Thursday, July 9, 2009

time flies when you're having fun

It's already July, and it's now less than a week until Ezri's first birthday marks her eligibility to compete in flyball tournaments. The past month of practice has been spent refining and solidifying her flyball talents and abilities, and I'm pretty confident that she's going to be debuting with flying colors on the 17th. I'm able to cross-pass her with most dogs in the club, I can swap lanes without doing a new holdback, she will run in any position, and she's not mouthy at the rest of the team but is instead deadly serious like Jadzia. She's no longer having issues with dropping her ball, and comes flying back to her tug like it's the best thing in the world.

And last Sunday we timed her at 4.36.

This weekend will be the last tournament Ezri does not compete in, (Muddy Paws are hosting in Salem, OR) and she will debut in competition pairs and singles on Friday, July 17th and in NAFA team competition on Saturday, July 18th (RF Revolution hosting in Truckee, CA). Ezri will run with her big sister Indigo in pairs competition under the team name "Ignition Sequence," both at the fun runs in Truckee and in UFLI competition at the end of August. For Truckee, I seeded them at a time of 8.4, but that may be too slow - if Indigo runs a 3.8 and Ezri runs a 4.3, that's an 8.1, and if Ezri speeds up in competition they are easily capable of breaking 8.0 together. It will be quite exciting to see how it goes!

Last week was my company's summer shutdown, and I spent two days at Lake Whatcom with Christy and Jason in the house that his parents use as a rental most of the year. I had dogs in the lake within 3 minutes of arrival - Curzon and Jadzia remembered it from our 2007 visit, and Ezri needed only one push to commence with flinging herself off the dock in pursuit of a ball. Phoebe of course is not fond of swimming and really not fond of jumping off of a dock, so we played "Terrier Bowling: Dock Dogs Edition" where she was gently pitched off the dock after a ball was thrown for her to go get. Ezri got to go on her first hike as well, as we did a short trail at the foot of Mt. Baker, and learned the "rules" of hiking from Curzon quite well along the way. Finally, we had a speedboat ride with Jason's dad, and Ezri thought that was incredibly awesome to the point of simply pointing her nose forward into the wind as far as I would let her lean. There are indeed pictures and video, but I don't have them accessible right now for posting, so hopefully I will get those up soon.

Work, flyball, and Warcraft keeps us busy in a smoothly rotating schedule. Our 25-man raiding team in WoW is working on the final boss in Ulduar (Yogg-Saron) and beginning to try the hard-modes on other bosses. Work is going pretty smoothly, with my new project behaving well so far, and Chris' job is busy and stable as well. We are looking forward to the remainder of our summer, with three tournaments straight to finish off July, a visit from friends in August, a trip to Blizzcon in Anaheim, and a UFLI tournament to round off August. PAX is the first weekend in September, and my brother-in-law's wedding is the third weekend in Ohio. It will be busy, but I am looking forward to all of it!

No comments: