Where does the time go?

Ooops...bad blogger me...more than a week without an entry!

Another busy one with one thing and another. We raced down at Newark at the weekend, although Gemma couldn't make it we did end up taking Bailey, we entered an extra team at the last minute as a space became available so ran the usual lineups. Demonz and Racers in Div 1 together again. Didn't feel quite as 'slick' this weekend but at least Mac didn't run out...it must have been seeing Bailey in the other lane as he came off the box that had distracted him at Selby because they were in opposite lanes this time so Mac was turning away. I do like the flooring better at Newark, when the dogs run wide and off the matting it's onto concrete rather than slippery gym flooring. Although they felt good, all 3 teams were well off their usual pace as were most other teams I watched run so I can only assume the surface just didn't run that well. We had a couple of unfortunate incidents that lost us races and ended up 3rd and 5th in Div One and 2nd in Div Two. Teal picked up her graduate award and Drake got his Advanced (already...don't know how he manged that so quickly!). We did have a really nice weekend, we stayed in the local travelodge so had a leisurely trip down on Saturday afternoon so we could walk the dogs, chill out and enjoy a meal together and have a nice relaxed start in the morning. It was nice spending some relaxed time together, something we don't get to do the same over the winter season.

The team social continued as we all went out last night (although Trish didn't make it), Paul had booked us all tickets to see The Feeling at Preston Guild Hall so we met up and went for a meal first before going on to the gig which was, I have to say, fantastic. Only a fairly small audience but they really did put on a good show, the music was great and there was enormous energy from the band. They really know how to work the crowd with their own catchy sing-a-long tunes and the odd crowd pleasing cover lobbed in to really rouse the troops. There was also the odd unexpected curve ball thrown in to keep the crowd on their toes such as lead singer Dan diving off the stage to 'crowd surf' to the back where there was a microphone stand and acoustic guitar set up for his next solo song and then coming on for the encore dressed as a marching band playing percussion instruments through the middle of the crowd, they marched right through the middle of me and Gemma (never realised how small they all are before!). It's nice when you go to see a band that makes and plays great music but are real performers too.

Not much else to report really, our first litter of cockers turned a year old this week, I did see Maizy on Saturday, she's lovely. They've all turned out to be such super little dogs and they're all doing really well in their training. Oz's latest litter arrived yesterday, Norman Johnson's bitch Bracken (Wildfell Bit o Heather) had 5 dog puppies, a choc/white, a black tri and 3 black/white so looking forward to pics of those. We're racing at Deeside this weekend although I had really wanted to go to Newton Heath agility show which is just down the road from my house. Trish isn't coming so we've just got the two teams entered, bit of a jiggle of dogs so we'll see how we get on.