Rotherham Flyball - ending the season on a positive :)

Well, it was a cold and miserable weekend, not least because I was suffering with a terrible bad back. It’s not so much the pain that was getting me down but the fact I couldn’t easily do all the things I wanted to! Saturday was actually a beautiful crisp, sunny day but involved a 5.30am start to get all the dogs up and sorted before we left for Rotherham, I also had 3 cocker pups to take with us that were leaving for their new homes but we had the van packed and left for 7am (a little later than planned) and headed off for the scenic journey over Woodhead pass. We made good time which was lucky because they started racing 5 mins early and we were second race in Division One with the Speed Demonz, the only team we had entered. We were 6th seed out of 7 teams on a seed time of 17.90, top seed being the Live Wires on 16.96, nearly a second faster, we expected a drubbing! I had been a little undecided who to run in the absence of Dottie or Lexie (both in whelp) so we ended up with 6 dogs named…Dylan, Bailey, Teal, Faith, Ethan, Mac. The first 3 were our set line up and we’d try each of the other 3 and see how we got on. We started with Mac but I soon put him away, he just doesn’t run all that well over 8” and Ethan and Faith seemed to be running better. Of course, they both have the ‘turning the wrong way in the opposite lane’ syndrome but fortunately in different lanes so I just alternated them in and out with each other depending on what lane we were in. Dylan was back on top ‘pre-injury’ form running consistent low 4 seconds and everyone else seemed pretty fired up too. We did better than expected and beat both Dolphins and Cheshire Set but stupidly lost against Moltens (yep…you guessed it…lights!), this put us 5th so we exceeded expectation but we also ran a new seasons best…in the last leg of the last race of our last tournament for the year! 17.71 which consisted of a perfect rolling start, 4.12 from both Dylan and Bailey, 4.57 from Faith and 4.90 from Teal. Ethan was also running 4.5’s which is pretty damn good for him, maybe we’re finally starting to see his potential coming through. This gives us a nice base to start working on over winter, we know Fi can run 4.2’s over 8” so she definitely has more to give, I’m sure Dyl and Bai will shave a little more time off as they get used to running the lower height too and Teal…who knows…we can but try! I am toying with the idea of trying out a flat fronted box over winter to see if that brings any benefits. I’m conscious of not wanting to fix what ‘aint broke since most of our dogs have a decent box technique but I am told that a good box turn on a boomerang should hold up on a flat fronted box too, we’ll see.

The cocker babies all left with no problems…Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble) has gone to Ellen from Cambridgeshire Canines

and Charlie (Bryning Brock) has gone to Hannah from Ready2Fly

...so hopefully we’ll see both out on the flyball circuit next year. Bracken (Bryning Bracken) has gone up to Co. Durham. It’s very quiet at home now with just Ziva and Tarka and will be more so next weekend when Ziva leaves us to go to her new home in Northern Ireland.

We also saw Jude (Bryning Crazy Talk) from Ethan and Dottie's litter and what a handsome boy he's turned into...

the joy of puppies! :)

Well, not a lot happening in the last couple of weeks. We had a couple of birthdays…Faith and Dylan turned 3 (which meant it was also my brother and sister-in-laws wedding anniversary and I still managed to forget!) and Spud turned 9.

Spud is my little choc tri working sheepdog, he’s a very funny character and was like an old man from the day I brought him home at 6 weeks old so I guess he is gradually ageing into himself. He was diagnosed with an additional and malformed vertebra in his spine as a puppy and with arthritis in his elbows and then his wrists a few years later so he’s always been a bit ‘special’ and limited in what he could. He took what felt like an eternity to train but turned out to be not a bad little obedience dog and was a pretty good little flyball dog in his youth too; still running sub 5 secs up ‘til last season and having the occasional run out in starters this year but he’s slowed dramatically in the last 18 months so I took the decision to retire him completely. He had his last run out in starters at Rotherham back in July and hasn’t run since. He is however still playing a very active role at home as ‘Nanny Spud’…I wouldn’t like to guess the number of pups he has played Nanny to over the past 9 years, he is supremely patient with all our litters and the pups we’ve brought in, he’s playful and caring with them but a good gentle disciplinarian too. Everyone loves Spud and he is greeted every morning by an excited flurry of frantic licks by all the girls and youngsters which he patiently puts up with (bless him).

