Easter eggs signal the start of the outdoor flyball season and 4 Owlers teams were entered for the traditional curtain raiser at Selby Game Fair spread over 3 days of competition and it was great to see the starters of last year re-appear on the renewal as fully fledged team players.

Having been given the task of writing up this first comp I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone in the club for helping get me through a weekend I thought I could never face for various obvious reasons and if it wasn't for the support of everyone at the Owlers I certainly wouldn't have.  My head and my heart were where they should have been long ago - 250 miles away and seeing the first flyballing Akita on Friday morning had not exactly helped either (no offence to friendly Akita's intended), but when the going gets tough (or nigh on impossible), the Owlers family get going, whether it is racing at its closest edge against much faster teams or supporting team mates going through hell.  Forget the A Team "if you have a problem and no-one else can help" etc, in the Owlers its "if you have a problem we will stick to you like glue!" seriously thanks guys you really are the best.  That said you still landed me in my fragile & neurotic state with taking back a team captaincy and then handed me 6 dogs to juggle so maybe you aren't so nice after all (LOL), but it certainly gave me something else to think about!

So it was the Night Owlers that were lumbered with me, last years starters - Little Archie, Charli, Buddy & Josh joined by experienced Jack and recently transferred Mollie on a tough declared time that had had to take into consideration at the time of submission a possible alternative & faster line up.  They threw down a tremendous challenge to seeded rivals most of whom the Barking Owlers had taken on only a couple of weeks before in Sheffield– such was their task.

The team may have had very little training time together, but what they lacked in practice they more than made up for in enthusiasm, effort and above all absolute 100% sportsmanship and commitment to wanting the team to achieve the best result possible regardless of me desperately trying to ensure an equal number of runs for the 6 dogs!  Brenda, Richard, Pam, Maxine, Michelle & June you were the best and I was very proud to be your captain on the day.

Brenda & Josh are proving a dab hand on the lights now as lead dog and Richard stepped up with Jack as deputy lead as if he had never been away on paternity and hockey duty and provided much appreciated tactical assistance during the break!  Pam got her eye in very quickly changing over into new dogs despite sweating away in the heat in the new club jumper she was determined to wear during racing (even if it was back to front!), I'm sure Maxine spots her changeover when the previous dog is on its way up rather than back and Michelle & June were putting the team first all the way when after a good days work height dog Archie decided the crowd was now worth investigating a little closer and Budd lost some confidence after an opposing dog got in his path.

They had won 4 out of 4 races with some tremendous racing especially against Kellington not giving up even when 2 legs down and so came the final showdown with top seeds Doncaster Dinky Stars.  They had been much faster than us all day and we had pretty much accepted defeat before we started – an usual Owlers perspective, but even we struggled to see where we could find 2 ˝ seconds in the final race on a very hot day!

Tails were up though and we were not going to go down without a fight and what a fight it proved to be, even after having to put the jumps up 5 inches with little Arch's wanderings we still gave a tiring Doncaster a real run for their money taking them to a closely fought 5^th and final leg.  A brilliant second place for the Nights in Div 13 proved to be the highlight of the weekend for the Owlers.

We were very excited about the new Barking line up with former Barney's Meg and Buffy stepping down to join speedy height dog Jess, new recruit Kim and Barking stalwart Ben.  Bad luck struck early on though in Div 6 with an injury to Ben in only the second leg of the day leaving the team with only 4 dogs to run all day on another uncharacteristically hot April day.

The four fought bravely with 3 of the 5 races going to 5 legs and the other 2 to 4 and racing could not have been tighter with times separated by 100^th's of a second.  They won 2 races to finish a valiant 4^th but mark my words this team will be a force to be reckoned with this season and hopefully will break the 20 second barrier when they are a bit more familiar with each other.

The Barney's lined up in Div 2, regulars Norah, Brooke, Murphy and George joined by another new member Poppy the lurcher.  It proved a day of showing what we could do when everything went right (ish) – a time of 18.36 and the absolute opposite when Poppy bless her decided she wasn't too sure about her new very noisy team mates yet and didn't want to get too close which meant we had to no option but to try Murph the black bullet in the dreaded red lane.  Although he had done it a few times indoors during the winter he certainly wasn't playing now – well he was, but with the dogs in the blue lane rather than at flyball in his!  They finished 5^th, but with plenty of hope for the future with 18.36 as a good starting point and changeovers to fine tune, will they manage the elusive sub 18 secs this season – watch this space!

The Laughing Owlets– Lolly, Jet, Stripe, Poppy & Mitch had a ridiculous task in starters Div 1 against experienced fast dogs drawn from the top teams, but did all that was asked of them and we were very proud that they kept smiling  regardless and a win in the very last race really made their day.  In fact the handlers enjoyed it so much I was sent to hunt down Sue from Kellington to sneak an extra team in at Drax in 4 weeks time.  These guys are keen and won't be hanging around in starters for long!

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