We ran at Farmer Copleys at Pontefract the weekend following Dinnington and boy…was it hot!! I got well and truly fried! We had entered 3 teams for the first time, Jovi was making her divisional debut and Sqiurrel was coming back to us from Tyne to make up the 3rd team (Demon Pawz) with Fly and Pip. Well, that was the plan anyway…I arrived on Saturday morning, just before that team was due to go in, opened the van to get the girls out for a warm up and….realised I’d forgotten Squirrel!! I couldn’t believe it…doh! Mad panic, we’d only got 12 dogs for the 3 teams so had no spares so I racked my brains trying to think of someone that might have a dog old enough and ready to go into open but hadn’t run for their own team yet and landed on Knott…the dog from Brigg that had been running with us in starters but is waiting ‘til they have enough dogs for a second team…bingo! Sonya agreed to run him with us so we had two dogs (and one handler) making their open debut! What can I say, they all did brilliantly, running a fastest time of 21.74 (which broke us out) and winning the division! Can’t tell you how pleased I was with Jovi, she was paw perfect and never batted an eyelid at having to suddenly run her own height (12”) instead of Squirrel’s 8! Jo and Knott accumulated their first flyball points…190 so just 10 short of their flyball dog awards :o) Knott will run with us again at Rotherham in a couple of weeks and then will go back to run with Brigg who hope to have their 2nd team up and running in July.
Our second team (Demon Racers) consisted of Mac, Dottie, Lexie and Ethan and were running on their own seed time. Paul did a brilliant job of running Mac start dog, 100 times better than the job I’ve been making of it recently! Some good consistent starts and nice consistent times form the Macman too, running between 4.6 and 4.8 all day. This was a seven team division run during searing heat so I was pretty pleased with that. Gemma was running Dottie who, I have to say, has been rather off form recently…not really sure what’s wrong with her?? I ran Lex 3rd dog and she ran really nicely, very consistently like Mac running between 4.7 and 4.9, not back on her best form yet but still lacking fitness (as is Dottie). Lastly Rachel was running Ethan who just seemed to be all over the place, to be fair to him he hasn’t run much over the last 7 or 8 months and I think he was just a little over excited! He had a lot of bad ball fumbles because he wasn’t concentrating on the box so his times were very erratic. All in all not a bad team performance, they came 4th having been seeded 6th and ran around their seed time. More to come from this team though me thinks.
Sunday saw us running our starter team, some nice solid performances from Knott and Jovi (as expected), Viggo completely lost his head, Maisie was good but has developed a habit of chasing back in so we’re just going to have to run her last for now and Fynn was ok but needed a lot of shouting to keep him focused on his own lane…work in progress! They came 4th but did run the fastest time (when they were all playing ball at the same time!).
We ran the Speed Demonz in Div 1 later in the day and had a rather frustrating day. Teal was very erratic (she hates the heat) and was running between 5 and 5.4 (not back to her best yet either), Dylan was on fire and consistently running sub 4.1 going start dog, Alison had a good handle on the lights too so got some good starts with him. Paul seemed to struggle with Faith and couldn’t get the changeover consistent but she ran ok. Bailey was right off form, running between 4.3 and 4.6, something really not right with him :o( somehow though, we came 3rd with the fastest time in a 3 way tie despite only having run 18.39…half a second slower than we ran at Dinnington (that was the leg Bailey ran 4.6). We have a couple of weekends off flyball so time to rest the dogs (and us!) and hopefully come back refreshed and fighting fit at Rotherham on 12th June.
Here’s a few pics of Eabha (Bryning Prime Time) from Dinnington the week before anyway…
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