Bank Holiday Flyball!!

It was a busy bank holiday weekend with three days of flyball over at Drax courtesy of the Kellington Flyball Teams. 5 divisions of Open racing running on each day Sat/Sun as well as 4 divisions of multibreed and 2 of starters on Monday!

This is the first time we've headed over to this venue and I was pleasantly suprised, lovely well maintained ground, the camping area surrounded by trees and a fantastic clubhouse a stones' throw away! Toilets, showers, a bar and delicious and reasonably priced food all on the caravan doorstep...perfect!

I was nice to catch up with a lot of friends and teams we haven't seen much of over winter too, the sun shone on Saturday and Sunday and we had two fairly lazy days with just one team running each day and no judging or ring party duties, although we did trade boxloader/linesman and ball collector with Tyne Tailwaggers on Saturday as there were only a few of them there, same as us.

We actually had a suprisingly successful weekend with the Pawz (seeded 5th) coming 3rd in Div 5 on Saturday and Faith making her 'post-litter' comeback, not running in top gear but she did run well and was really keen so hopefully we'll have her back on form soon! The Racers (seeded 6th) won div 2 on Sunday!!! Our opposition just seemed determined to hand us victory in every race even when I tried to hand it back to them with double false starts!! lol On two seperate occasions I got a 2nd false start with Mac but the opposing start dog also faulted meaning I 'got away with it'...very lucky!! It was really nice to get the division win but at the same time we never had to push it and really race so coasted through the division with the slowest time of all 6 teams! Not really what it's all about but hey ho...says something for consistency at least!

Squirrel ran with Rotherham starters on Monday and they came 2nd. She shared a spot with another dog but she was a little star! She also told me that she wants a Canadian box for her birthday, she ran so much better on this than our boomerang box but it's much more like the training chute she did all her initial training on.

Teal ran with Rotherham's 2nd multibreed team (with Charlie, Bryning Bright Light) and they came 2nd in Div 2 and Drake ran with their first team (with Ollie, Bryning Old Devil Moon) and they came 3rd in Div 1 but the racing in both divisions was very very tight, Doncaster Team Pow Wow ran a 17.76 and won the division, we ran an 18.80 something and our Div 2 team ran 19.84, all 4 divisions of multibreed were good racing to be honest, it was an exhausting but enjoyable day.

Over the weekend I managed to get the last of my dogs' final measures so have sent off a big envelope of height card applications for them. Dottie, Lexie and Faith have all finished up at 13", Drake 12" and Teal 8". Have got to start it all again with Kitten and Squirrel now! (although Kitten got her first measure at 11" at Anglesey already). Teal also picked up her Flyball Dog Advanced certificate, clever cocker :)

We have a couple of weeks off competing now before our 'team tour' begins on the 22nd May...off down to the Cambridgeshire K9's tournament over the bank holiday weekend and then over to Belgium for the European Championships the following weekend, back in the UK the following week and staright over to Littleport for the High Flyers debut tournament. We will be away for a total of 16 days...can't wait!