August Flyball

For some bizarre reason I thought it would be a good idea for us to enter a flyball tournament every weekend in August (which also happens to be a 5 week month) but not content with just that we would include two weekends that involved 2 sanctioned tournaments i.e. 7 sanctioned tournaments in a single month…nuts I know!

We started at Eastham on the Wirral over the 31st July/1st August weekend. I don’t entirely remember what happened that weekend but the Pawz and Racers ran really well and got new seed times and the Demonz ran really rubbish! To be fair, everyone in our division (div 2) ran really slow and I am pretty convinced that the ring was ‘out’ making the runs longer than they should have been…our other two teams ran in the other ring which ran really well (possibly a little on the short side??).

The following weekend we took the long trek up to Dundee for two 1-day sanctioned tournaments held at Caird Park and Camperdown Park (fab venue). We ran ‘scratch’ teams since Gemma couldn’t make it so Mac replaced Bailey in the Demonz and we mixed the other two teams together on a submitted time. The dogs actually ran really well and we ran some good times plus we ran Travis and Maisie in the starters and they were both fab! After chatting to my friend Hazell (Tyne flyball teams) on the Saturday night about the problem she had running her two dogs (River – Bryning Super Cool and Jack – Bryning Bold Jack Donohoe) in their top team we decided she would move River into our team so she could run them both herself and get the best out of them. So the next day River ran with us which was really nice since Lexie ended up running with 3 of her kids (Dylan, Faith and River); this also did the trick for Tyne who ran sub 18.00 seconds for the first time when Hazell ran Jack herself! We had a really nice weekend, good company and good flyball…very enjoyable and worth the long drive.

Hear No, See No, Speak No… lol
Maisie, Mouse and Spark enjoy the wide open spaces of Camperdown Park

A rare pic of Tarka at 11 months old, she’s usually just a blur!


’HERE’s’ some more pics I took at Camperdown Park, none of the flyball I’m afraid!

The following weekend we were at the British Flyball championships, I couldn’t make the Friday and the Pawz really did struggle and came last in their division…oh well! The Racers were running Saturday with a new line up since we had moved Teal and Faith down out of the Demonz and moved Lexie up to join her daughter River in the team. Faith is considerably faster than Lex over 8” but not over 13” so she moved down with the height dog (Teal). The weather was horrendous…torrential rain meant the conditions were awful so despite them running some good times and winning all their races in the morning, it all went belly up in the afternoon with the dogs sliding all over the place and really struggling on the box; the times suffered and we ended up losing races, a real shame. Mac suffered the most, I could see him twisting off the box as he struggled for grip and sure enough he was very stiff that evening so had a massage and slept in his coat to keep his poor aching back muscles warm, bless him. We had a team BBQ in the rain on Saturday evening (true British spirit!) and all really enjoyed the fancy dress party and disco in the marquee…we all went dressed as Demons! Haha

The Demonz were running Sunday in Division 5, this was a real learning curve since this was a completely untried team of Dylan, Bailey, Lexie and River, we lost all our morning races while we all got a feel for changeovers etc but got it together for the afternoon and actually beat the two fastest teams in the division thus handing the division win to our old friends at Red Rose who were running an entire Bryning team in the form of Aztec (Bryning Aztec), Harry (Bryning Silver Harrier), Haze (Bryning Indian Summer) and Oz (Bryning Willie Wagtail)…very proud of the babies :o). It does just go to show the way flyball goes though, the two teams we beat ran fastest times of 17.60 and 17.62, we ran a fastest time of 17.85 (seasons best) and the Red Rose Rascals won the division with a fastest time 18.18! lol

There are some pics of the Pawz and Demonz ’HERE’
(kindly taken by David Flood)

A couple of my faves...
Ethan…on a mission!

