Last Training before Easter...

Yesterday was our last training session before the Easter tournament at Fairview Farm!

Next weekend we re the Mutts tournament at Essex, which should be very interesting as this will be Ices big test - will he run with Kes or not.....?

We have some very nice dogs on our latest course, so if they stay and want to compete.... we should have some nice dogs to come out next year!

First we worked on Loki and Ice, this was to get Ice into "being good" mode, which seemed to work, so we then put Kes and Lottie in to the team - Ice ran really well - until he needed to cock his leg when he played up. But as soon as he'd been, he went back to Good mode!!! He is learning!! Then Ollie went in in Start, so all 5 dogs in that team were running. Then Kes sat out to give Ollie practice at coming back to Loki. Ice started to loose concentration, so he took a turn out and Kes ran again.

They did six runs at a time, then had 10 minutes rest whilst we ran the old course dogs. Rufus is doing very well and had a go over 12" jumps for the first time - he didn't even notice they were there!!!! Last time he trained, we only had net by the box, again he didn't notice and kept to the lane!! Although he's not done full runs yet as his box isn't 100%, he has done changeovers with most of the team dogs and isn't bothered at all. I hope his owner will compete with him.

By the time the Collies had run all their combinations, the last of the multibreed dogs had arrived so we could work on running order and changes. This group, for one reason or another haven't trained together at all!!! 3rd and 4th dogs were sorted out straight away and by swopping 1st and 2nd, we found that Merlin the springer prefers to run in second spot, so that sorted the running order out.

I am really looking forward to Essex and Fairview farm. It'll be nice to be competing again. Last year and the year before were ok as it helped some of the newer dogs to run properly, but two years of not really competing ( not that it was anyones fault, these things happen) but it'll be good to go to the start line with an equal chance!!!!

Training 22/3/09 - interesting discoveries!!!

We couldn't do much in the way of "team" training as quite a few people were not able to come training because it was Mothering Sunday!!! However, we still got a lot of work done - and made an interesting discovery!!!

The dogs we had were Ollie, Kes. Loki, Ice, Lottie, Jake, Jet arrived later.

We started with the big dogs doing their recalls over 14", then went onto getting time for all the dogs over 14" then over 7". Inspite of working the dogs over full height all over the winter, the difference in speed means that they are still faster running over 7" with a 6 second height dog than if we ran the 4 faster dogs over 14"!!!! This has shocked me greatly as we were all convinced that we would be way faster without little Lottie!!!!! I think that part of the problem is that all the dogs look to Lottie as pack leader and she has always beeen there on the start line with them, and it is her mouth that winds them all up.... we need to go to a tournament with all 5 top team dogs so we can put my theory into practice!!!!

We also discovered that all Kims hard work with Ice has paid off and as long as Kes runs first, Ice can run on the same team with her, so we can go to the Mad Mutts tournament and have a good chance of completing the whole division!!

We also have a nice groups of starter dogs on our new course, so next year we could have some nice teams running - but I must not count my tennis balls before they're marked!!

2009 is not looking too bad after all. I thought it was a major disaster when I had to retire my Grace after her collapse, but the new dogs are looking good.

ICE is now a proper "Flyball Dog"!!!!

We made the trip up to the Live Wires/Dolphins tournament at the Deeside Leisure Centre, Queensferry on Saturday.

The venue is fantastic for an inside show, with plenty of runback (except for Loki who would find 200 feet of runback too small!!!) and a fantastic cafe!

We were in division 2 and on a declaired time of 20 seconds (our seed time having lapsed just 2 days before the paperwork was done) we were actually in the right division. Our fastest time was 20.38.

Ollie was running in his first tournament since last June, and he did not put a paw wrong all day.

Loki ran well, but he's not teribly happy running on matting, so considering, he did well.

Grace (Pointer) didn't get that many runs, but she ran well.

Kes was there as back up to little brother Ice, just in case. So she only got a few runs in the afternoon when I ce got tired and started spitting out the ball.

Lottie (Charlotte Rose in flyball circles) was her usual dedicated little self. She now has a fan club from the Wilmslow team!! Lottie hopes this will bring her lots of extra food!!!!

The star of the day has to be Ice. He is just 18 months old and has only done one starters competition. But, he ran like an experienced dog and as a bonus, he got 225 points which means he has his Flyball Dog title!!!! He also drew blood on Kim, his handlers finger, which means he is a real, proper flyball dog!

Our next show is at Easter, in Hampshire. So, between now and then it's lots of hard training to get their speed, fitness and stamina up to scratch!!

They don't call me Mic Martin for nothing LOL