Last weekend also saw visits from Susan Owen and her husband who have Mouse’s litter brother Jeep, they were over visiting the UK from their home in Oklahoma, we spent a lovely hour or so with them being harassed by Mouse, Faith and granny Lexie for fusses and cuddles….what a soppy lot! Gemma also came up to collect Fynn …hurrah…peace and quiet at last!! lol He is of course quiet and lovely now he’s gone there! More time and attention is all he needed and now he has it which is great. We snapped a few pics of Faith, Lex, Ethan and (a very pregnant looking) Dottie too for a friend who has written an article featuring show bred dogs that are competing successfully in flyball and wanted a pic of the four of them to go with it. Why is it you can’t ever get a pic with everyone looking good at the same time?? These are the best three from the 44 we took in total!! (don’t you just love digital cameras?!)



Sunday Gem and I travelled down to Mansfield to bring the cocker puppies home, we spent a nice hour or so with Julie (Trevellis Border Collies) before loading the babies up and bringing them all back up here. James and Keeley (and of course Maizy) have done a great job, 5 happy, outgoing little monsters! They were 6 weeks old on Monday and I’d forgotten quite how mental 6 week old cocker puppies are! Here’s their first foray out into the garden at our house…

Cocker pups at 6 weeks old
They start to leave this weekend so we only have a week of them all together. I’m not sure if I’m happy or sad about that?? lol Although I had decided not to keep one of these after getting Travis (their half brother), I weakened and we’re keeping Tarka, Bryning Riverine…she’s bonkers!! (reminds me so much of grandad Drake!!)

‘Brock’ is still to find his perfect home, he’s going to be a very unusual dog, it doesn’t look as though he’s going to roan up so he will likely remain open marked white and black with light flecking and tan points…this is pretty rare (well I’ve never seen one before!).

This weekend we’re at Rotherham on Saturday, competing in what will likely be our last tournament of the year and at NWBCC Champ show on Sunday which is really local to us (great!). I will also start preparing the whelping pen in my bedroom in preparation for Dottie who is due next week (to her first mating)…fingers crossed all goes well with that, she’s quite big and very unhappy and restless already (I’m not getting much sleep with her night time fidgeting!). I’m still not sure about Dazzle ; I think she probably is in whelp but she’s very good at hiding it (like her mother before her!); Lexie is definitely in whelp though and starting to show quite clearly, her more slender frame and considerably less coat make it impossible for her to hide!

Lune Valley and Becketts Farm

Saturday was another ‘day off’ but turned out to be another busy one. Why is it that my supposedly relaxed days always seem to find me rushing from one place to another? Anyway, we went down to Manchester first thing and took Faith to see my friend Katherine who is a McTimoney Chiropracter to have her checked over. It was a few weeks back we’d competed at Acremead and I noticed Faith was struggling to run under 5secs (she’s usually around 4.3-4.4) we’d also done some agility training and she’d refused to jump full height so there was obviously something wrong despite no obvious signs of lameness. I decided to get her checked over before running her at Becketts on Sunday and I’m really glad I did because it transpired she’d suffered a hamstring tear and had quite a build up of scar tissue on her right hind leg as a result (cue me feeling really bad), no flyball for Faith…lead walks and hamstring stretches prescribed. We’re not doing very well with these, she’s resisting the push forward and I don’t know if this is because it’s just very uncomfortable or just Fi being her usual stubborn self?! Lol I’m going to see about taking her for some hydrotherapy.

