Very belated Becketts Farm write up!!

I dont currently have a fully working laptop or the internet at home, hence the week late update!!

This was my guys first flyball competition since the starters comp in may and finishing training about a week after that!!

Well it was Elliots first open, after having only done the one starters and wow, what a clever little man, he didn't put a foot wrong all day. He was a joy to run - no silliness on the line, just stood leaning into his harness ready to go but no jumping around or barking. At one point he turned of the box very wide but still made the choice to come back down over the jumps :) His box was really inconsistant which i think is only to be expected seeing as it was so long since he had done any training!! He also wasn't as fast as I thought he would be, only doing about 4.7-4.8 (the same as jem!!!!) but Nat reckoned it was just because he needs to build his confidence and that to start with he wasn't accelerating till he was past our line of dogs but then towards the end of the day was doing it earlier and earlier - it was also his first time going from 40 foot!!!

As both dogs were in the same team it involved Nat running Elliot for me when I was running jem but then when Jem was out I ran Elliot - it got extremely confusing but Elliot didn't seem to mind and ran just as well for us both bless him!!

Well Jem was only supposed to be doing warm ups and perhaps the odd run, however jive sadly injured herself on the last leg of the first race!! So this meant Jem and Fraggle had to run!!! Well in the blue lane Jem was good, she was always looking at the other lane and quite often just sort of stumbled up to the box and got the ball - twice she came off the box and decided to chase the other lane, but she only went to the middle between the two lanes and then made the choice to come back over our jumps, she did miss out the first jump after the box out tho but hey this was a big improvement from before!!! In the red lane though she did a beautiful full run in the warm up and the other lane were racing at the same time, however once we raced she just went over one jump then chased the other lane - when she got back to me I took her straight make to the car - she sulked all the way back but we have got to try something, there is no point letting her do it again as if the other lane aren't racing she does it fine. When we were in the red lane Fraggle took over so it was all ok :) and then when we went back in the blue lane was when she did one of her half way to the other lane runs.

Overall I was really pleased with her because there was noway i expected her to end up doing that much racing and she was a lot better than before. It also gives us an idea of what we need to work on in training - hopefully it will only take a few more trips to the car to make her realise she doesn't get away with being naughty!!

Nats blog will give a more detailed account of the whole weekend - http://natsdogs.blogspot.com/ - :)