Becketts Farm

Last show of the year for us, I hate getting to the end of the season, what am I going to do with myself now? Was really annoyed that the silly students gave me Freshers Flu (even though Im not a student anymore!) so I spent the whole weekend looking and feeling like a zombie, rubbish!

On Saturday we had the Extraset as 4th seed (I think:-S) in division 9. The team was Jemma, Perry, Elliot, Jive, Molly and Fraggle. The plan was to run mainly Perry, Elliot, Jive and Molly with Jemma and Fraggle doing warm ups and if they were good, Jemma getting a few runs in the blue lane and Fraggle a few runs in the red lane to give Jive a rest. What I'm forgetting to mention here is that it was Elliot's 1st open and 1st time doing flyball since doing starters in May... you wouldn't of known, he was fantastic, didn't put a foot wrong all day! Unfortunately on the last leg of the 1st race disaster struck when Jive suddenly went very lame. We won that race but it meant either Jemma or Fraggle would have to run in her place. Jemma did well, running some nice legs in the blue lane but was naughty in the red. We won another race with Fraggle who was really up for it and ran really well. Despite winning 2 races we came 5th with a best time of 22.57secs. Well done to Sarah who had to do proper changeovers for the 1st time and did really well under my instruction lol ;-)

Sunday we had Rockets bottom seed in division 3. The team was Bonnie, Lacy, Sonny, Smartie and Jamie. To be honest we weren't expecting much as our seed time was still on 18.89 which was the fastest this year and they hadn't been sub 19 since. However the dogs were really up for it and despite losing the 1st race hit another 18.89secs. In the 2nd race everything came together, Bonnie had a perfect start and ran a brilliant 4.18 and the team went on to run 18.48secs! (I did say Rockets could go faster!) The team won 3 races and were abit unlucky on the last race getting lights to finish a very credible 3rd.

Ballistics were bottom seed in division 1 and I was expecting an absolute hammering but actually really looking forward to it as we were hoping for some more records and we knew their would probably be quite a few people watching. We also had a new edition to the team. The team was Diefer, Asher, Rosie, Bunty and Luna! 1st race was against High Flyers, we went with the normal 4 and ran 17.57secs which we were thrilled with as our times seemed to have been dropping off the last couple of shows so that was a definite improvement. 2nd race against Bassetts we had Luna instead of Diefer so I went start. Asher ran a 3.77 :-D (3.82 with a 0.05 start). Luna was really good but our changes were a little off but we were pleased to still run sub 18 times. 3rd race was the big test, we decided to run without Bunty over Luna's height of 12". We hadn't trained it, it was more just a tester race to see what happened. Thankfully all the dogs accepted the height change very easily and it didn't seem to make a lot of difference time wise to Dief, Ash, or Rosie however it did affect Luna's times quite a bit. That combined with our changeovers being a bit rubbish (allowing for them to have slowed up over the higher jumps when they hadn't really) meant we only managed 17.80. It was still a good close race against Live wires though. We lost all the morning races but the dogs were brill and we got to see Bassetts break the British record again... twice! 1st running a 16.65 then a 16.60, well done Bassetts! In the afternoon we had a fantastic race against Molten where we were 2-0 down then they got a light and the next leg was a dead heat! We lost but you can't beat that for closeness! Last race we held it together and ran really smoothly against Cheshire to win the race and finish 5th. Asher was a good boy, 1st race in the morning he looked quite sluggish, wasn't rotating properly on the box so wasn't getting the drive off, but then I had no voice so that didn't help. Luckily half way through the 2nd race when he ran start he woke up, ran the fab time and started turning beautifully. He was amazing after that, i think every box was 4 foot and he was driving back really well. I know Carol (with Luna) was a bit gutted that we weren't any quicker running over 12" but I still think that will be the way to go next year. As I mentioned in the previous post Luna's box is pretty awful at the moment so she is not getting the drive back, she is also very inexperienced and needs to get a bit more focus. Over the winter we will work on her box and see if she would in fact like to be a lefty like her boyfriend! We will also work on her speed on the return. Even as she is at the moment she is 4.3-4.4 over low jumps so with lots of work she should easily do that over 12". And with the other 3 currently averaging 12.5secs (12.3 on a good day) we could end up very quick! Time will tell, atleast it gives us something to aim towards!

Asher started the Pet Passport process so that we can go to the Euro's next year, very excited! So thats it for the year, back to training! I'll write a year review soon!