I must say that U-FLI is really patting themselves on the back right now and I suppose it is a well-deserved pat on the back. After all, over $6000 was raised for a worthy cause.
St. Jude’s Showcase of Dogs ‘07
Fetchin’ Frenzi brings U-FLI to the “St. Jude Showcase of Dogs” in Memphis for the first time and raised over $6000 for the St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital founded by the legendary Mr. Danny Thomas.
By reading this first sentence you would swear that this is the first time flyball was held at the Showcase. However, what it means is, this is the first time U-FLI has been involved, for up until now this has been a traditionally NAFA event.
This event was started by the now disbanded Houston Flyball Association several years ago which if I’m not mistaken, Sam Ford was a part of back then. When the Houston club disbanded, Sam Ford and his group picked up the event, and continued to run it for several more years. I guess it just felt right for Sam and his club to turn the event over to Fetchin’ Frenzi since they are a Memphis club. It’s obvious that they never thought that this event would be turned over to NAFA’s competition.
Marketing
What’s really funny about all of this is the whole time NAFA hosted this event over all of those years they never highlighted the Showcase as U-FLI has done. It could be that U-FLI is just rubbing salt in NAFA wounds, but U-FLI is doing a great job of marketing this and other high profile event like Wags for Wishes in San Diego.
To be fair, NAFA has a much better website now and is currently doing a much better job of marketing flyball as evidenced by the Cynosport World Games in Scottsdale, AZ. However, more needs to be done to market high profile events where large numbers of the general public are in attendance. It doesn’t help NAFA by continuing to lose events like St. Jude Showcase of Dogs and The Peach Blossom Cluster in Georgia to U-FLI.
Competition aside, showcasing Flyball to the general public is good for our sport and I applaud both organizations for their efforts.
Larry
I thought this was such a touching story that I had to post the entire article from Itchmo.
News for cats and dogs - Dogs Stayed By Owner’s Body For Three Weeks
Pippin and Merry are extremely loyal and dedicated dogs. These two golden retrievers guarded over their owner’s body for at least three weeks after he died.
Gary Lorenz disappeared from his Colorado home in September, and his body was just found last week surrounded by Pippin and Merry.
Lorenz, who had Alzheimer’s disease, had taken his ATV and his two three-year-old golden retrievers over a ridge near his home. Officials said he died four or five days later from exposure and dehydration.
Pippin and Merry, brother and sister, lost about 9 pounds during the three weeks. They were emaciated and dehydrated when they were found. A veterinarian said that both dogs are doing well and will recover soon.
Lorenz’s daughter said, “Now that we have the dogs back, we feel like we’ve gotten a little piece of Dad back. He loved these dogs, and they loved him. They never left his side. They watched him. He was having trouble communicating with all of us, but he always seemed to be able to talk to the dogs. They were his best friends. We are so happy to have them back to remind us of the relationship he had with them and to help my mom get through her tough weeks ahead. They will be here to comfort her.”
Lorenz’s wife said that it helped that the dogs had each other to lean on during their time away from home. She added, “Pippin would never leave Gary, and Merry would never leave Pippin.”
Source: KNBC
News for cats and dogs from Itchmo.
Larry has graciously invited me to write a blog entry describing my experiences in hosting a U-FLI tournament and compare them to the experience of hosting a NAFA tournament. It is my hope that by pointing out some of the problems my team experienced in hosting a U-FLI tournament, they can be addressed and corrected by U-FLI.
My team had hosted our first NAFA tournament back in 2003. While we had been to plenty of tournaments and had put on a couple of fun matches, we were a little nervous about hosting our first tournament. However, our fun matches had gone well due to lots of planning and organization. So, we put the same skills to work and took the plunge into our first tournament. While it was not without stress, it was nothing that we could not handle. We kept things running smoothly, and based on the feedback we got from the teams who attended, everyone had a good time. The paperwork and fees were straightforward and we had no issues with seeding or scheduling.
Three years later, we had moved to Georgia and had been asked by a local kennel club to put on a flyball tournament as part of an AKC responsible dog ownership program. So we thought, let’s try a U-FLI tournament this time. We had been to one of the first U-FLI tournaments in the summer of 2006 and really liked it. We were warned by another team in a neighboring state about how much difficulty they had encountered in hosting a U-FLI tournament, particularly with the mountain of paperwork required. We did not think it would be such a big deal.
