A very positive start!

So the day finally arrived and we headed off down to Newark for the starters tournament as part of the Robin Hood Country Game Fair. It was a pretty early start as I had to go and pick Hannah and Charlie up first and it was still dark when we hit the road. Little
aisie had to stay home since she came in season straight after making her open debut at Doncaster…typical! I’m actually not complaining as this is her first season and at 18 months old I was starting to get a bit worried she was never going to have one! I took Jovi in her place, she is still technically a starter dog (not got her 200 points yet) and after last weeks performance at Doncaster she needed the practice! I also got a last minute request from Kristian from High Flyers to see whether we had any spares for their Intermediate team since Lola had also come in season and couldn’t run. Since Gemma was coming anyway and Fynn is also still technically eligible for starters (no points on yet); it seemed fitting that he should take his sisters place in ‘Highly Likely’ so that meant we had dogs in every division between us!

We were running two starter teams, one in each division and first up were ‘The Cock Ups’ which was a collaborative team between Demon Dogz, Cambridgeshire Canines and Ready2Fly that consisted entirely of cocker spaniels, 3 from my Rupert x Maizy litter – Charlie, Tarka and Tally, their half brother Travis and their Auntie Radley so something of a family affair! lol I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to pan out as all 5 dogs have shown a lot of promise but spaniels are notoriously unpredictable! For the 3 babies this was only their second outing but still the first time all 5 dogs had run together. We were very unlucky to lose the first race, entirely on ball fumbles (new box for most of the dogs)…the best out of 3 format didn’t allow for such mistakes, this cost the team first place but they did go on to win the other 5 races with relative ease and ran the fastest time of any starter team across both divisions of 19.93 and that was with wide changeovers too so I was pleased as punch with them all!

Too much to ask that they all look at the camera together! Lol


Here’s a video of all the ‘Brynings’ (so Travis is out)
Charlie (Bryning Brock) – Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) – Radley (Bryning Truly Radley Deeply) and Tarka (Bryning Riverine)


And here’s all the siblings (so Radley out)
Travis (Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning) - Charlie (Bryning Brock) – Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) and Tarka (Bryning Riverine)


The other team we ran, Demon K9s was also a collaboration of Demonz (Spark and Jovi) Cambs (Spencer) and Ready2Fly (Jessy) along with a Linnott dog too in the form of Beamer :o)
Gemma boxloaded for this team in the morning and Spark ran really well, running every leg in the morning, I was really pleased with all the distractions of a busy public show. This team ran really well together and remained unbeaten all day to romp home with 1st place although I had to pull Spark and run Jovi in the afternoon once Gemma had left (and he didn’t know the replacement boxloader…mummy’s boy!!)

I think Wendy (Beamers owner) got some video of this lot but I’m afraid I don’t have it yet.

Huge congratulations to the Alpha Dogz for organising the event, all in all a good day and well worth the early start and long drive but I got home just after 9pm and could hardly walk when I got out of the van…trapped sciatic nerve…agony!! I sorted the dogs and pretty much went straight to bed but had to be up at 6am to bath dogs for North West Border Collie Champ show the following day!

Drax - August Bank Holiday

So the last of our 5 legger August flyball marathon was the bank holiday weekend over at Drax. Not the most picturesque of venues to spend a bank holiday weekend admittedly (in the shadow of the power station cooling towers!) but a good venue nonetheless, it boasts a good sized nice club house that do really good food and drink and excellent shower facilities too, priorities for any weekend away flyballing! I also took my two Spark-Mercy pups, Viva and Vogue for their first camping trip since they’d come as a litter at 5 weeks old, they were very well behaved (apart from barking at every passer by!)

Our NEW team gazebo in the shadow of the cooling towers…lovely!

The troublesome twins!


