Beach Day

It was one of our team members birthday's recently and she'd suggested taking her horses and all the team dogs to the beach for the afternoon.  After finding out it'd cost £18 to park each of the horse lorries, we decided to just take the dogs!

We couldn't have asked for a nicer day - it was cold, but absolutely glorious sunshine.  We met up at Littleport with a few members still nursing a hangover from the pubbing/clubbing session the night before...

A convoy set out for Holme beach where we met up with the rest of our members.  It was a little bit manic co-ordinating everybody, but we finally all arrived and 25 dogs plus owners and their children made an amazing spectacle on the beach.

Look at that weather - it was perfect!

Just throw the blooming ball will you!!!

Afterwards we headed to a local pub (The Old Coach House, Thornam) where Kristy had booked a table for food and drinks.  It was lovely food and was great to have a natter with friends.

All in all, a great afternoon out, hopefully to be repeated next year.  Hope you had a great birthday weekend Kelly!

First Post & Alphas Starters Tournament

It seems fitting to me that my first post on my new blog is about the little dog who came into my life just over a year ago at a time when everything was changing and helped me mark the start of a new chapter in my life.

Tally (Bryning Totally Trouble of Tottlefields) is a working cocker spaniel bred by Nat of Bryning Border Collies and this weekend, she and 2 of her litter-mates, along with her half-brother Travis and aunty Radley made up the Cock-ups team, competing in the beta division of the Alphas starter tournament at Newark.

Nat and I had discussed being able to run the cockers together almost since the day they went to their seperate homes, but it was just that, talk, cos we thought we'd be mad to do it.  Then this tournament at Newark came up as the perfect opportunity, being fairly evenly placed between the 3 team involced with the cockers - Cambridgeshire Canines, Demon Dogz and Read2Fly.  We had to give it a go!

The week leading up to the tournament, I think Nat summed things up very well..
"I think it's going to go one of two ways...(1) they'll be absolutely fab (2) they'll be absolutely dire with no in between...cockers are always reliably unpredictable!"

Well, what can I say.... They were great!!!!  All the dogs ran really well and weren't fazed by not really having met before (other than a year ago before they left mummy!), Tally running on a flat-fronted box she's never done before, and dog's running back up the lane!  The team managed to pull off the fastest time of their division with a 19.93s and a 2nd place, losing to the winning team due to a couple of ball fumbles.

Below are Travis (Raezhaven Bryce at Bryning - half brother), Charlie (Bryning Brock), Tally and Tarka (Bryning Riverine) racing their hearts out:-

David Murdoch also came up to the tournament for the day and hopefully had a very enjoyable day racing his black lab Spencer at his 2nd starters tournament, joining Beamer (Linnotts), Jessey (Read2Fly), Spark, Jovi and Maisie (Demon Dogz) to make up the Demon K9's, who won the gamma division, remaining up defeated all day.