Here we go again :)... Acremead

Yay, season has finally started and with such beautiful weather!

Saturday we had Missiles and Babies. Missiles were Tyne, Sky, Chelsey, Fraggle, Guiness and Molly. They won 2 races and came 4th. Babies were awesome :-D. Team was Shani, Merlin, Loki and Ruby. We kept the prop infront of the box for all the morning races and then in the afternoon I was taking it out for 1 or 2 legs per race to see if they would hold their turns. Shani was stunning, she ran consistently at 3.9-4.0secs all day and box turn held up lovely. Merlin was also really focused and ran at around 4.8secs, box turn dropped a bit the 1st couple of times I took the prop out but they got better and were lovely by the end. I was so impressed with Loki, he has gone from the herdy, starey dog that struggled to focus to a dog with all his focus on flyball. He only dropped his ball twice going third which is a great improvement and his box turn was beautiful. He was running 4.3-4.4secs. Ruby also did great, she is still struggling to catch the ball but she was bringing the ball back everytime and her speed improved throughout the day. So our fabby little team ran consistently brilliantly all day and won their division :-D so proud!

Sunday we had Rockets and Ballistics. Rockets were Diefer, Smartie, Sonny, Bonnie and Jamie. Unfortunately there was a mistake with the paperwork which meant we had to go NFC. Nightmare. Not the end of the world as most of the dogs were way off their times from last year so would of struggled in the div anyway. It was Bonnie's 1st show back after her injury and she did really well, we are running her from close to the gate, firstly because of her kamikaze box, she does lovely turns up close but add a bit of speed and lets just say they go a bit out of the window! And secondly to get her running in the pack properly. I think it worked well for her. Rather than waste the opportunity we ran with the prop in for Diefer, Sonny and Jamie. Hopefully this will help their turns to hold up in competitions, although I'm not too confident. Jamie dropped a bit everytime I tried taking prop out and Sonny was good on the 1st leg of each race but lazy after that, I think it's a case of fitness with him. Diefer's were great but I was stood in on him so again don't expect it to hold!

Ballistics were Piper, Luna, Lacy, Asher with Perry as emergency reserve. We'd been chatting the night before, and I'd said that I'd be happy with anything under 17.50secs for the beginning of the season and with Acremead not being the fastest ground (well so we thought!!). To be fair though, all the dogs were looking fantastic, much leaner and fitter than they were this time last year so we set out to see what we could do. Our 3 races in the morning were against the lower seeds in the division but we just went for it and managed a best time of 17.17secs with a 0.15 start. I was getting a bit frustrated though because Asher didn't run well at all. I don't know if it was the fact he wasn't really racing anyone, he was out before the other teams last dogs and he tends to run better if he is trying to beat something. His boxturn was also all over the place, I *think* he was trying not to double hit but because he was hitting too low it meant he was just hanging on the box for ages and then coming off wide :-S. Of course it could just be fitness or he might not of been feeling 100% so we will see this weekend. In the afternoon we had the 3 higher seeds, our changes were a bit out against Bassetts, I got 2 lights trying to push it to catch up. We also got lights against Extreme, think it would of been close if we hadn't. Last race against Northants was well close. Poor Piper was knackered after doing like a gazillion false starts over the day. We managed to get a light on the 1st leg then we were all really late and lost 2nd leg. Luckily we managed to pull it back to win it 3-2. We ended up 3rd. Overall I thought it was a very successful 1st outing for Ballistics and well chuffed with the time. Luna and Lacy were fantastic. We don't have Piper this weekend but we do have Shani debuting with us which is exciting.

Hopefully Rockets will do better this weekend with Merlin and Loki joining them. Really looking forward to it.

Finally congrats to Extreme Racers on their record breaking run of 16.46secs. I am a little bit in love with Spirit, what a stunning dog!