Middlesex Show- 22nd/23rd June - (Report by Anne Alderman)

Luckily I managed to arrive early enough to pick a decent camping spot, closely followed by Robert and Kay, who squashed in next to me. We put up a communal garden and possibly(!) had the largest plot on the site!! Everyone else arrived later. And Dave arrived in a cloud of smoke having been chased by a Chinese/Japanese man!! (Ask Dave!)

Saturday saw Hotdogs and Doggy Mixtures racing in Div 1 and 3. First on BDM (Toddy, Snip, Paris, Maskell, Daisy and Eddie - after a detour around the surrounding countryside!) Div 3 teams seemed to have all sorts of problems, and we won 2 of our races on interference alone and no recorded time! We had a better race with the Malvern team, which went to 3-2 in our favour, and finally the Wolverines when it was our turn to cause havoc with interference. We replaced Eddie with Paris (Andy stood in as handler) but Paris had her own bit of fun, when she had to run after Maskell, so we lost that race. We came 2nd in Div 3 with a best time of 23.10 (probably our only recorded time!!)

Onto the Hotdogs (Abby, Spencer, Bazil, Barley and Ben on stand by). The first race was fairly straight forward, beating the K9'ers 3-1. Again the second race was straight forward, loosing to Back on Track 1-3! Next up, a team we have managed to beat, although they do have a faster seed time, and are generally faster, Bad Dog Racers. This time however, with some excellent passes, and keeping their 'cool' BH managed to pull off a win 3-2, gaining their best time of the day 18.47 (possibly our fastest out doors?). And finally onto the Wolf Pack, where we were beaten 3-0. As usual (!) we went into a 3 way run off, and unfortunately lost both races. So we came 4th overall, with a best time of 18.47.

In the evening we had a B-B-Q whilst listening to the live entertainment - The Counterfeit Stones. Kay and Chris snucked away to watch for a few minutes!

Allsorts (Molly, Monty, Badger, Lady and Breeze on stand by) raced on Sunday in Div 2. Racing was close through out this division. We won our first two races, against 4 Bad Dogs and Chitchats. We then lost narrowly, 3-2 to Cracker Jacks. Our last race was against a NFC team, so we automatically won 3-0. We were 2nd with a best time 21.09.

Cleverdog Results:

Claire decided to try a different tactic with Badger, to see if she could get him up the flyball run any quicker. And this involved me running him, whilst Claire stood on the box. It did actually seem to work, so now I think Claire should reciprocate and run Breeze! The other little 'mishap' which occurred, was when Robert hadn't loaded the box for Monty. But the twist to the story, and to Antons amusement, was when Kay also genuinely (so she led us all to believe!) hadn't loaded a ball for Abby.

Flyball Pairs Results:

They were only 1/100th sec. slower than the 3rd place pairs! Whilst packing up, our live entertainment was Bjorn Again. They were very good. We listened to them whilst walking dogs, then went and watched for a short while before coming home.