CaniX Fineshades

Originally this weekend I had planned to do the Agility Nuts show, but CaniX announced a one day event at Finshades, Corby just after I entered. This is the most local CaniX event to us so I decided I would instead do one day of each.

It was nice to have a bit of a lay in as we didn’t need to leave the house until 8.30. The race briefing wasn’t until 10am and it was just over an hours drive. The kids and short course set off at 10.15am followed by us 5km runners just after 10.30am.

Somehow I ended up at right at the back again but this time I was against a different group of 2-dog females. Although it wasn’t sunny, it was humid and both myself and Team Spanner certainly felt the heat. Rex rather sensibly stuck to a rather energy efficient trot, and once Blaze was over the initial excitement of the start even he slowed so he wasn’t pulling too much. The course was just over 5 km and consisted of mostly track – far from the obstacles that we had to contend with at Kielder or the muddy bogs of Mugdock. I do believe this effected the dogs running too; they much prefer the narrow forrest trails (as do I if I’m honest). But, aside for stopping to let them drink at the marshal point, and that final steep hill I managed to run it all. We finished in 29:39.58 and managed to win the 2-dog female category. Quite a bit slower than our time back in March but the weather at the march event was much more forgiving.

As we’re doing a lot more of the CaniX events this season, I decided to play about with the combinations of dogs I run at the events. This past week I’ve been running D, Blaze and Pip, with Inca off and Rex with Si and the bike (when Si has come). I don’t want Rex running even t after event so I took Blaze and Pip out for a run this evening (aka Team Noisy), while Inca was off lead and D was with Si on the bike. Theres the possibility that D will make his CaniX debut later in the season when it gets a bit cooler. Hes loving the training runs, I just need to get his confidence up when running with other dogs he doesn’t know.

This coming weekend its two 6km CaniX runs down in Bagshot. I guess I’ll need to see how the weather is, but I’m probably going to substitute Pip for Rex on one of the days. At least you’ll be able to hear us coming!