Acremead, the May version

So 4 teams this weekend, great fun, I love having lots of teams in! Missiles, Extraset and Rockets ran Saturday.

Missiles were the usual team and ran well improving their seed time by over a second but only managed 5th place.

Extraset were Jemma, Perry, Elliot, Jamie and Jive. This team ran fabulously. At the last Acremead with Piper and Smartie in the team they managed 20secs so when submitting a time for them we thought 21secs would be reasonable as Perry and Jamie were running just over 5.5 and Jemma and Elliot just under 5. Well this lot decided they didn't think much of our estimation and in the 1st race did 20.16secs... oops! We then had to be really careful not to breakout again so held back lots on our changeovers and ran late 20s for the rest of the day. Needless to say they won the division! As much as I'm not a fan of winning by such a margin, it was an honest mistake and we genuinely didn't expect to run that fast so we were all ecstatic at how well the team ran. Sarah's housemate Tasha took some videos so I thought I would time and see what the dogs were running. The reason for breaking out soon became clear! Perry was doing 5.1ish, Jamie 5.3, Elliot 4.6 and Super Jem had sped up to 4.4secs!! I think Jem had suddenly realised that it might be fun to race the other dog rather than just stare at it on the way to the box so was flying. Elliot was also coming back better and his box looked really good. Still some work to be done on his return drive but luckily Sarah is a good pupil and I'm sure will get that sorted!

Rockets were ran as Diefer, Sonny, Smartie and Bunty (with Rosie as reserve as she is coming back from injury). We were hoping Diefer would be fine running over the lower jumps especially as he had run faultlessly over 12" at training last weekend. Well he was fine in the red lane but was still being really naughty in the blue lane. There was really no excuse for this as he ran fine for most of last year over this height. Back to the drawing board i'm afraid and he needs more boxwork as it didn't look good! To be honest the rest of the team were also a bit all over the place and never really gelled. Sonny ran well in the morning and did nice boxes but looked sluggish in the afternoon. Smartie was great but had an odd moment where she suddenly went lame and then 5mins later she was fine again. Bunty was another one who was great in the morning but dropped her ball a couple of times in the afternoon which she hasn't done for years! So overall a bit of a kerfuffle! We submitted 19secs and they managed 19.44secs I think. We came 3rd but should really have won it as we beat the top seeds and eventual winners and only lost the other races on lights, it just wouldn't come together!

Ballistics ran Sunday. The team was Piper, Luna, Lacy and Asher. Again we had a submitted time, although not very well planned, we were asked at the last acremead if we just wanted to submit the same time as we ran at that show which we thought was 18.58secs, we just went with it not knowing which dogs were going to run. Some how our fastest time was recorded as 18.69 and we ended up in div 2 on that declared time. Well with these dogs we knew we would be quite a bit faster than this so again had to be careful on changeovers. Piper looked fantastic, lovely box and running 4.1-4.2 over the 12", his handler was also more confident and was doing excellent starts. Luna looked faster than the last show although not sure what times as changes were so far out! Lacy was great as always and looked more comfortable over the 12" than last show. Asher had a whale of a time running anchor, he point blank refused to be beaten back and won a couple of legs by just a couple of 100ths of a second despite going out 2/3 jumps behind! The only problem with him when he plays catch up is that he blows his box turn, they weren't terrible but certainly not as good as when he runs start. And he proved my point in 1 race when he was actually out before the other teams last dog and did beautiful box turns so that is something for us to work on. We won every race and I thoroughly enjoyed the racing. Our best time was 18.28secs but I think we could of knocked pretty much a second off that with tight changeovers. It was good in a way that we couldn't go much faster as we now don't have Piper for the next 3 shows so atleast we are on a realistic seed time for the dogs that will run in that team although right now don't ask me who they will be!

The Ballistics win on Sunday was dedicated to Tess who would of been 13 on that day. I miss her so so much so I'm glad we were able to mark the day with a win for her.

It was also Asher's 4th birthday on Saturday and his present was of course being allowed to run all day on Sunday, I don't think he would of asked for anything better!

Below are a couple of videos of the Extraset