I know I say this a lot but the Carleton County Pawtatoes Tournament is truly one of our favorites!! 

The Flyball MAINEiacs traveled to Florenceville NB with a fairly large crew in tow. We had beautiful weather for tenting and enjoyed a corn boil and camp fire at Carol-Anne and Rob's house. 

The MAINEiacs are becoming a less "green" team! We did mat time with only 5 young dogs. 

Quincy did some racing recalls against Cayman and then did some box work in the new environment. He did a great job and seemed really happy.

Apollo worked individually and did really well with his box work and grabbing a ball.

Cayman enjoyed his recalls with Quincy. He stayed super focused on his box work with Q's squeaky ball in the other lane. 

Odin figured out his job really quickly and did some nice recalls and on/offs.

Vennie did her first recalls on the flat and she even gave me attitude while I held her.  She loves her tug!!!

We had 3 teams this weekend. Our Vets team and our Open team did have to race each other once each day. That was pretty fun to be out there all together. We did have to do a little handler swapping but we figured it out. Now onto the rest of the story!

Vets - No Eff's Left

1st place both days

Banner
Sammie
Kessie
Levi
Sassy

The Vets ran really well together. They earned a total of 176 points that were split up between dogs that shared spots. These dogs have all been running for a really long time so it is hard to find individual things to say about each one. But I can say that they've still got it when we managed to have a handful of races under 24 seconds!!! I do have to say that Levi had an amazing tournament and ran full time and made all the right choices!!!


Open 3 - What The Fuzz
3rd place both days

Abbey - 632
Murphy - 632
Laikynn -557
Saoirse - 557
Thistle - 75
Arrow - 75

This team did really well together. This is a pretty new line up since it was Laikynn's first full time spot. Abbey and Murphy are really passing well and running so steady. Annaka ran Abbey in start for most of the weekend and was really starting to figure out her timing. Laikynn came into the weekend a little hot!!! By that I mean a lot hot!!! She figured herself out and cleaned up her turn and stopped bobbling. Then it was up to me to figure out how to pass such a speedy little dog. I think this was a good learning experience for us. Saoirse ran really strong the entire tournament! She is really liking running for treats and was super happy all weekend. Thistle proved in warm ups by the end of the weekend that she was ready for a race. It started out as 1 heat and lead to 3! She held her ball really well. Arrow was a pinch hitter on this team when we ran against the Vets and he took Laikynn's spot so mom could run on the Vets team. 


Reg 2 - Funk You Up
1st place both days

Picnic - 1100
Reese - 975
Arrow - 1100
Cody -1100
Shamu - 125
Abbey

This team was so exciting to be on!! Who would have ever thought that the MAINEiacs would be looking at the clocks and they would be consistently winning heats with 18 second times?!? We made some awesome progress this weekend. In our first race of the day this team posted a new MAINEiacs team record from 18.21 down to 18.11! That didn't last long and by our 3rd race of the day we hit a new team record of 17.807!!! What an exciting time it was to watch the clock for each dog and know our start was awesome and each pass was tighter than the last and all standing there together in the back of the run back waiting for the clock! I'm pretty sure we all screamed!!! Picnic was awesome in start! She really likes racing the other start dog! Reese does not like false starts but he does love passing Pic! Arrow was getting tighter and tighter passes on Reese and I'm pretty sure posted a 4.0 to 4.1 many times. Cody is figuring out passing too! He did a really great job and posted a lot of 4.1's. Part of what is so awesome about this line up is not only were we consistently in the very low 18's, we ran clean all weekend, still have room for more and we had soooo much fun together!!!


New titles:

Thistle FD
Laikynn FDCh-S

We really all had a great time together this weekend whether it was just hanging out or racing and we made so many memories!!!

Up next:
U-fli in Greenfield and then we are on the road to CanAm

​~Staci

A big group of Flyball MAINEiacs took the trip to Fredericton Canada for the OMG tournament.  We brought 4 teams with us this time! If you ask any MAINEiac when we are up the answer will be, NEXT!!! 