Lexie…

And daughter River…


The following weekend we were over at Rotherham for the tournament hosted by our friends at Tyne. We were top seed with all 3 open teams which is always the kiss of death! True to form we didn’t win a single division! Well, apart from starters actually where we were joined by Beamer (a BC bred by my friend Julie) who was making his tournament debut and ran really well; along with Spud, Travis and Maisie they managed to win the division with the fastest time of the day…clever babies :o)

Spud - 10 years old and rather arthritic, he’s retired from competing but makes the odd appearance in starters when we need a ‘steady hand’ ;o)

Travis

Maisie

Beamer

There are more pics of this team ’HERE’
(thanks to Kirsty Price for the photos)

Again we struggled with the Pawz, Radley seems to be struggling for confidence at the moment and Fynn is struggling to concentrate for a whole division but I was a particularly pleased with Squirrel who ran her little socks off :o) We actually managed a 2nd with this lot and a fastest time of 22.17

The Racers ran ok, Mac was a little off form since he’d has an abscess on his foot so wasn’t quite 100% and I really struggled with my changeovers in on Dottie who is becoming increasingly erratic off the box, lots of lights, very frustrating!

The Demonz ran Sunday and again we seemed to struggle for consistency, throwing away easy wins on stupid lights…tsk! Hoping for better results this weekend coming at Drax!

Drax - May Bank Holiday

Fallen a little behind on the blog again…oops!

So…over the bank holiday weekend we went over to Drax for three days of competition. Two days of open competition on the Saturday and Sunday and multibreed on the Monday. As it happened we didn’t have any teams running on the Saturday so had a nice leisurely day pottering about and helping the Tyne teams. I took most of my dogs with me and also had Ebi, my brother and sister-in-law’s parson puppy from Squirrels’ litter so he and sister Esther had a nice weekend together and had chance to catch up with their littermates Boz and Stella.

Here's Boz making the most of his 'ringside seat' in Bob and Lyn's caravan ;o)


The weather was kind and I crashed with the Tyne team….proper camping…in a tent and everything! lol The clubhouse there serves excellent food and is good value so we ate all our meals in there. We also collected our new (secondhand but new to us) flyball box, we’re planning to move from a boomerang box to a flat fronted CanAm style box which should give us faster box turns but requires a well trained box technique.

So Sunday arrived and we had a busy day ahead, three of our teams running, two of them at the same time in different rings! Hmmmm, that was going to be fun! I was also down to judge the division that Squirrel was running in with Tyne so had to ask Gemma to judge for me. As it happened I needn’t have bothered, Squirrel ran the first couple of races perfectly then just decided she wasn’t going to play ball. Firstly she wasn’t bringing her ball back, then she was bringing the ball but not coming over the hurdles then eventually she just refused to run at all….arghhh!!! What on earth possessed me to train and run a terrier??!! lol I just put her back in the van and panicked about what we were going to do for multibreed the next day when we needed her to run! We managed to hastily secure a super-sub JRT from the York Monsters flyball team…phew!

Here’s a few pics of her when she was actually doing it!


Very happy with that box technique…


Really MUST do something about that hurdling!! lol

It just turned out to be one of those frustrating days, we were top seed in Div 2 with the Demonz and 2nd seed with the Racers but just really struggled to get it together…everyone seemed to be struggling with the new start light sequencing so there were loads of false starts for both me with Mac and Gemma with Bailey. The dogs that tend to hit the box hard really struggled and were way off their pace including Bailey so the first team really suffered…we had thought it was due to us running on the new flat fronted box but he ran no better when we switched back to the boomerang, just seemed to struggle getting his footing when pushing back off which we eventually put down to the hard ground in that ring…most of the div 1 dogs were also way off their pace and a lot of teams were running a good 0.5sec off their seed times. I saw a lot of 4.1-4.2sec dogs clocking 4.5’s instead. On a positive note all the other Demonz ran well on the new box and it particularly seems to suit Teal and Faith well; Gemma has taken it home to do some box work with Bailey and I’m hoping his underperformance was down to the ground and not the change in box type. We ran an 18.17 as the fastest time which is just rubbish…we seriously need to tighten those changeovers!

