The Project Dog: Update #1

What a difference six weeks makes.

Maybe you read the post I wrote back in March about my one-year-old borderstaffy, Fringe, called "The Project Dog." In it, I lamented about neglecting her training for too long and how I was now having to make up for lost time.

Since then, I've been working with her every other day or so (short 5-10 min sessions). She's been learning the touch stick, hit-it's on the box, plus "Get your ball" (separate from the box). My boyfriend is teaching her "Roll over," which has been pretty entertaining since he has never used a clicker or trained a dog in his life (the fact that he likes this particular dog enough to do this says a lot about how cool she is!)


She has transformed so much in the past few weeks. She is loose in the house almost all the time now, where she is either snuggling with one of us, working with one of us, or sitting on the floor staring at one of us whining to work. Or wrestling with Punk (they sound like two baby dinosaurs crashing around on the floor). 


Here is what she looked like today on the box. I'm using a target stick to point at the box, clicking her when I see that she has put all 4 feet on it, then treating her with cheese. As I watched the video afterwards I could see that she was drifting wider and wider off the box because of where I was standing with that cheese...she kept moving closer to me instead of popping off into the middle of the lane. So what I need to start doing is transitioning over to her tug (held out into the center of the lane), or at least throw the cheese out on the floor so she makes more of a 180-degree turn on the box. 

Fringe has been to two tournaments since the first "Project Dog" post and has really come out of her shell in public. My teammates were taking her out of her crate and playing with her and walking her around, and she was thoroughly enjoying it. She tugged with me inside the tourney site. Plus, she didn't get carsick! I put her crate right behind the driver's seat on the floor and covered it with a sheet, which probably had a lot to do with it.

It just goes to show what a little training and extra attention can do. I'm still mad at myself for letting her sit on the back-burner for so long, but I'm happy to see her progress.

NAFA and the AKC?

So I went to NAFA's web site yesterday and right there on the home page is a big advertisement for the AKC Canine Partners program (that's the AKC's new mixed-breed registry).

Last I heard, the AKC wasn't sanctioning flyball events. Is that about to change? Does anybody have any insight as to why NAFA would put an AKC ad up on the website?

Maybe it was just a good deal for NAFA and good publicity all around.

If the AKC decided to start offering flyball the way they do Rally, Obedience, and Agility (which they are poised to do, now that mixed-breeds can compete with the purebred dogs), it could mean explosive growth for our sport. This is what happened with Agility back in the mid-1990s when the AKC started sanctioning it.

Just wonderin'.  :)

Controlling the Beast

This past weekend was the first time I can remember that Punk didn't quick his nails down to bloody nubs duriing a tournament.

Punk usually drags me into the building like we're in some sort of Canine Weight Pulling competition. I never cut his nails at home, and once I'm at a tournament I always find the quickest softest way (via grass, matting, etc.) to get him into the lanes, but it doesn't matter -- by late Saturday afternoon he is usually bleeding all over the place. He doesn't care...it doesn't affect his performance at all, but it makes me feel bad for him, plus he bleeds all over my shoes, pants, and the mats.

I've tried all sorts of things to prevent it from happening:

• carrying him (haha...he's 38 lbs of wildly squirming borderstaffy)
• wrapping his feet (haha...he burns through those wraps in no time)
• boots (haha...those flew off one at a time every few yards we walked)
• no-pull harness (haha...he backed out of it)
• leash looped under his stomach (haha...it made him leak poop)

I had actually priced out those crate dollies that people use for Conformation shows -- you know the ones, where you put the crate on wheels and pull them into the building? I was going to just wheel Punk right into the run-back area before every race. They're about $100, which is the only reason I didn't have one yet this past weekend.

My teammate Kristie convinced me to try the no-pull harness again (hers was an Easy Walk by Gentle Leader), she said maybe it was that I had the size wrong and/or hadn't tightened it up enough last time. She had a M-L size and let me borrow it.

Well, he almost backed out of it again, even though it was so tight that I worried I would pinch his skin in it when I clipped it shut on him. On a whim, I decided to try putting one leash on the no-pull harness and another one on his collar, and lo and behold -- IT WORKED.

I held the leashes like reins on a horse and toggled back and forth on them. After a few attempts to drag us in, which resulted in him turning himself backwards toward the car, he gave up and heeled along beside me making frustrated staffy-monkey grunts. I told my teammate Todd that it was like shaking up a can of Coke and putting it on a leash...

