Update

Dear God I am so rubbish at blogging!! After a promising start I keep forgetting to do it!! Anyway going to do a quick update

Flyball - We have had a fantastic year and gone well beyond what we expected with our top team. The Echoes achieved a seed time of 17.30 and won Div 3 at the British Champs! The team struggled at the end of the year with Jamie being pulled down by a virus that he took ages to recover from but still managed a 17.60 at the last show the year and very nearly a 17.12 with the tiniest early light!! Grrrrrr. Every team did really well this year breaking into the next second barrier. The Extras team got a second at the Champs too. We have had lots of new dogs come into open and new team members join too and I think we are in a really strong position as a team. We have a very strong group of Core handlers who come to every show which allows us the freedom to let people just do the shows they want to do.
We have broken down the training into parts this winter and gone back to basics with Box work. We are varying the training every week and rarely doing full runs at all. We are seeing a big improvement already as we are not competing around it.

Right the dogs.....

Fly - Old age has hit her quite hard this year and her performance has been erratic. She will have a competition where she will hit 4.3's and then another where she will do 4.7's. We have put her as a fifth dog so that she is not relied on. Even so I am very pleased with how she is still running at 11 years old, she helped the team go sub 17 for the first ever time and is generally still amazing :)

Neo - Neo hit his form in the middle of the season and then it tailed off again. he helped the team get their 17.30 but then started to slow down. I don't whether it was his stamina or the same virus as Jamie but his performance went downhill and he was mainly replaced by Echo in the top team when we needed the extra speed. He is definitely past his best at 7 years old but he still tries so hard - bless him.

Jamie - Jamie was absolutely amazing at the beginning of the year, hitting consistant low 4's. He hit a 4.09, then a 4.07 then a 4.00. I thought he was actually going to go sub 4 when he got really ill and that was that. He went a little off colour at the champs and then just got lower and lower until we had to pull him completely from two shows. Strong antibiotics and rest seemed to make him better but he had lost so much condition and weight that he is only getting back onto form now. The fireworks also have set him back massively as he stops eating when they are constantly going off as they have this year. Poor little man.

Fox - Well.... I don't even know where to go with him. At the beginning of the year 4.4 all day and now one 4.4 if I'm lucky then his performance is up and down all day. There is no consistancy. I am going to have him castrated this winter as I think a lot of the problem is that it has become very apparent that Fox also got Barley too (Pip is a little tri colour mini me!!) and now his brain has been replaced by another part of his anatomy!! If this doesn't work I will probably give Fly and Fox a place together as one dog and bring out the strongest dog at the relevant time.

Tia - OMG this little dog has been amazing this year!! Bearing in mind that she only came out into open at the beginning of this year, she has been mainly very consistant. She has got more and more confidence and become very speedy. She hit her peak at Paws in the Park hitting a 4.37 and doing 4.4 all day. Gt Barford was destined to be very exciting for the second team as we had our fastest dogs there for the first time all year. I did two legs with Tia and she didn't seem right so I put her away as I thought she was stiff. China had to be rushed to the vets which left us with four dogs. I got Tia out of the car and went to warm her up and do some stretches with her so she could run when I realised she was totally lame. She was diagnosed with a pulled cruciate ligament! I was devastated!. The killer blow was that we ran the other three dogs and they got 14.05 with Tia running properly the team would have easily got 18.50! Half a second of their seed time. I seriously wanted to cry!! The good news is that after six weeks of cage rest and a slow build up on her exercise, she is looking promising again. She has lost an awful lot of condition and weight due to stress (partly the cage rest and also fireworks) but was looking strong at training today, We managed 6 lots of eight jump runbacks and she was fine - phew!

Barley - I love this little dog, she is so funny. She is so sweet and innocent, so quiet and obedient until she is lining up to do flyball! Then she screams her head off and tries to bite Soph! Little monkey! She is getting better all the time as her and Soph build up a bond. She gone under 5 secs a few times which I'm really pleased with and she was in the Extras team that came second. It was only her second competition and she was part of a four dog team so I was really pleased with her :) Her training is coming on really well and I think she will come out much better next year. She is now single striding really well and her box has improved massively! Looking forward to her next year.

