Thursday 5 May 2011

Acremead take 2

Due to the babies having successfully come in to open we were able to put out 4 teams for Acremead this time. Missiles and Rockets ran Saturday.

Ruby managed to gain her 1st flyball points on Missiles which was very exciting for everyone, it's taken a long time to get her this far. Big congratulations to Joy. Now if she could just catch the ball she'd be dangerous! We do have a plan of action so I think it's just a matter of time! Unfortunately despite winning 2 of their races Missiles finished 5th.

Rockets were 5th seed in Div 2 on a declared of 19.30secs. We had a major reshuffle of the teams after finding out we didn't have Diefer and after how well Loki and Merlin ran last weekend. So the team ended up being Merlin, Sonny, Elliot and Loki. Sarah was stuck at home revising so I had stolen Elliot to run. He was such a good boy for me bless him. The team ran really well, it took a couple of races for us to get it together seeing as it was the 1st time this combo had raced together. Merlin was well cute running start and was very consistent throughout the day, again his box held up. Sonny also coped well with suddenly going up to 12" and I think with a bit more race fitness will be really strong. Elliot's box turn got better as the day went on and he seemed to be running speedy. Loki was awesome, he is just getting faster and more driven. He ran quite a few 4.3s and is cracking as anchor dog as he is so strong on his return. We ended up winning 2 races and coming 4th with a best time of 19.11secs but there were a couple of races that really could of gone either way and I feel there is a lot more in this team.

Ballistics and Extraset ran Sunday. Extraset were top seed Div 4 on a declared time of 19.75secs. The team was Bonnie, Perry, Smartie and Jamie. The team seemed to gel really easily and ran smoothly and consistently all day. I had the pleasure of running Perry which was lovely. Bonnie seems to have come back from her injury really well and was flying running start. Smartie was happy to be back running for her mum and Jamie looked alot better than he did last weekend at Fairview. We had a couple of close races but managed to win them all to come 1st with a best time of 19.85secs.

Ballistics were 2nd seed in Div 1. The team was Piper, Asher, Luna, Lacy, Shani. I would say at the moment this is what we would call our full strength team so I had high hopes. We decided to put Asher up to 2nd to see if that would help his speed and try Shani Anchor. Putting Asher 2nd (and start when Piper was out) defo helped him and he ran quite a few 3.8s, he's still not fully flying but I think that'll come in the next couple of weeks. However Shani anchor did not work, she was running nowhere near the times she ran last weekend. Luckily her box turn stayed lovely but I'm afraid she will have to go back in the pack as she wasn't driving back. Looks like it's going to be Luna or Lacy that will be anchor. It's a shame in the sense that in terms of speed they are slightly weaker than the others but it's overall speed that counts. Hopefully it will make other teams get lights as they will be down on us going in to last dogs! Anyway Piper was cracking and ran a few 4.1s and Luna and Lacy were consistent as ever. Our changes were all over the place and we kept messing up potentially good times. We finished 2nd, just losing to Bassetts with a best time of 17.14secs.

We've now got a weekend off before Alton. Hopefully we'll get some training in this weekend and can try some combinations to see what works best!

2 comments:

Susan said...

Getting a dog to catch is sometimes very hard! I recently went through that as well. It does make it very satisfying when they finally get it though!

K-Koira said...

Sounds like a busy but fun weekend. Its interesting to me how popular flyball is outside of the US, when most people here don't even know what it is.

I added you as a follower, and hope you get a chance to check out my blog as well.