I travelled over after work on Friday and had the luxury of having a tent all set up ready for me on my arrival (thanks Hazell!) so could just feed my dogs and get on with the important job of socialising! It ended up being a rather late one to bed (about 5am) and up a couple of hours later to get sorted for the days racing, fortunately we were off the first two divisions so that gave us just enough time to fully wake up! This team wasn’t the usual line up since Faith (the fastest dog on the team) was in season and stayed home so we brought Pip up from the Pawz to replace her. Paul continued running Mac start dog while Alison took over running Pip, Hazell kindly ran Dottie (and this is a very kind act…she’s hard work to run as she likes to nip her handler to psyche herself up!) and I ran Teal last dog. This combination actually worked quite well, Pip loves running behind her daddy (both human and canine in this case! lol) and Alison totally nailed the changeover into Mac, Dottie ran a bit better than she has done of late but Teal was really off form…she’s carrying too much weight at the moment and just wasn’t really that up for it. They ran a fastest time of 19.71 to come 4th in Division 5, about what I would have expected with Pip in place of Faith, we probably could have won this division with the regular line up, oh well.

Saturday we had a nice early night (lol) ready for a busy day ahead Sunday. Sunday began at 8.30am with the starter team, Demon Cubz, which comprised Maisie, Travis, Spud and Radley. Radley has been struggling for focus and confidence recently so we decided to pop her back into starters this weekend to see whether that would help; unfortunately they hadn’t arrived for the first race so we lost it but the other 3 were running well and when Radley did join us she was too which I was really pleased about. I don’t quite know what has happened to Radley but this seems to have started when she had a litter of pups earlier in the year. It seems to have really affected her confidence which is the opposite to what I found with Teal when she had her first litter and came back raring and brimming with confidence but I wonder if this is because I didn’t keep a Teal puppy (well not one that continued to live with us anyway) whereas Radley now has her daughter Truly to think about, which is possibly more important for her as she is also now no longer an ‘only dog’. She ran well all day though and they came 3rd :o)

Radley and Truly


We were straight into division 11 with the Pawz and boy did we struggle with this team! When moving Pip up into the Racers I hadn’t considered that we were also moving our only experienced start dog from this team. We started out running Fynn start, followed by Fly, Ethan and Squirrel who I was having to tuck in on the line so Ethan wouldn’t run out (seems a waste of a perfectly good terrier who will run in and change from 30ft but hey ho!); this worked fine until Fynn started doing his ‘stopping to take in the view’ routine (damn dog!) and Gemma asked to run him last. We tried running fly first…she bolted straight across to the other lane, we lost the leg on interference…she has WAY too much eye and is NOT cut out for start dog! The only way we could do this was to run Ethan start dog (yes…Ethan…eternal ‘arse-ender’ going start!) with Squirrel tucked in behind followed by Fly and then Fynn which worked ok for a couple of legs until Fly went in early against Squirrel causing her to run out…poor little Squirrel, as soon as a dog goes in early on her it knocks her confidence and she will keep running out she was going to have to go last…which meant Ethan was going to have to go 3rd and since Fly couldn’t go start she was going to have to go 2nd so….Fynn ended up back start in the same order we’d started on. We did actually run our two best times, morning and afternoon with this line up , we came last with a fastest time of 22.30…not actually that bad considered we’d submitted 22.20 and lost the fastest dog (Pip ) to the second team…work in progress me thinks! Lol

We than had a division off before heading back into the ring for Division 2 with the Demonz…Dylan, Bailey, Lexie and River. I can’t quite put my finger on why but we struggled with this team managing 3rd place with only an 18.13 (a little disappointing after the 17.85 we ran at the Champs). We have a two week break before running again so hopefully the dogs will come back refreshed.

Monday we had two multibreed teams running, our usual line up in the first team, Diverse Demonz…Dylan, Ruaraidh (collie x kelpie from Dolphins), Leo (standard Poodle from supernovas) and Teal. Teal seemed to be a little better than Saturday but still not back on full form and Leo was nursing a knee injury so we struggled to get anywhere near our previous 17.84 but we ran well and consistently, this is a really good little team. It came down to the last race…us (no. 1 seed) Vs Doncaster (no. 2 seed) and they had run faster than us so we knew it was going to be incredibly tight. It was and came down to the 5th leg but we’d pushed them enough and they got a light…phew! We’d won all our races and the Division again…excellent!

