Saturday was a little weird. Dylan wasn’t running at his best, stuttering a little through certain jump sequences and just generally floating around and distracted. We were E’d in the Jumping Qualifier, and then came 3rd in everything else. I’m still not quite sure what was going on! Kim finished out of the placings in her two jumping runs, but she was the top Medium in the Steeplechase and was less than a second of Dylan’s time, so her times are reflecting how much she’s cranked it up recently.

Had the most fun with both dogs in the Triple-A, this is Kim’s perfect game! She did a kickass run and finished 2nd in the Novice, and actually would have come 2nd in the Graduate too, beating Focus’ time. Anyone who knows Focus will appreciate how good that is! Dylan came 3rd, and I think that’s the only time Kim’s beaten him when they’ve both been clear. (Incidentally, the dog that beat them both to 1st is a Large KC Grade 6 dog, so I think they did pretty well!)

Sunday morning was a bit of a disappointment, still not jumping with extension or confidence. The Novice Plus Agility was a nasty little course, very challenging and filled with traps. Dyl got half-way around before shooting off into the wrong tunnel, but worked his contacts beautifully. The Jumping was better, but stuttering again, and he finished just out of the placings in 7th. Didn’t bode well for the Sunday afternoon Agility Final! I’d put Kim NFC in Introductory again and she loved it, despite getting E’d in everything anyway, so she was pretty much a write-off for Sunday.

The Novice Agility Final was actually quite a nice course, tricky sections but much easier than the Primary! Wasn’t really my kind of course, I didn’t feel very confident going in with how to handle the softer traps, and that’s where we lost it. I wasn’t clear enough with Dylan and he skipped the weave entry, and after we’d got 5f I kind of lost it and we got E’d. I wish I’d held it together and pushed on with 5f as we still would have been placed 7th barring any other mistakes.

Monday morning was even worse, if possible! Both really nice Novice Plus courses, really suited both me and the dogs. The Jumping was a super-lovely flowing course, but Kim had a pole (what the hell Kim?! Since when do you knock poles?!) and then (again) I sent Dylan into the wrong tunnel. He finished up measuring his jumps anyway, which left me in a total panic — not what you want with the Jumping Final in the afternoon! Novice Plus Agility was a big, open course, really nice, and Kim decided to do the dogwalk three times before actually thinking about listening to me, at which point she flew around and made it look so easy. Dylan also got E’d, but was jumping beautifully, very confident and very smooth, lovely fast contacts, another “what the hell” moment.

The Novice Jumping Final was a truly wicked course, all pull-thrus and call-offs and a really tough weave-exit. We wasted what felt like forever but was probably only a second or so whilst I tried to send Dylan through 5-6 (he wanted to jump, I wasn’t clear enough that I wanted the tunnel!), were a bit scrappy around to the weaves, but then nailed everything after the weaves, with lovely jumping and lots of drive and we did good. I’d watched a couple of the Mediums go clear, and our friend Moss did a cracking run just before we went in. I was guessing Moss for the win, with Dylan maybe in 5th, or 4th if we were lucky. If we were really lucky, I thought we might scrape 3rd. Somehow though, we came 2nd!

Mollie was the real superstar though. She got a 6th in Veteran Jumping, which is no mean feat at BAA – the Veteran classes are incredibly popular, there are usually around 50-60 ex-Graduate/Masters dogs in there, compared to our stumpy flyball dog who doesn’t actually ever train anymore and has never done any proper competitions. Anyway, with the points from that, she qualified for the Veterans Final! Which was hilarious, we got E’d. Mollie was wound up through the roof, ran like a complete lunatic and spent half the time barking at me. So much fun, love running my crazy old lady.

Annual booster time! Our dogs all get a general examination at the same time as their boosters, so it’s a good chance for them all to weigh-in and compare health notes. This is one of the highlight’s of Mollie’s year, she got very very excited in the waiting room and had to roo-roo at everyone and get some full-body wiggles in. She knows all the vet nurses and makes herself at home, and they all know her and spoil her silly. She weighed in at 17.70, which was the only surprise weigh-in; she’s usually around 18 and anything under is getting a bit skinny, but she looks and feels a good weight so I’m not too concerned. Her eyes were a bit cloudy but nothing else wrong, which is nice!

Kim weighs in at 12.10, which is a good weight for her. She looks good at the moment, looks toned and balanced and light on her paws. She looks better than she has in ages, in fact. And, against all odds, she’s as better on the inside as well as the outside. I’m not sure how this works – apparently it’s one of those things where nobody is quite sure how it works – but her heart murmur is … quiet. Six months ago she had a Grade 4-5 murmur, now she’s barely scoring. Her pulse is strong and steady and according to the text books it shouldn’t be, but sometimes it happens.

Dylan weighs in at 19.20, and is all good. He found the whole thing interesting (watching him watch Kim and Mollie be examined is adorable and quite funny) but treated everyone very suspiciously. After he got treats and cuddles off everyone he decided that maybe they weren’t so bad, but still needed to be treated with caution.

Having all my dogs be healthy makes me happier than what ever we did at the weekend, and I was very happy with the weekend.