Anyway, we then headed back home, popping in to see Paul and Alison and Nico to see if they fancied coming along to Myerscough to watch some of the agility. I thought it might be a good way to break Nico into the noise and activity at a flyball show since Agility tends to be less noisy and manic so a good transition. Luckily he absolutely loved it and didn’t want to go home :) Hopefully he’ll enjoy watching Dylan run at Rotherham in a couple of weeks. Had a nice afternoon watching lots of runs and catching up with folk. I was slightly peeved I hadn’t entered my girls (although Fi couldn’t have run anyway) since there were no weaves and the small G1-4 agility looked like something Teal and I could have tackled. I have bitten the bullet and entered Wilmslow at the end of next month. Now we just need to get Fi back fit and get some training in! Sparks’ brother, the lovely Max (Bryning Bright Star) and Sharon were back running now she’s out of plaster, only 2 clear rounds but both saw them with trophies, a 2nd in G3 jumping (losing by 0.02s!) and a 3rd in G3 agility…clever boy! :)

We left Myerscough and headed over to Clitheroe to meet Steve and Bridget who were at a wedding reception, we went to collect Orlaith with the intention of mating her but unfortunately it was too late and we’ve missed her season, better luck next time (which won’t be that far off she has such a short cycle!). We did stop and have tea at the Calf’s Head at Worston, I don’t know about being in a recession, the place was absolutely heaving! We then went home, fed everyone and got changed and went round to Paul and Alisons for drinks and X-factor. Very sensibly though we didn’t stay out late since we had the early start for Becketts in the morning.

Up bright and early on Sunday to get everyone out and loaded up for Becketts, I decided to leave Travis and Wesley at home since Trav had a dicky tummy and I didn’t want him crated in the van for long periods. I do need to get some new piccies of the pair of them though. We arrived for the start of racing at 9am and were ring party first thing, this wasn’t too bad, the weather was kind, bright and sunny but it was rather nippy. Next we were in Division 6 with the only team we’d entered, Demon Pawz. I did feel a bit bad because we were already top seed by quite a margin (about 0.4s) but since entering the team Gemma had decided to come and wanted to run Bailey so I knew we were going to run quite a bit faster (Bailey is probably 0.75-1.00sec faster than Pip who he was replacing)…we ended up running 18.51 with Paul from Cheshire Set still telling us off for not tightening up! That’s the Pawz seed time well and truly blown! We ran Mac - Bailey - Teal - Ethan. Genna from Alpha Dogz kindly ran Eth and Amanda boxloaded for us and I have to say…Ethan ran really well and he even managed to consistently turn left all day, regardless of what lane he was in. I actually think this is because we were so much faster than the opposition so he was always well ahead of their last dog going in…there was nothing to look at in the other lane! I will have a think about how we might use this to train him out of his ‘nosey beak’ box tendencies! The last race of the day was rather sad as we ran Drake in place of Ethan. These 3 legs will likely be his last as a Demon Dog, he went to his new home straight from the tournament so it’s just a case of seeing how he settles but I don’t forsee any problems to be honest. We will miss the mad little buggar, he’s such a loveable character but I think he’ll be much happier in a home where he gets more one-to-one. What was quite interesting was that in that last race where both Teal and Drake were running, she dropped to running 5.2’s despite having been under 5.0secs for the rest of the day, I knew as soon as we went in the ring that her focus was not there, they really do not run well together! I must say she did look rather lonely curled up in the back of her crate without him on the way home bless her, she’ll soon have Travis coming everywhere with us to keep her company though.

Fynn and Lola both had their rabies vaccinations at the show, the first step in getting their passports so that they can travel to the Euros next year, fingers crossed they’ll both be up and running by then! I haven’t had any dogs done this year, anyone who’s likely to come with us is already passported thankfully!

I managed to take photos of other peoples’ dogs and videos of other teams but nothing of ours…sorry!

This is Bentley who runs with Molten, aka Littlethorn Bentley, he’s another son of Tally (Sh CH Littlethorn Contintental) and is a super little flyball dog. I’m hoping for something similar from our expected Tally-Lexie litter…fingers crossed!

So that was the weekend, next weekend we have visitors from the US (the people who own Jeep, from Rico and Faith’s litter) and I will be travelling down to Mansfield to bring the cocker puppies home, am just awaiting confirmation from the KC that their names have been accepted (2nd attempt, these new naming rules are proving a bit of a nightmare!); hopefully we will find the little boy the perfect new home in the next couple of weeks too. I think he’s just lovely :)

The Next Generation...

