Rotherham

The past week seemed to just fly by so quickly, I was back in work on Tuesday and had a busy few days catching up and Friday seemed to come round again in no time at all. Thankfully Paul and Alison had offered to let me stay with them at Rotherham over the weekend so I didn’t have to get the caravan sorted but I was up at 6am on Friday morning still getting all mine and the dogs stuff sorted for another weekend of flyball. Gemma came over on Saturday morning with Viggo who was running in starters and Bailey of course. Conrad, Jackie and Jess also came over on Saturday with Radley. Unusually the weekend started with division 1 and I was boxloading for Tyne Tailwaggers on Tour in this division which was really nice for me because their last dog, Lexi is a Tammy daughter who has just started competing but wow…she’s good! This also meant I got to watch the rest of the racing and it was a fantastic division with every team running sub 18 secs. Live Wires won the division with a new fastest time of 16.91…sub 17 at last!! Their start dog is of course the fabulous Tarn (Bryning Tarn – Jaff X Spangle) who consistently ran sub 4secs over the day, she’s like a little flyball robot! Lol It’s an absolute pleasure to see her and Lucy run, they’re a great team. Wire Sparks came 2nd in the division and were running Zephyr (Bryning Bounce Right Back) and Nell (Bryning Mayan Prophecy) who are both Mac X Molly kids (wah!! I want a Mac kid!!!) The starters (Demon Cubz) were next in the ring and we were running Squirrel, Radley, Spud and Viggo…well I say we were running Viggo but he really was an another planet!! He had however eaten a bottle of prednisolone overnight (pillock!!) so I think this was the reason he was so spaced out (more so than usual and that is saying something for him!). I’ve decided not to try and run him and Squirrel at the same time because I don’t want to undo the progress we’ve made with her. Radley ran ok but seemed a little distracted, she has just finished her season though and I often find this affects them for a few weeks afterwards. We went NFC and ran Lexie in place of Vi in the afternoon just as a training exercise. The Pawz were running in Div 5 and we ran a slightly altered order with Faith going start dog to save Pip in the heat. Pip usually runs start but she suffers with the heat so we wanted to avoid her having to do too many legs with false starts etc. Faith ran ok but didn’t seem quite as focused as she had been at Littleport, she’s so damned nosey! It was a very open division and we won two races but ended up bottom of a 3 way tie for 3rd so came 5th but since we were seeded 6th this was a bonus! The Racers ran on Sunday and it was already baking hot by 8.30am when we started so we weren’t hoping for much. I was really looking forward to the racing in this division as only 0.15sec separated all 6 teams on seed times so we were expecting some really close competitive racing. As it happened we ran more than 0.5sec faster than anyone else and weren’t pushed at all so ended up winning every race and the division which was nice but not as much fun as I’d been hoping. We had a crack team with help from Nick running Bailey (Gemma was working), Naomi and Sharon on the line and Craig from GoFours boxloading. We had some really nice tight runs and although Lexie was a little off form time wise, all the dogs ran consistent times all day and we stayed in the 18.40’s from the first to the last race which, considering the heat, was really encouraging. The dogs all seem to be very fit coming off our time away although Lexie is suffering with a nasty rash on her right hind leg which seems to be some sort of allergy so I don’t know whether this is accounting for her poor times, she ran 4.7’s/4.8’s all day instead if her usual 4.5/4.6’s which is a little frustrating when everyone else is running so well. I’ll keep an eye on her over this week and see how she is. Teal will have finished her season and be back running at Eastham so we do have the option of resting Lexie if need be. The pups came for the first camping weekend since they went to Anglesey as a litter at 5 weeks old. They were pretty well behaved but Monkee did insist on wandering off exploring and he doesn’t yet understand that not all dogs are friendly so I was worried about him getting himself in bother and ended up tethering them. He is much more independent than Mouse. Although she’s quite confident and happy to explore she much prefers to stay with you and play or just have a cuddle on your lap; I really do adore her. I have decided to let Monkee go so that I have more time to spend with Mouse and he will have a home where more time is spent with him. Here’s a couple of pics from Saturday and a short vid of Gemma playing tuggy with Mouse (and teasing her…poor little Mouse! Lol)
Monkee...

Mouse...


Viggo (aka 'Spanner!)...
Eastham next weekend, hoping for more of the same weather-wise!!