The 2nd team, Demon Medley was a hastily thrown together combination due to no Bailey, injury of our crossbreed and losing the other standard poodle (he’d run for his own team since the last time he’d run for us making him ineligible to run again)…Faith would have been next choice BC but of course she was in season so we had Saffy (gorgeous lurcher), River, Radley, Squirrel and Echo (border terrier from Doncaster). I was hoping Radley would be full of beans after her successful run out in starters the previous day but alas she wasn’t and refused to run…very frustrating. Echo was steady but seemed to struggle on our Belgian box, the hole settings are quite high for a little dog, especially if they’ve not been taught to jump on/off so are just reaching up to take the ball. River and Saffy were fab, Riv ran start dog and they both but in some excellent times, Squirrel also ran reliably as last dog but we were seriously outclassed in that division, especially as we were running two little height dogs, and came last by a long way! Had I known which dogs we would end up running I would have submitted a much slower time.

I also judged division 2 which saw some really good close racing and it was lovely to see Echo (Bryning Superstella, Quillan – Lexie daughter and Rivers sister) running so well with Doghouse Odd’s n Sod’s, she was hitting 4.1’s all day…she’s really come on this season and is proving to be a cracking little flyball dog. All in all it was a good day.

The only slightly disappointing aspect was the Multibreed trophy which was to be awarded to the ‘best’ multibreed team over the two tournaments. This was calculated on total number of races won. Well…we were unbeaten at both tournaments, winning division 1 on both occasions and running a fastest time of 17.84 but another team were also unbeaten over both comps winning a division 4 and 3 with a fastest time of 19.78 (running on a seed time of 21.61). The organizers had no idea what to do about a tie because… ‘it’s never happened before’…well surely it was always a distinct possibility! Now as far as I’m concerned common sense would dictate that the fastest team should be the winners? This is a competitive sport after all and the whole point is to run 4 dogs as fast as you can but no, the options were to share the trophy (6 months each) or some ludicrous system of which team’s average time was closest to their seed time. Now, it’s worth pointing out that the other team had actually run a fastest time 1.8 seconds faster than their seed time and had (obviously) anihalated the opposition in their division (hardly in the spirit of competition) but occasionally throwing in a slower dog when they were two legs up and could afford to lose a leg (knowing they wouldn’t struggle to win the next one) so yes…their ‘average’ time probably wasn’t that far off their seed time but a more accurate measure of consistency is in the variance between their fastest and slowest times (some nearly 4 seconds!). While we were running a four dog team in division 1 where seed time is completely irrelevant, hence there being no break out times…you’re already running against the fastest opposition possible so there’s no way you can ‘cheat’ the seed time system to pitch yourself in a less competitive division and we didn’t even run the fastest time of that division, we raced damn hard to get our 5 race wins that day. To be honest, by this point I really couldn’t be bothered and had to go and judge division two so told them to just give it to the other team, after all, what did we want it for? The fact we were even having this conversation meant it clearly didn’t mean anything anyway so had just become a pointless piece of wood and metal! If it gives others satisfaction to achieve meaningless things so easily then let them have their easily attained pleasures. I am increasingly disappointed by the number of flyballers this appears to apply to :o(

Anyway, this got me on to thinking about another discussion we’d had the previous weekend about rosettes…I can’t stand the fact that rosettes are awarded to 4th place…in a 6 team division this is so stupid, that’s rosettes to 66%!! The system in agility is so much better, rosettes to 10%, sometimes possibly 15% but the elite competitors anyway, makes them mean something, something to strive for and a real sense of achievement when you win one! For a long time now I’ve just handed mine back at flyball, I only keep firsts or those that are special in some other way, like my dogs first comp or a tournament we’ve never been to before etc. I never keep a 4th though! It was the same thing with the change in the points system to offer higher points rewards to slower teams. What is so wrong about rewarding the best? It’s nice getting the awards but to be honest they are becoming worth less and less in my opinion. This is supposed to be a competitive sport, the aim is to run as fast as you can, as with all sports… some teams/dogs will be faster than others but they should be rewarded for being so! In my opinion a new tier of points should be brought in for teams running under 18 seconds so the very fastest dogs get the highest rewards (as it should be!). Ok, that’s my rant over... lol

Another fab weekend on the Wirral

What a fantastic weekend we had at Eastham which is one of my favourite tournaments in the flyball calendar. I must confess, we were all total lightweights on the party front…I think 5 tournaments in 5 weekends including the Euros has taken it’s toll and we’re all completely knackered!! We have this coming weekend off although I will be at Blackpool Champ Show on Sunday with Spark, our first breed show since Crufts! I have also entered Dottie as she was looking fab when the entries closed ( I really should know better) but of course she’s blown all her coat now and to be honest, she’s in prime racing condition at the moment…lean and well muscled and is really too thin for most (probably all!) show judges preference. Ah well, she’s running really well! I’ve been fattening Spark up since we got back from Belgium as he also tends to be a the lean side but he hides it better with his thick coat.

