Trail Achievements
We started out at the beginning of the 2008/09 rally season in our ‘comeback season’ at Ae forest for the SDAS race. We felt totally out of place as we looked around, everything had changed in the few years we had been away from racing. Many of the faces were new to us, everybody seemed so professional and in particular we were so out of touch and very rusty!
There were no expectations of us or our teams and we will admit that it was so much more fun like that. We really had no idea what to expect from our youngsters, they were in the main unknown quantities on trails that were new to them. We started by running a couple of our older dogs with the two new command girlies, which in fact ensured that the teams would get round the trails safely.
We were pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm and work ethos at Ae forest, to be totally honest we actually came away from the event rather excited at the prospects of the 6-dog team. They did not let us down and just got better and better as the season progressed, in actual fact we only put the young team together for the 6-dog class at Aviemore & Alwen.
The trail conditions at Aviemore were not the best we have ever experienced at the event and Adrian had to slow the team right down both days, but they would have flown round had the conditions been better. This was the second time that we have won the coveted Best Own-bred Team trophy, we originally won it with our old 6-dog team in 2002 and it’s taken another 6 years to have a team that could win it once again for the kennel.
This team did not run together again until the South Alwen rally where once again we were surprised by their attitude and performance, we know there is still so much more to come from this young team as they mature.
