As
remembered by Craig Peters......
No one remembers exactly how
the Club was formed but, after a few drinks, the story came out
as something like this....
Some time in 1992 Tina Haines,
Rob Busch, and Daphne Meisner(now Tryhuk) decided to form a new
team. They had been competing in Flyball in Winnipeg with Cando
Agility Team for a while but decided they wanted to go out on their
own. As luck would have it, Kevin Hughes and Allsorts Dogsports
offered to practice with them to get started. Kevin had also run
with Cando until he formed the Allsorts Club and, of course, they
competed against one another. So, as the story goes, the Flyball
Fanatics were a done deal.
The first problem to arise was that there were only 3 of them which
makes it a little difficult to practice if you don’t have
balls, a box, a boxloader etc. I still don’t know where the
box or the balls came from but everything else seem to come from
Daphne’s family. Did I mention that 3 people only means 4
dogs as well? (I’ll come back to that). Daphne enlisted volunteers
from her family – her sister, Pam Sheills, became the boxloader
with help from her boyfriend (now husband) Bud. Her younger brother,
Trevor Sheills, was really keen to join in but he didn’t have
a dog. As luck would have it, Tina’s boyfriend (now husband)
Graham Haines was not running his dog anymore so Trevor was in.
At the same time Rob was bringing his wife’s dog Misty out
to play just in case an extra dog was required.
So life was great! They entered their first tournament in the Fall
of 1992 and won the second division in a run off. It was probably
around this point that they realized that they didn’t really
have enough dogs to keep the team going. Blazer, Scout and Merc
were doing OK but Misty and Dixson were getting on in years and
weren’t going to last forever. Right around this time Daphne
bought a Border Collie pup and had it flown in from England.
Early in 1993 is where I (Craig)come into the story. Kevin and Nikki,
from Allsorts, had been giving Flyball classes and told the Fanatics
about us. I don’t think they mentioned that this was the second
set of beginner classes we had our Border Collie rescue, Bull, in
but I also don’t think it would have mattered. Beggars can’t
be choosers! The Fanatics didn’t run any kind of training
classes for quite a few years so most of us were rejects from the
classes that Kevin and Nikki had. I should mention that it was my
wife Janet who trained and raced Bull. I was there as often as I
could be but it obviously wasn’t enough because it was well
after our first tournament that I had people still calling me Curt.
In 1994 we had 5 new dogs join the team. Ramie and Jamie (brothers)
joined with their mixed breed littermates BJ and Shadow, Larry with
Border Collie Jasmine, Holly with German Shepherd Cheyenne and Amy
with Border Collie Freckles. This same year Blue had a litter of
pups and, in 1995 Wager, Winder, Sara, and Rewind all joined the
team (Winder was mine). This was a monumental year for the Club
because we also picked up our first height dog – Cassidy the
Sheltie. There was much rejoicing!!!
1996 was a turnaround year for us. We ran our first set of beginner
classes and had 7 new dogs join the Club. Some were from Kevin and
Nikki and some were trained on our own. They were: Diane with her
Sheltie Allie (also known as "Yappy" dog), Pat with Sheltie
Tarr, Lorna with Aussie Machz, Hettie with her 2 Cockers Dudley
and Ashley, Holly with her second German Shepherd Jackson and Sharon
with her Aussie Abby.
The rest, as they say, is history ....
Honour
Roll
