My excitement was tinged rather with sadness as I said goodbye to Dora just before we left. After several weeks of deliberating and changing my mind one way and then the other I finally decided to let her go. I will really miss her she’s such a little sweetheart but I just can’t justify keeping her. I already have a midget collie with her mother Kitten and I really don’t need another, sometimes you just have to accept that you can’t keep them all. She’s gone to a lovely home where she will be an only dog and get to go to obedience classes each week and go out running with her new owner and just be a much loved and spoiled family pet. This will suit Dora down to the ground!
I now just need to find the right home for her sister Lola who was returned to me last month, she’s a much feistier character all together!
So off we went down to the Wirral, the 10 dogs I had competing (7 open and 3 starters) plus Spark, Kitten, naughty Lola and the two pups…15 in total, just another normal flyball weekend! We didn’t get away ‘til quite late with having to sort Dora out first but at least everyone got a good blast round the garden before we left! I went and had tea with Paul and Alison after a quick set up and we had a few (ahem) cheeky drinks before Drew arrived straight from work at around 11pm bless him…it’s quite a drive from Scarborough! When we (and a number of our old Red Rose team mates) carried on drinking into the early hours, we had a good laugh and enjoyed catching up but were all rather tired the following morning! Conrad, Jackie and Amy didn’t arrive ‘til Saturday morning and quickly set about putting up their NEW TENT…hahaha…we have converted them at last!!
Saturday was quite a busy day with the ‘Cubz’ in starters followed by the ‘Pawz’ running in Division 4 and then me judging and the team ring partying in Div 3…not much time to relax! Katherine joined us in starters with her lovely (but incredibly soppy) rescue pointer Jasper, all the dogs ran really well and they came 4th. The Pawz were rather outclassed in Div 4 and the cockers decided to play silly beggars with Drake running out in the warm up for the first race resulting in me running Teal who ran her little socks off in the first two races and then refused to run in the 3rd??? Teal out, Drake in…he ran like a little star and I kept him in all day and didn’t run Teal again, I really enjoyed running him actually, he was really up for it. I think they came 5th out of 6 which is where they were seeded but they didn’t even break the 20 sec barrier all day. Amy ran Faith start dog which was her first experience of running a dog in open and she’d really got the hang of it by the afternoon but Faith was on another planet again and just kept looking over at the other lane as she was running in. I think we’ll swap her into a later position and see if that focuses her any better? That dog is infuriating! Ethan was the star of the team and ran consistent 4.8’s all day…we’re starting to see a bit more focus from him…finally!
Division Three was quite a tightly contested 7 team division that seemed to take forever to complete, lots of false starts and 5 leggers!! I don’t know what I’ve done wrong in a former life but I’ve had 7 team divs to judge at the last few shows we’ve been too and find myself losing the will to live by the end of it! lol We had some good banter though and the PODS earned a well deserved win and Amy did a great job line scribing for the first time, I have to mention my team and the Kiddy Monsters who made for a very competent and patient ring party!
Saturday evening and I took a few of the dogs out only to discover…arghhhh…Dottie was lame on her rear left (wah!!); after a quick ‘once over’ from Katherine it was decided she’d just tweaked a muscle in that leg so she got a rimadyl and was allowed to sleep in the caravan in the hope she’d be ok to run the following day. We finished the day with our usual Eastham treat…a lush Chinese banquet from the takeaway across the road!! (oops…diet can start again on Monday! lol)
Gemma and Bailey arrived on Sunday morning, all fit and raring to go after his staples came out this week. Sunday was a much quieter day with us only having the ‘Racers’ running in division 2 so we all had a lovely lie in (at flyball…that’s virtually unheard of!). Paul and I helped the Doghouse team who had just come over for the day and were a little short staffed but this meant I got to watch Echo run; Echo is a Quillan-Lexie daughter just making her open debut, she was fabby (typical Lexie baby!).
Dottie seemed much better in the morning so she went on the team sheet but was nearly 0.5sec of her normal times and completely lame after the morning’s racing so we pulled her. Mac was also way off his usual times and I’m not entirely sure why? Firstly he was running 3rd dog and he does usually run a bit slower when he’s not going start but the swelling on his dew claw still seems to be bothering him too. Once the season is over I’m going to have him castrated and ask the vet to remove his front dew claws too. I’m wondering if this swelling is caused by the papilloma virus that caused the wart on his pad, removed a few weeks ago? Annoyingly this meant that, once again, we couldn’t run our fastest combination of dogs and although we ran a new seed time of 18.17 it’s nowhere near what we should be running. I am going to rest Dottie at Dundee this weekend and fingers crossed she’ll be ‘match fit’ for the Champs in 2 weeks time where we’re entered in Div 3 on a submitted time of 17.80. Both Dylan and Bailey were both back on top form running consistent sub 4.2 times and Lexie was back running 4.6’s now I’m handling her again (mummy’s girl!!) so all we need to do is get Dottie back and sort our bloody passing out!! Lol We’re going to get stuffed at Dundee as we have no Bailey or Dottie so are going to try some different combinations…I’m even contemplating running Ethan in the Racers (gasp!) since he was running consistent 4.8’s at the weekend. I just wish he and Faith could focus fully on their flyball then we’d really see what they can both do! I’m also contemplating running Squirrel in the Pawz too (bigger gasp!) so this weekend is going to be very much an experiment!
2 comments:
I saw Faith on Saturday and I thought she looked pretty nippy, but then I am biased as she is my favourite Bryning :-D! I think your fastest time was 18.15 in the end not 18.17, I could be wrong though. See you guys at the Chumps.
oh ok lol...just checked the time sheets and you're right (blush) lol that 18.15 was the leg where we got a rolling start and decent changeovers only for Lexie to fumble the ball running last dog!
Fi was pretty nippy but not as nippy as she can be...little rat bag! lol
See you in 10 days! :)
Post a Comment