Thoresby Park 15th/16th July

This weekend was meant to be our own hosted tournament which had had to be cancelled due to lack of teams, however someone had been watching us from on high as the weekend weather turned out to be awful. We decided that we had ultimately been lucky we had not been setting up or trying to run the event in the end. We had decided after cancelling our own tournament to join Rockin at theirs and took all of the team with us. We ran 3 teams with Lottie and Naya joining Moltens in their foundation team.

We arrived in the rain, set up in the rain and spent a wet Friday evening in our vans. Jemma, Ash, Tine and Dean joined us Friday evening with Claire and Beth joining us on Saturday. Abbie decided to day trip it on Saturday with Willow.

Saturday dawned drizzly. We were up early setting up the lights and praying the weather was not going to be too bad. To be honest it wasn't as bad as it could have been but the wind played havoc, eventually resulting in us having to take down the event shelter to avoid it being destroyed and blown away.

Wash Warriors ran today with Stan, Zarah, Pip and Indie. The ground was not as good as it could have been resulting in the dogs running slower than usual, however they ran really steadily and we won our first 3 races in the morning, taking Rockin to a 5 heat race. The afternoon was not as steady as the morning and we lost the last 2 races of the day. We did however set 5 times in the 19secs and were really pleased with the 4 dogs as they are really gelling together well. At presentation we were surprised to find that they had gained 3rd place in the division having been seeded 4th.

Viking Warriors also ran today with Flo, Bonnie, Willow and Charly being joined again by Mabel and Maggie. This team is all about supporting the 2 green dogs but also ensuring the 4 experienced dogs gel well for the Champs. Willow was not sure about the rain but did decide to play running all the races except 1. Maggie and Mabel were working on bringing their balls back with Maggie having a bit more success than Mabel. The team came 5th in the division having posted a time of 25.33 secs today. We had expected this however and were essentially using the day as training.

Unfortunately the wind caused havoc with our lights with them playing up in the afternoon, resulting in them being pulled from use. Hopefully this will be and easy fix (writing this 2 weeks later than usual I can confirm that it was indeed an easy fix and they are back to full working order ready for back up use at the champs if needed and Drax the following weekend in August).

Sunday dawned a bit brighter than Saturday but the wind was still strong so we didn't chance re-erecting the event shelter.

Aztec ran today with us planning to work on Eddie and Jessie. We sincerely thank Blue (Gem) and Bessie (Ash) for supporting these 2 youngsters and tolerating their errors. Eddie worked better in the morning with leaving Claire, in the afternoon Claire tried a different release position for Eddie but with the change it blew Eddie's brain and he had a bit of a melt down. Throughout the day they logged 6 times in the 20 secs with the fastest run being 20.97s. Still a long way to go however, but they actually managed 4th position in the division today.

Lottie and Naya had been invited by Bhav to join Molten Maybes foundation team which ran today as well, as they also only had 2 dogs. Both Lottie and Naya did brilliantly only missing out on 4 clear runs all day. Both the dogs were running mid 4sec times but running 3rd and 4th in the morning and 1st and 2nd in the afternoon (when their times weren't logged). The team came 4th in their division and it was good training for our dogs joining in with 2 other dogs that they didn't know. Both of them are proving very enthusiastic although we still have a way to go with them.