Playing Catch up

Have been pretty rubbish at taking pics and updating the blog etc the past couple of weeks…just been very busy with one thing and the other…sorry!

Newark

What can I say…it was a hectic one! We headed off down to Dogs Unleashed at Newark Showground and had a brilliant weekend with glorious weather throughout. I also picked Maizy
up in Mansfield and took her down to Berkshire to be mated to the lovely Rupert (Silvertips Knight of Danalimatt) so fingers crossed we’ll have some lovely new cocker puppies early September.

Unfortunatley I’d had to leave Mac at home following his minor surgery. The growth on his digital pad turned out to be a Canine Viral Papilloma, something very unusual in a dog of his age (more commonly seen in puppies) and thankfully nothing to worry about. The wound has actually healed very well but the dressing caused some irritation to his dew claw so his recovery has taken a little longer than I’d hoped. Saturday we ran the Racers in Div 1 and got absolutely slaughtered. Without Mac we ran Faith who, for some completely unknown reason, was just on another planet!! Just no focus at all, watching the other lane, turning the wrong way off the box and just generally running like a slug…SO frustrating!! We came 5th out of 6 with a fastest time of 18.82…pants! lol

We also ran the Pawz in division 2 where we came bottom, just totally outclassed as we were missing Faith from that team and also ended up pulling Teal who had a badly a swollen back foot after suffering some sort of infection between her toes, ah well…one of those weekends!

I did take Drake over to have a go at the Scurry Bandits which turned out to be quite a tightly fought contest which he won!! He did the retrieve over the fences in a time of 12.87secs, 0.25sec faster than anyone else managed and the only dog to go under 13secs all weekend. Clever cocker. Everyone over there was so nice and friendly, we had some good banter and got a lovely prize too. Bailey also ran and came 3rd with a time of 13.19 proving that in cases like this, accuracy is just as important as straight line speed.

Sunday we had nothing to do so just had a nice day moseying round the rest of the show. Dylan went and won the scurry so it was a Demon Dogz clean sweep! I ran Bailey and Faith in a couple of agility classes NFC which went ok apart from Fi knocking a couple of poles, entirely my fault as I have a habit of bending down on turns which causes her to flatten over the jump and clip the pole…arghhh! She was much more focused at this than her flyball though! Bailey was dead keen and ran really well but was surprisingly controllable; I later discovered that he’d suffered a skin tear on his shoulder the previous day which ended up opening up into quite a large wound. Poor Bailey. It was off to the vets for him on Monday and 11 stitches to pull it all back together…he’s absolutely fine but no flyball for him for a couple of weeks.

We had a brilliant weekend nonetheless. It was nice to catch up with lots of people we don’t often see, good weather and great company and a really good laugh throughout…what flyball is all about!

Rotherham

This weekend started badly with me being stuck in work ‘til 6pm, then having to go home and sort the dogs and the caravan and get over to Rotherham. We made it for about 9.30pm and I had plenty of help setting up and getting sorted while Paul and Alison kindly cooked pizzas for tea! We had a full caravan for the duration of the evening and a good laugh…started the weekend as we meant to go on!

Saturday we were in first thing with the Racers in division 1…even more handicapped this time with an off form Mac and no Bailey! Mac ran a couple of races but I ended up pulling him and we ran Drake instead. We got whooped but we did manage to win one race against Mansfield Marnicks….beaten by a cocker…will they ever live down the shame?? Lol Was great to see our friends at Rotherham setting a new fastest seed time of 17.65 in this division and going on to win it…nice one guys! This team also included 2 ‘Brynings’ (Ollie and Charlie) which was really nice 

We also ran starters with the help of Donna and Neela running 4th dog and everyone ran really really well! Squirrel ended up running start dog, she’s so focused now and was running in from 25ft with some cracking starts and consistent 5.5sec times…this is a VAST improvement! I had said she may never run in open comp as I wouldn’t consider running her in a team unless she started running 5.5 or below. She’s obviously determined to prove me wrong! Radley also ran really well and so too did Neela who was making her flyball debut. I think all new flyballers could do with watching Donna run a dog and take note on how it should be done…she’s SO enthusiastic!!

We put up the ‘party tent’ in the afternoon, one of Steve’s 10m gazebos he’d brought over, and set up chairs, tables and BBQ and decorated with pink balloons for the ’Demon Dogz’ 1st birthday party…exactly one year since we’d first competed. Gemma also came over after work so we were all together and Alison brought a huge pink French fancy birthday cake too. Unfortunately some people had to leave before the BBQ got underway with racing/presentation having finished later than expected but we had a lovely time with all our friends and Conrad and Jackie finally popped their camping cherry and stayed over…in a tent!! Lol Now we’re just trying to persuade Steve to bring the gazebo to every tournament! Lol

Sunday morning we were in first thing again with the Pawz, again this team struggled having lost Drake to the Racers and while Faith
was running better than she had last week she’s still not fully focused. We’ve now had to start doing with her what we do with Ethan and load the ball the opposite side depending on what lane she’s in so that she’s always turning towards the other lane. As it happens she seems to be able to do lovely four footed box turns either way! Lol It’s just a little confusing for the poor boxloader when first and last dogs keep swapping holes!

We had another good weekend anyway with good weather throughout (apart from the downpour over Saturday night). We have a couple of weekends off now before a full month of comps in August starting with Eastham. Time to catch up with jobs at home!