The latest crop of Bryning Agility dogs are up and coming. The Bond-Lori and Rhett-Quinn pups have turned 18 months old in the last month and are set to make their debuts in the agility rings, however Surf thought better of it and decided to come in season! Brother Chief made his debut at the weekend though, he got lots of ‘nearly’ runs with just 5f and a clear in Grade 3 jumping with a 5th place :)

Some pics of Chief…lovely jumping style…very like big sis Teal.


Pics by Action Replay Photography

Diesel is also going great guns

Pic by Giruff

You can read all about D's training and progress on the Giruff Blog

Not much to report...

Haven't done a posting for a couple of weeks but haven't really had much to report, we had a weekend off at the end of September so I spent it doing ‘normal’ things for a change…hairdressers, shopping and lunch out with my mum, family round for Sunday lunch and a bit of DIY and gardening…how very civilized! lol

I have finally secured the fence between us and the cows so no more jaunts for Spark et al out under the netting and into the field to roll in cow shit! The cows found my fencing very interesting and decided to assist by licking my hair and just generally being very annoying!! lol Squirrel has decided that now she can’t squeeze under the fence and run gaily around the cows (who just stand and stare at her rather bemused) that she will stand at the fence and bark at them instead…oooh…BAD parson!! This does of course also now mean that I can let dogs out into the main garden without having to be supervised which is much much better, they love having the space and freedom to really run around like wild things playing their chasing games and will soon wear each other out! Going for a run in the fields just doesn’t seem to cut it when they’re used to being away at the weekends and I do tend to find that we get a lot of loitering around the back of the van with hopeful glances every time I walk past. It’s funny because they get as much, if not more, exercise when at home but it seems they miss the mental stimulation/excitement of our weekend trips.

Dazzle had a bath and good groom on Sunday morning, she has more coat than any bitch I’ve ever known and it’s like a soft sponge that soaks up every bit of dirt and moisture! It’s a shame because it does actually limit how much I show her (i.e. very little), aside from keeping her in a box or her permanently wearing one of those all in one suits I don’t think there’s any way of keeping her coat in the sort of condition required for the showring. Thankfully Spark has inherited the harsher texture from Ethan and doesn’t require quite so much work!

Fynn also had a bath, he’s at that funny ‘in between’ age, 9 months old…not quite an adult yet but not really a puppy either. He’s an absolute pillock, very boisterous and bouncy…in fact he’s just a bigger, stronger version of Kitten! He’s shaping up quite nicely, just needs to mature and ‘tighten up’ a bit, he actually reminds me very much of Kitten’s brother and his namesake…Finn, Locheil Finnishing First who lives out in Hungary. Fynn will be going to live with Gemma and I’m hoping the one-to-one will do him some good. Hopefully he’ll be trained up for flyball and also attend a few shows in the future.

Dottie is starting to show signs of her pregnancy now and has gone onto 2 meals a day and started her daily panacur treatment, I just wish she would learn to slow down and take a bit more care of herself. Some bitches seem to instinctively do this when they’re in whelp, like a self preservation thing but not Dottie…she still tears around like a wild child, I think I’m going to have to separate her from the others and force her to stop; she whelped 5 days early with her last litter and 3 of the 9 pups she produced were stillborn, I can’t help wondering if this had something to do with her behaviour and am obviously keen not to have a repeat of this.

We were at Lune agility show (just spectating) and flyballing at Becketts Farm this weekend, I'll post an update on that later.

Darlington & Acremead...another long haul weekend

Last busy weekend of the year with a 520mile road trip to take in Darlington Champ Show, being held at Newby Hall in North Yorkshire on Saturday followed by flyball at Abingdon in Oxfordshire on Sunday (despite there being a flyball tournament on in Darlington too!! lol)

Dogs were bathed on Friday night in between watching ‘Strictly’ and catching up on my e-mails/facebook etc. This was the scene underneath my desk...

the two lone feet are Ethans' since he was right in front of my chair and under my legs then my old WSD Spud (aka Nanny Spud lol) with Travis draped over him and little Wes curled up on his feet. Wesley is our newest addition who arrived from Scotland earlier this week. He is from the same breeder as Squirrel, my friend Paul Fitzsimmons (Glendream), and they are actually cousins.