Anyway, we set up camp on Friday evening, I was judging first div on Saturday so had vowed to curb the alcohol intake and as it happened I was too tired to drink anyway. Paul went off partying with the Steve and the Cheshire Set while Alison and I stayed in and chilled, we went to bed about 1.30am…Paul fell in at 4am!! He wasn’t too bright in the morning I have to say (makes a pleasant change…it wasn’t me! lol). Gemma arrived in the morning just in time to help ring party Div 8, the one I was judging, which seemed to take an age to complete! The lower divisions are always more *interesting* to judge as there tends to be a lot more going wrong! We then had 2 divisions off before the Pawz ran in division 5. They were in on a seed time of 19.96 which put them 2nd seed but as they hadn’t got under 20 seconds at Rotherham last week I did wonder how we’d fair. Teal was back having finished her season so we decided we would just swap the cockers in and out with each other and leave the rest of the team the same. So we were running… Faith – Pip – Teal/Drake – Ethan. First race of the day I ran Drake and we were faster than the other team but we totally threw it away on lights, just couldn’t get the changeovers right. The electronic time displays showing individual times (thank god for those…I’ve really missed them!) gave us some indication…Faith had gone up about 3 gears and was running 4.3-4.4’s (she has never run these times over 12” before!), Pip was really off form…don’t know why? Drake was usual Drake and Ethan had also gone up a gear and was running 4.8’s. In the second race we brought Teal in instead of Drake and my god she was on fire running 4.9’s, the jump heights dropped to 8” and now Faith was running 4.2’s! They ran 19.21! more than half a second faster than they’d ever run before! The decision was made to move Faith up into the Racers at the next comp (Newark). I was so pleased with the way they all ran. Race 7 it all went a bit *pete tong* with Ethan running out at the first jump, we’ve decided to go back to loading him alternate sides again so he can always turn towards the other lane as this is what is causing it. We pulled him out and ran both the cockers which is something I really didn’t want to do but hey ho. By this time they were running much slower and that turned into a tense 5 legger against our old team, Red Rose Renegades and was really tight racing which saw us just narrowly winning…really good close racing, what flyball is all about. By the last race of the day Pip had gone right off and Paul offered to pull her out and run both the cockers again so Gem and I ran the cockers and Paul ran Ethan….it worked and we won the race but the thrown away first race cost us and we ended up 3rd but had run the fastest time in the division! I’m not sure what we’ll do at the next comp in terms of seed times as we’re taking Faith out of that team so may well submit a time rather than face being thrashed in a division we won’t be able to compete in!

Gem and I dashed off straight after presentation (sorry to all the teams in the division I judged that I couldn’t be there to congratulate you!) as we were heading over to Shirley’s in North Wales to pick up a new puppy! This little man is called ‘Roo’ and is one I am co-owning with my friend Laura Cunningham and he will be going up to Scotland to live with her and hopefully become a super little sheepdog in time. He is 7 weeks old, sired by Canen Wallace and out of Canen Katrina so is line bred on the lovely Canen Baz and therefore also my beautiful Spangle which is where his ee red colouring has come from. As far as I know, he is the first and only ISDS registered ee red which makes him a little bit special. He’s certainly not of the type of ee red I’m used to, he’s much finer and has less coat than any I’ve had before but I know these working lines very well and they are much later maturing so I am sure he’s going to turn out to be a really nice dog. He’s got nice eyes and dark eye rims and I think his nose will fill in in time too. He’s certainly going to have good ears! Most importantly he’s got a super temperament and character, he’s a bold but not pushy pup; very inquisitive and confident but not stupid and he’s already sleeping through and staying clean in his crate…good boy :) We’ll see how he turns out over the coming year.

