Swallownest

Not a great weekend at Swallownest. Dylan was a little off on Friday evening but nothing dramatic, and I figured he’d just been eating something he shouldn’t (like he usually does). Unfortunately he was a sad man all day Saturday and I nearly pulled him completely from racing. He went onto a reduced racing schedule and did a few legs here and there, but he wasn’t himself and his times reflected that.

His team finished 1st in their division but from my perspective, it wasn’t a good day. Not only was Dylan ill, but the team ran very slow times and we lost to the only other competent team in the division (the other teams struggled to have four dogs complete successfully). The rest of my team seemed happy though, so I do feel a bit guilty about feeling disappointed. No-one is to blame for our current lineup, it’s just the way things have fallen this year with various older dogs being retired, height dogs being injured, and our Starter dogs aren’t ready to take up team positions yet. Those are all very good reasons for the lineup! But Dylan has run in 18-19s teams and to go to a 23s team when he hasn’t got any slower is hard for me to take. So the real problem is my ego, and if I can’t get a handle on that, I’ve no business in a flyball team anyway.

Ri had a good day playing in the wheat fields again, although she did get tragically lost at one point and went into super-panic-mode. My thanks to the guys from Extreme Racers for trying to catch her! She evaded everyone and eventually got shepherded back in the right direction and sighted us. She’s can be such a muffin sometimes, really.