British Championships

I know I’m being a very bad blogger again! Quite a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks, we’ve competed at the British Flyball Championships and then again at Rotherham, Travis has arrived and Dottie has been mated. Maizy’s pups are due in just 9 days time (eek…excited!!)…these will be our first cocker puppies for two years and the start of our autumn/winter ‘puppy season’ now the flyball fixtures are starting to slow down.

So…briefly…the Championships were bigger and better than ever, a testament to the hard work and organization from Steve and Bridget and the Dolphins team who were this years’ hosts down at Holt Farm in Southam, Warwickshire. This year saw 32 divisions run in 3 rings spread over 3 days running in reverse order. Since both our teams fell into the top 10 divisions we didn’t actually run until the final day on the Sunday but we spent all 3 days there just catching up with friends, helping other teams, soaking up the atmosphere and chilling out. I did try to photograph all the Brynings there competing but failed miserably and missed a fair few. I’ve uploaded a selection of photos into an ALBUM there’s too many to post here!

I did get to run Jack (Bryning Bold Jack Donohoe) on the Saturday in the Tyne Tailtwisters (Thanks Hazell!) and he ran really well, alongside his housemate River (Bryning Supercool) to go on to win Division 13 which was really nice :) I also got to judge division 12 which I really enjoyed, despite Jason from the Shooting Stars badly spraining his ankle and one of their dogs getting stung by a wasp! This division was won by the Wilmslow Jackals featuring the lovely Kite (Bryning Black Kite) which was also really nice! :)

The lovely Jack...

and the lovely Kite...


In terms of racing we actually did a lot better than we thought we might, both teams were seeded low in their divisions and both were in on seed times they hadn’t run for a while. Now…there is an awful lot of ‘cheating’ that goes on at the Champs, by that I mean…teams deliberately slowing their seed times down with lose changeovers leading up to the competition to get seeded in a lower division that they can just go out and stuff (grrrr) or teams submitting one team name and then running dogs from another (faster) team in it so they can do the same thing. I know, hard to believe anyone could be that sad but it is true!! Personally, I really don’t see the point in winning a division you’ve ‘fixed’, where’s the achievement in that? Moves are afoot to identify the culprits and but rules in place to stop it happening in future, I think they should all be ‘named and shamed’ to be honest!

Anyway, the Pawz were seeded 5th in Division 10 on their fastest ever time of 19.21 that they had run once! On paper there was just 0.05 between top and bottom seed…we expected a drubbing! However, the dogs all ran really well and with a fastest time of the day of 19.45 they actually ended up 2nd behind the Rotherham Runaways who ran 18.88! Our friends at Rotherham had a fantastic Champs winning 4 out of their 5 divisions! (they could have let us have one couldn’t they! lol). We were running under the Speed Demonz name for the first time this year, finally having all our dogs back running…or so we thought! (yes, we did the opposite of the ‘cheats’ and submitted a faster team! lol). Unfortunately after the first two races in the morning it became apparent that Bailey had injured his shoulder so we had to pull him, Gemma was understandably very disappointed, as we all were, we’d lost our fastest dog. We struggled on with Dylan, Lexie, Dottie and Mac and didn’t achieve much time wise but consistency paid off and we won two races ending up a very respectable 4th

Rachel and Phil arrived late Sunday afternoon with Travis and he had his first experience of flyball with a carry round the rings and lots of cuddles, he wasn’t fazed by anything, a real testament to what a well grown and well reared little chap he is.

All in all it was a very relaxed and enjoyable weekend…good weather, good company and good racing…and we came home with a new puppy…who could ask for more?!