A smaller turnout of just 3 teams meant a relatively easy day for me in my home town, especially with the Eagles delegated to Maxine who did a great job in her first official captaining role, get used to her guys I’ll be putting my feet up a bit more often now!

The Barney’s and Barking were a real mish mash of dogs and hopes for rosettes were resting on the largely intact Eagles seeded top of Division 5 on 22.43 who were first to race, although we were expecting all the dogs to be a bit ring rusty having not raced since 5 December.

Archie, Josh, Bailey, Charli, Chewy & Buddy completed an unusual 6 dog line up though it was a bit fortuitous in the end as poor Arch was sick in the morning and we needed to get the Chewy monster acclimatised to the indoor environment.  The dogs all ran well and the girls quickly picked up changeovers, they swept the board winning 4 out of 4 despite running a second slower than the seed time.  It was all down to the last race, however it sadly became a bit of an anticlimax when we realised their final opponents had run well below 21 secs several times during the day, a bit naughty in Div 5 and as optimistic as us ‘Owlers try to be, there was no way we could match that, so we had to settle for second place with a best time of 23.41.

The Barking team name had been revived for the Rotherham comp that should have taken place 2 weeks before, when all 5 teams were due to take part.  After having to pull out of the re-scheduled event at Newark, it meant we had had to “guestimate” a declared time as in the intervening couple of weeks the existing seed time had expired. 

Not knowing quite what the line up would be I had plunged for 21.00 which I thought was a bit optimistic, but with a shortage of bodies I didn’t really want to risk them clashing with the Eagles either.  As it turned out it was a pretty good guess as speedy newcomer Lucy (Lab) (as she will have to be known) was passed fit to run and the sextet of her, Stripe, Mollie, Chip, Buffy and Lucy managed a best time of 21.15.  

Fifth seeds on that optimistically declared time they had a bad morning losing both of their races; it was the first time indoors for novice’s Chip & Lucy, both of whom have had a few hiccups in training and at tournaments towards the back end of 2008 and it proved a bit too much for them at first with both running out on the way up.  We took them out to let them acclimatise a bit and they came back in the afternoon different dogs - they were foot perfect and won all 3 races.  Like the Eagles the Barking took a very creditable second place, it was a very pleasant surprise and even more impressive for a team that had never trained together!

As the Barney’s were running on a seed time achieved back in October at Rotherham, where Kim had very ably substituted Norah, we pinched her again to replace Floss who can’t be let loose on matting.  We knew it would still be tough to get near that seed time as Floss’ shoes are harder to fill, but with us benefiting from the new height rules for the first time, Kim dropped to 12” so we were hopeful we may get close to it with a 2” advantage Norah, Jet & George don’t normally benefit from.  Youngster Dylan made up the quintet (another newcomer to matting) as we were interested to see if he raised his game playing with the big boys.

We had a thoroughly enjoyable time not expecting anything and were simply outclassed by 2 teams as under strength as we were, but we gave the other 2 some good racing, especially the last 5 legger with Alpha Dogz.  The Barney’s thrive on pressure whereas some teams don’t and it was an exciting climax winning our last couple of races which gave us fourth place with a best time of 19.01.

Dog the Day; Lucy came good in the afternoon in some style, running as anchor dog for the first time she showed us she was learning how to race as well, pegging back the opposition on a couple of legs to claim victory for the team and for the first time flowed and single strode over 13 and 14 inch jobs like an old pro.  Mum Christine was great with her changes as well which are pretty new to her as she is more used to going lead dog with Archie.  Well done to both of you.

This is a great new venue, with a longer run back than you can normally expect in sports halls which is good, because with every finger and paw in the club crossed we are back there in a months time with 4 teams, one of which will need that extended run back and touching every bit of wood in sight see a very special reunion, both human and canine.