Home Farm Flyball

Alpha Dogz ran a fab tournament this weekend at Home Farm. Five divisions in 1 ring and they were still finished with presentations at 6:30! So organised and the rosettes were lovely, and they did special keyrings for the dogs in Starters which were fantastic.

Dylan was so naughty in his Starters team, I could have lynched him but he’s too adorable and happy. He ran up and down but that’s never been a problem for us, but that dreaded slammer’s turn was back!

I thought we nailed it after last week at Doncaster where he was 100% all day, but this weekend he was awful. We did forget his cone but he did some perfect turns around a water bottle before he ran, but then as soon as we took it away he was rubbish again. I was resigning myself to another three months in Starters with him!

He was down as emergency 5th dog for our depleted Barking team on Sunday, but we weren’t expecting him to run. We had always planned for him to go in with the team and do some warm-up runs, because it was his first time without netting in the arena and although we never really thought he’d have a problem, you can never be 100% sure. Jane brought the spare cone and we gave him a couple of runs in the 2mins warm up on every race, and he was doing his lovely turns again, and then he toodled off outside to wait whilst the pro team of Mollie, Kim, Stripe and Lolly raced their socks off. We knew before we ran that we didn’t really have a chance as our seed time had been set with Barney’s dogs Floss and Jet, so we were at least 0.5-1 second off the pace. We actually came 3rd in the end and did beat some teams, which was a nice surprise!

Anyway, we were losing to Cheshire Set by quite a way (they were running 19.60’s, I think the best we did was 20.71!) so Jane decided to put Dylan in to save Mollie. She loves running lead dog but false starts do take their toll eventually! So Dylan made his Divisional debut … after Mollie had a strop and slipped her harness and caused a bit of chaos. She knows when she’s getting pulled and she’s never happy about it! Mum took over running Kim, and off we went.

Well he ran up and down and did a textbook turn and I was so proud! He got a couple of runs against Cheshire and Dog Friendly’s who we really didn’t have a chance of beating. But Dyl’s turn was absolutely perfect on every run, I was so proud of my boy. Katie did an awesome job boxloading for him! The splits showed he ran a 5.1 but I still feel like he’s got some to give, that competitive spirit hasn’t kicked in yet and he’s not running anywhere near flat out. The 13″ jumps suited him well though, he looked a lot better over them than the 10/12″ he’s been running in Starters.

It only rained heavily once, but naturally it was right before the second half of our division. All our dogs can run in mud (Mollie and Lolly actually seem to prefer it!) but Kim drops about a ¼ second off her normal pace. She runs best indoors, and if we’re outdoors it’s ideally on sun-baked rock hard ground. Not enough to make a huge difference to our times, but enough to make her splits look slow and make me sad because as soon as she seems to be slowing down I just start thinking it’s her age, which leads me to think she’s getting old and then I get sad. She’s not old, she’s only 7, and she can still kick ass. It’s not age, it’s the weather, I have to remember that! Kim doesn’t do rain, she can’t bear getting all wet and ruining her good looks.

Finally, I did not get a light all day with Kim or Dylan. I don’t want to brag about my changeovers (except I totally do, because I am really good at changeovers!) because to balance it out I really sucked at going first, I need some serious training. My starts were way off! Mum got a 0.00 with Mollie and Andrea got 2 or 3 with Norah, which actually just goes to show how hard it was on this set of lights. Andrea normally gets at least a quarter of her starts dead on, and even when she doesn’t she’s rarely over 0.1 off. Mum isn’t too shabby either, particularly as Mollie doesn’t always run lead so it takes her a couple of goes to get her eye in. But I wasn’t even close — I think 0.1?? was my closest, but more like 0.2+. Shameful!