2023 Blast off at Oakridge arena with Rocking - 21/22 January 2023

Wash had intended to concentrate on training until April to bring in our new members and dogs into the team, however the opportunity arose for us to get our timing lights sanctioned with BFA and the team voted in November 22 to attend Rockin's event in January. The Hatchers, opted to camp with their new caravan so they didn't have to travel both days, unknowingly choosing one of the coldest weekends to test the van out. It did pass, with almost flying colours, as they and the dogs were snug and warm all weekend.

Wash had a blast with the regular members being joined by Gem, Martin, Jack and Ollie with their dogs for their first Wash Warriors racing outing. Abigail joined us on Saturday to help the team (unfortunately without Willow who was in season) and Beth and Cat also came along (who are on their 6 week course with Naya, Remi and Scout) to see what a competition is all about. Sandra and Mike who had also had a taster session the week before with Phantom also came to see a competition.

Saturday saw Wash Warriors coming 1st in their division and gaining a shiny new seed time of 19.18secs. The team was made up of Indie, Stan, Zarah, Bessie and Pip. Pip is one of our new additions to the club handled by Martin Hope. Abigail did a great job of boxloading for us and told me she would come just to do this job as she loves it (a girl after my own heart)! Thanks also go to Beth and Cat who I threw in the deep end (as I usually do to new members) who took our times down. Beth also had a go at the line, consulting with Chris who was officially on the line for the team and according to him she did a great job.

Naya, Remi and Scout seemed to have a blast when they came in to watch the Foundation team, managing to put Jessie off her stride once or twice!

Brave Warriors joined the Foundation division, they came last but we had a blast with Eddie, Jessie and Lottie. It was Lottie's first outing into the ring and she had the most amazing time doing runbacks. Eddie was working on his confidence and by the end of the day we managed to get him running to the box and back again. Jessie did amazingly well gaining all the scoring points for the team during the day.

Tina got back in the ring judging again, as she had not done this since August 2022, had a blast and even got some dancing in!!

Sunday saw us back in the ring with Vikings, the team being made up by Blue, Bonnie, Jack, Charly and Flo. Again the two new additions to the team are Blue and Flo handled by Gemma Wright, joining us for their first comp and what an awesome day they had. The team broke out spectacularly (6-7 times as we lost count!!) giving us a shiny new seed time of 21.20secs. We have some niggles to iron out with the line ups but the dogs ran well. Gem was delighted as she told us afterwards that all her dogs ran their fastest time ever over the weekend. Well done to all.

Jack also had a blast running with Bonnie again and even managed to average under 6secs all day. Thanks go to Ash for boxloading for the team and for Jack (Gem's son - not the dog!) for ball collecting for us - he did a really grand job. Thanks go to Tina G who came back for the 2nd day and took out times down for us.

We spent quite a bit of the day in the lovely cafe at the arena with all the team members there, chilling out until we were racing. It was quite a long day but we were all lovely and warm in there. We all got to know each other better too, Tina and I have never seen so many club members there and we all toasted Gem and Martin who had decided that they want to stay with Wash Warriors for the forseeable future. Welcome to the gang - we hope you know what your're doing!!!

The lights behaved themselves over both days even with the gates being knocked about a bit on Sunday. We even had some compliments on them so all looks good for future use.

We are now looking forward to 2 months of training and our next planned event over the Easter weekend in April down in Kent.