We have competed at 3 events in the last 5 weeks, which took us from the miserable downpours of early May through to the blistering heat of early June. That's British weather and outdoor racing for you - one minute the racing grounds are too saturated to run over, and only a few weeks later, we have hot dogs and rock hard ground!
Our Kennet Kestrels team take these things in their stride - our dogs are fit and we take their welfare seriously - we keep an eye on energy levels throughout the day, and are lucky enough to have 5 dogs racing in each competition meaning we can change the line up if we have any concerns.
Back at the start of May, we competed at the Lightning Strikes competition over the Coronation weekend. The weather was so bad leading up to the weekend that Lightnings had to change venue due to flooding, and even then they had to cancel the foundation competition.
In very soggy conditions, the Kennet Kestrels line up of Kizzy, Bracken, Luna, Dory and Buzz were seeded last in Division 5, and our declared time was 0.3s faster than we had run at that point so we had a challenge ahead of us. We did our best, but our fastest time that day was 19.71s which was 0.5s slower than our seed time, so we definitely owned that last place!! Dory must have loved the wet conditions though as she pulled a season's best of 4.15s.
Next up, we were at the Barkshire Bandits competition at Paws in the Park. The conditions were perfect - dry, but not too warm - and we really found our form. We had the same line up, and were seeded 2nd in Division 4, but our seed time was still quite a stretch from what we had been running. We had a really clean set of races though, and this made all the difference as we weren't the fastest team, but we came in 1st place managing a best time of 19.44s. Kizzy did great as start dog, with an average start time of 0.06s - absolutely amazing!
Last weekend we ventured west to TVR's first competition. This time we had Kizzy, Bracken, Cassi, Dory and Buzz in our line up and we were seeded 4th in Division 4 with our new seed time of 19.44s. It was a hot day, and we were definitely slower overall than previous competitions - but we raced well again with mostly clean runs. We got a well-deserved 3rd place, but even better was how well the team is gelling - Kizzy was great on starts again with an average start of 0.12s, whilst Cassi is a model of consistency run after run, but it's the Dory-Buzz pairing that is so good to see - both dogs previously partial to spitting the ball on close crosses, but now showing no signs of this - the confidence they have with each other is great! And to top if off, Bracken achieved a season's best of 4.44s. Let's see how things develop!