Horseley Fen Fun
The final event in our series of one-day fun events saw us open up to league teams to fill the spaces. As this event was means to be part of our Paw Camp, we elected to not enter too much as we had training on Sunday/Monday, but we did put our world cup dogs in for some good H2H racing practise against some fast teams.
After setting up on Friday night, Mat spent 2hrs re-covering and re-setting our box ahead of racing. Thank you Mat, we are very grateful for your hard work and the box was 10 million times better for racing!
CANINES were in division 1, racing against our fellow TeamGB teams of Raptors, Essex and Aces. This was Texan’s 2nd ever full day of racing and with no training between Newark and here he started struggling with a wide turn and elected to return down the side of the jumps in the left lane. Obviously this is not safe for any dog/handler but when, as we do in the canines, we are releasing on the box, this becomes very dangerous. We therefore made the sensible decision to go NFC to fix the turn and allow Nicole & Prime the chance to pass in safely. The back half of this team – Vegas & Kyloe – are now pretty solid, but racing B2B weekends, over 11″, with no training in between deff saw Kylo slightly off his usual times (by 0.1s) and Ellen struggling to pass as tight as normal. Before they went NFC however, they did post a lovely clean 14.65 with space all round. The future is very bright for this team!
CAMBS FLYBALL were in division 2 for more World Cup practise. Quest & Ossie will be joining their CANINES friends in the final WC team, but Storm & Zola are just as valued as our amazing travelling reserves, so deserve just as much work, training and effort. Frank has also worked hard alongside the squad over the past few months, supporting this team as their 5th dog. Today was the day that we saw Mell step up to take the reins of running Quest, meaning we needed a backup handler for Storm. Mell & Quest absolutely nailed it but Storm was starting to struggle. As a young dog at his second ever open comp we decided his needs were greater, so Quest was handed over to Ellen and Mell went back to her boy. Ossie is currently going from strngth to strength over 11″ and posted many, many sub-4 times… Zola is showing us that the winter working on his box turn and reward system was the right decision but is definitely enjoying being back racing… Frank is really loving the game these days but is coming in with so much power that he is struggling to control his turn.
All in all, there is a good reason we don’t tend to do B2B weekends of racing, and it showed. Back to training next weekend dogs… ready for Newark in 2 weeks time!