People made fun of us as we walked around, but I didn't care -- it worked!!!!!!

Later when I got home I realized I could probably just clip one leash to both the collar and the harness at the same time. I'll try that at the next tournament.

Does anybody else have any tricks like this to share?

I'm Playing Flyball This Weekend!

I'm heading to a tournament this weekend (yay!), and as usual I'm waiting till the last minute to pack.

I can't really pack the car until tomorrow, because I have to take the kids to school in the morning and seats are an important component of carpooling. But I could at least start piling things up in a corner of the dining room or garage or something. Maybe blogging about it will motivate me...

It's going to be a small one-ring tournament, held at a pretty site in Virginia with 60' of runback. I love tournaments like this, especially since we only entered two teams (instead of our usual four). With one ring we'll have a good idea of how much time we'll have in between races and there won't be any ring conflicts. We'll have time to hang out together and socialize.

I'm going to talk to some start-dog people and ask them their secrets. Todd Pope, on my team Carpe Pilam, is so consistent with his starts -- he runs a whippet named Wii and turns in a .0-something start pretty much every time. (So does Tim Mulrooney on Fetchin' Frenzi, the other team I play with -- no matter what dog you give him, he gets a .0-something, it's crazy). I think being a great starter is equal parts of the following: 1) consistent dog, 2) handler's reaction time with the lights, 3) consistent start position (i.e., dog is always pulled up with back legs in handler's lap at 53' and 2"). "Consistent dog" also means well-conditioned dog, because in order to be consistent you have to run the same speed all the time and not get tired.

I'm also going to talk to people about how their teams split entry fees. I think our team does it by the # of heats run. I'm honestly not sure, but I never feel cheated when I get the tournament bill (from either team), so as long as I'm happy and feel like it's fair, I'm good with it.

I usually come home from tournaments with a whole bunch of new ideas for blog posts. Let me know if you have ideas, don't be shy.

I think for kicks I'll videotape our team's box turns so we can evaluate them later. I'm not running Rooster (The Ball Obsessed Dog) this weekend because he's still in Re-training Land, but I am running Kraken (The Spitter), at least in warmups. And Punk (The Beast), of course.

Actually I'm bringing all 9 dogs with me to the tournament, because nobody will be at home to watch them. My petsitter just closed on her house and moved out of the area (gah!!), and I didn't really feel like bringing a new petsitter up to speed and spending the $80 or so for her to come feed them while I'm gone. Hopefully bringing all the dogs won't be a mistake. Fringe (The Project Dog) will get some good socialization time, and so will Roc (Mr. ADHD).

Speaking of ADHD, that's sort of what my post feels like to me this morning. Sort of rambling and all over the place. I'm looking forward to re-charging with the team this weekend and coming back with lots of new material for the blog.

In keeping with my earlier post about tournament goals, here are a few of mine for this weekend:

• I hope Punk doesn't tear anything up (like he ate my hoodie there)

• I hope our teams run well!
• I hope I get to spend a lot of great quality time with my team and other flyball friends
• I hope I get some good video
• I hope I get some good blog ideas
• I hope Kraken holds his ball and is able to run a few races
• I hope there are  no doggie health problems on the trip (no injuries, diarrhea, carsickness, seizures, etc.)
• Also, I'd like to get through the weekend without screwing up my low-carb diet

To the rest of you out there gearing up for a tournament this weekend -- get packing!  ;)  And happy racing.

Anatomy of a Double-Hit (box turn)

So by now you all know that my borderstaffy Punk has a less-than-stellar turn. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read the "Splat" post.)

Sometimes he surprises me by popping off a series of good turns -- it might happen two times in a row or the streak might continue for several races, you just never know. But other times his turn looks like what I'm going to describe for the rest of the post. He's a double hitter.

Double hitting means that the dog hits the box with their front feet twice. They usually slide or leap onto the box low, so that their front feet hit the lower edge (opposite side of their ball), then their back feet come up, then their front feet must hit the box again so that they can push off and turn around.

Double hitters often turn wide, too. Think about it from a momentum standpoint. Let's say the dog turns to the right (clockwise). If they hit the box low on the left and work their way across the box (front feet - back feet - front feet), by the time they rotate their momentum is sideways and they don't usually have enough power to turn totally around 180 degrees. They usually land a few inches wide on the right, sometimes even needing to take an extra step to get back into the center of the lane to take the first jump back.