Here’s some pics of him in the garden at home…
covered in oil from crawling around under the caravan, highlighting one of the main issues of having such a pale coloured puppy! lol

Sunday morning brought showers but it was still warm and bright. Conrad and Jackie arrived with Radley for the starters first in. We were running Spud, Radley, Squirrel and a borrowed retriever…Ollie who was lovely. Viggo also went on the sheet although I have decided to not run him and Squirrel at the same time as they both need my undivided attention at the moment. Spud ran start dog and, although he has aged so much and slowed considerably in the last year, he was his usual reliable self. It’s a real bonus to have an older experienced retired dog in your starter team as it really seems to help the younger inexperienced dogs/handlers. Radley ran 2nd and we were working on tightening up her changeovers running in, she was a bit more focused this week but still had a couple of ‘loopy’ moments like when she smelt the burger van and when she saw a blue roan cocker in the other lane and thought it might be her mum! Lol Squirrel…well, what can I say…where’s my naughty little parson gone??!! She was SO good, it all finally seems to have clicked with her! She was totally focused on what she was doing, only dropped her ball once and most impressively I was able to start sending her in from 20 ft and she was running right in past Radley without batting an eyelid…result!! There is light at the end of the terrier tunnel after all, and after I’ve been telling everyone she will probably never run in open and always be a starter dog…she does so love to prove me wrong! We now need to work on getting her to hurdle lower over the jumps as she’s wasting time in the air. The photos show she is jumping high enough to clear full height hurdles when she’ll only ever be running 8”!! Viggo ran in one race when Ollie’s handler was running another dog against us, it was er… *interesting* but we did manage to get him down and back with his ball…small steps for the blue bimbo me thinks but he will get there and when he does, I have a feeling he’s going to be a cracking little flyball dog…time will tell I guess.

Radley on the way to the box with a look of steely determination on her face…


We were straight in div 2 with the Racers. Again we were second seed in this division and we were still on a seed time of 18.82 from Wood Green with Kiddy Minx’s top seeds on 18.48. We knew we had a chance of winning this having run an 18.45 at Littleport and 18.43 at Rotherham last weekend but we thought it might be tight. As it happens it wasn’t and we won the division, Kiddy’s weren’t on form and we were running better still, with a fastest time of 18.24 (with a 0.1 late start!) and consistent 18.30’s all day. Mac ran a few sub 4.5 second legs and maintained 4.5’s all day, he is a really good start dog because he doesn’t seem to tire between each run and he loves to go first, this is the position he always run fastest in (he’s not patient enough to wait his turn! lol), Bailey was running 4.2’s all day so was a little off his fastest pace, Dottie ran 4.5’s…she’s in great form at the moment but Lexie …was RUBBISH!! 4.7’s and 4.8’s all day, I just don’t know what’s wrong with her? Part of me wonders if it’s the change of handler, I have always run Lexie myself from when she first started competing but now I’m running Dottie (who is not an easy dog to run as the bruises up my arms from her excited nips will testify!) and I just wonder if this has curbed Lexie’s enthusiasm some? At the next comp Alison will start running Faith in this team and, provided she maintains the form she was showing this weekend, she will run every leg and I will probably swap Lexie and Dottie in and out as last dog to keep them both fresh. It will be interesting to see whether Lexie’s times pick up again with me back running her. I will also see if I can fit in a visit to Katherine before Newark and just get her checked over to make sure she’s alright. We *should* be breaking the 18.00sec barrier again if Faith delivers at Newark and we can all get our changeovers right, it often takes a couple of weeks to ‘bed in’ a new combination so we’ll see what we can do.

The best news of the weekend is that Tom had a look at Dylan and said he was looking/feeling totally sound and we can start training him over low jumps…yippee!! We’re all really excited but also a little nervous about bringing Dyl back; 6 months is a pretty long lay off and cruciate injuries are notoriously fickle but we’re keeping everything crossed and may have him running in the Pawz at Newark all being well…can’t wait!

Here’s a little vid of his first training session last night, he could hardly believe he was finally being allowed to have a go bless him!

We were just using 3 hurdles with no run in and 8” jumps to keep him nice and steady but…the boy is back!!