Since we were basically a brand new team, we figured that we were going to have to bend over backwards to get folks to attend our tournament. After all, first tournaments do traditionally have low attendance. So, we decided to offer singles and pairs, in addition to standard and variety racing. We asked a team in a neighboring state to lend their names as co-hosts so that we might spark some interest in their region. We got a lot of response. Initially, we had about 42 teams enter, plus quite a few pairs and singles. Our building only had room for one ring. The only way to accommodate all of this was to run some of the singles and pairs on Friday night and to start insanely early. I’m talking 5:30 am for singles and pairs. While I am not the morning person my husband Howard is, you do what you have to do to put on a successful tournament. We finished on Friday and Saturday somewhere between 7 and 8 pm. We finished up on Sunday around 5 pm, due in large part to having the judges very strictly enforce warm-up times which dwindled to 30 seconds after the mid-way point. Once again, we got a lot of positive feedback from attending clubs with a request to host it again next year. The only negative remarks I remember were that the a/c was not cold enough. As this was something over which we had no control, we were not put out by these comments at all.
Most folks were unaware of the turmoil going on behind the scenes. Actually, I’m betting there were about 4 or 5 teams in one particular division that had a clue about it. The source of this turmoil was a combination of the U-FLI seeding and scheduling system, and one particular club.
When you submit a list of entries to U-FLI, they put them through their seeding and scheduling applications and send you back a seeding chart, a racing schedule, and an invoice. This sounds really great. They even send you a file that is pre-formatted for the labels that most folks use to post race results. Everything would have run smoothly, except that one club that had 4 teams plus several singles and pairs entries contacted us a couple of weeks before the tournament and said that due to family medical problems, they would not be able to attend. Fair enough, we’ve all been there. Send the changes back to U-FLI and get new paperwork. Yes and No. You get a new seeding chart and racing schedule, but not a new invoice. Ok. We’ll talk to someone and work this out. Except a week later, the team called back and said they were back in. Now, at this point, we probably should have said no. However, what tournament director of a first tournament wants to do that? We have since learned that this particular club does this dropping in/out/in/out of tournaments quite a bit. In fact, the club owner told us that this is common practice in other regions. Perhaps some folks outside of NAFA Region 14 can comment on this, but it seems highly unlikely to me. If you are ever in this situation and it is a U-FLI tournament, I highly recommend that you do say no. Unfortunately for us, we wanted to be nice, so we said yes. Contact U-FLI again to get them to redo the schedule, seeding, chart, and labels again. Oops, except that two days before the tournament, the club called us back and said that no, they would not be able to attend. If this were a small tournament, I guess you could have run 4 divisions worth of byes, but as it was quite large, we had to contact U-FLI again to get the seeding chart, schedule, and labels redone.
None of this contacting U-FLI and getting stuff back happened overnight. The folks we worked with were very understanding about the changes, so I am not criticizing them. The problem was, we didn’t have the finalized seeding chart, schedules, and labels until Friday afternoon, after we had stated setup and just a few hours before racing. I was literally printing labels and filling out singles and pairs entry forms by hand to get them ready in time for Friday night racing.
We got home around 10 pm and stayed up literally all night printing labels. Howard had to get to Kinko’s at 3:30 am to get schedules copied and get to the building by 5 am. Plus, we still had Sunday labels to do. This was not poor organization on our part as we had already done all of this paperwork prior to the last schedule change. Saturday night we were again up all night printing labels. Sunday morning, during singles and pairs racing, I was still printing labels when I noticed the schedule was bad for one division. So, I had to redo the entire schedule for that division. The teams were very patient about it, and I applaud them for their good sportsmanship, as things could have gotten pretty ugly.
Could this have been avoided? Absolutely. While I think it is commendable that the sanctioning organization has programs to create seeding charts and schedules, it is deplorable that the tournament directors do not have access to the programs. Make them available to clubs, either by download, or by web-based application if the code is proprietary. That way, host clubs don’t have to continually pester U-FLI for the paperwork they need. If a team drops out, the TD can make the changes and move on. At the time we hosted this tournament, we were not given the option of changing the schedule ourselves.
Another issue we had was with the U-FLI racing and entry paperwork itself. Friday evening, a U-FLI representative told me explicitly that I absolutely had to have a signed entry form for each and every team and singles/pairs entry. There is a release of liability statement on these forms for those of you who are not familiar with them.