Double hitting happens so quickly with some dogs that you can hardly see it. They're on and off the box so fast -- you can tell that the turn looks messy, but it's hard to figure out what's happening down there. It's sort of like in "The Matrix" when Keanu Reeves is all over the place karate-chopping everybody but all you see is a blur, and then Mr. Anderson is lying on the floor. The slow-motion video tells the real story.

Here's normal-speed video of Punk double hitting in practice (click on the picture to see the video on You Tube):

Did you miss it?

Here is a frame-by-frame breakdown:

His double hitting is even worse when there's no prop in there...that's when he slides into the lower left side of the box and puts his front feet down in the white tape area. And he turns wide because there's no stanchion at his head.


Deconstructing the double hit vs the correct turn

Here's where the double hitter often lands:

1. Front feet hit here first
2. Back feet hit around here
3. Front feet hit AGAIN around here
4. Dog usually lands wide because of the sideways momentum

Here's where the dog SHOULD be landing:

1. Front feet hit here first
2. Back feet follow

This way is so much more efficient, right?


How to fix it

Double hitting is pretty easy for me to spot now, but I didn't notice that Punk was doing it for a long time. And when I did notice it, I tried to fix it the wrong way.

I reasoned that because he was turning wide, he needed more peripheral pressure on the right. So my prop always had the stanchion on the right, like you see below:

But the real problem is that he's sliding in low on the left. In fact, the Not-so-good prop above is actually encouraging him to hang out on the far left of the box because there is no pressure on him there (it's totally open and prop-free). If you fix where he lands, you fix everything. The wide turn is just a symptom of the bigger issue. What he really needs is a stanchion on the OTHER side to push his rear over and remind him to land with his front feet on the box higher and more in the center. (Thanks to Lisa Kronz from Hyper Flight for pointing this out to me a couple of years ago. :)).

If you ever get a chance to watch Hyper Flight from TX race, look at the way they set up their props in warm-ups. They use a high prop (at least 9 or 10") with a stanchion on the BACK as well as the front. Their dogs have some of the best turns I've ever seen (so does Quest, the red BC from Instant Replay -- OMG, has anybody seen that dog turn? It's like poetry in motion!).

Here's what my new improved prop looks like (I know it looks a little rednecky with the blue tape on it, but whatever works):

"But wait, Lisa," you might say. "In the video, Punk  had a prop that looked a lot like that, and he still was double hitting." It's true. Sigh. Maybe somebody can tell me why. My theory is that: 1) He was doing a full run during that video and reverted back to his old way of turning out of habit (because that prop does work when he's closer to the box and not going so fast), 2) The prop in the video wasn't quite high enough, 3) The prop in the video wasn't close enough to his butt. And I've seen that prop work for other double hitters, so I know it's effective.

Plus, I let Punk run with a bad turn for several years, then spent more time trying to fix it the wrong way. To truly fix it I would probably have to pull him from racing for a year, start over, and put in the 3,000-5,000 good turn reps needed to break the old bad habit (I cover the 3,000-5,000 rep thing more in the Analysis Paralysis post).

I'm pretty sure there's another element to double hitting that I haven't figured out yet (maybe somebody out there can shed some light), and that has to do with Punk's approach to the box -- it's too far to the left and it's too low. Maybe I need to put a gutter prop on the left side of the lane or a slat on the floor or something to discourage the sliding? (Not that Punk pays a lot of attention to props. Have you ever heard the flyball term "Yard Sale-ing"? It's when props fly all over the place and land on the ground like a scene out of a yard sale. At least, that's how I interpreted the term when I heard it. Punk loves yard sales.)

I want to end this post by emphasizing how important it is to videotape your dog's turn and look at it in slow motion. You can learn so much by doing this. You don't need any fancy equipment, most digital cameras these days have a movie setting. I take quick movies on the digital camera, upload them to my computer, and watch them there. From there you can easily upload them to You Tube and/or post them to Facebook and ask for advice. In fact, feel free to post them on the Prop-a-Ganda Facebook page if you want. I can't promise you that any of the big guns will weigh in, but maybe together we can all figure out how to make improvements.

