May 12th

With Claire unavailable, we decided to bite the bullet and put Foster and Finnegan into the main team.  The order we ran was Tara, Millie, Finnegan and Foster.  On the first race of the morning against the Crazies, Foster ran over to the red lane and we lost the leg due to interference.  At that point we decided to treat the day as a training day, so for the second leg Carole let the Crazies dog clear the lane before letting Foster go.  With no dog in the other lane Foster ran superbly, so this seemed the way to go.  However on the third leg the Crazies got a light but rather than let their dog go the Crazies let Foster complete his run before letting their dog go.  Flyball must be one of the few sports where competitors will lose a race just to give an inexperienced dog the chance to race competitively in the future.  Well done the Crazies, this is the spirit of flyball at its finest.

As the day progressed Foster and Finnegan gained in confidence and experience.  The crossovers between Millie and Finnegan caused some comments as both dogs seem unable to run in anything other than straight lines.  Having said that, during one race Finnegan fumbled the ball out of the box but he recovered and came back down the lane, this was witnessed by Murphy's Dad James who was rather impressed.  We finished the day with a second place and a very satisfied feeling.