We ran the Racers on the boomerang but struggled for consistency with running a 6 dog team…going to have a re-think about that one. Running a 6 dog team is actually quite tricky when you have 6 unevenly matched dogs. Firstly, you get a seed time based on your fastest four dogs, which obviously you’re not always running so can’t always achieve and secondly, you have handlers swapping between dogs which makes consistency very difficult and it showed in our results…lots of lights and lots of ‘should have won’ races…all in all rather frustrating. Ideally we could do with sticking to running the same 4 dogs but that then means 2 of my dogs don’t get to run. Lexie and Ethan have hardly run at all this year and it’s really not very fair when both are good dogs and both enjoy it so much. We desperately need to get that 3rd team running but until Squirrel starts running more consistently and we get Jovi out into Open competition we’re a bit stuck. The Demonz finished 3rd and Racers 4th, not a great day.

Thankfully our starters all ran really well, I swapped between Maizy and Jovi since, at the moment, I feel they both need me to run them…Jovi is very much a ‘mummy’s girl’ and has eyes only for me and Maizy needs someone who knows her well enough to be able to react to what she might do next…she was much better this week and we didn’t have any running back up the lane or dropping the ball…good girl :o) The revelation of the day was Fynn who ran very reliably…always got his ball, always brought it all the way out and no running back up the lane…by jove…I think he’s got it! He’s also picked up the pace but is only putting in about 50% effort…I’m hoping the rest will come as he gains more experience. I was very pleased though when we ran them in singles on Monday without any netting and they all ran perfectly…Maizy is certainly nothing if not consistent…she ran all 3 timed runs in 5.07secs exactly! She has loads more to give but considering she’s actually only been doing flyball for 3 weeks I’m over the moon with her performance!

A few pics of the babies thanks to Brian McMurray from Tyne…

Jovi


Maisie


Fynn


Monday was a much more successful day altogether, Squirrel still started the day ‘out on strike’ so our second multibreed team (Demon Medley) ended up only containing one of our dogs for most of the day! We decided to run Dylan on the first team (Diverse Demonz) rather than Bailey simply because there’s nothing between them time wise when they’re both on form but Bailey had definitely been off the previous day. We also ran that team on the new flat fronted box. So that team ended up being… Ruaraidh (xbreed), Leo (standard poodle), Dylan (BC) and Teal (cocker) and worked really nicely…of course my changeover with Teal was easy peasy since that’s the changeover we do every week in the Speed Demonz but everyone else did a great job and we easily won the division with a fastest time of 17.84.

A few pics of the Diverse Demonz thanks to Kirtsty Price from Linnotts...

Ruaraidh (Rory)

Leo

Dylan

Teal


We had to work somewhat harder with ‘Medley’ which consisted of Finnbarre (standard poodle), Bailey (WS), Jet (xbreed), Scooter (JRT) and Squirrel (when she finally decided to do it!)…it was a shame because they were narrowly ‘pipped’ in a couple of the earlier races and it wasn’t until the last race, when we were against Scooters team (Monster Mash) that I decided to give Squirrel a go and see what she would do…of course she ran all 3 legs perfectly and they ran 0.25sec faster despite my late changeovers….grrrr…bloody terrier!! lol Scooter was a little star and that team would have been completely stuck without him. They managed a 4th place which is exactly where they had been seeded. Sorry, no-one took pics of this lot!

I’m just glad that Squirrel managed to finish the weekend on a good note and I have learned a valuable lesson….treat the terrier like a spaniel (i.e. be extremely nice to it and don’t let on it’s done anything wrong no matter what it does) or it just won’t run so our new team mantra is no longer just ‘keep the cocker happy’ but also ‘don’t upset the terrier’!! lol

All in all it was a good weekend, it’s a lovely venue for hanging out and spending time with friends because of the club house (although the food is far too good and portions too big…I think I’ve probably gained several pounds over the weekend!), 4 of Squirrels puppies were there which was nice and loads of Viggo babies to enjoy cuddles with too. Just a pity the weather wasn’t better, although mostly bright and sunny it was quite cold and windy with intermittent showers. We have a weekend off now and will be back out competing again on mine and Sharon’s birthday…Dinnington Rugby Club on the 15th May :o)

Tilly...a Viggo baby out of River (Bryning Super Cool)


too cute!

