Well, this one was a lot of fun. It was nice for a change to go compete with only one team, which is what we did for a couple years before we grew bigger.  We ended up buddying up with Rocket Dog Racers from the Malibu area, they needed help and so did we (boxloaders, shaggers) so we helped each other out.

The original plan was to run a team consisting of Jake, Cody, Wee-Bee and Gypsy with Reno as backup. Reno would only fill in if needed because he was racing in Pairs (team name = Lenny & Squiggy) with his littermate-brother Hemi from RFR Flyball in Reno.  Unfortunately it became obvious the first two races on Saturday that Wee-Bee is just not able to manage racing any longer due to vision problems. Pat decided to pull her out, and we put Reno in her place.

The seed time for this team was 20.50 with a breakout time of 19.50. The fastest we ever ran was last year in Truckee, and then it was like 19.8 something, so we weren’t too concerned, even though we replaced a 6.5 second dog with a 4.2 second dog.

Wrong!

We broke out once (I think) on Saturday. Twice on Sunday. Our fastest of the break out times was 19.375. Trish from Rocket Dogs told us we should be racing in the 18s with that combination of dogs. Sweet! However, not part of the game plan. If we had broke out three times in one day, we would have been disqualified. So, we had to really watch it. Saturday we took second place in our division (Division 3), and Sunday we took first place in the same division. The dogs ran very well, clean runs all the way!  Lynette Brennan was running Jake as start dog until we lost Wee-Bee, then she shifted easily into running anchor with Gypsy, even though we hadn’t practiced that. Lynette did a fantastic job of handling the whole weekend.

Lenny and Squiggy surprised us on Sunday by being the fastest Pairs team for the day.  We made new friends, getting to know the Rocket Dogs people. Very nice folks.  Gold Coast Flyers put on an excellent tournament, it was a lot of fun, and we’ll look forward to their next one.