Carlton Towers Flyball

Well, I’ve never flyballed in the snow before.

Barking Owlers came 2nd in their Division, although to be honest we really didn’t expect to. The Beardies came into season this week and had to drop out, so we were left with four competitive dogs, plus Chewy. On the day, we also lost one of our handlers as Craig was called into work after the first race, so we had to bring in someone who had never handled in open competition before, and had never run Meg. Jo’s Dad did brilliantly considering, but obviously we weren’t as gelled as normal and Meg had to run as lead dog, which she doesn’t like, and Mollie had to run as second dog, which she doesn’t like!

Kim ran brilliantly all day, she was absolutely faultless. I couldn’t have asked for more from her! But as a team we just couldn’t muster much enthusiasm and the tournament just wasn’t that great. We ran some miserable times, I think our fastest was 20.55 and our slowest was over 22 seconds, which was very disappointing from a team that normally runs sub-20. We were really hoping to get Mollie the 204points she needed for her Graduate award, and we just scraped it; thanks to Julie for counting up at the end, and Jane for offering to get her a few runs at Drax if she hadn’t made it. Go the Mol! Our division was also cut to the minimum of 4 teams as Dog Friendly and Hillam had to pull out at the last minute due to Kennel Cough, so even our 2nd place didn’t feel like much of an achievement.

Video to come …

I was scribing for Barney Owlers in Division 1 who were also down to 4 dogs, as Norah the SuperBeardie was out along with our Buffy. Jet had to step in as lead dog, with a completely new handler who had never done the lights before! Having said that, James got some awesome start times, cutting it down to get a best of 0.01 … impressive! The team did an 18.46 but were mainly running low 19 second times most of the day, which again was disappointing. Jet tried her best but she just wasn’t running the kind of times she normally does, being off by 0.4-6 seconds, but I think she found it hard work running in all the heats. It’s a lot of fun getting to be on the line though!

Dylan also got to play at CleverDogs! I was more interested in letting him work on different equipment than really going for a time with him, which worked out quite well because we only got one recorded time in the end! He clocked a 23.– in the Starters division, not too bad. I was more concerned that he ran the course well, and he did, but boy was he a tired dog! Nothing like his normal speed and enthusiasm. Teams are allowed some time to practise on the course before being timed, so I got a chance to play with Dylan a bit first. I really need to work on being clearer with my commands, but we got some work done on rear crosses and I even layered in a jump at one point, which Dylan didn’t mind at all, although it didn’t exactly achieve the intended and Dyl still took off back towards the weaves!

The CleverDogs was being run by some of the people from the British Agility Association, and I’m apparently a recognisable name now because I was asked whether Dylan was the dog I won everything with or if I had another. I had to confess Dylan was only the baby and Kim was off flyballing today, otherwise she’d have come and done some CleverDogs too.

The weather was awful all day, but we clearly didn’t have the worst of it. All the outdoor agility shows have been cancelled, including the huge Dashin Dogs show. But the tournament just felt very ‘meh’ … nobody could muster any enthusiasm to run, possibly because so often we were against an empty lane, but mainly because the atmosphere was just dead. Other teams seemed to be feeling the same way as us, and I’m not sure if we’ll be doing Carlton Towers next year. The first year I went (2004), Kim was running in her first ever open tournament and we came 3rd in the division, only to be told that the rosettes weren’t available and we wouldn’t get any. I know there are problems with every tournament but that was the standard the first year I went, and it seems to have got worse every year since. There are other competitions on Easter Weekend and right now, even the cancelled ones seem more appealing!

I got three lights for early changovers too, which is appalling. I haven’t done that for months!

Thanks to Cat Clark of http://www.themodernlove.co.uk/ for providing the photos of Dylan in this post and the last, and for the videos. Also thanks to Jess for allowing us to borrow her camera to film the Barking Owlers.