More Starters Flyball...

The youngsters are all coming along nicely and last week's training session went well with Maisie , Jovi and Fynn all running in a team together (so all should hopefully be ok at Drax!) so I was feeling quite hopeful about running the girls in starters at Norfolk Park over the weekend. Lori ’s pups were due mid week (21st to the first mating and 23rd to the second) so I expected we would have puppies before the weekend but no…nothing…Saturday she was a little restless but I knew she hadn’t started so decided to go to Sheffield for the flyball and leave her with some peace and quiet.

I got hopelessly lost trying to find my way into Norfolk Park…last time I went I had a sat nav…now I don’t…I missed the first couple of races in starters…doh! Maisie was running with the Alphas and Jovi was running with Tyne…of course…the first race for both of them was against each other so I opted to run Jo with Tyne and Mark took Maisie to run with Alphas…she will run for anyone but decided she wanted to run every leg!! What can I say? She’s keen!! Lol

Jovi ran well in a few different positions. Positives – I had her running in from 35ft and doing nice tight changeovers with the dog coming out, not bad for only her 3rd time competing. Negatives – I have a feeling she’s going to be like Ethan (not surprising since she is his niece) in that she runs in like a train but has a lot of eye and is really having a good look at everything on the way back! As a consequence her runbacks are slow and I’m struggling to find anything to motivate her out quicker…hmmmm. The Tyne team finished 4th and Viggo also managed to complete a few legs too! So Jovi now has another rosette :o)

A couple of pics of Vi and Jovi taken by Jess Penaluna from the Tyne team (thanks Jess!)





Maisie…well…as I said she is very keen…she is also running in from around 30ft and happily running past another dog, she is also much more focused than Jovi on the runout…she comes belting back to me and goes ‘what are we doing next?’ with a big smile on her face (she is just too cute!)…HOWEVER…if I don’t ‘answer her question’ quickly enough she belts straight back down the lane again…regardless of who else might be running! So…I’ve started having another ball for her when she comes out which is fine at keeping her focused on me BUT can make her drop her ball on the runback (yeh, I know...it’s a common complaint) so I’ve decided to start training her to return to a target like we have done with Dylan and his tuggy in the bucket. I have target trained various dogs within the teams I’ve run in over the years but never had to do it with one of my own so this is a first for me. I just need to have a think about what form this might take?? Anyway, the Alpha team won (again!) so Maisie has another 1st rosette, not bad for a little dog that has only been training for 2 weeks! (although to be fair, the Alphas do have a cracking starter team that she’s been lucky to run with)

Squirrel ran with one of the Tyne open teams, making her open competition debut and despite a couple of dropped balls (we were using full sized soft balls but new ones that hadn't been well 'broken in', she likes to be able to squash them so they don't make her jaw ache I think, she won't entertain small balls at all!) I was really pleased with how she did, some nice tight changeovers and no running out! She now has her first flyball points too, clever girlie! :o)

We are running our own starter team at Drax this weekend…Maisie, Jovi, Fynn and a couple of Tyne dogs too…should be fun! Squirrel is also running with the Tyne Titans and will be making her multibreed debut in our second MB team on the Monday, which has been seeded in Div 1 with our first MB team! Haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to run Squirrel and Teal at the same time yet! Fingers crossed Squirt behaves and gains her flyball dog award this weekend!

Flyball starters and training

Arghhh…behind on my blog again already!!

