Go Demon Dogz!!

Well, as you may have guessed...my van did finally emerge from the garage on Friday in time to get packed up and head over to Rotherham, I arrived about 6pm and got set up (put my caravan awning up all by myself...impressed???!!! lol), Paul and Alison arrived about 8.30pm after being stuck in traffic on the M1 and Gemma arrived shortly after (Trish is in Malta so I had her dogs too!) so it was quite late by the time we sat down for our pizzas and we were all knackered. We tried out the new team kit that Steve and B and brought over for us and it's all v cool!! Our quiet evening in soon went out the window when we got invitied over to the club house bar for a 'quick pint' which quickly turned into 2 or 3 and then back to the caravan for (lots) more wine and before you could say 'black russian' I couldn't remember anything else except for waking up in the morning feeling VERY ill!! lol (I think Steve is now banned from the Demon camp...he seems to be a a very bad influence!)

In spite of my stinking hangover we did make it into the ring and had some really good racing. First in with the Demon Pawz in division 6 and then in div 3 with the Demon Racers, loads of help from Hazell and Rachel from Tyne and Crazies who boxloaded superbly for us and Steve and Bridget, our lovely Dolphin friends, who manned the line and took down our times. The 'Pawz' finished the day 2nd in div 6 with a fastest time of 20.67 which we were all really pleased with. Noteably Drake and Pip ran brilliantly and Spud came in for the last 2 races in place of Teal and the change from 9" to 13" hurdles hardly affected the times at all which was nice to see (Spudley was VERY excited too!! lol). Pip seems to have really improved in her fitness level over the last couple of months and the wider hole settings on the new box seem to suit her better too. The Racers WON div 3 (woo hoo!!) which was most unexpected; they ran a fastest time of 19.61, Frost and Lexie were fantastic all day but Dottie seemed a little off form, Fi was just Fi...in a little world of her own most of the time! The weather was very kind to us all day and although occasionally overcast it stayed dry, by presentation I was (thankfully) fully recovered and it was lovely to receive Dylan and Faith's Intermediate certificates together, we also got lots of free Vitalin dog food for winning a div, courtesy of the Rotherham team sponsors which was nice. Had a yummy indian meal for tea but wisely we all had an early night!

Sunday we woke up (bright eyed and bushy tailed! lol) to beautiful sunshine...hurray! We didn't have anything on the first 2 divs but did end up helping a few friends out in the ring and then ring partied for div 2. We were bottom seed in div 1 with the Speed Demonz so decided to just go in and have fun and see what was what but amazingly...we won a couple of races and came 4th! :) Steve, Bridget, Hazell, Rachel and Faye were all on hand again to help us out boxloading and on the line/scribing etc, very grateful to them all. We tried a few different running orders and managed a fastest time of 18.09 but I know these dogs are capable of running faster so that's something to aim for next week. Oh...yes...we will be running again next week although we hadn't planned to! Somehow or other we managed to be persuaded to take the 3 teams down to the Chilterns Show in Buckinghamshire next weekend...with several teams having had to withdraw over the week we're going to make up the numbers but I'm actually really looking forward to it. We don't venture down south very often so it'll be nice to catch up with old friends and meet some new ones too! (We're going to have to since we won't have a box loader or 'linesman' again! lol)

All in all we had a lovely weekend and the Rotherham lot did a really fantastic job on their first ever tournament...great venue, superbly organised but friendly and laid back with it. Can't wait for the next one!