Dog showing seems to have taken a back seat at the moment while we wait for Hugo and Indy to grow a coat.
In the meantime I have been taking a more active role in helping Jim with his racing pigeons. Weather permitting 2 or 3 days a week the pigeons are taken 40 to 50 miles from home for training, ending with race marking on a Friday night and the race on the Saturday.
Our first race from Carnwath was a cracker, with an expected race time of 50 mins the sky seemed full of birds, normally the young crows that you never notice seem to be everywhere and even a swallow suddenly gives the illusion of being a pigeon way high up in the sky. LOL. Like the calm before the storm the skies go quiet and even the clouds seem to stop where they are, then you spot one then a second and before you know it you have half the race team sitting on the hut and in the stall traps, this is the point where your heart starts to beat faster, and your normally blase attitude to getting them in changes. Imagine you are in a race and you can feel someone breathing down your neck!!! well that's what it is like, for every seconds delay in getting the race ring off the pigeon and into clock can mean the difference between 1st and 12th place. With the ring off 4 hours after liberation we had to make do with telephone calls to other club members trying to second guess the results. A bit like dog showing. On this occassion we were beaten by half a second into 2nd place but also taking 3rd place, not to bad from a total of 235 birds sent by 10 members of the club.
Our first race from Carnwath was a cracker, with an expected race time of 50 mins the sky seemed full of birds, normally the young crows that you never notice seem to be everywhere and even a swallow suddenly gives the illusion of being a pigeon way high up in the sky. LOL. Like the calm before the storm the skies go quiet and even the clouds seem to stop where they are, then you spot one then a second and before you know it you have half the race team sitting on the hut and in the stall traps, this is the point where your heart starts to beat faster, and your normally blase attitude to getting them in changes. Imagine you are in a race and you can feel someone breathing down your neck!!! well that's what it is like, for every seconds delay in getting the race ring off the pigeon and into clock can mean the difference between 1st and 12th place. With the ring off 4 hours after liberation we had to make do with telephone calls to other club members trying to second guess the results. A bit like dog showing. On this occassion we were beaten by half a second into 2nd place but also taking 3rd place, not to bad from a total of 235 birds sent by 10 members of the club.
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