The Champs

Well it has to be said that this was a bit of a disaster all round really!!

We met Jenny who is a brand new member to the team at South Mimms Services. Kim turned her van off to pop to the loo and it wouldn't start again. We were stuck there for two hours and missed all our mornings racing with the third team. Finally got to the show and put the awning up and one of the screws in the awning threaded leaving us no option to but to get the gaffer tape out! We finally get everyone set up and walked down to the lanes and ran the third team. We only had four dogs (with Fox) in this team so I was a little stressed and it passed down the lead to Fox. In the first warm up he wouldn't run right and I got more and more upset. Val who is a fantastic judge and a lovely person, calmed me down and ordered the team to put wings up so that Fox ran right (remember this is only his second open). He ran beautifully and Soph was able to do cracking changeovers onto him with Raven. I was very proud of him :). We went back to the caravan only to find that the water pump was broken :s
On the Saturday we were in with the Express (Fly's) team. Fly had skinned her pad ten days before so I decided to leave her out as much as possible and only bring her in if we needed her as she is by far the fastest dog on the team. On the first race the team went two legs down, I put her in and she hurt her foot on the first run, I was really upset and she was out for the rest of the day. I got Matt to hold her away from the ring and I managed the team. They did surperbly well and ended up with a second. I was really pleased and still went to get my rossette as my dog ran one leg lol! We had a lovely bbq in the evening and sat watching the lightening from under our gazebos lol.
On the Sunday was the top team with Neo and Jamie. I was really worried about Jamie as he had barely eaten for a week and was very thin. The vet hadn't been able to find anything wrong with him and put it down to him being a beardie lol. He is a very sensitive boy and not a foodie at all so it doesn't take a lot to put him off his food. He definitely wasn't running right but that wasn't our biggest problem! The box that we had brought only two weeks before has a serious design fault which means that when a dog hits it hard a flap of rubber matting gets wedged inbetween the top of the box and the pedal. We ended up gaffer taping (good ole gaffer tape) another piece of rubber matting onto it!! The dogs were not happy though as we were all now rather hacked off with the whole weekend and never ran right. I think we would have won the award for the most lights in the comp and we looked liked we had no idea what we were doing!! All in all not a good weekend for me but as usual the comp was fab. Very slick and well run and Div 1 was amazing! Can't wait until next year (I think!!)