Redcar

Flyball at one of my favourite ever venues, walks on the beach and beautiful weather. Can’t ask for much more!

Dylan and his best redhead girl Skye were up with the Barneys in Div 2, and we came 1st, just pipping the lovely Monsters gang, and most of the racing went to 5 legs so we had to work for it.

I was a bit unsure how the team would be to run in as I don’t much like scratch teams; they tend to be unbalanced and in this case, there were 3 fast dogs, 1 reasonably fast dog, and Dylan. Technically there is less than .5s seperating each dog’s singles time, but it’s still a bit disconcerting to find you have the noticably slowest dog on the team. But actually the team all ran really well together, and they weren’t miles faster without Dylan.

The Owlers gang got a lovely walk on the beach after they’d finished racing; Dylan, Jet and Chip hit the sand early and then picked up George, Norah and the Labradors a little while later.

The girls had a bit of a miserable day on Saturday, since I flat out refused to take them down to the beach. They have the stamina and the drive to do a crazy beach session and then race the day after, but they wouldn’t be as fresh and their times would have suffered.

We stayed in a slightly odd but clean and friendly hotel on Saturday night, and actually got a bit of a lie-in on Sunday morning! We trundled the 5minutes to the venue for about 9am, and only because I was Vice-Captain for the wayward Night Owlers. I’m not quite sure what happened, but a team who, on paper, should have run around 20s (if not high 19s) somehow ended up running times varying from 21.94 to 30.09 with the same 4 dogs and no lights! Not quite sure how that happened, but thankfully we all have a very good sense of humour.

As it happened, the girls ran brilliantly on Sunday, so I think we made the right decision in not letting them visit the beach! Again we had a scratch team, and the girls ran their paws off but couldn’t make up the losses, and we came 4th overall in Div 5. I admit I was a bit more relaxed than I would normally be, and so if Kim got an early changeover light I re-ran her every time. She was having a blast over 11″ (with Bailey in the team) and having her slow up a bit towards the end of the day wasn’t going to make a difference to the decision. We also did a fantastically awesome turnaround, Kim belted down the line and then didn’t even hit the 10ft line before she’d spun around and re-run. I think we impressed the ring party, and we won the leg, so that’s the important bit.

They did eventually get to the beach though, on Sunday afternoon. It was worth the wait; they had a blast with Bailey. It was a gorgeous afternoon as well; we (Emma, me, and the 4 dogs) paddled out in the breakers for a while, although the dogs did go a bit deeper than we did!