Well, what can I say about the British Championships?? We had an absolute blast! Great weather, great company, superb venue, lovely happy and relaxed throughout, first class racing and a real carnival atmosphere. in short it was FANTASTIC! Even my extremely irritating head cold/sore throat/tickly cough wasn't enough to dampen my spirits!
The Champs this year was the biggest ever and was held over 3 days, they ran the divisions in reverse order, slowest Friday and fastest Sunday so we weren't actually running 'til Saturday. Gem and I arrived Friday evening with Paul and Alison already there and set up. We had decided that since there was just the 4 of us, rather than taking the caravans down we would share a big team tent and it actually worked really well. I took a spag bol I'd made the night before and we had tea shortly after arriving then headed over to the big Marquee for the Quiz and Disco, it was so lovely to have everyone together from all over the country, dancing, singing and having a ball! I think we made it to bed about 2am and were up at 7am to get the dogs out and sorted before racing started at 8.30am...we did have a division off before Gem had to go run Keston for the Rotherham team in Div 10 then we were in straight afterwards in Div 9 with the Pawz (Pip, Drake, Dottie, Ethan and Spud)...I thought we'd get thrashed in this division as we were in on a seed time of 20.00secs, achieved with Faith and Teal in the team at Chilterns and the divisions were all very tight in seed times (that's what happens when you have 133 teams competing!) but the dogs ran really well and we did some decent times finishing up 4th. The Barkshire Bandits very kindly did our ring party in the morning session of division 8 so we only had to do the afternoon (of what seemed like the longest 7 team division ever!). We just had a lovely relaxing day with plenty of time to sit by the rings between divisions, watch the racing and have a natter. The 8 week old pups that came with us had lots and lots of attention and fussing, great for them to experience all the sights and sounds of a flyball tournament and be handled so much, particularly by all the kids on the circuit, it's always nice to get your pups used to 'dog savy' kids before they head off out into the big wide world ;)
Here's some pics of us just chilling out, spending some time with Steve and B's kids while they were busy racing...
Megan reading to Gemma...
Ben trying to kill me!! lol (aren't little boys lovely????)
Pollaidh doing what Pollaidh does...waiting for someone to throw her ball...
The pups getting more cuddles...
just soaking up the sights and sounds
Kes keeping watch...
Saturday was a big party night, we had a lovely meal of beef and stir fried veg in black bean sauce with noodles (see...camping food can be good!) with a nice bottle of red and then off to the marquee for more partying...then...back to our tent for...flaming Sambuca's!! (medicinal purposes of course...excellent for a sore throat...ha ha)...finally made it to bed about 3.30am listening to the torrential rain that was falling outside (oh dear!!)...what was tomorrow going to have in store?
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