CHAROITE SIBERIANS

Well, our "Just One More" rally weekend went by in a flash and racing season 2011/12 is officially finished. Boo…

It’s been an awesome five months. I’ve loved every single moment and the dogs have once again amazed me, putting in fantastic performance after fantastic performance. You can read a bit more about our race season here.

It’s time now for some chilled-out Spring/Summer training as we try not to hang up the harnesses over the summer and hope it’s like last year with plenty of cool early starts to nice days.

Last weekend we headed down to Surrey for the last rally of the season, AMWA’s 3 Stage Buttersteep Challenge.

Like the other races that have been taking place over the past couple of weekends, the team behind Buttersteep had clearly thought about the uncertain spring weather well in advance. The start for the daylight stages had been brought forward to 8am Saturday and 7.30am Sunday. Gaps between classes cut down to the minimum and smaller teams sent out in one minute intervals so everyone would get to run while it was still cool enough. As it was, last weekend proved chilly (as it had been forecast) anyway and Sunday’s weather was especially great with all teams finished more or less before a lovely frost had melted!

Spook & Pyewacket in action at Buttersteep, photo by Sammy Taylor

The dogs really enjoyed the three runs. We moved over to Swinley Forest for the night stage which I didn’t like quite so much as my old Mila head lamp is clearly on its last legs and isn’t lighting up the trail as spectacularly as it used to so cue much hesitation on my part which must affect the dogs. It’s okay for training but makes it difficult to spot where the turns are on a new trail. Need a new light!

I ran Spook and his Uncle Pyewacket who put in three great runs to win their class. Kev ran Hex with her daddy Brew and their friend Chena, winning 3 dog. Haven’t seen the times yet. Kev also ran the rest of the gang in 6 dog so all the runners got an outing. The rest had two different race trails to walk so Beany was in her element on the flexi-lead.

Mojo didn’t have such a great weekend as her on-going dental issues started playing up and toothache made her grouchier than usual. She went into the vet yesterday and 12 hours later and minus several teeth is already a much happier little doggy this morning.

Long weekend coming up! House has been sorely neglected over the past few months so time for long due Spring overall!