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.

Kim is smug about her trophies. She knows she’s better than me.

I feel like the title of this post should really be “That was Unexpected”, since the whole show was definitely so. I went hoping to see how Dylan would measure up in Grade 4, and let Kim have a blast in the 1-7 classes she had. I suppose I did achieve that, just not quite in the way I thought I would.

Kim did have a blast in the 1-7′s. The Jumping was a lovely course, really spread out and with just a wrong tunnel entry to challenge. I would have been quite surprised if Kim hadn’t gone clear! She cruised around, didn’t fire on all cylinders but she enjoyed herself and made it look super easy. And then she came 1st … great, says I, but no more wins please Kim. She had a Jumping win from High Peak, so another Jumping win would have taken us to Grade 6. Which I wanted to avoid!

Graded 1-7 Agility was a difficult course for Open, very tight spacings to start and a really awkward soft weave entry. I handled the start badly and was way too far behind when Kim hit the weave entry, so she popped out to check where the hell I’d got to. She doesn’t weave away from me (there’s always something to work on!), and then I tried to send her back in from a stupid angle before finally getting my head in gear and setting her up properly. She flew around the rest of the course, did beautiful running contacts on the dogwalk and aframe, so we finished up with 10f — and 2 time faults, grr. We probably wasted only 4-5s at most at the weaves, so to get time faults was a little frustrating. Still came 1st though! Only Grade 6 won with a clear, Grades 4 and 7 both had faults and nobody from Grade 1-3 even got around. Too hard for a 1-7, maybe?!

Sunday’s 1-7 Agility was a lovely fast course, and Kim just blitzed around again, came 1st, and took us to Grade 6. Scuppered all my plans there for her having a few relaxing retirement runs in 3-5 classes! Kim does like to do it in style though, three wins in one weekend. (Annoyingly, last course of the day was Doc’s really nice 1-7 Jumping — probably the only real 1-7 type course of the weekend — and we blew it with a 5f as Kim skipped past on the weaves).

Dylan was not so good. Felt like we’d gone backwards 6 months, 12 months. We badly crashed a jump in the first (very difficult!) C4-5 Jumping class, and although he finished that course well, I wonder if it through him off for the rest of the weekend, but that sounds like a fairly bad excuse. He also took the first pole in the second class of the weekend too, which upset him, but again he finished the course well and I thought he would improve as we went on. Famous last words. First agility run was clear but slow, slow creepy contacts and no real drive at all through the whole thing. No where near the placings in that. Second agility was better, much more driven, but we were E’d at the start.

Again, thought things were going to improve for Sunday … notsomuch. CSJ Qualifier was a fab course, I loved it and tried to push Dylan since I thought he would like it too. He was way too slow over the first section and after we dithered after the weaves, I decided to hold his contacts since I thought we’d be well out of the placings anyway. Aframe was nice but dogwalk was disappointingly slow. Finished 19th. Untidy clear in the Jumping and well out of the placings, and then a shockingly bad run in the other Jumping class; Dylan was measuring jumps and should have gotten a refusal, but apparently the judge was very generous. His jumping improved in the Derby but we were way too wide at one of the turns to get placed, although we finished 19th again.

Much to think about, not least what I’m going to do with Kim now!

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Dinnington as much as I did, but it was a bit of a blast from the past; tiny one day tournament at a nice venue on good ground, just three divisions and a proper set of Starters, and the weather held all day. Done and dusted by 5:30pm.

We knew this was going to be our prep tournament for the Champs, and we also knew we were going to need the training as gypsies have taken over our training ground, leaving us without anywhere to train at the moment. Typical!

Dylan’s team was a bit of a mixed bag, we’ve been running together for 6 months but we just don’t seem to be gelling, I don’t know why. We are getting better, and we’re throwing out consistent times, but I don’t feel like this lineup is working.

Kim and Mollie’s team were … unexpected. We were seeded on 22.25, and I was pretty hopeful we would get under 22s and get the girls some points. I wasn’t expecting great things as the top seed was on 20.92, which we seemed unlikely to run. And then we ran 21.12 twice for the first race, with the slowest dog on the team in, a 6s dog.

And then, second race, we broke out. The girls ran a 19.82 … I actually thought Katie was joking, and then we ran 19.90, and broke out again, and just, what!? How can a team seeded on 22.25 run 19.82? Day, made. (Of course, this does put us in a bit of a bind for the Champs, where we are seeded on 22.25 and the slowest dog from this weekend is being replaced by a faster one. And the divisions will be closely seeded, meaning the break-out time is likely to be 21.00 at best).

Meanwhile, I told Katie I wanted some more Flybe pictures, since the blue puppy is 6months old and I haven’t seen her for a month. Fly wasn’t so much into the photos at first.

But she came around!

Dinnington Div1

Originally uploaded by kayanem

My trusty camera camera buddy Emma snapped a couple of random shots, and so did I. Click to view.

If Kim could use the internet, she would kill me for posting this picture of her.