Apupalyptic Flyball Club

Unorthodogs Lucky Balls Tournament - Monroe WA

Another crazy weekend, though much less so than Animal House. Big thanks to Anna and Tara for stepping in at the last minute and lending us some dogs. A slightly less busy weekend, with only 11 races over the two days but with a skeleton crew. We lucked out compared to the last UOD tournament in that we were not right by the door and close to a heater so it was a much warmer experience. Saturday we had a few teething issues and ended up 4th in our division but Riley did get her FM title. Sunday was a much smoother day, with some nice big breaks between races. We weren't really watching the scores at all so when it came to prizes we were pleasantly surprised to come second out of 6 in our division. Additionally looking at our stats sheet, we got through 25 heats and didn't have a single no finish. There was only 1 heat where we didn't score points for our dogs but we still won that heat! We also helped the lovely Lolly get to FDCH.

Animal House Toga Party Tournament - Salem OR

Woo boy what a weekend! We debuted our awesome new club jumpsuits this weekend and we can safely say they were a big hit, even winning us a prize on Sunday for style, that and Anthony's toga. Saturday we had a very successful day with the regular team racking up our first Regular win. Asti made her debut and got FD and Ace got his FDX, Riley and Ptera also did a great job running on both open and regular teams.

Sunday things got a bit crazy, by the end of the day Saturday it was apparent that quite a few of the dogs on the open team were not going to be able to run as much as we had hoped which meant that we had to sub in more of our regular team dogs so Ptera, Stella and Angus all got to run more than time and a half, by the end of the day there were some tired dogs and handlers! We still managed a decent showing in both divisions and Stella and Angus both earned their FDCH-G.

Apupalyptic Holiday Party and Conditioning Seminar

As part of out holiday party we had Maddy from WetDog Wellness come down and give us some information on exercises to condition our dogs and good methods for warm up and cool down during competition. We worked with podiums and balance beams to help our dogs develop body awareness and strength. After the seminar Maddy gave several of the dogs massages which they really enjoyed. After our gift exchange of homemade dog gifts we took some new team photos in our fancy flyball sweater vests and hats.

Unorthodogs Butterballs Tournament- Monroe WA

Another successful tournament outing for Apupalyptic. Ace debuted and got his FD, Hadley got her FD and we hit a new club best team of 19.98s. It was not the warmest of weekends, with a few flurries of snow making an appearance. We had the pleasure of having our crating area right by the door so we got plenty of fresh air! We didn't let the weather get the best of us and made an admirable showing coming in second in Open 4 on Saturday and Regular 2 on Sunday. We also debuted our all terrier team - Terrier Alert Level Red, in Open 4 on Sunday and went on to take first place in the division. We also gave everyone a sneak peek at the Flyball themed Christmas sweater we are going to be raffling off.

Stumptown Racers Flying into Fall Tournament - Ridgefield WA

A big weekend for Apupalyptic- we made our debut running in regular division, had a brand new handler take on the tiny terror in some races, 3 of our dogs ran full time for the first time. We brought home some new titles: FM for Ptera, FDCH-G for Riley and FDCH & FDCH-S for Angus and a new club crockpot! We also debuted our new boxes which worked excellently and the dogs had no problems, we also did a bit of parking lot construction and made a new ball hopper that is capable of picking up all of our ball types. This of course leads to tired dogs and tired humans. Tired humans apparently brings on some post tournament hysteria and conversations about fundraising ended up with plans to get a custom skinned club tour bus to house all of us and our dogs. This of course required a visual...

New Boxes!

After some hefty fundraising efforts, intense building, hours on a CNC machine and some studying of other boxes out there our new boxes are ready and we tried them out at practice today. All the dogs took to them straight away and we know that having 2 boxes are going to make things much easier in the future. How about some info on our build process?

Final Assembly

The cut and painted pieces were put together and then after some brain storming a system was developed to attach the thrusters. Anti-fatigue matting was put onto the front where the dogs hit and the base to give something nice for the box loader to stand on, a padded knee rest was put in to brace against the might of the Riley. Then it was time for the fun stuff- decoration! Custom cut vinyl with the club logo on the sides and various stripes of duck tape to cover the edges of the mat.

