The girls ran well, we broke our seed time again and clocked a 20.15 in the afternoon. Mollie was slightly off her normal form, I think Saturday took her edge away. She gets so excited and then exhausts herself by getting all wound up and silly when she’s not running. She and Kim still ran line-to-line 4.9-5.1s all day. I am especially pleased with Kim, she ran all day as she was the height dog and she clocked a 4.99 in the afternoon. No idea what she’s up to, getting faster at her age! It was really good racing though, and we finished 3rd in the Division.

Dylan’s team also finished 3rd. Dylan was not running at his best. He was running with the top-team dogs again as they were missing two of the usual dogs from that team, and he wasn’t happy. As soon as I tried to do a proper change into Norah, Dylan started stuttering into the first jump, slamming on the breaks. My assumption is that this was to avoid Norah, because on wide changes he wasn’t stuttering. I’m getting a little bit frustrated with his stuttering into the first hurdle – it’s something that has only developed this summer and it varies depending on the competition.

What made this more frustrating was that Dylan’s box was lovely! He had a few mishaps after our new boxloader dropped a ball as he was approaching the box, which confused him no end, but by the next race he was back to neat, tight turns. It’s probably the best boxwork I’ve seen him doing all summer, but instead of improving his times, he was slower due to the run-in. He clocked 5.1s consistently all day (including changeovers, not line to line), which isn’t good enough. He clocked a 4.81 in singles the day after his first ever competition, and that is the standard I have been holding him to ever since.

Luckily we went to the beach afterwards. Despite the windswept grey sky and the wild grey sea, Redcar is always worth the trip because of the Stray.