Becketts Farm 16.85 :-D

Well we had thee most amazing day at Becketts Farm on Sunday. We had Ballistics as 2nd seed in div 1. Rockets and Extraset were in div 2 as 1st and 5th seeds respectively. Having all the usual dogs for these teams was great as it meant we had 3 teams of 5 dogs and all teams were at full strength.

Rockets were Diefer, Merlin, Elliot, Bonnie, Loki running over 12" and Extraset were Jemma, Perry, Sonny, Smartie, Jamie running over 9". Div 2 was a very hectic division to say the least. I was running Perry in Extraset but also helping out Rockets so it felt like we were barely out the ring. Was quite fun though!

Rockets were typical rockets, moments of brilliance and moments of chaos! They managed to lose their 1st race on lights, 2nd race was against Extraset which was great! Rockets really got their act together and managed to pull out a fantastic time of 18.16secs with a line-up of Diefer, Merlin, Bonnie and Loki. This is another fastest ever time for Rockets. Needless to say they beat Extraset! They continued to win the rest of their races fairly comfortably although the range of times they ran was huge! They also managed 18.44secs twice in a row in the last race of the day, more amazingly they were with a different line up for each one! We recorded splits for all the dogs although I don't think they give a true representation for this team as changes were sooo variable! Fastest times were: Diefer 4.52, Merlin 4.61, Elliot 4.53, Bonnie 4.54, Loki 4.24. This doesn't include the race against each other where I suspect faster times were run as we were too short on people to do times for that one! Despite losing 1 race they still managed to win the division!

Extraset were more consistent apart from 1 nightmare race where Sonny started dropping his ball, luckily we managed to bring it back! Jemma was fine after her incident last weekend and ran very consistently all day. The rest of the team also gelled well together and managed to win all their races except for the 1 against Rockets with a new best ever time of 19.62secs. The line-up was Jemma, Sonny, Smartie, Jamie. We have to be quite careful now with the seed time as we don't always have Jemma due to Sarahs uni stuff and Jem is the fastest dog on the team! Dogs fastest times: Jemma 4.54, Perry 5.18, Sonny 4.65, Smartie 4.58, Jamie 5.19. This meant Extraset came 2nd!

Ballistics had a team of Piper, Asher, Shani, Luna, Lacy. Asher the total muppet stole some food not long before we were due to race. I never give him breakfast before racing as he always runs considerably slower. It was a bit gutting knowing that even before we entered the ring that he wasn't going to be himself. I decided I would only run him in the 1st race as we weren't sure exactly how much he'd eaten or how long ago. As suspected he was well off his pace but seemed fine other than that. 1st race we went for a time and left Lacy out. 1st leg flowed really well and we did 16.85secs :-). As planned I left Asher out for the rest of the morning. The other 4 did great winning the next 2 races with a best time of 17.32secs. In the afternoon Asher ran the 3 remaining races. He looked alot snappier in the 1st race of the afternoon and managed some sub 4s...just! Our last race was against Bassetts, we'd won all our races up to that point but they'd managed a 16.59secs earlier on. It was a fantastic race which went to 5 legs. They won the 1st on speed, we won the 2nd on speed with a 16.98secs, 3rd we both got lights on last dog but they were able to turn around quicker, 4th and 5th they got lights which meant we won! Dogs fastest times: Piper 4.05 (PB), Asher 3.97, Shani 4.12, Luna 4.29, Lacy 4.37 (Just because I'm a nerd... this technically means we could of done 16.43secs which is very encouraging ;-)!).

We had a fantastic day, couldn't of asked for anymore. We've got a weekend off now so we're going to train our new starters (and do tiny bits with Miss Laika!) and do some boxwork particularly with the babies that have come out this year to try and maintain their turns. Got to continue the fitness work with Asheroo. I'm also thinking of taking him back to Smart to be checked over to put my mind at rest that nothing else is going on to slow him down. He will be thrilled, my bank balance will not!