Cooper and I took the trek up to Indianapolis to attend NAFA’s
2017 CanAm Classic tournament. So much
thanks to our friends from Crazy Train for creating an open spot for Cooper on
Saturday. We had a fantastic time in the
lanes racing against some amazing fast teams/dogs and outside the lanes
watching the even more amazing faster teams/dogs.
Some observations we made during our first CanAm travels:
-- United Airlines has inconsistent training for
their crew on pets and travel policies.
They didn’t want to print out Cooper’s boarding pass in SFO and didn’t
even realize he was on board in IND until after I left the plane holding him when
we landed back in SFO. Lesson learned
here? Don’t even bother to pay the pet
fee.
-- Cooper can travel about 3 hours at the start of
the trip before he starts to get restless.
Having bully sticks and ice helps, and the space under the seat is wider
than the carrier bag so always plan to unzip one or both sides to get more room
inside the pet carrier. Cooper slept the
whole way back during the 5 hours flight, mostly due to post racing exhaustion
and me playing tug with him at the gate.
-- CanAm is amazing! So many teams onsite to talk to, so much to
watch and learn during racing, so many vendors to visit. Having multiple rings helped move things
along, but also means you have less time to yourself as you’re literally running
from one ring to another… Wear comfortable shoes every day!
-- Racing with new team members = first few races
of confusion 😊 BUT
everyone gets it together in the end and our OPEN 5 team placed first at the
end of the day!
-- Having fun is paramount and keeping a good sense
of humor helps to move things along. I
did witness some freak outs on other teams and clubs during the tournament, but
I also don’t have a 3.0 dog and am not running on the fastest team, so pressure
was not there for me to “get invited” to the Classic tournament. I must say, though, OPEN 5 with 18.2 second
teams make it a bit more competitive than our regional tournaments.
-- That being said, the Classic tournament was
amazing and watching the 14 sec teams was totally inspiring!
So
we made it back safely and have so many memories to revisit. It was incredible to experience the
tournament of tournaments for NAFA and Cooper getting to compete at a national
level made it even more worthwhile. Here’s
to CanAm 2018 – the 10th year anniversary!
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