Alaska Flyball Trip

Keri convinced us to fly the pups up to Alaska for the 4th annual Alaska Dogs Gone Wild flyball tournament. It was pretty much a last-minute decision, but we were fortunate to be able to use credit card miles to pay for our airfare. It made it much easier to afford the trip. It was the first time any of our dogs had flown on a plane, so we were a bit worried, but they did great! Alaska Airlines does a good job with the dogs. There were 5 people and 5 dogs from Region 19 who went on the trip.


Ethan & Arrow, Keri & Kaya, Lindsey & Mariah, Travis & Brisco, Walt & Digit

We spent just under a week up there, but we were able to do a lot of things. We had 4 days of racing and on our days off, we went hiking and fly fishing! I have a lot of pictures posted on the MDS web page.
Click here to see more Alaska pictures

We arrived in Anchorage at 1:00am on Tuesday June 23rd. One of the Alaska Dogs Gone Wild (ADGW) members was out of town for the week and she let us use her truck. It was perfect and all 5 of us and our dogs/crates/bags fit nicely! Thanks Angie for letting us borrow it! Another ADGW member, Vickie, let us crash at her old training building for a few hours to recover from the flight. Many of the Alaska flyball members sent sleeping bags & pads with Vickie, so we were able to rest comfortably. After a few hours of rest, we went across the street to Vickie's coffee shop and got some hot tea and coffee. Nice and rested, we hit the road and drove to Hatcher Pass and Independence Mine just north of Palmer. It was raining a little, but that didn't stop us from taking a hike. Keri, Ethan, Travis & I took the pups out for a short hike up to a crystal clear lake. It was nice for all of us to stretch our legs after the flight and the dogs had a blast. After the hike we went into Palmer to help set-up for the tournament and get tents to crash in.

Racing recap
I won't go over every detail, but we had a good time racing up there. The first tournament we raced all 5 of our dogs together. We had some good times and set a new Alaska state record of 18.08 seconds! The previous record was 18.6 sec, so we beat that by 1/2 second. We were hoping to get into the 17's, but couldn't quite make it. The second tournament, we split up our dogs and raced with some of the ADGW members. Mariah, Brisco and Digit were lucky to race with Carly & Oliver and Stacy & Zoya. They did awesome and we picked up lots of points! We did have a surprise rain/hail storm with only 3 races left on Sunday. Everyone was madly running around trying to get things under cover and we threw a large tarp over the box area of the racing lanes. Since we weren't leaving until midnight, everyone decided to wait it out and come back in a bit to see if we could finish the tournament. After warming up at a near-by restaurant, we came back and the field had dried off enough to finish the last 3 races! The final race between D.E.O Freezin' and RUFF Gone Wild was a good one with very close finishes. D.E.O. ended up in 1st with RUFF a close second.

Our day off between tournaments was spent on the Russian River fly fishing for Salmon. It was the first time we'd been combat fishing and it took a little while to get a hang of things. Lindsey and Ethan finally started hooking into some fish and Lindsey ended the day with one nice salmon. The next day, Walt cooked it up for lunch and we all enjoyed it!


Overall - we had an amazing time up there! We got to spend time with all the Alaska flyball folks at a BBQ at a bed & breakfast and we got to see Matanuska Glacier one day after racing. We wish we had more time up there to spend sight seeing and visiting. The hospitality of the ADGW and Northern Lightspeed members was amazing!!! A big THANK YOU to everyone for making us feel welcome and providing us with food, lodging and transportation. Special thanks to Curtis for helping arrange everything, Vickie for the room at the B&B, the coffee, a place to crash and everything else, and thanks to Angie for loaning us the truck. Hopefully we can get back up there next year!