August Bank Holiday 2009 was always down in the diary as a weekend of celebrations – a mass camping outing, our fifth birthday celebrations and a retirement party rolled into one as Jack, one of the original ‘Owlers raced for the last time. 

Added to that, more recently we had our Championship successes to celebrate with those that weren’t present at Holt Farm, the presentation of Brooke’s Ice Blue Moon Award (which we had kept secret from Julie) and also Floss’ semi-retirement from competition on safety grounds!

The Ghost/Barney Owlers were due to be first up at 8.30am, the dogs were all ready and chomping at the bit when a Captain’s meeting was called and, due to missing pieces of the lights, the whole running order was changed quite dramatically.  Division 1 was moved right to the end, so we took some very confused dogs back to camp.

The change meant the Eagles – Archie, Jack, Harvey, Sam & Jess were first up in Division 9.  At the same time a few of us were helping out Dog Friendly in the other ring so it was quite amusing for anyone watching seeing ‘Owlers scampering from one ring to the other to watch our team and then go back to the Friendly’s.

Michelle took charge of the Eagles for me and they did both Jack and the club proud winning 3 of their 5 races and with a best time of 22.33 got third place.  It was quite emotional watching the last race, which fittingly they won, to think of the ‘Owlers without Jack and of course Richard’s legendary “ready, ready, ready”.  We wish Jack a long and happy retirement.

The Marsh Owlers had an unusual line up with Buffy replacing the absent Dylan and joining Lucy Lab, Brooke and Skye and who despite reaching the grand old age of 9 the previous week and Andrea panicking she would really slow the team down, held her own well.  This team had some cracking racing and were not far off their seed time of 20.06 at all with a best time of 20.20, there were some superb changes as they gave every race their all.  I couldn’t have asked for anymore from them and it was thoroughly enjoyable with them being rewarded for their efforts with fourth place.

We quickly swapped from the Marsh dogs to the Ghost and headed up to the ring, the dogs even more hyped up than earlier in the day, unfortunately we arrived to find out there was now an hour’s break before Div 1 was going to start due to teams also running in the other arena – so it was back to the cars again!!

Eventually at 1.50pm having first gone up to race at 8.15am the Ghost ‘Owlers got to the ring and the dogs – Norah, Jet, Floss, Murphy & George were absolutely off their heads having waited so long to get racing.  We left the youngster of the quintet Jet out for the first race to let the others get warmed up as we had secretly hoped after the unofficial 17.99 of Norah, Jet, Floss & George at the Champs that maybe there was a chance of that magic milestone this weekend.

The expectations of the handlers however, myself included, had become somewhat dampened with the delays, we were racing very, very fast teams and had no hope of doing anything rosette wise really, so it was just a matter of seeing if we could be pushed to some decent times.

First race, first leg – a very, very crazy and wound up Norah, Floss, Murphy & George against the Dippy Dolphins (seeded on 17.88).  We lost but not by much, back where we love them on the line Jo & Craig told Sarah and James they could close up their changes, Andrea had done a 0.00 on the lights, I had nothing, so we re-grouped to try again.  But by this time Katie had seen the time on the monitors (it will teach me to have my glasses on in the ring lol) and saw what Jo & Craig had omitted to tell us – the time was 17.70!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say there was a bit of delay to starting the next leg as Andrea, Sarah, James and I all stared at each other in disbelief trying to check with Jo as to whether Katie had seen it correctly or not!  She had, but our sneaky line people were going to keep it secret until the end.  Maybe it would have been better not knowing as things soon went from elation to despair as the dogs completely overboiled during the second leg with Norah and Murphy getting far too giddy with each other in the run back area, resulting in our poor accident prone whippet having a cut side, ruling him out and off to the vets within minutes of our achievement.

It was absolute gutting, from such a high we were back down to earth with a huge bang, typical ‘Owlers luck really, but we had to carry on with the foursome we had left and try and get Jet a sub 18 too.  Now at the Championships 2 weeks earlier Floss had seemed to take a sudden dislike to having Jet behind her in the line up and so we took a snap decision, prayed that George wouldn’t remember he was scared of running into Floss and swapped the order back around.  Thankfully it worked with dog issues, but with the changes not as pinpoint that “rusty” way round, we could only manage 18.12, so the challenge remains to get Jet in the sub 18 club! 

On a personal note it was very sad to say goodbye to Floss as a full time member of the Barneys/Ghost as she goes into semi-retirement (too crazy for her own good her mum says), what a way to sign off though - retaining a title at the Championships and being part of the club’s first ever sub 18 time, all in her last 3 weeks, we will really miss her and look forward to her “guest appearances” next summer.

As expected we finished last, but never has a team been so pleased at being the bottom of the pile with that time.  We were, very bizarrely as well, the only team to beat the winners Cheshire Set!

Presentation came and back on cue were James and a stitched up Moo man, to see Julie receive Brooke’ s award.  There was a comic moment as James motioned to me over the gathered crowd - would I push Ju up to get the award while he got in position to take pictures.  Proud as I was to be asked to push her up there for it, vanity (unusual for me at the best of times, let alone at a flyball comp) took over, when I remembered the state of my hair after camping Friday night, so I whipped Claire’s cap off her head to cover my mess, only to realise she was using it for the same purpose LOL.  Sorry Claire J

It was the first of many laughs that evening though as we joined the celebrations in the clubhouse for Sue & Roger’s Silver Wedding Anniversary, the highlights being Richard, Craig & Garry’s YMCA participation and the ‘Owler girls (me, Sarah, Claire & Katie) & guests (Kath & Fay) karaoke-ing “Don’t stop me now”!

Despite the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, Katie and I at least were fit to man the Night Owlers at 8.30am Sunday morning, whilst Sarah & Claire valiantly battled hangovers.

Having never trained together we didn’t really know what to expect from the main 4 of Chip, Stripe, Meg & Buddy.  We certainly didn’t expect them to smash a seed time we weren’t even sure they would get near and record 20.58 in the first leg!  Stripe maintained the form he rediscovered at the Champs, enigmatic Chip was on fire, Meg seemed to thrive and take things much more seriously back over bigger jumps and our “2009 model” Buddy did some pull backs as anchor dog his best mate George would have been proud of!

Big Bert was in there as well with them after his sterling effort at Rotherham (that’s the July one, not the June one where he actually went for a run around Rotherham – the city!).  Although he did all his runbacks and warm ups faultlessly, he was unusually distracted during actual racing providing some comic moments, but after Claire’s admittance later on to being the most hungover she’s been in years, I think we’ll blame her, Big Bert will be back and as we know he loves Rotherham where he’ll be seen next!