Tails We Winter Series

Thank you Tails We Win for a fantastic day of racing and general team support on Saturday, it was appreciated.

With many of the team out of action this weekend Ellen had a bit of a job to rejig the teams to provide the right support for the more Rookie dogs (ever mindful that consistency is key) but a quick zoom on the Thursday evening the the training team were all briefed and ready to race 3 teams.

During that zoom meeting, conversion strayed and we started to talk about walkie-talkies and ear pieces (very much inspired by you Road Runners ). And as it happened Mell knew just the person to talk to to get us a set to try out. Thank you Mel and Lewis!!! And oh my goodness these things are a game changer……. We loved them and they will definitely be a fixture going forward. Not only can you play at being bouncers, you can sing to the box loader when they look a bit lonely all the way up the other end. You can let the host team steal the mic and entertain everyone plugged in. Oh and yeah, we could easily call the team in when it was time, calmly change orders mid race, ask the box loader to try a different ball, get line information directly to the team. Every team should invest in a set!!

CANINES – These guys had one core objective for this competition….get a time!! In other words our current seed time was about to expire therefore we had to run clean at least once and complete to get a recordable time and preferably we wanted to keep our seeding. Obviously the complication was that many our dogs/owners couldn’t be there so we were missing some of our more solid dogs and were leaning more on our green dogs than we would have liked.

It was not a smooth journey and at one point we did think we would need to be seeded on a 17.55! But we had one gloriously tense yet perfect leg that gave us a new seed time of 15.87. 🎉🎉

Thank you to everyone that rallied around and helped us to achieve it in the ring and cheering from the outside – it felt truly amazing and just a shame Ellen and the rest of the team weren’t there to share that moment with us. The Canines came 3rd but we left the competition feeling as joyful as if we had won.

CANNONS – The line-up of the Cannons was a 4 dog team, and new to each other. There were definitely a few hiccups, which the handlers (Janet, Mat, Pamela & Nic M) all took in their stride and helped their dogs to work through.  We are really proud of how this team ran… they came 3rd with a fastest time (and new team record) of 17.54! Congratulations to Wally & Nicole for making their league debut AND earning their Cadet award.

CROSSBOWS – We were so pleased with the Crossbows who got a 2nd place with a fastest time of 20.40. We think it was far to say this team was a little thrown together, a hybrid of a couple of the more regular teams if you like! Not that you might have noticed, they worked together beautifully. With a few dogs returning from injury (and 3 unpredictable terrier types in the line up) we kept it as 6 dog team to give us options and make sure the dogs that needed to didn’t have to race all day. Congratulations to the dinky Doris (aka “Pig”) for being awarded the UKFL Inca award for best character of the day… we think this was very fitting!

Results

Team Place F/T
Cambridgeshire Canines 3rd 15.87
Cambridgeshire Cannons 3rd 17.54
Cambridgeshire Crossbows 2nd 20.40