Well, best laid plans and all that…the short story is that it turned out I had ordered my new van gearbox from a bunch of total cowboys (International Car Spares in Oldham FYI…be warned and do not order anything from these people!!) and it never arrived…I ended up cancelling this order (still waiting for my refund of £750!!) and having my existing gearbox re-built locally, needless to say…weekend arrived and I still had no van so we ended up taking a minimal team to Drax (in my hired Nissan Micra!) and we had to miss NEBCC…for the 3rd year running!! ( I think this show is jinxed for me).
Rach and Gemma came and stayed over Friday night and we set off early Saturday morning to Drax, the Micra was surprisingly nippy over the big hills of the M62 and we arrived in good time. We didn’t bother taking our box as Steve Leek had kindly offered us the use of the Dolphins box (which is the same model as ours); I kind of regretted this decision because, despite being the same model it is not adjusted quite the same as ours and we did have some box issues over the course of the day. We were running 2 four dog teams since I had only been able to fit 4 of my dogs in (Faith, Mac, Dottie and Teal…Ethan and Lexie stayed home) and Squirrels open debut was postponed yet again. The dogs ran just ok, Teal is still not running that well and Faith is still not focusing and is therefore inconsistent. Dylan and Bailey both ran really well and both clocked a number of sub 4 sec times but we struggled on changeovers and consistency, tried a couple of different running orders and were just generally crap! We had similar issues with the second team too but somehow managed to come 3rd with them, no idea how…a 3 way run off for 3rd place and we had run the fastest time so were awarded it! This team seems to suffer stamina issues, running much quicker times early on in the day and then struggling in later ones…this is definitely a team that benefits from having more than 4 dogs so we can swap dogs in and out. I am consoling myself that we are always rubbish at the start of the year but improve as the season wears on…fingers crossed!!
Here are a couple of photos kindly taken for us by David Flood from the Cambridgeshire Canines team who also kindly boxloaded for us in the afternoon (My lovely friend Hazell had driven down to do this for us in the morning but had to head off home before the racing had finished so she could sort her dogs out to run their Tyne teams the following day)
I particularly liked this pic of Mac…
And this one of Pip…
Here’s an interesting couple of pics of Faith turning the wrong way so she can ‘nosey-beak’ at the dog in the other lane…her natural box turn is to the right but when she starts doing this we will switch and load her left.
So here’s her left turn loaded right (the way she SHOULD be turning)…
And here it is when we switch and load her left…
I’m not sure if this actually makes any difference to her speed/times but it’s really infuriating!! Either way she loses time compared to her normal right turn...wonder if I could invent some dog blinkers like racehorses wear?? lol
There are a load more pics here
Will post the report from Easter weekend (just gone) later...
4 comments:
Hi Nat, I've just seen the photo of Faith on the box and thought of something which may help. Am I right in thinking that she changes her turn depending on which side the other dog is on? You may have already tried this but if you get Faith to do a full run and have two dogs next to the lane on both sides and when she has turned off the box let both dogs go so they are doing recalls to their handlers. They do not need to be going over the jumps as they will just be running on the ground. You start staggering it so when she is on the fourth jump you let both dogs doing the recalls go. Hopefully this will make her turn her natural way as she will have both dogs on either side of her. This also helps getting dogs to really drive off the box and power back if they have the chase drive. Just thought this may help!?
Thanks Kristi, no we haven't tried that but it is something we thought about trying with Ethan in training and the little sod doesn't do it...it just seems to be the competition atmosphere that gets him either wound up or anxious...not sure which?? (he is an odd bod that's for sure!) At least he does it reliably so we can always load him the opposite side although I do wonder whether this turning the 'un-natural' way has contributed to his hock problem?
The difficult thing with Faith is that she's so unpredictable...she might go a whole competition without doing it or she might do it all day or she might just do it a couple of times in the middle of the day....arghhh!!! One thing I have noticed is that it's something that started as she moved her way up the teams (and therefore divisions) and started running against noisier/faster dogs and it tends to be the faster teams she does it against (typical!).
We'll give it a go anyway and hope it doesn't just blow her brain! lol
Faith sounds like she is being a real character. Sorry to hear about Ethan and hope he makes a speedy recovery. Keep me updated on how it is going.
'character' is one word for it Kristi yes lol
I'm sure Eth will be fine, hopefully we'll have him sorted before Belgium or we'll be a dog down too.
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