I had to beg and cajole every team captain to get these forms signed both days. Sunday afternoon, the “official” U-FLI representative handed all of these signed papers back to me, saying that she didn’t need them. Adding “nobody sends paper entries anymore.” In a state of quietly controlled rage, I informed her of what the other U-FLI representative had told me. She asked me if I needed her to take the paperwork anyway. I think it must have been the murderous look on my face. I told her “Yes, I really never want to see that set of paperwork ever again.”
Here’s a couple of ways to avoid this problem and any future attempted homicides it might incur. How about having good communication among the U-FLI representatives, including having them all on the same page? An even better solution would be to put the liability statement on the actual race results form if it is legally required. There is plenty of room on the singles and pairs forms for this. On the standard team racing forms, you might have to leave one race off the form. I guess you could put it on the back, but not everybody has access to a duplex printer. By including the liability statement on the racing form, you meet the legal requirements, cut the paperwork in half, save a lot of trees and tournament secretary’s nerves.
While I am on the subject of paperwork problems, I have to point out those abysmal singles/pairs results forms. They are the most confusing forms I have ever seen. I am not the only one who has had this reaction. Every time I’ve been to a U-FLI tournament I’ve heard line judges asking how to read them. The fix is simple in my opinion. Just make them look like a regular racing form. You can combine the singles and pairs record into one. Put a place on top for 2 dogs and their RUN numbers then just list two races in the results section. This makes it look like every other tournament scoring sheet and helps speed along the tournament because the line judges and table workers won’t asking how to score them.
We had one final headache from hosting a U-FLI tournament, and that was that pesky invoice. It was unchanged from the initial one we received when we first sent the list of entries to U-FLI. At the end of the weekend, we spoke to the U-FLI representative about it, since we were being charged for 4 teams entries for the two one-day tournaments, plus a handful of singles and pairs entries for both days. It was quite a chunk of change. The U-FLI representative told us to contact a particular individual to have those charges removed. Well, as you might have guessed, the charges never were removed and we were forced to pay them anyway, while we were still trying to collect from the club.
NAFA does this right folks. Just let the Tournament Director send in the appropriate fees for the racing sheets they send in. If you have to provide an invoice, do it at the end of the tournament based on the scoring sheets turned in. Make it simple and easy on the host club if you want them to continue putting on U-FLI tournaments.
Now, I’m quite sure that many clubs have hosted U-FLI tournaments without a hitch. I think that is great and it is probably the norm. However, it is not until you encounter problems that you can reveal flaws in the system. One U-FLI representative looked at me at the end of racing on Sunday and said, “You look like I did the first time I hosted a U-FLI tournament. The next one will be easier.” This struck me as strangely humorous. Didn’t this person help design their tournament system? He shouldn’t have looked the way I did. I certainly didn’t look or feel this way after hosting my first flyball tournament, which just happened to be a NAFA tournament. If U-FLI were to correct the problems that I have pointed out here, I would personally be willing to host a U-FLI tournament again. Until then, I’ll go to U-FLI tournaments, but when it comes to hosting, I’m sticking with NAFA.
Thanks again to Larry, for maintaining this blog and inviting me to write about this subject.
Danie Arnt
“Team splits are the bastard child in the closet of Flyball.” I received this quote from someone wanting additional information on how people deal with this situation.
I’ve talked about this issue before in my post, Breaking-up is Hard to Do. I asked the question,” So how do you handle it?” and my answer was, “You do the best you can.” I know that is pretty lame advice because any team split is traumatic. It’s rejection at its very core, I’m right you’re wrong, friends against friends, and philosophy against philosophy. Is there anything to make the trauma easier to manage? It’s bad enough dealing with a breakup while it’s in the process but what about afterward.
Breakup Postmortem
How do you handle it after the breakup? I know that it can be awkward when you see your old teammates the first time after a split and you can do one of two things. You can just ignore and not talk to any of your old teammates by giving them the cold shoulder, but I personally find this approach hard to do and it’s something that is not in me. I just can’t do it. The other way is to talk to your old teammates as if nothing happened. For me this is the way I handle it. Even though it sometimes is a personal situation, which caused the breakup, I try not to take it personal. To me this way makes it much easier to cope.
Coping
From my own personal experience, I know that coping with a breakup can be difficult and it can be something that you think about for a very long time. What could I have done differently, why did this happen, and how am I going to get over this, are the things that I’ve dealt with. I know that it is not a subject that is talked about much and the private message I received was a request for “…input from some of my elders in the flyball community” and how they dealt with breaking up. Does anyone have anything to add to what I’ve already provided? What advice can you give?
Larry
