Peterborough - Funky Fidos - 22/23rd July 2023

This weekend was almost doomed to failure with the weather forecast looming wet and windy again. We had packed the caravan and were ready to leave but were contacted by Emily requesting if it was possible for us to travel daily and not camp as they were having problems with the host pulling camping pitches on them! So in the end we unpacked the caravan and all our team day tripped both Saturday and Sunday - good job it was close to home.

Saturday morning dawned wet but it kept dry enough for us to erect the event shelter near the ring for us all to congregate in. The weather throughout the day proved testing, raining on and off all day with only a few dry spells, which was testing for Willow again as she really doesn't like the rain. Abi had been having nightmares about this expecting her to refuse to run at all!!

The morning started with a bit of fun with us running Jessie and Eddie in pairs. They didn't have a lot of success but hey ho its all practice at the end of the day! Wash and Vikings were up today as well.

Wash Warriors - with the usual line up of Stan, Zarah, Pip and Indie buckled down to business rain or not- and ran so solidly all day they didn't lose a heat. We think that's the first time they have run clean all day and won 4 races of 3 heats. They also only posted only 1x 20 sec time all day with the fastest run being 19.04 s and all in the rain and wind. After doing the stats this week we realised that all 4 dogs averaged sub 5 times, which again is a first. Needless to say they won their division - seems no one could catch them! Lets just hope this continues at the champs and they and the handlers don't get spooked out with the pressure!!!

Vikings (with Flo, Bonnie, Willow, Mabel, Maggie and Charly) ran too today. We're working with Maggie and Mabel again as much as possible to try to get them to gain confidence. Willow objected to the weather to begin with but buckled down after realising the rain wasn't as bad as she had expected!! She's taking crosses from Charly well now with him running in from the side and at times the crosses are down to 2-3 feet. Keep it up Willow.

Ollie was with us today and took on the onerous task of running Flo again (which he loved the last time at Peterborugh), however this time we had thrown him on lights as 1st dog. Did that faze him?? Not one bit!! Not only did he average a 0.06 start time all day - but managed 3 rolling starts (one after doing a minus roller). After chatting to the Head Judge during the day - this is now known as 'doing an Ollie'!!

The team managed to win 1 race throughout the day but ended up 6th. We believe that the 4 main dogs will run well together in Vikings for the Champs, which is what we are going to rely on.

The weather was still drizzling at presentation when Wash gained their first place, blue was awarded his Flyball dog award of 1000 points and Ollie got another shout out at presentation and WELL DESERVED this was too..

Sunday saw us all arrive again for another day's racing. The weather was windy but the rain had eased up and in the afternoon some sun arrived.

Aztec ran today along with Pip and Indie competing in pairs against Stan and Eddie - nothing like a bit of inter team competition!! A singles open had pulled out and Emily offered us the slot for a dog. We decided Charly could come out to play with Chris as he hadn't done a lot the day before. Lottie was also competing today in singles foundation.

Pairs were up first. Ollie had asked if he could try boxloading so we felt it was an opportunity for him with only 2 dogs running to have a go. Indie and Pip were consistently a bit faster than Stan and Zarah in the first 3 heats, however for the first race Julia did hold back a bit on the crosses with Zarah to ensure Ollie managed to get the ball in the box and kept his confidence. By the second race he was doing fine and Stan and Zarah managed to just get 2 heats of the others. With some pairs having been run the day before we had to wait till presentation to find out how they got on. Pip and Indie came 3rd and Stan and Zarah came 4th. We'll get you back next time......

Charly was up next in singles open and he and Chris had a ball with a large degree of banter going on with Chris' erratic starts. However looking at the figures afterwards he did manage a roller, 0.01, 0.02 and 0.03 --- so not all bad (apart from the -0.19 early!!!) Charly however posted all the times sub 6 sec with a 5.43 his fastest - not bad for an almost 10 year old!!! This just shows the support he's providing to the youngsters in Vikings when he's crossing into the green dogs last and losing most of his time on crosses. Well done to the old master!!!

Lottie ran in foundation singles and never put a paw wrong all day. She ran out with a perfect 100% score of 12 clean runs and won the singles outright. I've not seen such a proud handler in ages, well done Tine and Lottie - can't wait to get this dog in open competition.

Aztec were the team out today and were seeded 4th out of a 5 team division. We are still working on Eddie's starts and today we tried Ollie releasing him with Claire running him in. The team managed to post a 22.27s as fastest time and came 3rd overall in the division - more by luck than design however!! We still need to work out a way for this team to work - it has soooo much potential.

Shouts go to Ollie again over the weekend. Running a dog, ball collecting, box loading, releasing a dog all amounted to him gaining his first award in the young handlers scheme which he will collect at the next tournament. WELL DONE OLLIE - you are becoming a great club asset and we're so glad you're enjoying it and coming to the Champs.