Painting Party

We decided that to make it look its very best painting the pieces prior to assembly was going to work best. So multiple cans of spray primer, a few gallons of exterior gloss paint and a whole lot of sparkles later we have some lovely pink and blue pieces ready for assembly. We also took this opportunity to trim and sand our new set of sintra jumps- with only minimal injury!

Design and Cutting

We knew we wanted a box based on the one used by Run Free and so Karl very kindly allowed us multiple poking and photographing expeditions. This was then translated into a schematic of what pieces we would need for the boxes and plans made for a new full set of sintra jumps. To (we thought) save time and make things as accurate as possible the box and jump parts were then transfered to a CNC machine thanks to the wood shop of North Eugene High School. 8 hours later we had all of our pieces ready to trim and sand.

Flyball Demos at Polk County Fair - Rickreall OR

Our friends at Muddy Paws once again invited us to hang out and do some flyball demos, this time at the Polk County Fair. Another fun time running outside, and letting folks see what this flyball thing is all about. We tried for some new initiates through the day as volunteers from the crowd were given the opportunity to run some of our more point and shoot dogs.

Flyball Demos at SafeHaven Humane Society - Tangent OR

We stopped by the SafeHaven Humane Society this weekend to hang out with the good people of Muddy Paws A Flying and do some flyball demos as part of an open house the Human Society were having. This ended up being the first time running outside on grass for some of our dogs and they all did great. Several people wanted to adopt our dogs and we all made it home safely with the exact number of dogs we came with.

Muddy Paws Fun Fair All Tournament - Salem OR

A tournament where we can sleep in our own beds at the end of the day is always a good tournament but this weekend was good for so many more reasons. We had a whole ton of fun with Anna from Flight Pack bringing the ever wonderful Kaiser to run with us, and helped us come in second on Saturday and first place on Sunday for the first time ever! Another good weekend for titles- FDCH-G for Addie, FDCH-S for Stella and FD/FDX for Angus. We also had Miss Hadley joining us in the ring for warm ups for the first time.

Flyball Demos, booth and Try-its at Poochapalooza - Corvallis OR

We spent our weekend at the Benton County Fairgrounds at the very popular Pooch-a-Paw-Looza event. We set up our booth selling gently used toys, handmade tugs, bandanas and paw balm. We also did regular demonstrations to allow people to see what flyball is all about, with the good people of Muddy paws joining us on Sunday to give us someone to race and really show off how flyball works. We also offered people the opportunity to try some aspects of flyball for themselves and have a try on the wall boards and doing some over and backs.

Jet City Jumpers Freedom Fight Tournament - Bremerton WA

We thought we were heading to Washington this past weekend to have our dogs run some flyball, little did we know that the humans would also be getting in on the action! Saturday lunchtime held a human flyball competition- the rules being pretty similar to the dog version, run over the hurdles, hit the box get the ball and carry it back over the jumps, pretty easy you might think BUT something to remember dogs don't have hands so we were also not allowed to use our hands, any ball holding resulted in a rerun. As you'll see from the video we certainly made an impression!

We also played some flyball with our dogs. Anthony made his box-loading debut, Stella and Riley both got new titles FDCH and FDCH-S respectively, Angus had his first ring time. The biggest event came right at the end of Sunday when we ran our first ever line up composed entirely of club dogs: Stella, Ptera, Addie and Riley. We ran a nice clean race and established a club best time of 21.9s.

Flyball demos and booth at Oregon Dog Sports Swap Meet - Eugene OR

This weekend was the Everything Dog Swap meet at Oregon Dog Sports and we went out to let people know about flyball, do some demos and do some fundraising. We set up our booth to sell gently used dog goods and handmade dog goodies. We also entered the awesome dog pageant with Addie taking home the title for waggiest tail and Angus and Riley both being awarded best ears.

Easter Treat Hunt Fundraiser- Eugene OR

Our Easter Treat Hunt was a huge success! We set up several boxes, blankets and other things for the dogs to search through and then scattered high quality kibble throughout. We had over 50 dogs come through in 5 minute slots to look for treats and several stay to get their easter photos taken. We also had a surprise visit from the local news who gave us a great bit of coverage: