Thursday, 7 August 2008

Flyball pictures

Asher at Chilterns


Asher at Stockbridge

Wednesday, 6 August 2008

A few pics of the doglets

These are just a few photos from my phone that I thought I'd post



Asher on his wall!


Asher and Tess pretty tired

Tess looking pretty



Asher



Asher looking handsome


Anglesey week -The parties and other stuff!

Well Friday evening (the day we arrived) we were going to have an early night until me and Louise started on the cider (we are from the west country!), we were up until 3 and had to get up at 8! That kinda set the tone for the week really.

Monday was a rest day for us so we all took the dogs to the beach, they love it there and we quite like it too. We all went in the sea, up to our knees anyway and the dogs swam. The sun shone and there was nowhere I'd rather of been at that time, it was lush.

Monday night was the 'official' party or PODfest as it became known, they had a lady come in to do the entertainment. She's been coming for a few years now and is brilliant, she really gets everyone involved and shes got a great voice. She got everyone singing and dancing, not that are team needs much encouragement and along with the mad mutts we caused are usual chaos. I led the amarillo around the field for the 2nd year running... yeh i'm cool! Then it started raining and we carried on dancing in the rain, good times! We then all descended on high flyers base camp, where the party continued and the talk rapidly switched to flyball boxes. We really need a new box for the team but can't decide which sort to get, anyway everyone has a different opinion and I will discuss it in a separate post. About 2 we literally staggered home, still soaking wet and 5 of us carried on talking til gone 4am, it was the chocolate vodka that finished us in the end!

Tuesday we went to the leisure centre, went swimming and got to have a proper shower which was very much needed!

Thursday was the other big party to celebrate Louise's from High flyers 21st birthday. The weather was rubbish by then so we had it in the admin gazebo by the ring. Had a wicked night, quite a lot of people there and we played games and stuff. Me and Mark from my team did an allnighter, were hardcore. We walked to the beach at 5 in the morning with Carol (who couldnt sleep) and the dogs. Was really fun, I've attempted this walk on several previous anglesey encounters but we usually get bored once we reach the golf course and turn back so it was nice to finally make it!

So all in all we had a brilliant time in Anglesey, shame we had to come home a day early as I missed lee's birthday party :-(. Can't wait til next year although some of my team members won't be returning due to the behaviour of another team, such a shame when that happens.

I'd also like to give a massive congratulations to the High Flyers who carried on up to the Wirral when they left Anglesey and managed a fastest time of 17.13seconds making them top seed in the country! They also won the division :-).

Anglesey week -The racing

The racing was great, was really nice to race against teams we don't usually see and of course spend quality time with the ones we do! We had two teams: the missiles and the rockets as we didn't have all the first team dogs there. Rockets raced saturday, we were on a seed time of 19.46secs, which ideally we didn't want to break because of the summer champs in a couple of weeks. It was tricky as we had molly the little border terrier who runs around 7seconds plus 5 pretty fast collies (one of which won't run over full height) so the plan was to run three races over 9" and two over 14". So the first two races we ran over 9" and we promptly lost as we were doing 20s with Asher and 21s without. First race in the afternoon we ran over 14, the plan was for the first 3 dogs to do there normal thing and for me to hang back with Asher and let go when I thought he could win it, easier said than done! So yeh I broke our seed time to 19.30secs...oops, i was like 10ft late so not alot else i could do. We won that race and the next race over 14". Our last race was against demon dogz (can't remember if it was pawz or racers) who were running mid 20s so we went with molly and the 3 fastest collies. It was brilliant racing that went to the wire, we won it 3-2 which put us 3rd, we were thrilled considering how much mixing around we had to do and Asher was still running 3.9 in the last race (over 9) even in the heat, good boy!

Missiles raced Sunday, Tess ran in this team. We were greatly helped by Jive running in this team as even though she is nearly 10 she still runs well under 5 seconds. We've stuggled the last couple of comps as she has been promoted to the rockets but we are still running on a seed time with her in the team of 23.37secs. Speed wise we didn't have a lot on the other teams but what we did have was complete consistency which in the end won us 1st place :-). Was really pleased with Tess as she ran consistent 5.7secs, I know thats not fast but for a dog that is over 11yrs old and has never exactly been lightening I think its pretty good!

For the 2nd comp of the week, both teams ran Wednesday. Missiles were on first and it became apparent to me that Tess is affected by the weather, as it was quite cold and the ground a bit slippy. Tess is very careful when its slippy and her joints weren't warm enough to be as supple, consequently she wasn't as quick as the weekend before and i didn't run her as much. Fortunately two of the other dogs on the team ran much better than they had on the previous weekend as the heat had really got to them. This resulted in another 1st place :-).

By the time the Rockets raced the ground had dried out a bit, we went with the same format as before. And again we lost the first two races although one of them only just which was a shame. The third race was against Hotshots, we decided to run over 14", it was really hard judging when to let asher go as there last dog is tiny but also pretty quick. Unfortunately I underestimated Asher and despite still being about 6 foot late we did a 18.98seconds... double ooops! We then won the next two races, one over 14" and one over 9" which wasn't as close as soxon were running 21secs. We came 2nd overall. Not bad for a week: 2 1sts, a 2nd and a 3rd :-)

To see some pictures of Asher and the rockets racing, go to equipics http://www.equipics.co.uk/viewdir.tlx?albumid=166330

Really love the pics of him here as you can see him run on the right hand side of the jumps so that he can get on the box properly, also love the pic of him on the box and coming off of it :-)

Really enjoyed watching division 1, Shooting Stars were still a force to be reckoned with despite not having dodgy dot-com there super height dog, shame they're not at the summer champs this year!

Anglesey Week - the weather

Well I've made it back safely from Anglesey after what can only be described as a week of two halfs weather wise! The first weekend was absolutely beautiful, it was so hot and sunny I got sunburnt (which is now peeling *yuck*). Then Monday we had showers culminating in a proper thunderstorm overnight, I was literally clinging on to Tess as she was panicking trying to escape from the tent... it's only as she's got older that it has started to bother her, Asher just slept. From there the weather gradually got worse, and after very strong winds thursday night and torrential rain we decided to come home friday fearing that the tent wouldn't survive another night!