This is the first time I’ve spent a whole day at flyball. Impressions?
Much barking. Mostly joyous barking, but all manner from time to time – anxious and angry and scared barking mixed in with much happy barking. I haven’t explained this well enough. Imagine you are in a big concrete barn with a tall roof. There are at least two hundred dogs in this big building and about the same number of people. There is no silence. Ever.
My job was to collect balls. The handlers teach the dogs to love balls. Then they carefully control where on the course the balls are allowed to be, so the dogs go there. Balls in the wrong place mean the dogs go to the wrong place, too. So the ball shagger (me) collects stray balls that are not where they are supposed to be.
It’s harder than it looks – you have to avoid getting hit by racing dogs, racing humans, or stray balls. Your have about 5 seconds after each dog runs to get the ball they drop out of the way of the next dog. There were seven-year-olds doing it quite well. I did it well, but not as well as the seven-year-olds.
I suspect they had more practice than me.
Our dogs did great – Cricket is still learning and the most important thing for her is to be there in the barks and chirps and whistles and chaos. She managed to come when called more than once in the midst of all that. Sasha ran one heat of each race nearly flawlessly. Our teams did great – the fast team is new in their division and they beat their old times and came in third for the day.
There is a small pile of pictures on my picasa web album. I was hoping for better pictures, but I was busy shagging balls and taking video of box-turns.
Much barking.
Well, what better thing to do with what might be the last truly hot weekend of the summer than beach it?
Every family has rituals. Holiday rituals. Coming and going rituals. We have a host of them that revolve around the dogs. That’s because the dog’s created them – or embellished those that already existed to make them their own. In this case, it is the shower ritual. Now it used to be the case that I could decide to take a shower – climb the stairs without hazard – turn on the water and undress in peace. Climb into the glorious stream of hot and steamy water and stand with it beating on my head and shoulders. Make up little tunes – either silent or aloud. Think my own thoughts without interruption. Showers used to be my time. And I think I can safely speak for the other humans in the household that the same was true for them. History. Sasha introduced a whole set of new shower rituals. It started when she learned the word. Thereafter, mention of the word “shower” resulted in a black and white streak up the stairs, poised in anticipation and barking at the shower door. Humans learned to quickly follow so that she didn’t break through the doors, to quickly turn on the water and crack the back door open wide enough for her head and shoulders to enter and snap at the water while undressing occured. Now the ritual is compounded by a second border collie who is no less insistent. And of course, the border collies will “get” more out of some humans than others. The previous description happens to reflect my behavior. Brenda, on the other hand, throws the door open so that the border collies can walk into the shower entirely. And the goddess only knows what Katie does with them. But as you can see, they emerge properly and well drenched. In my ritual, I enter the shower, close the door, and the border collies wait patiently for me to emerge and assist my towel in the drying process. Katie’s ritual results in five wet towels per shower. What do you think is happening there? LOL