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!