NZFDA TOURNAMENT SUNDAY 9TH IN ROTORUA.

Dog Sports Rotorua has a Flygility Tournament this Sunday at the Stock Car Speedway on Paradise Valley Road.

Our present grounds of course are at Ngongotaha where all our gear resides. With a trailer from George and Carolyn Mear I got to our gear container at about 9.10 am. My workers were already there and organising the gear out of the container and ready to load. Thank you Chris and Rose, you were an asset, it would have taken me a heck of a long time on my own.

Club Captain Rosslyn and Sharon Mear our Secretary went direct to the Speedway to meet with Sonja Hickey to organise keys and to start the process from that end. We finally got there at 10.30 ish with the gear and then with Hilary Chris and I working on the course layouts for the Tournament and Sharon and Rosslyn working in the Clubrooms we started to feel as though it was a place we could work in, it started to feel good. All of our dogs enjoyed the space and as there was no stock in adjacent paddocks we let our dogs have a bit of a roam and that looked good too.

When we do a Tournament at our Club these days we pre-mark the courses on the ground colour co-ordinated so that any fool can set up the courses on the day. For example Beginners is marked in fluoro orange, hurdles, fly hurdles boxes. The start line - box line and catch net line are set up, as is the centre line, which admittedly is a bit tricky at the Speedway as they do a grid system for car parking and the grid lines aren't necessarily in a good spot for all the courses, however we found a way to work around it.

We were into marking courses - which entails setting up a full two lane course then spraying it onto the ground,- at 10.30 and finished at 2.30. Six courses, three different courses on each ring site. Chris and Hilary are getting to be indispensable for set ups now, however Hilary had another appointment and had to leave. Fortunately Rosslyn was free as was Emily so between us we finished the set ups and markings. By now it was raining cats and dogs and blowing a storm. Baptism of fire they call it. Even more wonderful was that Chris raced home and made me the greatest steak and onion toasted sandwich to help keep my strength up. Thank you so much Chris.

One of my little eccentricities is that I am almost completely deaf. I was born that way and I am supposed to be wearing two well tuned hearing aids. However, when I have wind and rain it isn't possible to do that, so I just about drove everyone nuts today with the communication gap, sorry guys. I am used to it but you did struggle with me today. I also have a long suffering audiologist by the name of Aura who growls at me all the time for not wearing my aids.

So we are ready to go with the Tournament at a new venue with heaps of space. I was planning on taking some pics for my website today but weather precluded that. Just to add to the excitement tomorrow - Saturday - is supposed to be hideous weather and Sunday will be dodgy as well.

Dear Rose said this morning when we were packing that it seemed to be a bit of a waste of time to pack all this gear to take to Paradise Valley only to have the day rained out. We don't rain out, we do it no matter what the weather and we have been very lucky in the past and this Sunday will be no exception. We have wonderful prizes from Masterpet and great ribbons. If it is only our Club members and a few more - we are going to go home with a bunch of goodies. We also have pots of soup and wonderful pies to eat on the day so we will all be smiling no matter what the weather.

So tired and over worked before the weekend even starts, but hey looking forward to it anyway.

Thanks again Dog Sports Rotorua - what a great club.

Raewyn Saville Dog Trainer