Doncaster Flyball (Cantley Park)

It’s really hard to write about how the dogs did this weekend and focus on their positive points and make a record for myself of how they did. Julie was helping/captaining one of our teams (I can’t remember which team it was) and within minutes of leaving the ring was rushed to Doncaster A&E. Although I won’t go into details, she’s seriously ill and could do with all the best thoughts and wishes you can send her. If you would like a send a card or pass on a message, please let Katie know via the Ruffdogs forum.

Obviously our whole team was devastated, and as news from hospital was relayed back to us it became a very hard decision to continue racing. But as we sat and discussed it, we all thought Julie would have been thoroughly unimpressed with us if we’d pulled out, so we chose to let our teams remain in the tournament.

Mollie and Kim were both a touch slower than normal, but they both ran well all day, both in Marsh Owlers. Mollie was clocking around 5-5.1 and Kim about 4.9, but neither felt as fast as they had done at Newark. Claire commented that Lolly was no where near her normal manic and speedy self either, particularly in the morning. Our team did well overall though, we came 3rd in the end and ruined our Marsh seed time by running a 20.80! Kim was also involved in a tussle with old LeadLegs Stripe, who had decided not to have lead legs anymore and actually ran the fastest singles times of the whole team. It’s the first time he’s been really enthused at a tournament and hasn’t really learnt how to channel that energy, so he decided to take his excitement out on my little Kim. Well, Kim doesn’t stand for that kind of nonsense from these young whippersnappers so she put him right back in his place, despite the fact he’s three times her size — I actually didn’t know whether to be more worried about Stripe than Kim! Luckily neither of them were injured and were fine and happy with each other for the rest of the day as they normally are. Unfortunately with all the excitement and hype that we expect our dogs to deal with in flyball, these things sometimes happen.

Dylan was brilliant, I am so proud! I’ve always said I thought he was going to be a lead dog like his dad and after training on Wednesday that’s where we decided to put him. He was super-focussed as soon as we lined up, did some wicked turns and then some not-so-good ones, but he was always driving in from his left and snapping around so the foundation is definitely there. We came 3rd in the end but we battled hard for it! Starters is run “best of 3 run 3” and if it had gone to 5 legs in each of our final races I think we could have won it.

There’s a chance he may be stepping in to a proper team next week as one of the Owlers dogs is due in season and if she does come in, Dylan will be taking her place. I don’t think he’ll get his FD first time out as Kim did because he’s subbing for one of the slower teams, but it will be a great experience for him. And if he’s not running with them he’ll be taking up his place as lead in the Little Owlers starters team again so fingers crossed we get a good result.