We also did some training with the youngsters and had Radley running without netting/wings for the first time…she was a good little girl and ran in but she does seem to have lost some of her drive and focus which I’m hoping is just down to her having been in season recently, she has a few weeks out before we’ll be running starters again so hopefully she’ll pick up before then.

Star pupils and class clowns!

'Perfect Pip'

Well, the weather stayed fine enough for us to do some flyball training last night. Conrad, Jackie, Paul and Alison came over and we spent quite a long time with the babies first. Radley was a little star and as she gets more confident about what she's doing she's starting to demonstrate her dad's speedy turn off the box! I have high hopes she's going to be one speedy little dog! We trained her mostly with Teal to begin with and also did a little with Faith, while her pups are only just 4 weeks old she just did a little bit over the low jumps and wasn't exactly speedy! I hope we can build her back up gradually and have her back to full fitness for the Euros...keeping fingers crossed!

We then got Squirrel out....the less said about her performance the better!! I'm putting it down to her being in season at the moment! She was AWFUL...the attention span of a gnat! I have ordered her some new 'different' tennis balls as this seems to make quite a big difference to whether or not she's going to keep hold of it. She doesn't like small balls but sometimes struggles to hold onto the harder full sized ones so we're compromising with full sized softer balls that she can 'squish' a bit! She would have to be different!

I then decided to get Viggo out and just have a look at him...the first runback he did was actually more like a 'walkback' lol He was really unsure about what was being asked of him (this is Vi all over!) and slowly stuttered over the hurdles. However...the second and third he started to get the idea and was really getting into this game, pulling on his harness and running down with purpose! Then we tried sending him up to Paul for his squeaky ball until he was having the ball rolled down the box front (and doing some nice turns actually! lol). He thought this game was great and just kept running up and down the jumps by himself. Now this is quite cute and at least demonstrates that he knows what to do but could get quite annoying if it becomes a habit! For now I want him to enjoy it and be happy but we'll have to nip the 'laps of honour' in the bud! lol

We then ran Pip (Paul), Mac (Conrad), Drake (Jackie) and Ethan (Me) together while Alison boxloaded. Now, for a first attempt at running a (manic) trained dog within a team I was really impressed with Jackie and Conrad! Mac and Drake are not the easiest dogs in the world to run (one pulls like a train and the other wriggles like a cobra!) but they did a really good job. There is so much to learn about running a dog that experienced handlers take for granted. Pip was putting in some lovely four-footed turns off the box, she's running really well at the moment. Mac was a bit of a plank about the starters netting still being up and kept running out but we got him sorted. Drake and Ethan both ran fine although I was finding it harder and harder to see Drake (an almost entirely black dog!) coming back as it started to get dark so my changeovers were seriously suspect!

All in all it was a good session and I was pleased with (nearly) everyone. Gold stars to Radley, Viggo and Pip and a big red penned 'must try harder' for that naughty terrier!!

'Quick, slow...Quick, Quick..slow'

It's been a funny few days with long periods of total inactivity interjected with short bursts of intense activity! I've been laid up with 'flu' for a couple of days so haven't done much apart from the bare essentials with the dogs and puppies. I really didn't think I was going to make Stocksbridge on Saturday but slept most of the day on Friday and drank about a gallon of lemon and ginger tea with honey in and dosed up on paracetemol and amazingly felt not too bad when I woke on Saturday morning. Paul and Alison arrived at around 6.15am and we all piled into the van and headed over to Stocksbridge on the outskirts of Sheffield for my first flyball tournament of the year. This is a venue I haven't been to before and I was really pleased to see the lovely big exercise area available to run the dogs on. It was another superbly organised affair from the Sheffield Speeders, we started off with dog measuring, the first time I've had my lot done since the new jump height rules have come in, as expected Teal measured 8" and Drake 12", this is the final measure for both of them so I can now apply for their height cards. I also had Dottie and Lexie measured and they have both now come in as 13" height dogs under the new rules (5" below shoulder height). We just ran the two teams, as expected the Demonz were seriously outclassed in Div 1, we've decided we probably won't run under this team name again until we get Dylan back running later in the year (fingers crossed!), they were running mid 19's most of the day. The Pawz were also a little off form running mid 20's but after such a long break and on the indoor rubber matting I was actually really pleased with everyone's performance. Both the cockers in particular runnning really well. Thanks must go again to the wonderful lot from the Notts Supadogs for their much appreciated help in box loading, ball collecting and running Mac and Dottie. I judged Div 4 which turned out to be a fiercly contested affair, I must admit I was (secretly) really pleased when the Nunnies won it running two of the Oz sons (Bray (choc/white) and Shimmer (tri blue merle)) that Pam had bred, two very handsome young boys. I must thank all the teams and the very patient ring party for putting up with my coughing and sniffling throughout, I think I'll sterilise my whistle before I use it again...god knows what germs it must now be harbouring! lol

