New People at Flyball

It's always difficult to organize practices efficiently when we have new people coming out for the first time. There is paperwork, and explanations, and we have to run the full team first thing so that they can see what it is that we're working at. But, still, I am glad whenever we have new people, because we need more live bodies and dogs. Plus, it's fun to see people stretching out of there comfort zone to explore something new. For example, you see middle-aged people with their chunky, untrained dogs and its fun to see their relationship with the dog and understanding of it blossom and grow as they work on training.

Today, there were deaf people who came out. None of the team knows sign language and only one of the deaf people lip read. It meant that conversations were mostly wave, smile, shrug. If they decide to continue coming to practice, I think we'll get more fluent in gesture and shrug, and email for the more detailed stuff. Some of the signing two of them were using looked like ASL, so maybe I will try to l google or look up some kind of chart for some of the words we might need to use that are hard to say or too abstract for point and nod.

There was a very enthusiastic little Jack Russell. We so need a height dog. He seemed very nice and tolerated well being held by a complete stranger for restrained recalls. There were two border collies that were terribly pretty and they were typical enthusiastic all over the place border collies. There was a chow cross whose owners indicated she may have some over-protective issues, but she seemed okay when we had them take her over the jumps on leash with the other dogs. The retriever is a nice, freindly dog who seemed to want to play with the other dogs, but she needs to loose weight.

Weasel was sloppy with her box turns, and the first set of runs, she didn't have the prop. I hope the bouncing off the wall is having a good effect, but I couldn't see. Z dog practiced a bit of passing, and he seemed to do okay, but the other dog was intimidated and slowed way down coming back when she was passing into him. For some reason, he was exploring crossing over when we were doing box work, but I believe that's because of the prop we use. It's the hinged jump we were arranging in a v in front of the box, and now I've moved to using just one side as a more standard jump, but I believe he feels he's supposed to jump over that second side and that aims him right at the other box.

One more practice until the tournament. Hope it goes well!