Ryecroft Farm

Well, what a FANTASTIC weekend we had at Ryecroft Farm. It's only an hour from home and all our teams were running on Sunday but we decided to take the caravans down Saturday afternoon and have a bit of time to chill out which was very nice. We had only booked 2 camping spaces so I stayed with Trish (thanks Trish!). The weather was as good as it's been in ages so it was all very civilised, sitting out enjoying the late afternoon sunshine with a glass of wine. After several more bottles of wine, on account of the fact it was Bridget's birthday (Happy Birthday B!), Gemma finally joined us about 12.30am (she had been working the late shift) and we stayed up and chatted into the early hours and eventually fell into bed...knowing we were running in Div 1 at 8.30 in the morning!!

The alarm went of at 7.00 as usual but it was 7.30 before we woke up properly and then jumped out of bed and dashed around getting dogs walked and fed before racing started. Most tournament organisers run the fastest divisions on the Sunday as they were doing this weekend; the thinking being that they'll get through the racing quicker and have an earlier finish for people having a long way to travel home. However, most tournaments run the days' divisions in reverse order...starting with the lowest and finishing with the highest. I don't know why but this weekend they did it the other way round starting with Div 1 and going down to Div 5 . I actually think this is a good idea, it often happens that Div 1 is the last division to go into the ring after a whole weekends racing and you end up running on the worst ground, especially if it's been wet and the runs and box areas start to get cut up, this sort of churned up/slippy ground obviously affects the faster dogs more.

Anyway, our schedule for the day was...Div 1 with the Speed Demonz (Dylan, Bailey, Lexie, Mist)...Div 2 with the Demon Racers (Mac, Frost, Faith, Teal)...Div 3 ring party, Div 4 off and finishing in Div 5 with the Demon Pawz (Pip, Drake, Dottie, Ethan, Spud) so quite a busy one!

We were all suprisingly spritely considering the late night and the teams all ran brilliantly, better than we could have hoped for with all 3 teams achieving new fastest times!! The Speed Demonz WON divsion 1 (woo hoo!!) and did it with some style, unbeaten all day and a fastest time of 17.48...we finally broke the 17.50 barrier!! This was also the fastest time of the weekend. The Demon Racers came 4th in Division 2, their first time up in Div 2 and they ran a fastest time of 19.01 (oh so close to the sub 19.00 I'm sure they're capable of!! lol)...not bad for a team fielding the mad midget cocker!! I was most pleased with Tealey this weekend because she actually ran for Gemma in the afternoon as I took over running Mac start dog (for some reason Gemma seemed to be asleep on the start this weekend!! lol). Although I did commit the cardinal start dog sin with Mac (getting two consecutive false starts)....TWICE!!! (oh the shame!). This is however, the first time Teal has run for someone else and she ran brilliantly all day (clever cocker!!). The Demon Pawz were top seed in Div 5 and didn't disappoint as they also won the division (yay!!) totally smashing their seed time by running 19.82!! This now gives us 3 sub 20.00 sec teams...fantastic!! I must also mention the help that we had from Steve and Bridget on the line for us, first class assistance as usual, and also Manda who was quickly volunteered to run Dottie in the afternoon, when Gemma had to leave for work, and did a brilliant job with a dog that isn't the easiest in the world to run that's for sure!!

The day was made complete by the phone call I received from Joy in the afternoon to say that Teal had won combined Grade 6/7 agility down at Trent Park so had got her last agilty win needed to go Grade 7 (Advanced)...absolutely chuffed to bits for Joy, Becca and Tealey...grade 7 before she's 3 years old...now that's not bad going is it? Well done girls!

It was a long and busy day but a very enjoyable one and we all left for home tired but very very happy and looking forward to next weekend with great anticipation. Keeping fingers crossed for a few dry days so that the Penny farm venue will be able to dry out in time for next weekend's tournament.