Sam and Andy popped over in the afternoon although they weren't racing 'til Sunday so I got to have a cuddle with Eabha and I also snapped a few pics of Sparks' brother Charlie.



(no...he hasn't got a short tail...he just wouldn't stop wagging it while I was taking his pic! lol)

Dora and 'Jerry' came and were impeccably behaved, I was quite suprised by Dora who is quite a cocky little madam at home but wasn't too sure about all these people and all these big dogs somewhere new...she'll soon get over that...she's got a lot of flyball to go to this year! lol

Here she is eating a biscuit...

Jerry was just 'Mr Cool' and took it all in his stride and as the day wore on I was really starting to weaken towards the idea of just keeping him. Watching him trot about on the field with his stunning movement already showing at 11 weeks old I was seriously beginning to wonder whether I was quite mad to let him go! Fortunately(?) a lovely lady came today and took 'Jerry' (now known as 'Stanley'), he's going to be living relatively close by and will hopefully be competing in obedience in the future. I really hope things go well for him because he's a super little fella, I was very sad to see him go.

I woke up this morning feeling really rough again, maybe I just wasn't up to a full day of flyball yesterday after all?! Just seemed to take me ages to get going. Needless to say I didn't make it to agility training and just had a quiet morning at home. We had a steady stream of visitors this afternoon. Conrad, Jackie, Amy and Jess came over and we did some flyball training with Radley in the garden. She's doing really well and was doing full runs and triggering the box by the end of the session and even had 'mummy' Teal running in on her doing close changeovers. We just need to do some chute work to perfect that box technique and she should be ready for starters! :)

Nathan (my brother) and Sue popped over with Connor and Charlie; they'd been into town and Charlie was sporting his new hat and shoes...HOW cute is he??


Once all our visitors had left we finally settled down to a roast dinner and Sunday evening tv. Here's a pic mum took of me and 'the girls' watching the 'Dancing on Ice' final (and HOW good was Ray Quinn?!!)...

...to be honest...I think I may have been the only one of us actually watching it lol
(check out my poor red nose...tissue chaffed from excessive nose blowing!! lol)

So...off to bed and hoping for a return to feeling 'normal' in the morning!!

Tag...you're it!

Well, now I've finally caught up with all the blogs I follow I found out that I got 'tagged' by Brenda and Hazel, the idea is that you...
open a document or file folder
Click on the fifth folder and then the fifth photo
Post the photo and describe it
Then tag 5 other bloggers
Now...what this doesn't take into account is my highly organised and multi layered file structures!! lol
So I actually had to open a folder, select the 5th folder and then another folder inside that folder before I actually came to any photos! This folder happened to contain pics of my cocker pups from last year and 5th photo down was this one of Radley (Bryning Truly Radley Deeply) who belongs to my Auntie Jackie, Uncle Conrad and cousins Amy and Jess, she lives close by and I get to see her regularly. She has grown up into a beautiful, affectionate and (mostly) impeccably behaved member of the family, she's an absolute joy :)


She is pictured here at six weeks old in Amy's arms, god she as cute wasn't she?! :)

Ok, near everyone I know has already been tagged but these are the 5 blogs I am tagging...
http://www.sooshine-bordercollies.com/apps/blog/
http://cockercircus.blogspot.com/
http://hofdiabolo-in-english.blogspot.com/
http://erinsdogs.blogspot.com/
http://rushnsassydogs.blogspot.com/ (might encourage an update from Sue!! lol)