With our larger groups I am learning to take lots of notes over the weekend! We did a lot of work on figuring out our starts and passes at this tournament.  Our dogs are running so well together that we have a good plan in place to start tightening things up for future tournaments. I'm going to write this review a little different. My plan is to talk about each team as a whole instead of each individual dog. Just changing things up a little to keep my reviews interesting!!

Funk You Up! Open 1 

Arrow 821 
Cody 821 
Reese 821 
Picnic 671 
Shamu 150 
Tilt 


This team continues to amaze me! We made a little adjustment to our line up by adding Arrow in place of Taboo this time. We have plenty of room to tighten passes but this weekend was about holding the ball and getting consistent. With that said we still came home with a new club record of 18.236!!!!

Shut The Front Door! Open 2
Roxie 738
Eliot 438
Pivot 738
Kessie 612
Laikynn 426
Abbey

This team did a good job of holding things together. They are able to pass really well and post some really respectable times in the low 20's! 


What The Fuzz!? Regular 2

Abbey 835
Murphy 835
Saoirse 835
Rita 805
Tilt 30
Thistle


This team really showed what they have been working on. I'm pretty sure there was a near perfect start and closer passing than this team has seen in a while. No dropped balls at the line either!!!!

No Eff's Left! Vets

Banner 320
Sammie 351
Bullet 281
Sassy 121
Levi 46
Tchino


Our vets team ran really well together. The old dogs had lots of fun and brought home lots of points for them. We had a few heats each day under 24 seconds! A big shout out to Tchino from FAME for helping us out! 

Our warm up dogs are making lots of good decisions. Shamu, Tilt and Laikynn all did a little bit of racing and are all so close to having at least a 1/2 time spot soon. Thistle worked hard and did start to hold her ball further and further!

Odin, Shilo and Quincy did green dog mat time on Sat night. Odin is really starting to pick up pieces of the game. Shilo was happy to do some recalls and play all fly, no ball!! Quincy made some progress with his ball retrieval and loves doing recalls.

New titles
Bullet FDCh-g
Cody FDCh-G
Murphy FM
Levi FDCh-S
Laikynn FDCh (personal best time 3.971)
Roxie FMCh


At the end of day 2 OMG have an award in honor of a former dog on their team. He was a dog that worked hard, loved to play and loved his person. Congrats to Shamu and Anna on receiving the Higgs Award!!!

NEXT up: Sarah H and her dogs are going to Ontario in July. Then a larger group will head to Florenceville to Carleton County's tournament at the end of August.  


Thanks for reading!

I'll start by saying the Flyball MAINEiacs are an enormous team! With that being said it has been really hard to write a review for our first few tournaments of the year because we've had so many dogs running on so many teams. 

We started out in early April by going to the Spring Fling in Dover hosted by BARK & co-hosted by us. We brought five teams and our winter practices have paid off! We ran really well all weekend with lots of dogs gaining lots of points and new titles. We did also accomplish a new team personal best time of 18.59 with Cody, Taboo, Reese and Picnic.  We ate really well as usual and had a puppy shower to welcome Cayman to the team. 

A smaller crew traveled to Fredericton Canada the following weekend to the PFT tournament. PFT welcomed a few of our vets dogs on their team and they ran really well together for being a new group. Our own two teams continued to work well together and posted some nice times and really nice passing. We even beat the bad weather on our way home!! 

At both of these tournaments I wasn't able to track our actual placements or give you a breakdown of each dogs points or accomplishments. I'm hoping that going forward I will be able to keep more notes to be able to do that, but it will all depend on how big the MAINEiacs get! 

Now on to our most recent tournament. We headed to Mass Chaos' bid for the balls tournament in Greenfield Massachusetts. We have come so far in the last year that our single dog racing time and mat time is now limited to about four or five dogs. Quincy, Izzy, Odin and Cayman all did a great job getting acclimated to a new environment. 

On to the individual team reviews! We had five teams with us which included a vets team, a regular team, a multi team and 2 open teams. Overall this weekend we were seeded really well in each of our divisions. Lots of really close racing and friendly competition in the lanes!!! 