Eventually we got everything packed and prepared for the weekend but it ended up being a rather late one to bed (for a change!) followed by a fairly early start, although I didn’t have anyone in the ring ‘til Limit dog and judging wasn’t starting ‘til 9.30am I wanted to get there in good time so I could have Spark out around the rings and get him settled before his class, so we didn’t have a repeat of last weeks’ performance! We arrived just before 10am and got set up and sorted. It was another hot day so I got Spark prepped and then walked him round the rings and sat in the shade by the James Wellbeloved stand and watched the judging. He’s still dropping coat so a lot had come out after bathing and more again on grooming in the morning, I do think Spark is one of those dogs that often looks better for losing a bit of coat (like his dad) and was happy with how he ‘scrubbed up’. The judge was from Denmark and this was his first UK appointment so I wasn’t sure what he’d do, I do wonder how these foreign judges cope with the big entries here though, they’re around 5 times bigger than the biggest entries on the continent so that’s a lot more dogs to assess!
Limit dog was the largest class of the day with 18 entries and some nice dogs in there so I wasn’t sure how we were going to get on but Spark redeemed himself and I was really pleased with the way he went. No repeat of last weeks’ giddy shenanigans (good boy) and he didn’t even seem to mind being picked up by his tail while being gone over (!! See the video). I was really pleased when he was pulled out for the shortlist and more so when he placed 3rd, he’s really starting to mature and look the part now and I’m happy that he’s holding his own in these large strong classes, I think it’ll be another year before he’s really at his best though, we’ll see.



Mouse, well…what can I say…she is one very ‘foody’ little dog and had not forgotten about last weeks’ tasty delights from the boxer ring, the result being that she just wanted to move round the ring with her nose glued to the floor the whole time…arghhhhh!!! It’s very frustrating because when she did get her head up and move properly she actually moved really well. She got binned anyway.



Dottie was in Limit bitch again so wasn’t in ‘til late afternoon, this was a relatively big class but she went really well, received a lot of nice comments ringside but got binned, just not flashy enough for this judge I don’t think…hmph…just look at the way she moved in the vid though...love this dog :)



We left the show around 4.30pm and headed straight down to stay with Joy and Becca (again!), we had another lovely meal and evening with them (thanks guys) but were very sensibly all in bed for midmight! Joy and Becca left for Trent Park agility early doors and we left later to drive the 30 mins or so down to the flyball at Acremead kennels. We had a lovely day at the Mad Mutts show, it was so small and friendly and relaxed. There was only me and Drew running a team that consisted entirely of my own dogs, having 7 competing at the moment I had to draw straws and decide who to run and we ended up with Mac, Faith, Lexie and Teal and stuck to those four. My old friend Pete who used to run with us a few years back before emigrating to Spain was in the country and came over to see us and lend a hand which was great, it was lovely to see him and great to have an extra pair of hands. Sharon and Richard from the High Flyers also came over and helped us out too even though they didn’t have a team entered (aren’t flyballers just the best people?!) and we had Nat from Bristol on the line and keeping us in order. It was a fun day and we came 2nd in Div 3 with a fastest time of 19.54 which had actually broken us out…oops! I’d entered the Demon Racers on a submitted time of 20.05 to ensure we got to run on Sunday but knew it would be close (if you submit a time you cannot run more than 0.5sec faster or you break out and automatically lose that leg, break out 3 times and you become ineligible to compete). We managed to ‘hang lose’ and not break out again but lost a crucial race against the Bassetts on lights (doh!) so missed out on that first place…ah well…c’est la vie!

Squirrel ran in the Mutts Intermediate team and did really well, they ran best of 5 legs in a 7 team division (the most running she’s ever done) with wings instead of full netting and she was great, running with lots of dogs she’d never met before and running either start dog or in a later position with no problems…clever parson! There was a photographer on site who got some lovely pics of her, I’ll see if I can find them and post the link.

