Sutton Fields Flyball

Mollie and Dylan ran on Saturday with the Night Owlers in Division 8. We’ve got quite a nice little Nights team shaping up there! We ran 20.98, won our division and Dylan got his 200 points, I’m so pleased! He ran in nearly every leg and was a little pro. Some of his turns in the afternoon were a little dodgy, but I think that’s my fault for messing up in the practise time and both freaking Katie out by sending him just as she was putting the ball in (sorry Katie! I was thinking I’d just send him around without a ball) and then not doing a full run with the cone. Jane was stopwatch-ing the dogs in Nights to get some competitive singles times, and Dylan surprisingly threw out consistent sub-5s times … bit of a shock there! He was running well but he’s not even touching full speed yet, I don’t think he’s clocked on to racing yet.

Mollie is always awesome, and she was the smallest dog in the team this weekend but she still ran her paws off over 14″ (full-height) hurdles. Jane clocked her at a few 5s times over the big jumps, so she proved she’s still got it! However, after we’d finished racing, she unfortunately got so excited and so silly late in the afternoon she made herself sick, which meant she wasn’t up for the return journey on Sunday. I really think it was just a mix over-excitement, over-heating and dehydration. She never knows when to call it a day!

Kim was a mishmashed Barneys team on Sunday, on a declared time of 19.60 and in Division 3. We ended up running 19.46 as our fastest time although I’m positive we could have gone faster, we were all playing safe with changeovers, but since our breakout time was 19.10 we didn’t want to risk it! Kim had some cracking runs, I think she likes running with Jet! She was over 13″ though and it does wear her out, but we won the division anyway.

Dylan came back with us on Sunday and we threw him in Singles and Pairs, just to see what he could do. His best Singles time was 4.81 and his Pairs with Chip clocked 9.88. Chip came 2nd in the Starters singles with a 4.50 and both he and Dylan ran over 14″, none of this 7″ lark, so not too shabby for the babies! But of course Jet and Kim couldn’t have their baby brothers beating them so they ran the very last Pairs race of the day in a bid to beat Chip and Dylan and win the Multibreed Pairs title … but they only succeeded on one count! They ran a 9.81 which put them 2nd for the Multibreed, but Kim won it last year (with Poppy) and Jet won it on Saturday (with Miko), so we weren’t too disappointed.

We have to try and make it back next year anyway as ‘Owlers won the Lucy Locket trophy for the highest percentage of wins over the weekend. Next year we’ll be defending titles everywhere!

[Edited to Add: Our lovely team captain Jane named Dylan as the ‘Owlers Dog of the Day for this tournament, very proud of my little man!]