Rocky - Aww little Rockstar! He is a little character. He is totally Soph's dog which is really nice. He is a one person dog and he is Soph's. He will come and say hello to me but he runs straight back to her which is brilliant and what I wanted. He is a very slow maturer and his training is coming on slowly but thats fine. He is doing a nice box (no ball) and his runbacks to a tuggy are coming on really well. He works with other dogs around and isn't phased by them at all, he just isn't interested. He managed to do one proper run with a ball at training today before he was distracted - bless him, he has the attention span of a gold fish!

Millie - Millie?? Who's Millie?? I hear you say!! Millie is the new rather unplanned addition - aren't they always!? Millie is a Beardie x Border pup. She is now 7 months old. I got her at 6 months. I saw this beautiful little face and it was absolute love at first sight. I was feeling a bit low and she is like a little ray of sunshine. She is so funny and sweet - so Beardie! She looks like a mini Jamie. She has only done two training sessions and we have just kept it fun for her as she is so nervy. She is running up to the lane to someone for a treat and then running back to me for a treat. Just to get confidence and so we can make it a positive experience. I will publish some more on her progress as we go on.

Stockbridge at Easter 2010

Well this really was an weekend of ups and downs!!! We pulled up at Stockbridge on Friday afternoon to a mud bath!!!! Kim bravely tried to drive onto the field, got 15 feet and stopped!! I stopped in the lane, turned my engine off and waited! lol! After about 10 mins of banter with the Aces and Fantastic 4 while I was waiting for Kim's Van and caravan to be towed away, I unhooked my car and with a little (cough cough) help from the previously mentioned teams I drove onto the field. Tim from the Jets kindly followed pulling my caravan with his 4x4. We just started setting up when we got a phone call from Mary who told us to look at the entrance. They were being pulled by 3 4x4s!!!!! Their massive campervan had got totally stuck and it took 3 of them to pull it on! Show offs! lol!

The racing the next day was fantastic!! We went in with the Express (2nd) team and they just gelled instantly. Its very different in competition to training but we were able to go out and pull off fantastic changeovers from the first race. I saw several people wince at mine hee hee!! The team were absolutely flying! We lost the first leg of the first race as the ball rolled out of the box and China did the wall of death around the ring at top whippet speed! We lost that one on interference :os! On the 2nd leg we did a cracking run and won! Yeay!! We were then told that we had run 21.10 our breakout time was 21.00 Arghhhh! Tooo close!! We pulled back a little and won the third leg!! We had won our first race!! Its a bit of a blur after that! On one leg I got a light and sent Fly up as fifth dog as the other team had a light too but Soph (her first time box loading - bless her) didn't realise that she needed to put another ball in! She saw Fly coming back as I shouted to her to put another ball in. Soph span round, grabbed a ball, loaded the box and stood up just as Fly got to the box. She had done it so fast I barely believed that she had done it!!! We also broke out once too but the long and short of it was that we won our division!!! Wow what a first competition!!!

The downside was that the rest of the competition was cancelled due to the horrendous ground conditions :( so we never got to run our top team and multibreed teams. Oh well never mind!!

Some Spectators

The entrance to the show ground

The Showground

Rick and Mary being towed off!

It was a really nice weekend all in all though and although I was very disapointed that the show had to be cancelled (although I totally understand why) I was very pleased with the way we ran and the support we got from the other teams. Its always a bit nerve racking running with a new team but it was really nice and on the whole people are very supportive. I did however get a couple of jokes about which team I had my eye on to run with next! lol!!! Cheeky people!!

Fly and her Ice Blue Moon

Fly with her bits from her Ice Blue Moon Award

Chilterns Show

I had the clever idea to go and see the new Harry Potter film (brilliant) on friday night. We went for a chinese and then went to see the film after. This resulted in me finally getting to bed at 2am as I had to quickly pack for the weekend. I then had to get up at 4.30am urgh!! I blearily drove to Katies to pick her up as she was staying with me and then we set off for the show. Made it to the show ground in just over an hour from Katie's house and quickly set the caravan up. We were in the second div on with the Muttleys and did really well although nearly every race went to five legs. We came second and achieved a cracking new seed time of 20 secs dead. This was especially good as Tyler and Lily were not being run by Dave and Kate (they are both now sacked!! :) lol). The Running 4 Mutts also got a stunning new seed time of 17.57 but ended coming seventh!! lol!! Poor Fly was so tired by the end of her racing that she could barely keep her head up to see where she was going bless her! At presentation I was awarded with Fly's Ice Blue Moon award and the team brought me a beautiful engraved glass frame with a picture of Fly in it and a bottle of rose cava (very nice). I will post some photos of her with her goodies soon. We then had a celebratory chinese (diet did not go well this weekend lol). On the sunday the Fun 4 Mutts ran but it was raining most of the day and it was very slippery. They did well and got a third (i think) but the times were not great. It was a lovely show and it was very nice to be back at a country show where there is quite a bit to do. As ever the Barkshire Bandits hosted a very slick and well run show and you would never have guessed that on saturday there was only six of them running it!!

