Barneys, Marsh, Nights and Eagles provided a very busy day for us all at the first indoor grass tournament of the winter, especially with the Eagles & Nights going head to head in Div 3!

Barney’s kicked off the day, again at the wrong end of Div 1, but with improvement shown eventually at Redcar the previous weekend we were hopefully that this would continue as the foursome are beginning to gel a bit better as a unit.  This team has always been the one that takes a long time to settle for some reason – 3 years ago when Norah replaced Luke despite being half a second faster the times got worse for the first 4 months, Jet replacing Brooke had the same effect although they did lose the inch advantage Brooke gave them, and then Floss replacing Murph since June has seen a very slow acceptance of a complete stranger by one old Fox at least!

We knew we had no chance against Hill Top and the Crazies so had thrown in Chewy for a couple of goes against them for a bit of experience with the other teams being full.  It all started brilliantly with an 18.48 (another 0.11 off the best time) despite one big change and another fairly comfortable one for Norah, Jet, Floss, George - it was looking good!  Unfortunately we all got a bit carried away by that and pushed just a fraction too much and we lost a race we should really have won.  Chewy strutted his stuff and amusingly we one a leg with him in against but Hill Top and Podlings when they got lights.  With 2 wins which should really have been 3 the Barneys finished 4^th (seeded 5) so we were quite pleased with them to be honest and only had ourselves to blame for the race lost.

I was really looking forward to the Marsh, as they had their Summer Champs last minute line up bar the exchange of Buffy for the faster and smaller Kim, (exiled at the champs under kennel cough isolation regulations).  The anticipation was well founded as Skye, Kim, Stripe & Lolly (ably assisted by Big Pops again to give the odd breather in a 7 team div) improved by half a second to a best time of 20.15 to win the division.  It was an impressive performance for a team that hadn’t yet trained together.

The new look Nights had got slightly lucky as their seed time from Sutton had not gone up when the running orders were done.  But they had Josh in place of Stripe from that line up so I thought it was probably a fair reflection of what they would do.  As Master Joshua has been a bit of a monkey with changes of late (one minute you can do them spot on, the next it’s far too scary) I decided to put him lead dog even though he has never seemed that enthusiastic about the position as Brenda had never run into any of the other dogs before.  

Well both Bren & Josh rose to the challenge of the lights and really held their own and along with Mollie, Buffy & Dylan proved a real force to be reckoned with.  They were ably assisted by Chip out to redeem himself a little after not quite living up to his fantastic Sutton performance at Redcar.  He did 4 great runs – one in that real top gear we don’t see very often, but then it suddenly seemed to twig with him that flyball is really quite exciting you know and unfortunately for us that meant the only lurcher we have ever known that has never been interested in the other lane suddenly began to have a look a whether the opposing team were as good as his!  Never fear we have had plenty of practice correcting this and he’ll be back.

The hiccup of the excited lurcher cost the Nights just one race and they were pipped in a tie for first place with Sheffield Sprinters, ending up 2^nd with a best time of 21.05, a fantastic achievement especially as it was in the very first race with a new and unpractised lead dog.

The Eagles of Archie, Lucy, Sam, Harvey, Buddy & Bailey had a very tough time ahead of them, seeded bottom of the division nearly 2 seconds away from the top seeds, but they had a cracking morning wining 2 of their 3 races – they may not have had the speed of the other teams but they had reliability in abundance which proved the winner.  The afternoon was a different story but they gave it all they had against their club-mates the Nights in the last race and it was great fun as their box loader to have a birds eye view of the 2 teams going head to head.

It was a great day out, even if a thoroughly exhausting one and thank you to all those who were involved in every single team and to Mich, Bren & Christine for covering ring party duties to give us a bit of a breather!

Dog the Day – Josh gets the nod for a great performance on the lights and really holding his own in a higher quality division than he has probably run in before. 

Next stop Rotherham Sunday 26^th, with a couple of weeks in between for tweaking some sloppy box work that seems to have crept in, in the 6 weeks we haven’t trained and not forgetting another hydrotherapy outing – camera’s at the ready for the Owlers Baywatch Babe!!