The dogs are all still flying about at flyball, but I’m looking forward to finally getting back to agility this weekend. After a nailbiting couple of weeks, Dylan has qualified for the Agility and Jumping Finals, and I’ve purposely kept Kim out of the Qualifiers to make sure she doesn’t qualify (although there is a chance she might get called up anyway, unfortunately …). I sound like a horrible person trying to make sure that my dog doesn’t qualify, but the Novice has only 15 dogs in the Final, and I can’t concentrate on Dylan if I have to run Kim as well. And Kim might run brilliantly if she did qualify, but she might be tired and bored and not want to play, and it’s not worth taking someone elses’ spot.

We’ve been having some fun recently exploring some new walks, and August has tumbled away without anyone even noticing. Mollie’s eyesight seems to be getting a little worse; it’s hard to say exactly what makes us think so, since there is nothing specific I can explain. Just a feeling that she can’t see as well as she could. Dylan has had some issues that I’ve posted about before, but I finally feel like we’re getting a handle on this and I’m very pleased with the progress we’ve made so far. It’s really just a patience game now, and I don’t want to go into too much detail in case I jinx it.

Really wishing the flyball points would go up sometime soon, I am hoping Kim had got her FD-Gold, and I’d really like to see if Dylan is anywhere near his FD-Silver. I thought we might get it before the end of the year, but now I’m not so sure.

What a meandering post! It’s the terrible rainy weather getting me down, lets all hope for an Indian Summer.

Tournament at the usual Rotherham venue, but run by Tyne Tailwaggers. Out to confuse me from the start.

Kim and Mollie’s team was a bit of a mix, and we lost pretty much everything, apart from the one race against our arch-rivals Doghouse (to clarify: we love Doghouse). Mollie was running consistent 5.1s over 12″, Kim was also around 5.1s but she did run a 4.9s first thing, which suggests to me that if she’d been against faster dogs she’d have probably been a bit faster herself. She was the height dog as well so she was over her version of full-height, and it was baking hot weather, so very pleased with the girls. The team just didn’t work, sadly, so our times were pretty shocking and it was 3-leg losses all round (sometimes 1 or 2 leg losses, as one of the team dogs has started interfering for the first time in his life).

Dylan was really not feeling well when we got home on Saturday, and eventually we made the decision to pull him from Sunday’s racing. I don’t regret this at all; I know Dylan would have raced had I asked him to, which is why I had to make the decision. By the time we got home on Sunday he was recovering nicely, and is back to his usual chirpy self now. It appears it was just a 24-hour bug, thankfully!

So, we had pulled Dylan, and one of the other dogs Buddy also went lame on Saturday, and with the Beardies (all three!) in season, we ended up scratching one of the teams. About an hour after pulling the Division 2 team Ghost Owlers, George and Jet also couldn’t run (illness and chiro orders, respectively!) so that left poor Murphy all on his own! We recruited a few other NFC dogs, and since Mollie and Kim hadn’t exactly been racing the day before, we let them have a few legs in the NFC team too. Kim ran with Francis, (aged 10 years, already a boxloading/ring-party/vice-captain pro) to let her try running a dog in a team for the first time. Kim was a fab little teacher and Fran did brilliantly too.

Dylan’s original team ran with four dogs — we couldn’t put Murphy in with them as he’s just too fast! — and they got a new seed-time of 19.98 and finished 2nd. Unfortunately there was an incident during the last race and they went down to three dogs, but they still ran their socks off, and I got plenty of photos.

It wasn’t a great weekend for the teams, but at least it was sunny and the fit and healthy dogs all got to run in the end.

Thunderstorms and shooting stars, pouring rain and sunshine …

The girls did good. We were in a bit of a weird position, in that we had three dogs who had suddenly gone back to being sub-5s dogs, and then one slower dog who has suddenly gone from clocking 6.5s to 5.5s. However, these are all older dogs, and we knew they were going to get tired over the day. So in the morning, we spent a lot of time holding back our changeovers so we didn’t win too easily and break out, and in the afternoon, we spend a lot of time pushing changeovers to try and keep ourselves in the game. Somehow, it worked, and the Hawk Owlers won Division 32.

Mollie clocked a 4.65s as lead dog, and then ran 4.7′s and 4.8′s and eventually worked her way up to 5s at the end of the day. She’s eleven. That’s so wtf crazy I don’t even know. Kim ran her socks off, she was such a pro and she kicked ass, just like she always does.

(Sponsored by CSJ, can you tell?!)

I nearly cried when we won, everyone was so overjoyed and the whole team was dancing around on a high, even those who hadn’t run a dog. These are our old ladies, our girls, and we never know if they’re going to make it to another Champs, but every year they come back, and they don’t just race, they win. Kim and Mollie have never been to the Champs and not come home with a 1st place. I am so proud of them!

Dylan did good too. The whole team did good, but we couldn’t quite pull it off and lost to Paws8, which put us 2nd. Dylan’s team has never won their division at the Champs … fingers crossed for next year!

Congratulations to Bassetts who retained their Division One title, but hats off to Bristol Ball-istics for the most decisive, brave and calm show of sportsmanship ever seen in Ring 2. One of their dogs was running across the lanes, and they chose to sacrifice their own chances to make sure that the dog didn’t cause any problems for other teams, and to make sure she was running again by the end of the day.