Abbey(704) Murphy(704) Curly(704) Saoirse(704) Thistle 

Multi - What The Fuzz! - 4th place 

Abbey held her ball really well all weekend. Murphy started to be able to pass tighter. Curly and Saoirse were really solid and didn't miss a beat!! 

Roxie(495) Eliot(495) Peanut(315) Levi(320) Shamu(255) Kessie(100)

Reg 2 - Shut The Front Door! - 4th place 

Roxie and Eliot have the number 1 and number 2 spots held down and are a perfect pair in the lanes!! Peanut ran the most number of heats that he's ever run in a tournament since he started playing flyball. Every year he improves more and more in this environment. I don't think he had any truly scary moments this weekend. Levi ran nearly full time, and made lots of great choices! Shamu and Anna did so well with the help of Dani this weekend. Shamu had such great focus that he was starting to pass closer and closer with each race. 

Cody(516) Taboo(516) Reese(516) Picnic(516) Pistol 

Open 1 - Back The Truck Up! - 3rd place 

Cody and Martha had their first perfect start!!! Taboo jumps in and runs with us like she practices every week with the team. Reese and Picnic are both wild in the lanes and make it a lot of fun for Rebeccah and I out there. This team had so many close races against the other teams. It was a lot of fun to push things just a bit more until we got a new personal best time of 18.42!!! 

Arrow(727) SaraLab(727) Kessie(627) Rita(727) Laikynn(100) 

Open 2 - Funk You Up! - 1st place 

Arrow had a new personal best of 3.901 and I'm pretty sure a perfect start or pretty darn close to perfect!! SaraLab and Sharon are working on tightening passes and Sara's times are showing their hard work. Kessie was happy to run open and be able to jump 7" jumps! The old girl has still got it! Rita is turning out to be a nice little anchor dog. I think she likes coming back to her cheering squad! Laikynn ran her first tournament heats! She ran in the 3rd spot and was passing SaraLab without any issues but she dropped her ball. She got to try again in the last race of the day and she figured things out and ran all 4 heats clean and speedy with her best pack time of 4.5! 


Banner(39) Sammie(63) Bullet(74) Sassy(46) Gemma(74) and Mattingly 

Vets - No Eff's Left! - 2nd place

This vets team is the happiest group of old dogs around!!! Banner didn't smash his face on the box, but because he was distracted he bobbled and ran into the back boards. Not once, but twice!!! No major issues though. Sammie ran for me and for Dani. Dani did a great job handling her and had her passing Banner in the lanes with ease. Bullet had a lot of fun this weekend and had some speedy times! Sassy was her reliable self and didn't mind having her flyball Auntie Deb run her for most of the weekend. Gemma ran a few races both days. She was happy to share her spot and help the older dogs out! Mattingly from Weston Whirlwinds came out of retirement to play with FM for the weekend. He may not have gained any points but he had the most fun making the game his own. He had the best smile on his face each race!! 

Pistol and Thistle also warmed up all weekend and made lots of progress. Both were doing full runs by the end of the weekend and looking more and more confident. 

New Titles:

Arrow -FMX 
Laikynn -FD and FDX 
Peanut - FDCh 
Rita - FMX
SaraLab-FDCh-S
Shamu - FDCh-S

We had nearly our entire village at this tournament (We missed you Lisa and Lynda!) in more ways than one! Our human wall down the entire middle of the lanes during warm ups, then all in the run back supporting each of our 5 teams races, 7 tents for camping, 4 coolers, 5 easy ups and 3 grilling devices to feed this entire crew all at one time! 

I will end my long winded review with these few words!

When are we up? Next!!!

We will be headed back to Canada to OMG! in June.

Thanks for reading!

~Staci

​The Flyball MAINEiacs had a fun time racing away in Barkaritaville this past weekend! The whole region came together to help put on the tournament that almost didn't happen in North Smithfield, Rhode Island. The weather was definitely on the warm side but luckily the AC was on in the building to keep us mostly cool.

