Rotherdrax (and Points)

I’ve never been to the Drax venue before, for various reasons, so it was nice to get a visit in before we stay there in May. It’s tiny! But very flyball-y, everything squashes in nicely and there is a clubhouse with a proper bar and proper drinks and proper food, all the important things.

I thought Dylan ran well, he felt reasonably quick and enthusiastic. His box turn is going very wide, he’s not snapping around fast enough so I know we have room for improvement there, but he was matching (if not beating) the dogs he was running against on the flat. The dogs we have in the team are all good dogs, they all run roughly the same kind of times and we can mix/match easily with changeovers. But it was very low, we all know there are 0.2s here and there we can knock off but we haven’t done enough training on those things. I know I also daren’t push my changeovers at all, I got a light in the morning and got a lot of flak and so I held back later in the day when I know I shouldn’t have. I also know I’m not the only person on the team who was doing that!

Kim and Mollie ran as well as ever, I was really undecided about whether to run Kim as she looked lame after getting out of the car initially, but she was happy in herself and the more she moved, the smoother her gaits were. I spoke to the vet on Monday morning and he offered some reassurance, and said that without the lump her paw probably felt a little bit weird, especially since it had been there for such a long time. So I’ll give her a bit longer before really panicking.

I really enjoyed running my dogs, and it was lovely to catch up with various people, but I can’t do long days! We didn’t finish racing until 7ish, and then rushed through presentations to leave at 8. Fingers crossed all other tournaments for the rest of the year run smoothly and to time!

The flyballers have exploded everywhere with their opinion on points, and I’m pretty amused reading them. I love points, I think it’s really nice to have these records of the time, energy and dedication your dog has put in. Of course my dog’s don’t care, but if we’re going to use that argument, we might as well not bother with seed-times, divisions, tournaments or rosettes either. I know a lot of people are arguing that only fast dogs are rewarded with awards, but that’s up to you, surely? Kim’s Silver Award will always mean more to me than Dylan’s, because I know how hard we had to work to reach it. Dylan’s will be easy, he’ll probably get his by the end of the year. When your Bulldog get’s his FD, be proud of it and stop comparing him to the Whippet on your top team who has just got his eleventy-billionth point.

When you get down to basics, flyball is about speed. It’s a race, fastest team wins. If you choose to own dogs who are not conformationally able to run all that fast, that’s your choice, and you’ll have to accept that you are unlikely to get as many points as one that is, just like you’ll have to accept that you aren’t going to be running in Div 1 at the Champs.

Agility at Hare’n’Hounds next weekend, everything crossed for good weather!