I have an excuse though, I’ve been really poorly with a nasty sinus infection; this is one of those things that, until you’ve experienced it yourself, you really can’t appreciate how unpleasant it is :o(

I had come home from Sutton Fields at Easter with a heavy cold which always makes me a little nervous since I am prone to blocked/painful sinuses but the cold seemed to clear up within the week and all was fine so I tootled off over to Drax for the BFA judges and ring party training seminar on Saturday afternoon. I wasn’t attending the seminar but running dogs in the starters competition that was being held at the same time. The way this works is…those attending the training seminar have theory presentations and discussions in the morning then get to practice what they’ve learnt in the afternoon with some unsanctioned competition; in this case it was a division of starters and an NFC division of teams made up of dogs currently running in open competition that also happened to be there. It was a really beautiful day and I was really surprised when I arrived by the number of people that were there and how many were camping and almost immediately regretted not having brought a tent and camping gear! Anyway, I was running Squirrel and Jovi in the Alpha Dogz starters team and both ran well, Jo is starting to get used to passing with other dogs now and we were loading her ball in the box…she’s making excellent progress, especially considering the small amount of training she’s had. Both girl ran in various different positions and I was pleased with them both, the team all ran well and they came 3rd :o)

Hazell and Leanne arrived just as the day’s activities were ending, they were attending the seminar on Sunday but…Hazell had a spare tent and Sharon had a spare sleeping bag so….I ended up staying over! Lol Hazell had a lovely smart new black harness, still with the label attached and asked if I had a dog it would fit so I suggested Maisie, she was just a year old that day and I really needed to start her flyball training! We’ve been doing lots of groundwork in the last month or so…restrained recalls and sending away to a ‘dead’ ball or to take a ball from someone else but she hadn’t actually seen any of the equipment (I know…I am very lax in training my youngsters! lol). Anyway, Hazell gave Maisie the harness as her birthday pressie so while everyone wandered over to the club house for some tea we decided to make the most of the beautiful weather and the ring that was all set up and do some training; I wanted to see how Viggo was coming on (he’s staying with Hazell and she’s training him for me!) and also see what Maisie could do. I went to borrow the Cheshire Set box (which is the same as ours) and Hazell took Vi and Maisie into the ring…Vi knows exactly what to do so he ran straight up the lane and then back down again, it was all netted for the starters the next day so Maisie just followed him…up over the hurdles and back again. Leanne came over to box load and I did a couple of runbacks with Maisie…no problem, she was hurdling perfectly so we decided to try sending her up to Leanne for a ball…again…no problem..she ran straight up took her ball and came back…she was really keen! So after a couple more like this we decided that Leanne would show her the ball and then load it in the box as she approached…she took it straight out of the box, triggering it and no reaction to the sound or firing action. Ok…so…it seems…Maisie already knows how to do flyball!! Lol

Viggo was doing full runs up and down and triggering the box (this has taken a lot of work because he has been quite sensitive over the box) and, more importantly, he was doing this while Maisie was lined up and alternating his runs with hers…this is also a breakthrough because he has such a high chase drive that he finds the other dogs very distracting. There is hope!! All in all very pleased with both of them :o)

We then went to the club house and had something to eat and a few drinks with everyone before piling back to Sharon’s caravan for more wine (so sorry Sharon…didn’t mean to keep you that late!) and then bed. Well, the next morning I felt terrible…I was so cold I just couldn’t get warm and felt so ill. Couldn’t understand why I had such a bad hangover when we really hadn’t drunk that much. I got up and sorted the dogs out, went and sat with the Rotherham lot and watched them box training (and drank several cups of tea!) then went back to bed for a couple of hours while everyone else was on the seminar. Got up around lunchtime feeling a bit brighter but still not 100%. I asked the Alphas whether it would be possible to put Maisie on their teamsheet for starters and try some runs with her in the warm ups and they said they would be happy to run her so we decided to give it a go. I wouldn’t normally throw a youngster in with so little training (i.e. none!) but she had done so well the night before and I knew I would have to run her so we might as well see how she did. Well, she was super…ran really well throughout the whole division in numerous different positions and ended up being able to run in and do (loose-ish) changeovers etc…I was SO pleased with her! The team also won so not only did she make a fab debut but she won a first rosette!