Made it home for around 10pm and promptly fell asleep exhausted…what an exhausting but fun weekend!

Wow…what a weekend!

I had planned to head down to stay with Joy and Becca in Oxfordshire on Friday evening to then travel on to Richmond the following morning. Drew was off work so bathed the 3 entered dogs (Spark, Dottie and Mouse) during the day and got stuff ready but I was just feeling that way out having had a pretty awful week with one thing and another and Friday morning I was dubious about going at all, in these hard financial times I was wondering about the sense in driving such a long way down to a dog show (why I hadn’t thought of this when I entered I don’t know?)…Richmond Champ show is about 360 miles from us down in Surrey! However a couple of friends called in the morning to see how I was (since I was being so miserable) and I was soon cheered up and motivated enough to decide that yes, we were going after all! Lol This really isn’t like me at all!

I got home from work and we packed the van and fed the dogs and left home about 8.30pm and managed to miss most of the Friday night traffic but my god…the roadworks…you wouldn’t believe!! We arrived down at Joys’ for 11pm and cracked open a bottle of wine and took the time to chill and natter…’til 3.30am!! ahem (always the same when we get together!). Fortunately we didn’t need to be at the show early doors since Spark was first in in Limit Dog which I knew would be late morning. It was a glorious day, warm and sunny, we sorted all the dogs before leaving around 9am and arrived at Loseley Hall around 10.30am just time to get all the stuff in and get Spark up on the table for his last minute brush/trim before his class. I wish I hadn’t bothered…he was such an idiot! I can only think having all these bitches in season at home is driving him nuts because he’s usually so easy to handle but he just would not settle! Every time we moved he wanted to gallop round the ring and when I checked him he went into serious sulk mode!! We got binned…I’m not surprised!

There was a quite a gap before Mouse was in Minor Puppy bitch with a 45 min lunch break after the dog challenge and veteran bitch class. This gave me time to get her out and let her have a good look at everything; although she’s been to lots of flyball comps etc there are very different sights/sounds at a large all breeds Champ Show such as this one so I wanted to make sure she wasn’t over faced by everything. At just 6 months old she’s not very big and she’s still a real baby so I wasn’t sure how she’d do but just wanted her to be happy in the ring. I was pleased with how she behaved, she’s such a quiet and placid little pup that she doesn’t find standing still all that difficult (vbg); I knelt alongside her and stacked her so as to avoid her looking even smaller alongside me! She moved well…how a 6 month old puppy at it’s first show would…some nice bits with some giddy bits thrown in…I was MOST displeased however with the bloody boxer exhibitors in the next ring who kept chucking bits of cooked steak, chicken and dried liver around which kept landing in our ring! Mouse wouldn’t take her nose off the floor in that corner of the ring and managed to grab a large piece on our last run round making it almost impossible for me to stack her afterwards (she’s very foody!!). I retrieved a large handful of different tit bits as I left the ring and I’d already seen the boxer judge do the same in an earlier class! Anyway…Mouse made the shortlist and was placed 4th (reserve)…only one place outside of qualifying but I wasn’t bothered. She’d gone well and received lots of nice comments from those watching outside the ring and I was happy with our place.

