"Dogs That Fly"

Artist:   Susan Haney

Media:   Hand embroidery and machine piecing

Artist's comments:

Its the dogs that fly in flyball. Flyball is a relay race between two teams of 4 dogs each. Each dog must jump 4 hurdles, trigger the flyball box and catch the ball it throws and return over the 4 hurdles to the start/ finish line with the ball in her mouth. The team on which all four dogs complete these tasks fastest, wins.

What is shown on the quilt square is exactly 1/8 of a flyball race. On the top panel the Airedale has just triggered the flyball box and has the ball in her mouth as she turns to head back to the finish line. In the middle panel, the Airedale is racing between the middle 2 hurdles, changing her stride to go faster. In the bottom panel, the Airedale is jumping over the last hurdle headed to the finish line. The finish line marker contains an electronic array that starts and times the race and senses false starts and early passes between 2 dogs. These events are signaled by the light pole seen at the far right in this panel.

Artist's bio:

Hi, I'm Susan Haney. I'm Information Systems Manager with an environmental consulting firm. I did my graduate work in botany so of course now I work at a fish lab. I live in Amish country Pennsylvania a few miles north of the Mason-Dixon line with 2 Airedale and 4 Cairn terriers (sigh, yes I know that's too many dogs).

I've been interested in performance dog work ever since I got my first Airedale 23 years ago. I've been teaching obedience classes at one level or other almost continuously for 21 years. I "retired" from obedience last year and am currently teaching flyball classes. I'm currently showing my dogs in agility, flyball and breed ring. I took my Cairn, Tuck, (more properly he took me) to both USDAA semi-final and AKC final national agility championships. My Airedale, Wicca, has both AKC and NADAC Novice agility titles and USDAA Agility Dog and AKC Open legs. She is a Flyball Dog Champion and an Award of Merit winner at the ATCA National Specialty at Montgomery. For those of you how have the World of Discover Airedale 2000 calendar, Wicca is Ms August. My Cairn, Cairtidh is the #1 Flyball Cairn in North America and has a NADAC Novice Agility title and an Outstanding Jumpers title.

As for hobbies, I vaguely remember what those are. They are something that you have time for when you aren't trying to do too many things with too many dogs. Back in the days when I had two dogs, I used to do a lot of hand needlework, primarily needlepoint. Its these vague recollections of stitching that gave me the nerve to volunteer to do a square for the Airedale rescue quilt. Other than that my needle work involves reattaching limbs and closing abdominal wounds on dog toys.