How to Overcome Analysis Paralysis

A comment somebody made on my last post about goals really resonated with me -- the commenter wrote that she was trying not to get so paralyzed worrying about doing something wrong with her puppy that she didn't get anywhere at all.

I can totally relate. Even though I started playing flyball in 2000 and have trained a bunch of dogs since then, I still fall into the analysis paralysis trap all the time. In fact, I'm probably more worried about doing something wrong now than when I was a newbie. I worry about disappointing the breeders who entrusted me with a puppy, I worry about screwing the dog up so they don't reach their full potential, I worry about letting down my team, I worry about giving people who don't like me one more reason to talk shit about me.

It's a fact of life that in flyball people are going to watch your dogs and judge you, whether they're literally judging you as the line judge or box judge or standing on the sidelines with the express purpose of watching your dog run. Sometimes they're watching because they're stuck in the chair, sometimes they're just curious, sometimes they're on a rival team and looking for something to criticize or laugh at. This happens in all kinds of sports, not just flyball.

Recently a competitor was watching me warm up Kraken (aka The Spitter) and asked one of my teammates if I had sent him away to Aaron Robbins for training. The insinuation being that I couldn't have possibly trained a dog whose turn looked that good by myself, I guess. (Although I'm betting if Aaron had trained Kraken, he'd already be running by now and he wouldn't be spitting his ball! ;)).

You just have to make the decision that you don't care what other people think (especially if it's a rival -- they aren't going to be happy for you no matter what you do). Then you have to back it up with the best training you can. Take action -- any action -- right now. If you're not sure how you want to train the box yet, at least focus on your recall or targeting or something instead. Just do something. Action leads to more action.

Other thoughts:

Don't be shy about asking others for help
There are so many really gifted trainers who are more than happy to advise you if you just ask. Start taking video of your training sessions (I use my daughter's digital camera -- it takes great little short videos and they're easy to upload to You Tube). You could start by asking your pup's breeder and the folks who have its littermates what they think. You can also post a link to your videos on Facebook and ask for input.

Try not to let anybody's comments hurt your feelings. We all have to start somewhere, and they're just trying to help. I'd rather hear that I'm not being exciting enough or that my arm position is totally wrong, versus having somebody just say "That looks great" and not really mean it. Remember there are 10 different ways to train everything in flyball (and they've all worked for somebody -- every dog needs different things), so pick what you feel will work best for you and your puppy. 

Resist the urge to send your dog away for training
Although your dog might end up faster if you send him to an expert, you won't have the same feeling of accomplishment and pride that you get when you do it yourself. Plus, as I mentioned in an earlier post, you won't know what the other trainer did in terms of drills, rewards, motivation, etc., so it'll be hard for you to duplicate that when you get your dog back. If their turn starts to go bad or something, you won't know what to do to fix it.

Build a great foundation, the sooner the better
It is so much easier to create a good flyball foundation in a puppy versus a dog that is a year or two old, so don't let analysis paralysis mess things up.

I have made the mistake of waiting too long with several of my dogs and paid for it dearly, ending up with chasers, dogs who don't focus on me, dogs who don't like balls, etc. I actually have a 4-year-old Jack Russell at home who has been able to run the entire course since 2008, as long as there are no other dogs or people (or squirrels, or food) in his line of sight. I taught him flyball skills but didn't do enough basic focus and distraction work. He's in serious need of some "Control Unleashed."

Play chase games at home. Build up that crazy tug drive in your puppy early. Teach them to get a ball and exchange it for the tug. Make the tug (or other reward) the best thing in the universe.

Teach them to target a pointer stick so that you can use it when you're ready to put them on the wall/ramp/box.

Teach them to come to you when they're called -- work on building up a really great recall in the face of distractions. Socialize your pup out in the world, take them to practices and tournaments to get them used to the traveling, noise, and tournament chaos.

Do lots of recalls with them at practice. Borrow the practice drill from the Slammers, where you run a pup side by side next to an experienced dog to head off chasing very early on.

Speaking of Slammers, I hear they put on a good seminar. I've been to seminars by Rocket Relay (3 times) and Spring Loaded, and I learned a lot. Touch N Go's is supposed to be great as well. If you can find a seminar to attend in your area, try to make the trip, it's worth it.