Our teams did very well this weekend overall. Our Regular 2 team "Funk You Up" consisted of Taboo, Eliot and Picnic holding down the core flawlessly all weekend. For greener dogs, Eliot and Picnic really did a great job with their passing. The anchor position on this team was shared among Gemma, Tilt and Cody who all had some excellent runs. The team came in 2nd place in their division, and the point totals were:

Taboo 571
Eliot 571
Picnic 571
Gemma 295
Tilt 100
Cody 176

Our Open 2 team also came in 2nd in their division. "Shut the Front Door" was made up of Roxie, Kessie, Murphy and Abbey as the core dogs. Roxie held down the start position all weekend but the rest of the lineup changed from time to time. Peanut was able to run a couple of heats for Kessie, and Levi owned race 91! Abbey and Murphy played very nicely with each other on the same team. Both were passing into other dogs and Abbey held her ball! The point totals for this team were:

Roxie 622
Kessie 532
Murphy 622
Abbey 522
Peanut 90
Levi 100

Our Multibreed team was "What the Fuzz?!" They placed third in their division. This team included Arrow, Curly, Rita and Pivot as the core dogs. Saoirse and Shamu also got to run a little for Pivot throughout the weekend. Once again, there was some nice passing on this team and they had a good number of clean runs. Curly became a "treat dog" this weekend, Arrow seemed to really enjoy running for both Sarah and Deb, and Rita did not have ANY butterflies all weekend! This team ended up with a huge number of points:

Arrow 801
Curly 801
Rita 801
Pivot 625
Saoirse 101
Shamu 75

Our Vets team "Fine Whine" had a lot of fun this weekend. Sorry, we somehow missed the point totals for this team. They did get some points- not a lot- but they got some. Sassy ran on this team, along with her housemate Bullet. Luna ran on this team too and earned her FMX! Shilo got in a few heats and sometimes remembered both parts of the game (fly-BALL). Leap had some very respectable times for a little one and our visitor Poppy ran really really consistently.

ARFF had some pretty "New Title" ribbons for us. Other titles earned this weekend were:

Cody - FDX
Shamu - FDCH
Eliot - FDCH-G
Luna - FMX
Roxie - FMX

And the Mat dogs! Almost forgot about mat time. With set up happening Saturdaymorning, there was no single dog racing, just mat time Saturday evening after racing. We had three dogs in- Jester, Thistle and Quincy. All three got some good work in a challenging environment.

All in all, it was a really fun and mostly successful weekend. It's always different for the dogs to run on the turf and the heat was definitely a factor for a lot of the dogs. In addition to some great racing, we found a delicious new restaurant called "Chop Kabob" and I have a feeling we will be returning there the next time we are in the area.

Huge thanks to our team photographers for taking some great photos all weekend. We are so lucky to have so many talented people with fancy cameras!

I think that's it. Sorry if we forgot anyone. Next up- a small group of MAINEiacs are traveling to PEI in early July!

Travis and Sarah L

​Photos courtesy of Dave Strauss and Martha Miller

​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~

​Well the Flyball MAINEiacs were finally back in the lanes to start the 2017 season. We went to Dover NH for the MCR & BARK Spring Fling. We love this tournament!!!
 
I'll start off by saying I don't know exactly where our teams placed. There was so much going on and I couldn't hear the placements. However I do know that our teams ran really well and you can tell we have been practicing a lot!!!
 
We brought 4 teams and got a little help from Ember and Taboo on 2 of our teams.
 
Vets
Shilo 285, Sammie 405, Luna 320, Bullet 55, Kessie 145 (and Ember)
 
For a bunch of older dogs they all ran really well! It's nice to see them be pretty competitve in this division.
 
My memory is not serving me very well for each of our other line ups. We were pretty busy!
 