Maisie sporting her FIRST rosette (which was sadly eaten by Esther this weekend!!...BAD parson puppy! lol)

We also made up an ‘open’ team with Leanne’s Floyd (a beautiful HUGE rottie-dobe cross), Hazell’s River (Bryning Super Cool), my Dottie and Squirrel…the idea being that it would be a good way to introduce Squirrel to open competition…no wings and no netting along the lanes but there was netting in the middle, between the two lanes. For some reason, Squirrel never even looks at the other lane in starters but as soon as you remove all wings and netting she gets very distracted by it…she doesn’t run over and chase but it draws her concentration and causes her to run out. I can only think this stems back to one of her first starters competitions last year where a Rottweiler (a friendly one but huge nonetheless!) jumped over the netting into her lane and scared her; I think removing the netting makes her feel a little vulnerable so she worries and watches the other lane. Hopefully, the more she runs and realizes that no-one is going to come across into her lane (fingers crossed!), the more confident she will become. Anyway, this setup was ideal and she ran paw perfect throughout, turning well off the box and not running out once…clever parson! Next thing we have to work on is getting her to hurdle (single stride) over the jumps. This is a big ask for a small, short-coupled dog…although she and Teal are measured the same height (both run 8”), Teal’s long and low build is actually much better suited to the action of hurdling. I have a few ideas to try to achieve this with Squirrel so we’ll see. She is set to make her open competition debut running with the Tyne team at Norfolk Park this weekend…fingers crossed! Until we have a 3rd team up and running we don’t really have anywhere to run Squirrel so she is going to run with Tyne for a while. We didn’t get in at Norfolk Park (I didn’t send the entry in time since the schedule came out the day Tammy had her accident and I forgot about it) but I will be going on the Sunday to run Squirrel and also to run Jovi and Maisie in starters too.

We stayed and had some tea in the club house at Drax and then set off home so my afternoon of flyball ended up turning into a 2-dayer! It was a lovely unexpected weekend though, good company, good food and flyball…what more could you want?! Got home and was so tired I just sorted the dogs and went to bed. When I woke in the morning feeling as though I’d had the previous day’s hangover, only three times over, I realized it hadn’t been a hangover at all…yup…the dreaded sinusitis, ended up having the whole week off work, two doses of antibiotics later and I'm back at work but still not 100%...not happy! This is typical, just as the weather has finally picked up and the evenings are getting lighter and I've done very little of anything :o(

So...puppies due this week and flyball at Norfolk Park to look forward to at the weekend...I hope this final couple of days of antibiotics finally knocks this on the head and I can fully enjoy both :o)

A weekend in Dundee

Friday evening we headed up to Dundee for a weekend of flyball,; two one day tournaments so lots of running! Paul, Alison and I and 12 dogs packed into the van with our tent and all our gear! We left Preston at around 6.10pm and arrived at Caird Park around 9.45pm so the journey wasn’t too bad but of course it was dark by the time we arrived so we had to put the tent up using the van headlights! Lol It didn’t take too long thankfully. Drew arrived just before 2am since he’d been working late so it was a late night but thankfully we weren’t on first thing and had the chance for a lie-in in the morning. Caird Park is a great venue, handy for everything with really nice toilet/shower facilities too, always a bonus in my book!

We were ring partying division 3 which unfortunately was spoiled by a very rude and unpleasant handler from one of the Scottish teams. Everybody knows flyball can get very competitive and heated at times and can bring out the ugly side in some people but this is something I’ve never experienced north of the border before so was a bit of a shock. Having been told to ‘get a life’ for upholding a handler fault, followed by a rant and petty point scoring…one has to wonder who it is exactly who’s in need of a life?? Sad isn’t it when people get so wound up about something that’s *supposed to be fun!* With more and more teams now competing, the Scottish shows do seem to have lost some of their laid back and relaxed charm which is the price of progress I guess but a shame nonetheless.