Try to get your dog into a warm-up slot as soon as you can
I don't mean you need to have them up and running as soon as they turn a year old -- I just mean get them to the point where they can do recalls and a little box work (hit-its or turns with a prop in front) during warm-ups, that way you can start desensitizing them to the tournament environment early. It's hard to recreate that cranked-up tourney atmosphere at practice.

Take advantage of single-dog racing
NAFA and U-FLI both offer it, although NAFA's is usually more laid back (and cheaper) because it's not sanctioned and the rules are determined by the host club. In NAFA you can usually put a prop in front of the box, run your dog unopposed, etc., which is a little more green-dog friendly (U-FLI's singles and pairs are geared more towards dogs who are practically ready to compete or are gunning for a fast time in the U-FLI database).

If you aren't happy with your dog's turn, DON'T COMPETE YET
Do as I say, not as I've done -- I've made this mistake three times already.

Once your dog is racing and repeating their less-than-perfect turn with no prop heat after heat after heat, they're developing the wrong muscle memory and it's really hard to fix.

Think about it. How many practice turns do you do with your dog in between tournaments? Maybe 10 or 15 each practice? Plus a few sessions at home? (Note that these usually aren't full runs, either, they're usually partial runs or close-up box work.) Then you get to a tournament and run them 30 heats or so, plus warmups and re-runs. So you could get in 30-40 bad turns in one weekend.

There's a book called "Motor Learning and Performance" by Dr. Richard Schmidt that many people quote from when discussing human muscle memory retention. In it, Dr. Schmidt says, "it takes 300-500 poor movement patterns to create a faulty motor engram and takes 3,000-5,000 good quality movements to unwind it.” So if you translate that to box turns: it'll take about 300-500 reps for a bad box turn to become muscle memory, and 3,000-5,000 good box turns to fix it. Blah! So do it right the first time!

Don't be intimidated by the rockstars
Not all dogs debut at 3.7. You will hear about the ones that do on Facebook, and it will probably freak you out (especially if they are related to your pup :)), but remember that:

• These people are probably great trainers (often professional ones whose life revolves around dogs) on 15-second teams who practice several times a week
• These people have more to prove than you do
• In some cases, these people refuse to race their dog publicly until they know it's going to be a sub-4, because they think it will reflect badly on them as trainers. They probably timed that dog with a stopwatch every practice for months until they knew it was sub-4, then "debuted" it.
• These people are going to censor what they post publicly (they aren't going brag about their 4.3 dog's debut). Sometimes they will quietly place a dog elsewhere if it looks like they won't pan out. You won't hear about those on Facebook.

Try to relax and keep it all in perspective
Dogs don't have to debut at 3.7 to end up fast in the long run. Sometimes it takes a dog a year or so to really get into the groove.

My border collie Sky started racing at age 2 and at her first tournament we put her in start position. She ran consistent 4.5's. She was my first border collie and it was 7 years ago, so I was really happy with that.

Every tournament after that she dropped a tenth, until she leveled out at 3.9. She ran 3.9-4.0 consistently for years and still runs 4.0-4.1 now at age 9.

My first flyball dog, Hathaway (JRT), started out around 5.2 and got a little bit faster every year until he hit his personal best time of 4.6 at age 7 or 8 (after 5 or 6 years of racing). Then he got old and slowed down again, dammit.



Just be patient, have faith in yourself, do your best, and don't worry about what everybody else thinks. And start training that puppy, right now.

What Are Your Goals?

Hello again, friends, sorry I haven't posted in a few days, Easter and the kids' spring break have had me pretty distracted. When the kids are out of school it's hard to do much with the dogs (anybody else have this problem?).

Today I was thinking about goals. I'm pretty big on goals -- I'm one of those people who really needs to have specific things to work towards, preferably with a deadline, in order to get my ass in gear. (This applies to all aspects of my life, not just flyball, but this is a flyball blog. Feel free to read my other blog if you care about the other stuff).

I have all sorts of goals when it comes to flyball. Club goals, individual team goals (Multibreed, etc.), goals for each of my dogs, goals for my handling, even goals for this blog.

Prop-a-Ganda has done a lot for me in terms of training motivation. I love posting training updates and reading your comments. It's fun to be excited about flyball again.