Puppy Reunion

We had a bit of a reunion at Millets Farm as Christine from the Wolf Pack brought Becky down. First of all we tried to get some pictures of us cuddling the puppies........

Hmmmmm

Squirmy

Kisses


So we thought we'd a picture of them standing.....

Look who has the naughty puppy!!

We then gave up and let them all play :)

All four of them

Henry watching the girls play

Becky and Fraggle

Barley and Henry at the back

Becky and Fraggle at the front

All four of them

Fly sulking after being told off for telling puppies off!!!

Fly

Today I had my camera over the training field and managed to snap some rather nice pictures of Fly, I'm very pleased with my efforts!! lol!!

This last one is my favourite,

Think I'll get that one framed :)

Stockbridge at Easter

I have just got back from a fantastic weekend in Hampshire but goodness am I tired!! I think we all decided that perhaps it was a bit silly to do our own show then three days later do a four day show!! :)
Friday was starters which started disastrously when Kate twisted her bad knee whilst running Boston. She has a cruciate injury and her knee just gave way. She was carried out of the ring and we decided not to race for the rest of the morning. In the afternoon Dave took over Boston and I ran Stacey, Boston's sister. Stacey had been eyeballing the other team and then running across the lane in the morning so I calmly held my hand over her eyes and then let her go. She ran like a dream! I have told Dave that he can't run her any more LOL!! Kate went to A&E and came back several hours later with her leg in plaster from hip to ankle oops.
On Saturday the Mad Muttleys (Jamie's team) ran. Sam had to run Lily as Kate couldn't. Lily was not right all day and I could not get my changeovers right, this is really unusual. We were rather outclassed in the division but we ran our fastest ever time of 21.47 and Jamie ran a stonking time of 4.36 in the wet! This was the fastest time that any of our dogs did all weekend not bad for a Beardie, LOL. Then at presentation I was presented with Jamie's Graduate and Neo's Advanced in beautiful silver frames. Ahhh!
Sunday was our top team's turn in Div 2, We were the Cannon fodder!!! Poor Fly really struggled with her arthritis and was very stiff when she got up this morning. I warmed her up for about half an hour and massaged her legs which really helped but she didn't really run right all day. She did not like the slippery ground and didn't run faster then 4.60 secs all day, which is really slow for her. She was start dog and these are a new set of lights which meant that there were loads of false starts and she had to run lots. She was exhausted bless her! We made the decision at the end of the day to put her down to the second team for the next show where she can run anchor dog (her favourite position) and interchange her with another dog so she doesn't have to run all day. This is a really hard thing to do as she was my first flyball dog and a superb dog in her day. She was easily one of the fastest and most reliable start dogs in the country. Its such a shame when you start to see them get old. :(
Monday was multibreed. Jamie ran with Lily, Taff and Poppit. We did really well and came second, only loosing to a team that was a second and a half faster then us! So we were really pleased with our time of 19.36 secs.
All in all it was weekend of mixed results but a good one at that!

Getting to know the big dogs

I thought it was a good idea to let the dogs get to know each other on a one to one basis so that it is calmer and I can spot and stop potential problems before they start. It was Fly's turn tonight! She was NOT impressed!!!! I decided to start with her because she is going to be the problem as she doesn't like other dogs and although she has never hurt any of my current dogs, she has inflicted serious injuries on other dogs I have had. Barley was determined to play with Fly, Fly was determined NOT to play with Barley!!

Look at that face!! I have to add I did distract Barley away from Fly at this point! That is not a good face in Fly World!!

Fly was really good and very calm and tolerant. I was surprised by how much abuse she took from the young whippersnapper. She did tell her off several times but it was no more then rolling Barley over, Barley ran away and thought about it for thirty seconds before rushing Fly again! She is a monkey!!

I have to say I am going to have my work cut out with her as she is a very dominant and subborn little bitch but really sweet and lovely at the same time. She is very similar to Fly in the fact that you can't give her an inch....lucky I love a challenge!!!