We were running completely thrown together teams and knew we were going to get stuffed in both divisions since we were missing two first team dogs in the form of Bailey and Dottie so we were just using the weekend as a training exercise. The Pawz consisted of Mac, Pip, Teal and Ethan and they all actually ran quite well. Mac has been a bit off colour lately so I thought he might benefit from the 8” jumps and he was running around the 4.6 mark so better than last weekend but still not what he should be running. Drew did a great job of getting to grips with running him and getting some really good starts since it’s a bit like wrestling an octopus keeping him still on the start! Lol Pip ran well, she likes running behind her daddy and kept trying to bite his bum in the line up! lol. Teal stayed motivated for most of the weekend with just momentary lapses in concentration which was quite a relief since she was running in a 4 dog team! Ethan had moments of brilliance and moments of his usual clown self. It is frustrating that he does the opposite turn in each lane since this does really affect his times in the blue lane (where he’s turning against his natural left turn and turning right instead).

The Racers was a rather odd line up of Dylan, Faith, Lexie and Drake so was a bit of a family affair (Lex with her son and daughter) with the cocker interloper. I started off running Drake but then swapped with Drew and took over Lexie since she really does need that high pitched scream to get her back faster, I was really pleased with how she ran actually and she was back running 4.6s. In fact that team ran really well and although we got stuffed in div one, they did manage a time of 18.30 which, considering we only ran 18.15 last weekend with Bailey, is pretty impressive! It makes me much more confident in the 17.80 we’ve submitted for the champs since Bailey is easily a good half second faster than Drake. Faith ran really well, especially since she was running 12” all day but again we have the same issue we have with Ethan where she’s swapping sides depending on the lane, only she’s the opposite to him so she runs better in the blue lane where she’s doing her natural right turn. What is doubly frustrating about this is that she didn’t do it last season, it’s only since she’s come back from having pups that she’s started this and we’re really struggling to stop it!

So, something to think about for the Champs next weekend, not sure what teams we’ll run yet but I’m keeping everything crossed that Dottie will be sound and we’ll have 10 dogs to run at least!

Anyhow…here’s some pics from the weekend taken at Camperdown Park on the Sunday…what a fantastic venue for flyball…check out all that open space for running dogs in!

'The Pawz'...


The handsome Spark...dozing in his crate...

The handsome Dylan...

Maisie and mouse...having a whale of a time!!

The beardie has landed!!

Well, she arrived on Saturday evening and she's settling in just fine. She really likes people but she was a little unsure of the other dogs at first, she's decided Mac will be her new best friend (bless) but he is starting to get a little weary of this constant licky little shadow following him around! lol She's a quiet little pup, happy to go and play by herself or find a nice little hidey hole for a little nap like...

under the sofa...

or under the shoe rack in the front porch...

Too cute! :)

She couldn't quite decide what to do when we did some flyball training this evening though; we heard her bark for the first time as she got rather excited and kept rushing out to join in but then quickly running back to safety again if she thought one of the other dogs was looking at her! lol She has a good play/chase drive but isn't overly confident so this is something we can work on as she grows up.

One Out, One In

Well, I think I have finally confirmed that I am completely mad! Having decided I definitely didn’t want to keep 2 pups from the same litter I sold Monkee and he leaves us this week to go to his new home in Florida where I’m sure he’s going to have a fantastic new life. Meanwhile…in a moment of madness I went and bought…
Maisie…

She’s a 10 week old blue merle working beardie pup and she’s absolutely gorgeous! She arrives home this weekend and I can’t wait!

I just really love that ‘scruffy mutt’ look of the working beardies

Here’s her mum Nell…

And here’s her dad Sky, he’s pretty unusual as he’s a tri blue merle, something you don’t see very often in beardies…

I’m hoping to train her up for flyball, she’s a pretty quiet little pup at the moment, thinks before she acts, she’s actually very similar to Mouse in character so I hope they’ll get along and be good friends.