Fusion, Louie and I were playing flyball at the Coconut Classis this past weekend. The Coconut Classic (aka “the Nut”) is a flyball tournament held every June by the Fur Fun flyball team. And Hey — Fur Fun Flyball is OUR Team too!
We usually have a secondary theme at the Nut so people can dress up and so we can just have a lot of “nutty” fun over the weekend. The Nut theme this was “Nuts in Wonderland.”
This year was great. It was Fusion’s first time back doing flyball since the CanAm in Oct 2009. Fusion did OK. Little slower than before but she has to make sure it was ok to pass the other dog. If you watched her ears you can see her making decision to pass. She should just stay at one speed but she doesn’t. If she was at same speed, there would be no time for her ears to be like radars. Her carefulness on passing was finally getting better at end of show. Fusion’s Team did fantastic and took 1st place in Multi 1. Louie was on vets and ran part time. Part-time wasn’t because of his health. He was looking good. Just that our team has LOTS of dogs and sometimes you have to share a spot. His vet team took second to the OTHER FF Vet team. So vets were 1-2. Cool. Actually Awesome considering the team was running the show!
The Nut has always been the largest Flyball show on the east coast — and one of the craziest. The Nut has also, in the past, donated some of the raffle proceeds to great causes.
This year, the Nut had another twist and FurFun’s Team Captain Julie challenged clubs to help raise money for the 2010 cause: National Canine Cancer Fund (NCCF). Julie recommended NCCF as the cause because so many of the FF team members have been impacted by canine cancer. Julie has had dogs with lymphoma and Hemangiosarcoma. And at this show, two of FurFuns dogs that were racing in the lanes are cancer survivors. Jammer, the fastest Boston in the world and height dog for the Mult-1 team, has survived Stage 2 MastCell. Louie, my chinese crested, running on a veterans team, is now 19 months past his initial diagnosis of Stage IVa lymphoma (he just finished his second round of chemo treatment).
Before the show and during the show, Teams sold treats, Tugs, carcitures, pendants and other goods to help raise funds. FF once again gave portion of raffle proceeds to the cause. On Sunday at the awards ceremony, the total was $7000!!! WOW. A great start to help kick Canine Cancer in the nuts!!!
THANK YOU!!!! To help make the Nut extra special, I approached my favorite Dog Food and Treat friends, FreshPet, to see if they would help sponsor the show by providing some goodies for the teams. I use FreshPet food and treats for Louie (I am very careful what I feed him now that he has cancer). But their treats are GREAT for any dog. Lots of Agility trainers are using them for training treats. Especially the ones that look like little meatballs.
Here are some pics of the FreshPet goodies the the Nut. Most went into the welcome bags we gave each team. One was item for raffle.
Fresh Pet Raffle: Really cool stuff!!!
And here is Louie with his Treats. I admit. I just carry the bag “as is” into the flyball ring with me! That way I never run out of treats for the Lou!!