Abbey 533
Arrow 761
Curly 723
Eliot 565 – new title FDCh-Silver
Gemma 556 – new title FDCh-Gold
Leap 125
Murphy 301 – new title FDX
Peanut 80 – new title FD (way to go Nut!!)
Picnic 175 – new title FD & FDX
Pivot 623
Reese 761
Rita 723
Roxie 761
Saoirse 300 – new title FMX
Sassy 386
Shamu 115
Tilt 176
 
This was such a great tournament for FM! So many accomplishments for our green dogs and then our core dogs are really pulling things together and being super reliable. SDR went really well for Levi, Banner, Thistle, Quincy, Jester, and Pistol. Everyone is making progress and will hopefully have warm up spots in the near future. Rebeccah even learned how to use a new passing program and it is awesome! We are going to be able to really start working on those passes even more now!
 
We can't wait to see everyone again in a few weeks in Greenfield! It's Derby weekend! Mint Julep's all around!!!
 
Photos courtesy of team member Chris Baby

​What a busy weekend the MAINEiacs had in Greenfield MA! Mass Chaos hosted a really great tournament.
 
Staci, Martha and Annaka made the trip this time. You would think this would be a short review with such a small group, but I'll warn you that it is not! We had a busy weekend!
 
We went with 8 dogs and ran on 4 teams.
 
Shilo ran on Vets with WW and was handled by Natalie Landry. Shi still ran so many 4.4’s this weekend. It's kinda crazy he's almost 12yrs old! His team came in 1st and he earned 656 points.
 
Sammie ran on Vets with ARFF. She was really steady and only had a few bobbles each day. She did chase after her ball that popped out of her mouth in the run back and took out Barb at the knees. Sorry Barb!!!! Luckily no major injuries. This team came in 2nd and Sammie earned 710 points.
 
Abbey ran with NasDog in Open 2. She was pretty distracted but stayed in her own lane all weekend!!! Abbey is proving she can do the job! A lil ball holding work and she’ll have it!!! This team didn't place in the top 3. Abbey earned 385 points.
 
Arrow and Reese ran on an Open 1 team with Land Sharks from Ontario. We didn't think it would be a problem and we put Arrow in start for the first race. Well he decided any tug will do and he came back to me while I was sending Reese instead of to Martha. My shin and his big head make a lovely bruise! Lol! We figured it out and ended up running him in anchor and he did awesome. He pulled out a 4.2 and some 4.3’s. We played with the line up a few times and Reese was passing the other dogs and running really solid. He did get to start the last few races on Sunday. First heat, early. Move back 6 inches and end up with a 0.002 and 0.001! This team had a best time of 18.58 today against CxM. It was really fun to be racing their height dog team! We came in 3rd and both boys earned 565 points.
 
Annaka was Jr handler extraordinaire! If we couldn't find her she was in the lanes racing a dog. I'm pretty sure she handled 5 dogs this weekend. Penny, Capri, Wager, Sammie and another border collie. She was passing and starting dogs with minimal help! Talk about good starts! Annaka had her first ever perfect 0.000 start this weekend. It was awesome, everyone in the venue was cheering her on!
 
Rufus and Shamu did SDR on Friday. We worked through Rufus not wanting to be held and got a few good recalls over 1 jump. Shamu did mostly recallson Friday and did a good job.
 
We did mat time on Saturday with Banner, Shamu and Picnic. Banner looked great on the box and got in lots of runs. Shamu got to do full runs next to a fluffy white dog doing recalls in the other lane. He looked over once and then decided to get his job done! Rebeccah and Picnic joined us for the night so Picnic could get in some flyball time. She did some really good work and was really happy in the lanes.
 
There was a wonderful raffle of 3 baskets that were made up of donations from the competitors. The raffle was to raise money for the Pascarelli family. Around $2000 was raised!!!!
 
We camped on-site and ate well as usual. Pancakes with bacon and mimosas, burgers and take out Chinese food!
 
This is always one of my favorite tournaments and even with such a small crew it still is a favorite! We had tons of fun!! We missed the rest of FM too though!
 
Next up: Flyball MAINEia!!!
 
~Staci

​A large group of Flyball MAINEiacs made the trip just over the Maine border to Florenceville-Bristol Canada for the 1st annual Carleton County Pawtatoes tournament! Our gracious hosts were amazing! We tented on Carole-Anne’s lawn, had campfires with lots of the other clubs, a corn boil and we were walking distance to the site! What a great little town with one of the biggest turnout of spectators. Our corgi mixes were feeling the love from the crowd with special requests to see Shamu warm up and visitors coming over to meet Odin.
 
