were losing her two dogs (one which was a 7” height dog). Therefore, we had to do some rearranging for that team. On Saturday Red Eye consisted of all veteran aged dogs, jumping 10” and they went undefeated and took first in Open 2. On Sunday we were very happy that Donna from Paws on Deck and her dog Joey were able to run with us for the day. We also moved Nika over to Red Eye as start dog and she had a great day! Red Eye once again went undefeated and took first.

Two titles for our team this weekend: Nika earned her FDCH-G and Rev earned his FGDCH 40K. They both earned their titles the last heat of our last Red Eye race! We also received our 2015-2016 Region 10 Championship plaque. Congratulations to all the teams who hit PB’s and achieved new titles this weekend, I know there were many.

Big shout out to our puppies Bond & Fitz who looked amazing in green dogs! We are so proud of how well these puppies are doing. And Bond even caught his first Frisbee at the tournament in between racing!

Even though it was not smooth sailing, the end result is exactly how we wanted to start our season. The countdown is on until the next tournament and we have plenty to work on before then! We also have a little celebration to attend – Sonya & James get hitched on May 20th!!!

Until next time!
*Holly*