Barbury Castle AKA Birthday weekend!

I went up to Barbury Castle on Friday night with Sarah and we took the caravan with us which was nice especially considering the weather forecast for Saturday was bad! It was a fun and eventful weekend, think I got a tad too drunk when celebrating my birthday Saturday night! Lol!

Saturday we just had Missiles running in division 7 and they managed to come 4th (seeded 5th)with a best time of 25.08secs, that time was with Ruby running so shows she is starting to influence the speed of that team!

Sunday (My Bithday) was a much busier day with the other 3 teams in 3 out of the 4 divisions. Subsequently we spent all of our time at the ring!

Extraset were first on in division 3 seeded 2nd on 18.91. The team was Jemma, Perry, Smartie, Jamie and Bonnie. We decided to swap Bonnie with Sonny as we didn't think Elliot would be able to run due to skinning his feet! We don't like to run Bonnie all day so we decided to put her on the 5 dog team as we don't like to run Perry all day either. Despite the ground running quite slow, the team ran really well together as always and we had some good, close racing. They managed to win all of their races to finish 1st with a best time of 19.09secs.

Rockets were next in as top seed (18.04) in division 2. The team was Diefer, Merlin, Elliot, Sonny and Loki. Luckily by Sunday morning Elliot's feet looked much better so we decided to let him have a few runs to see how he got on and he was fine. We usually have big problems with consistency with this team but for once they actually ran quite consistent (albeit slightly slower)times! They won all their morning races and by the last race of the day were still unbeaten. Their final race against Barkshire Bandits was very close but they were just pipped in to 2nd place on the 5th and deciding leg by 0.08secs. Merlin is looking great at the moment, when he ran start he was fantastic, hitting 4.47, 4.48 and 4.50secs over his own height of 12". He runs much better start as he is still a little cautious running in to the changeover, i'm sure this will come with time. The team managed a best time of 18.33secs, they did 18.3-18.4 in every race apart from when Loki was out as he is the fastest dog so the team was a little slower.

Ballistics were 2nd seed in division 1 on 16.85secs. The team was Piper, Shani, Lacy, Luna and... Asher! I was told by Smart that I could run him in a couple of races to see how he got on. I ran him in our 1st race against dream team. I was annoyed with myself as my changeovers were so late, I think i was overthinking whether he'd be back to normal speed or whether I'd be releasing from the same spot as before. He ran ok, we managed to go 2-0 down as Piper fumbled the 1st leg and Asher fumbled the 2nd so we were all being cautious on changes (you literally could of got a bus through mine) for the rest of the race. The 3rd leg we ran clean and did 16.63 secs! The next leg we did 16.76 and were able to win the final leg too. Asher sat out the rest of the races until we brought him back in to face Bassetts in the last race of the day. We sat Piper out of the 1st leg so we could get an accurate time for Asher (thats all I can judge him on as he doesn't give me anything else!). My start was awful at 0.14 and the clock read 3.96 (so would of been 3.82) but Shani was a smidge early so it wasn't quite that fast. We brought Piper back in and the next leg Asher fumbled, I think he might be struggling to hold the ball now he is missing 2 of his front teeth, poor boy. He made sure he caught it properly after that which resulted in us gaining a leg back but he was less snappy on the box and on the final leg this resulted in less momentum on the return and Shani getting a light. So we came 2nd but the time was the most important thing as that *should* get us div 1 for the Champs so we can relax now! Asher was fine after racing and at Smart they said the racing had made him no worse which is good. He may now have the rest of July off, I haven't totally decided yet, just want him tip top by the Champs. Piper ran great and managed to run a best ever time of 4.00secs. The other 3 ran ok, maybe just slightly off their usual times but then as I mentioned earlier the ground seemed to be running slow.

And the best news of all, after a right kerfuffle, Luna got her 3rd and final 12" measurement which means we can now get her height card, yay :)

It was a lovely show with lots to watch and the camping area was beautiful. And we got really fit walking the 1m to the ring!