During most of 2009, the only flyball goal I had was to go to a tournament every once in a while and run a couple of my dogs. Help out the team, socialize, get a weekend away from home to chill out with friends. Nothing stressful. I'm pretty competitive in general, so of course I tried hard once I was actually at the tournament, but I wasn't putting in any time at home. No training, no practices for months on end.

This year I'm more fired up. But I've also realized that when it comes to tournament goals, you can't put all your eggs in one basket (belated Easter pun). Otherwise you might end up having a disappointing and crappy weekend.

For example, let's say your club puts together a stellar new lineup of dogs. You know that together these dogs, if everybody was "on" that weekend, could pull out your club's personal best time, or win regionals, or break a world record (for the 10 people this actually applies to), or whatever. You're psyched! You get to the tournament on Saturday morning and your heart is beating a mile a minute!

And then, something happens. The start dogs burns a pad. One of your handlers hurts their back and their dog won't run fast for anybody else. The height dog, who has run perfectly for years, suddenly decides that this is the weekend to start running around the jumps or spitting the ball (that one actually happened to me with my ONYX'd Jack Russell...argh!). The dog that ran low 4's last tournament managed to get into the trash can a few days ago and ate itself to tick-like proportions and is now running 5.1's. The list goes on and on.

Your whole weekend could be ruined, just like that. Unless you had other goals beyond this team's performance.

Some of the things I like to focus on at tournaments:

My passing
Even when the whole team is a Cluster-F, you can still work on your own passing or starts.

My dogs' performance
I like to try to get personal best times for my dogs, or at least see really good times from my experienced dogs, no matter which team they're on. It means I really have to pay attention to how I warm them up, IF I warm them up (some of my older dogs run faster with no warm-up), how I care for them in between races (water, cool-down, walking, etc.), preventive maintenance (wrapping their feet, administering metronidazole right on schedule for the stress poopers), my passes/starts, and how I psych them up and play with them in the lanes. I try to treat my dogs like rockstars in the ring no matter how the team is running.

Green dogs
There are always green dogs warming up on our teams (I think we had 5 this past tournament), and I love helping out with them. It's even more fun (and stressful) when one of my dogs is warming up.

Sometimes we're all just happy when our dog can do a recall without chasing anybody in the other lane. Other times the lightbulb comes on and the dog is GETTING IT.

If we have a team that isn't running that well and has no chance of placing, I am all for putting in a green dog in lieu of earning points so they can get some experience in a tournament setting. I really don't care if my dogs get points or not (topic for another post ;)) -- to me, getting a green dog up and running is more valuable from a team perspective.

Big titles
That being said, you can also count on me to help a dog reach a title. Just let me know in advance, that way I'll do my best not to screw anything up so we can go for max points.

I was at a tournament a few months ago where we ran a Veterans team and each of the four core dogs reached a major title. It was also the retirement weekend for one of the dogs. It was very exciting and everybody cried each time one of the dogs reached their title. We ran 4 or 5 teams that weekend, even broke the club's personal best time with our Multibreed team, but were all most proud of that little Veterans team.

Helping others
I love calling passes or teaching a newbie how to pass.

Team dynamics
Sometimes your teams can all be losing and you all look like you never played flyball before, and you're still having a blast because you and your teammates are in the fun zone.

I don't see most of my teammates outside of flyball, so tournaments are my chance to hang out and catch up with everybody. Sometimes I get lazy and park my van close to the building instead of by the RV's (mostly because of Punk), but I try to make it a point to hang out with the gang as much as possible.

Keeping your cool
Sometimes it's my goal to just get through a tournament without losing it. It's hard to be positive when the weather is horrible, or the racing surface is made out of mulch, or all your dogs have a stomach virus and there's no hose in sight, but I try really hard to keep from snarking at anybody (I've gotten much better about this through the years).

One lesson I've learned is that EVERYBODY makes a mistake sometimes. If you jump all over a teammate's ass for something -- a bad pass, double false start, getting in your way while you're trying to pass, repeatedly swinging their borderstaffy into your shins (ok, I'm guilty of that one) -- I guarantee you'll make the same mistake at some point, and then who's going to look like a moron? I'd rather give everybody the benefit of the doubt, plus I want them to be nice to me when I screw up, so I try to keep my mouth shut in the runback area.

Etc.
And then there are the tournaments when you drive up to the tournament site and see a giant rooster statue and you think: I've GOT to get a photo with this rooster this weekend.

So -- what are your tournament goals?