​On a rainy Friday, a small group of MAINEiacs drove just about 8 hours to Batavia, New York for Team Tenacity's "Make It Memorial Day" Tournament. This was a new tournament for most in our group, and for several dogs, it was a chance to go "home" and see their breeders.

The tournament site was kind of like Greenfield... there was camping... and rain... and the racing lanes were in a large, very open building. It was a very loud tournament with many dogs crating inside. It was fun seeing some teams from Region 13 West who we don't often race against. There were lots of very fast sport mixes at this tournament which were very exciting to watch.

We brought two teams- our Open team "What the Fuzz?!" was seeded in the first division of open against some very fast teams. We weren't expecting to fair all that well in the division standings, but our clean racing helped us win lots of heats against many teams who didn't finish. Fuzz ended up finishing second in the Open-1 division. Arrow, Roxie, Picnic and Abbey ran on this team. Roxie ran smoothly between the Power Tripp Crazy Train of Arrow and Picnic all weekend. Arrow had some great starts with Sarah and hit 3.9xx several times over the weekend. The muppet kept Bex on her toes with all her excitement at the start line. Abbey held her ball all weekend in anchor! Abbey was also kind enough to let her housemate Cody run a few heats for him to earn his first flyball points and his FD in front of his breeder, mother and brother.

This tournament was a little loosey-goosey compared to how we are used to things running in Region 13 East. We think the point totals for this team looked like this, but again, we're not entirely sure:
Arrow: 607
Roxie: 607
Picnic: 607
Abbey: 582
Cody: 25

Our Regular 2 team "Shut the Front Door" consisted of Eliot, Murphy, Rita, Saoirse, Shamu, and Kessie. Eliot, Murphy and Rita were a solid core all weekend. Rita had only one "butterfly moment" where she bobbled her ball and forget she was playing flyball. But, she stayed in the building all weekend! Eliot was a steady-eddy start dog, and Murphy ran solidly, full-time in the pack like he'd been running there forever. Saoirse, Shamu and Kessie all got a chance to run a few heats in the very challenging venue.

This team earned a very respectable amount of points too (again not totally sure this is correct, but this is what was posted):
Eliot: 435
Murphy: 435
Rita: 435
Saoirse: 230
Shamu: 75
Kessie: 130

Shilo ran on a team that ended up short on dogs in Open 3. This team was actually pretty fast and broke out multiple times over the weekend. The MAINEiacs team members also helped out numerous other clubs over the weekend. Travis box loaded for one of our teams plus two others (Ruffin' It and FNF) . We were also very grateful to have some help in return from Ruffin' It who gave us a very experienced box loader. Rebeccah and Sarah got to handle Taboo (Picnic's grandfather) and Shayde (Arrow's mom) for a few races which  was also extra special this weekend.

There was some extra excitement Saturday evening after racing when we learned there would be speedway racing in the track right near our camping area. Luckily, it was over by midnight, so we were able to get some sleep before racing again Sunday morning :-) 

There were some new titles this weekend too:
Cody-FD
Picnic FDCH-S
Abbey- FM
Rita- FM

It was a great weekend showing Region 13 West what the MAINEiacs are all about! Sorry for the late update and thanks for reading!

Sarah and Travis

The Flyball MAINEiacs traveled West this weekend to Mass Chaos’ Greenfield Derby.
 
The weather wasn’t expected to be great, but it actually managed to clear up quite a bit. We had a really enjoyable, sunny, but windy weekend.
 
This is another one of our favorite tournaments, so it brings a big crowd of Flyball MAINEiacs. We brought 3 of our own teams, had a dog on a team with BARK and had lots of green dogs with us.
 
Our multi team “What the Fuzz” came in 1st!!!
 
Taboo – 675 (our “newest” MAINEiac)
Eliot – 675
Murphy – 675 (new title FDCh)
Saoirse – 500
Shamu – 175
Levi
 
It was so nice to have Taboo and Dave in the lanes with us this weekend. I think Dave’s competitive nature may be rubbing off on us. This was a really nice little team! I’m super proud of these dogs for running so well together. Murphy ran full time like he's been doing it forever. Shamu and Annaka had a few great races too!!
 
Our regular team “Shut the Front Door” came in 2nd!!!
 
Arrow -750 (new title FM)
Reese -750
Picnic – 750 (new title FDCh)
Abbey – 700
Peanut -50 (new title FDX)
Pivot
 
This team was on fire!! We had a last minute change in dogs which resulted in Picnic running a full time spot. This was her first full time spot and she rocked it!!!  With this change, it made our team a little bit faster and we were really close to breaking out. We kept saying we need to hold our passes, we don’t want to break out! Well then there was a change of plans and we decided that we did want to break out!!! Our dogs were passing so well and running so clean that we took a chance and our first break out race we ran a 19.945. Then we decided in our last race of the day, in our last heat of the day that we’d try it one more time to see what our fastest team time could be. We ended up with a 19.831!!! I know a team shouldn’t be as excited for a break out as we were, but this was one of our fastest team times that we have run in about 5 years with a team made up of all our own dogs!

We hope the Pivot is feeling better soon!  We missed that little spitfire in the lanes!!
 
Our open team “It's Brittany B!tch” came in 3rd!!!
 
Roxie – 571
Sassy- 571
Rita – 571
Bullet – 471
Kessie – 100 (honorary Brittany)
Thistle
 
We’ve been waiting a long time to run this team! With 6 Brittany’s on our team, and the new open rules, we were finally able to do it. I have to say for a team made up of 4 dogs from 2 households, they all handled themselves really well. Kessie was able to help them out for a few races too, since she’s the same colors as Brittany’s!.
 
BARK Vets “Just Keep Barking” came in 2nd!!!
 
Sammie – 80
 
Sammie, Anna and I had a really fun time running with BARK! What a great group of old dogs and great people!!
 
Levi and Thistle both did warm ups and are getting so close!! Peanut did lots of warm ups and earned himself a few heats. I wasn’t there in time for SDR, but I hear it was a really great success for all of the dogs that were practicing.
We got to do some mat time on Saturday night. Cody, Shilo, Banner, Tilt, Quincy, Roo, Jester, Odin, and Laikynn all got to have some fun in the lanes.
 
A big huge thank you to Mass Chaos for hosting another fabulous tournament!!!
 
Up Next:
Batavia and Rhode Island
 
Thanks
~Staci~