The site was great too! We enjoyed some great home cooked breakfasts and lunches, including poutine!
 
We ran 3 teams this weekend. All of them ran so well together! I didn't get our placements for Sunday since we needed to get our tents packed up and on the road home. Running great and having fun was all that mattered and we definitely did both.
 
Funk You Up! (Regular 2)
4th place on Saturday
 
Roxie – 980
Reese – 980
Curly – 980
Abbey – 875
Eliot – 85
Levi
Picnic
 
Roxie is loving being start dog! She has gained so much confidence and really seems to trust her team. She trusts her team so much that Reese going nuts just 6 inches away from her is no big deal! Reese was so solid in the #2 spot. I'm pretty proud of my boy! Curly was a rock star this weekend. He held his turn really well and was nice and speedy. Abbey was spectating in the other lane this weekend but she proved to everyone that she can spectate and get her job done without crossing! She was really starting to pass and got a personal best time of 5.2! Eliot did a few heats this weekend and is looking so good! He had a few baby moments where he forgot he needed to do a turn and get his ball, but he recovered and stayed really confident. Levi had some really nice warm ups in Sat. This boy is looking so good and making such good decisions. Levi talked Picnic into taking his spot on Sun so she could get some time in the lanes. Picnic’s recalls were so focused and fast!!! She did get to doing some box work by the end of the day and is really advancing to the next level.
 
Shut The Front Door (Open 1)
2nd place on Saturday
 
Rita – 822
Capri (CC)
Henna (WW)
Remi (WW)
Banner
Murphy
Shamu
 
This was an awesome little open team! None of these dogs have ever run together but you would have never known it! This team also had a tied heat in the first race of the day on Sat. That was pretty cool!! Rita did a really good job in start. It's a hard job and she stayed strong all weekend. All of the open dogs that ran with us were rock solid and a pleasure to run with. Banner warmed up on Sat and was a little distracted but did get in some head to head racing and held himself together. He's making progress. Murphy warmed up on Sun and is doing great with his focus on getting his ball and staying in his lane. A rolling ball did get the best of him once but we have plans to work on that. Shamu warmed up both days and had a bit of a fan club! He and Anna are doing really well working together and should be running some real heats soon.
 
Fine Whine (Vets)
2nd place on Saturday
 
Shilo – 235
Sammie – 485
Sassy – 400
Luna – 485
Bullet – 85
Kessie – 250
 
This vets team has been running together for most of the 2016 season. They are running really well together. Shilo and Kessie split their spot this weekend. Both of them were really happy to be at a tournament and running with Rebeccah! Sammie had some help in the lanes from our Jr. Handler. Anna is getting pretty good at letting Sammie go at just the right time. Sassy and Bullet shared a spot too. Sassy was a trooper and got the job done. Bullet seems to like the #2 spot and was speedy and confident! Luna was really solid this weekend. She seems to really enjoy running with this group of dogs. Sammie apologizes for knocking the top slat off and scaring Luna!
 
We did some mat time on Sat night. Odin got to come and play and did some box work and recalls. He hasn't seen much of the flyball experience and he handled it all very well! Picnic and Thistle did mat time together. We were all prepared for Picnic to go visiting that we weren't paying attention to Thistle. So Thistle saw her opportunity to go visit. They both figured things out and go their jobs done. Quincy did some nice recalls and box work too. Rufus came out for the first time. He wasn't a big fan of being held by a stranger, but his recalls were great!
 
New titles
Abbey – FDCh-G
Eliot – FDX
Reese – FMX
Rita – FDCh-G
 
We missed all of the MAINEiacs that couldn't make this trip, but don't worry it's on our calendars for next year so you'll be able to join us the next time!
 
Up Next:
Sammie and Reese will be running on Vets and Open in Greenfield.
 
Then MAINEia for the team in November!!!!
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Submitted by Staci Yates

​Photos courtesy of the always awesome Dave Strauss!!