Fairview Farm

Ok so this is over a week late, but as they say... better late than never! We had 3 teams in. Rockets ran Saturday.

Rockets were in Division 3. We had Bonnie, Lacy, Sonny, Perry and Jamie. Weather was a bit rubbish on the Saturday so it was a bit slippery. Bonnie was alot better on the box although still fumbling a bit, she was running around 4.2secs when her box was ok. Lacy was fab as usual, then I was running Perry and Carol was running Sonny as Louise was on holiday. We just swapped Perry and Sonny so as to keep the team fairly consistent with Jamie on the end. They ran really well and ended up winning all their races and therefore the division with a best time of 19.43secs.

Had a brilliant night Saturday, playing games with my team then after most of them went to bed we invaded the Mutts and then the few of us left standing invaded Lightning and somehow stayed up til gone 4.30am. Don't know where the time went! Was up again by half 8 and I swear I was still drunk! Had to go run a dog though!

Ballistics and Missiles raced Sunday. Missiles were on 1st and bottom seed by quite a margin. We decided to put Jive in this team to give them a little bit of speed. They still ended up coming last but did take a couple of races to 5 legs and raced quite consistently.

Ballistics were 5th seed in Division 1, we had Rosie back from her holidays so had a team of Diefer, Asher, Rosie, Smartie and Bunty. 1st race was against Barkshire Bandits, we went without Smartie, and proceeded to break our seed time 3 times in a row by doing 2 times in the 17.50s and then a 17.46secs! We won that 3-0 and it gave us a lot of confidence to go and face our next competitors... Shooting Stars. Ordinarily we would rest one of our faster dogs as we wouldn't think we had a chance of beating them on time but now we decided to were gonna go for it! We rested Smartie again, went in and did a 17.42, then a faster time than I could of dreamt of for this year 17.37secs!!! Stars got lights on both of these legs so we were 2-0 up. 3rd leg was sooo close, no lights, they did 17.55, we did 17.52... Omg we'd just beaten Shooting Stars! That was it for the morning, in the afternoon, 1st race was against Maples which is nearly always eventful! We went 2-0 up, the 1st one they got a light then the next we beat them on speed. 3rd leg, Diefer came really wide off the box and ran out so 2-1, then we were late on our changes so 2-2. Last leg there was a lot of pressure but we held it together and won it! Then we also beat Shooting Star Comets. Last race all went a bit pear shaped against Hampshire but we'd won 4 out of 5 and won Division 1!!

I can't remember the last time we won Div 1, it was literally years ago. I had a goal for this year which I set back in January that was for ballistics to go sub 17.50secs, i thought after the way some of the comps had gone this year and after it taking so long to come together that this aim was a bit unrealistic so I am so thrilled that we beat it by over a 10th of a sec and hopefully we can go a little bit quicker! It's funny how everything happens for a reason, and how an unplanned chain of events can lead you to success. E.g. If it hadn't been for June (with Rosie) and Lou and Bobbie being on hols at Becketts Farm then Smartie never would of been in the 1st team. Smartie can't change to Diefer cuz she loves him so much she nips him on her outrun so Asher had to go 2nd. If it hadn't been for this we wouldn't of realised how much better Angie with Buntys changeovers would be to a slightly slower dog. We also wouldn't have known how much better Diefer would be with Asher running to him. He was back hitting 4.1s at Stockbridge which he hasn't really done all year and we believe it is because although Asher is fast he is also very inoffensive and non-confrontational unlike the other bossy bitches in the team! So from Frimley to Stockbridge just swapping Rosie and Asher round improved the time by half a second! Obviously some of this has got to be improved racing fitness but it really makes you think!

So yeh bring on the Champs! Can. Not. Wait.