We worked very hard with Dylan at training this week. He is getting more confident changing into Roi, but he’s not foot perfect. Neither am I; it’s very hard to work on perfecting the change when Dylan sometimes “flinches” (throws in an extra short stride just before the line). I’m between 1-3ft off on my changes, so we have work to do yet. Since Norah wasn’t at training, Dylan also hasn’t had chance to work into her and I foresee this being our biggest problem.

We did a lot of box work as well and Dylan ran with a stride regulator in, which makes an immediate and hugely positive impact on his turn. I get lazy with including it, but since it works very well for Roi as well, the stride regulator will be making a more constant appearance in training.

Kim and Mollie both looked great. It looks like – for the first time! – the girls will be in seperate teams at the Champs. Mollie just runs so much better over 9″, and at her age it makes a big difference to her consistency. Because of injuries amongst some of our other dogs, Kim is now the height dog for the bottom team, but if we do get one or two of our other height dogs back, she’ll be advantaged by running over lower anyway. Mollie can’t really run 12″ all day anymore and so we can’t risk that she might have to.

Very complicated team structuring but that’s the way it’s had to roll this time around! Next year we will have a whole bunch of different dogs anyway, with our babies coming up and our older dogs very close to retirement now. I’ve been saying this for ages but that’s how it will go!

Best of luck to everyone at the European Championships this week, especially Katie and Jet, and the rest of the High Flyers teams!