British Flyball Championships 2009

This was our first time at the “new look” BFA Championships, but we couldn’t have picked a better weekend; gorgeous weather, fantastic racing and maybe just a little bit of luck on our side, as we’d drawn in the top half of the seedings for all our divisions.

Friday

The girls were up. We knew they had a strong team; the four solid old ladies (or honourary old ladies) in Kim, Mollie, Bailey and Buffy, with ever-reliable Sam on hand to support his harem of girls. We also had Stripe, who has been up and down in the past year but has been looking stronger, fitter and more focused in every training session recently, promising a return to form but weren’t quite sure if it would show. We were expecting to have to fight for the win though, and we had trained accordingly — all the handlers had worked very, very hard to make sure that the dogs were as fit and healthy as possible — and we worked endlessly on changeovers and stamina at training. We all know each other inside out, and we all know the dogs (which ones take a while to warm up, who tires quickly, who can lunge on the pass) so we can adjust for changeovers, weird runbacks, which habits to watch for. And so it was easy.

Mollie was running lead, and she just revelled in the atmosphere, soaked it all up and ran a 4.8s in the first leg. Kim and Bailey were throwing out their consistent 5s times, with perfect box turns every time, and Buffy was just her ever-ready, ever-consistent self. Stripe was back to his old self and Sam was single striding for the occasion. Our gang just stepped up and obliterated the opposition. We won every race in three leg straight wins. We got just one light all day (an early change from yours truly!) but since the other team also had a light, Kim pulled an old trick out of the bag and did a turn-around on the 5ft line and so we still finished the race in time to get a point. (Thank you Flloyd, all those years ago, for teaching us that one!)

Night Owlers, aka Mollie, Bailey, Buffy, Sam, Stripe and Kim, are Division 24 Champions 2009.

Saturday

We had very high hopes for Hawk Owlers. We’d drawn as top seed, and our five baby dogs were all ready to show what they were made of. None of the dogs had done their best last year; Dylan and Buddy didn’t go at all, Lucy wasn’t with Owlers, Skye had barely trained and Chip was still unpredictable.

It started so well, when we ran our first sub-20s time as a team with a 19.98 against Grasshoppers. We had room to spare with changeovers, the dogs were just warming up, and it looked so promising. We won the next one, but then lost the last race in the morning with changeover lights.

Pressure was on! We knew if we won both afternoon races we could still win; nobody else had won all their races either, and we had the second fastest time which would put us 1st in a three-way tie. (The fastest time set by Grasshoppers was a break-out and wouldn’t count, so we technically had the fastest). We came back in the afternoon and won the first race, but there was some tension in the team.

The last race against Golden Valley should have been a walkover. We’d run 2s faster than them in the morning session, and they hadn’t won a race all day. But we folded under the pressure; a few bad decisions and a few bad calls came back to haunt us, and we’d lost in straight legs and that left us 3rd in Division 18.

It was ours to win and we blew it. Unfortunately the whole Owlers camp focused on that, including me, when really we should have been looking at the positives; we smashed our seed time by nearly half a second, Dylan and Skye ran like true professionals, despite having been competing in Open tournaments for less than 12months. And Buddy, our lovable chocolate Lab, was a complete revelation. I’m sure Michelle wouldn’t mind me saying that at the beginning of the summer season, nobody would have guessed he could run in a sub-20 team and make it look as easy as he did.

Sunday

Thankfully we’re a generally cheerful bunch, so we bounced right back on Sunday to watch the Barney Owlers kicking ass in Division 7. Mum was on the line, I was scribing, and Norah, Floss, Jet and George were just fantastic all day, I was very privileged to get the front row seat (and to keep circling the big W as they won leg after leg!)

The guys also ran 18.25, well under their seed time and much faster than they thought they could go.

Barney Owlers, aka Norah, Floss, Jet and George, are Division 7 Champions 2009.

We also won the Feelwell Trophy, which is given to the primary team with the highest percentage of wins.