Stockbridge Week

Ok I'm going to try and be fairly brief as it was a very busy week and to be quite honest I can't remember everything!

First Weekend

Missiles and ballistics ran Saturday. Missiles were missing Sky due to injury so struggled a bit within their division but still managed to come 4th. Ballistics were missing Piper so had a 1st team of Lacy, Asher, Rosie and Luna. Without Piper our times suffered and our best was 17.63secs. We lost to Shooting Stars and Lightening Strikes and came 3rd. With having the Shooting Star lights we were able to see individual dog times. We've got these all recorded, Sarah has them somewhere *edit to say* Sarah has now sent me all the times but my computer is too damn old to open the file, i'll do a separate post on it!! From memory I think Lacy's fastest was 4.31 with an average of i think 4.42, she's very consistent. Ashers fastest was 3.76 and average 3.91. Rosie had a fastest of 4.49 and average of i think 4.7something. Luna had a fastest of 4.52 and again an average of 4.7ish.



Sunday we had Rockets and Extraset running. Rockets were Diefer, Elliot, Smartie and Bunty. Same old problem with rockets which was consistency, they seem to be able to hit the odd sub 19 time and then can't keep it up for the rest of the day and are comfortable around low to mid 19s. Diefer seemed to be back on form and was running 4.2s. Elliot ran probably the best I've seen him, he had a best time of 4.5something and averaged around 4.7. Smartie had a best time of around 4.6 and averaged i think 4.82. Bunty had a best time 0f 5.1something but averaged around 5.5. They did a best time of 18.88 and came 5th.



Extraset were Jemma, Sonny, Perry and Jamie. This is our lovely little consistent team apart from Katie running Sonny and still in the process of learning changeovers. They were just a bit unlucky that some of the races didn't go their way but as always they hit low 20s all day and had a best time of 20.05secs. They came 5th. Jemma was hitting some fab times, I believe her best was 4.43 and she averaged 4.5-4.6. Sonny had a best of around 4.7 and averaged i think 4.89secs. Perry was consistent as ever at 5.3-5.4secs and Jamie had a best time of 5.2 and averaged about 5.4. Excuse the video skills lol:

The Inbetweeny Bit

During our week between competitions we did some pretty fun stuff. Midweek we had fancy dress pairs which was hilarious. You had to run the dogs as a pair then the humans had to go 1 at a time up the flyball lane, down a glass of wine, shout "I love flyball" and come back. It was very funny. Me and Sarah dressed as ladybirds and managed to win our division with Asher and Elliot. The boys must have found it very exciting as they ran extra well, I had 2 people come up and tell me they saw Asher run a 3.6, I wish I'd seen it! The rest of our team were also quite successful with Mark and June with Smartie and Rosie coming 2nd in another division and Carol and Mark with Luna and Fraggle!! won the other division!

We also took part in a bit of fun agility where I tried running Jemma and Elliot, E wasn't too bothered but Jemma wasn't impressed although I was surprised she did it at all as she is such a mummy's girl!

Our plan for the week was to also push on a bit with the puppies training as they are all now over a year old (time flys!). I'm really pleased with how they are all coming on, Shani and Loki have had lots of work put in to their boxwork at home and it really showed. It was Shani's 1st time on our box (Nick had made a dummy 1 to practice at home) and she was doing 4 feet turns with ball within about 15mins. Carol has also been working on Merlin but as he is her mums dog hasn't had as much time as she would like, with just a few minutes each day by the end of the week he was also doing 4feet turns with ball. Loki's turn is looking brilliant, here is a vid of Merlin and Loki. I will try get 1 of Shani plus Moss and Ruby (who are also making good progress) soon.

The rest of the week consisted of walking the dogs, partying, lots of alcohol, lots of food and 2 trips to A+E!

Second Weekend

It was just the Missiles on Saturday. Fraggle decided after his amazing performance in pairs that he was done for the week and couldn't really be arsed! This resulted in a very comical performance which greatly entertained the crowd but not so much his owner! They still won 1 race and came 4th!

We were supposed to have the other 3 teams Sunday but unfortunately Jemma became ill and wasn't able to race, this meant we didn't have enough dogs and had to withdraw the Extraset. Sarah kindly also withdrew Elliot so that the remaining 6 dogs could run as the rockets. With having 6 dogs the Rockets never really gelled and were never going to be fast enough for division 2 so we just rotated the racing so it was fair for all the dogs. I got to run Jamie which was great fun as I haven't ran a little dog for years, I might have to get myself a handbag dog, I think they suit me! Unfortunately the team came last and managed a best time of 19.40secs.

Ballistics were the same team although we did have Elliot join us for some warmups. We've been on at Carol for a while now about how exciting she needs to be for Luna so that she comes back quicker and so after various discussions through the week Carol put everything in to running her. This made such a difference and Luna managed to clock a few late 4.3s and 4.4s, she also seemed to be starting to race the other lane. We were thinking how great this was, especially when we managed 17.43secs until disaster struck. We came out in the afternoon and in red lane Luna was coming back though the finish line and continuing to race the other dog in to their runback area. It wasn't agressive and she had the ball in her mouth the whole time but she was running at high speed. We were stumped, didn't see that 1 coming! So our last race in red was against an NFC Jets, they kindly let us run our team 1st so that Luna would do it right and she was fine. Unfortunately as many of you would of seen this problem carried over to haunt us at the Champs but I just wanted to show how recently it started. Despite this we came 2nd and were really pleased with the time as I wouldn't expect that time without Piper.

Hmmm so that wasn't exactly brief but nevermind, I guess I remembered more than I thought! Coming next... Champs!