Restless Paws

‘Owlers have withdrawn from Newark in 2 weeks for various reasons, which I’m a bit sad about because it means Kim won’t have a chance to run “properly” indoors this winter season. Kim loves running indoors, perferably in the loudest, most echo-ing hall with the hardest surface, and she always throws up her fastest singles times in those circumstances. Having said that, most of our dogs (like most “normal” flyball dogs over here in the UK) don’t really like running on rubber matting and it’s hard on our veteran gang, so it’s probably for the best. Our next flyball will be at Doncaster, which is run on turf and the ring is in such a huge arena it always feels to be outdoors. The cars and caravans parked indoors don’t help! And then in the new year we’ll have Rotherham in the marquee, which is pretty fab and does feel like an indoor tournament as Kim proved by running her little socks off at the last one. (As soon as we start talking about pulling her back next season and swapping teams so she can ease into retirement next year, she blows off to run sub-5s times all day over 13″ jumps and looks comfortable in Div 1 company. I can see she’s not going down without a fight — that’s my girl!)

November is looking pretty dull now though! I have EMDAC on the 29th but that’s a whole 4 weeks away. For some reason, every year I have a mental blank when it comes to November and I just never enter anything, and every year I’m bored stupid every weekend! Luckily we still have training every week for agility and flyball so hopefully that will keep me entertained, and I’m going to try and get some of the weaves at home again so I can really sort Dylan’s weave entries out. I’m really wishing I’d entered Newton Heath though, Kim could have had her first Grade 4 classes — just 2 runs but both Graded, and Dylan would have had 3 Graded runs. But I thought 4 weeks in a row (Newark, NH, EMDAC, Wyre/Donny) would have been a bit much so I skipped it. Remind me not to do that again!

Huge congrats to Vicki with Diesel for qualifying for Crufts today, and he’s still only 6 months old!