Mouse at 6 months old

Bryning Believe in Me

We had another good gap before Dottie was in Limit bitch which gave me plenty of time to get her trimmed up and get her coat flattened (she does tend to go rather wavy after a bath…a bit like me! lol); I’ve discovered that the best way to sort this is not to bother with any fancy products but simply spray the coat with water, give it a good rub through with a towel, brush it flat and put a toweling coat over the top for 20 mins or so. I was pleased with how she looked, we went and sat by the ring, I put her in the shade by a chair and was watched the Post Grad class, this finished with a lovely line up of bitches but I must admit, I was starting to wonder whether I’d entered the right bitch and whether Faith might have appealed to this judge more than Dottie. It appeared to me that she wasn’t bothered about flashy or glamorous or lots of bone/coat just good honest soundly constructed dogs that could move well. I know that Dottie would fall into this category I just worried that there may be a little too much of her since she is well boned and coated and probably not quite as feminine and ‘pretty’ as Fi. Anyway, there were 16 entered in Limit Bitch and only 1 absent so a nice entry and some really nice bitches. By this time the sun had really come out and it had got rather warm (my jacket had come off and my treats were all in my jean pockets). As usual Dottie presented herself well, in the line up and being gone over and she moved in her usual free flowing and effortless way; she also never even broke into a pant while a few of the others in the class were starting to flag, testament perhaps to her flyball career….a quick jaunt around a showring wasn’t going to bother her in the slightest! We made the cut and I had a really good feeling about how she’d gone and was really quite hopeful that she would place top 3 and get her stud book number (and lifetime Crufts qualification) which is what I was hoping for…she got a bit fidgety but I managed to settle her and I was pleased as punch when we got pulled out first! Yippee…stud book number and a place in the challenge! There were only 9 in Open bitch so I knew we didn’t have too long ‘til the challenge so I found her some shade and gave her a drink and kept brushing that coat down, we headed back to the ring and the shaded chair and waited for the Open bitch class, this was won by a super little champion bitch, I went into the challenge with a totally open mind, I had no idea what would happen…the Post Grad winner and veteran winner were both very nice bitches that were going to challenge hard for the prizes so I just concentrated on my dog and she didn’t let me down. As I had thought the CC went to the Open winner, Sh CH Altricia Fancy Free of Tudorhurst, a well deserved win since she moved like a dream but I was absolutely over the moon when the judge came straight back to us with the Reserve. My little girl has won her first reserve ticket!!

I can’t tell you how chuffed I am because I really rate this little dog and I’m so pleased that the judge also recognized and rewarded this. I know she’s not particularly flashy or glamorous, she’s not got those flashy markings or that ultra feminine head and semi erect ears that seem to be so fashionable these days but there’s so much more to a dog than its' head and markings! She DOES have a lovely lay of shoulder and reach of neck and beautiful rear angulation and a lovely straight driving action from behind that allows her to cover the ground so effortlessly but so much more than that, she’s a lovely dog…so open and honest and friendly, always keen and happy to oblige, full of fun and just a joy to live with. I await the judges’ critique with interest.

Dottie after winning the Res CC

Locheil Crazy Chic at Bryning

Full Richmond results HERE

I think we grinned the whole way back from Richmond to Joys’ house where we enjoyed a lovely meal and celebratory drink although I have to say, we weren’t so late to bed…everyone was knackered!

Sunday morning we had a bit of a lie in before sorting the dogs out and heading over to Up and Over dog training club at Heyford, Joy was teaching the Good Citizen Silver class which I joined with Mac who was a bit of an over excitable idiot bless him…he did do a lovely recall and some nice stays though. Becca was teaching the agility class so I joined this with Faith who was also a bit of an over excitable idiot! At least she remembered to stop on all her contacts, pity she couldn’t concentrate for longer than a nano second and when she did I was always in the wrong place! Lol

After the classes were over one of the instructors got her flyball equipment out for a few people to have a go on so we did a rather impromptu demonstration getting Mac, Faith, Dottie and Ethan out and running them together as a team, they had fun and so did we. We then did a bit of training with a couple of young dogs from the club who did really well and picked it up very quickly. It was nearly 4pm by the time we got back…we were all starving!

We messed about with the pups for a while…this is Beccas’ pup Chewey (aka Aviary Atlantis). Chewey is sired by Bond (Locheil Time Moves On) so is a half sister to Dottie, Dazzle, Teal etc and her mum is Wren (Bryning Goldfinch); she and Mouse are nearly the same age and very similarly bred but you never met two more different puppies!! Mouse is a very quiet, steady and sensible little dog and Chewey is…well…mental!! She is an awful lot of fun though!

Chewey approaching 6 months old

Aviary Atlantis

We finally left for home around 6pm and got back at 8.30pm…tired but happy, I was so glad we’d made the effort and gone, we had a really good weekend.

We're off over to Darlington Champ show this weekend and then down to Oxford again for flyball at the Mad Mutts show....not sure how we'll top this one though!