30 April 2007

Good dogs at dog show.

So moving is going okie dokie, and I had the dogs entered, so what better to do after a hard week of moving than get up at 5:30 and go to a dog show. This one is sponored by my dog club, SMART and I don't do a whole lot except random graphic design things for my own dog club that I am a member of, so I wanted to get there and run the dogs and help. Because we need help. There are a couple local dog clubs, and SMART is sort of the gangly kid sibling one that doesn't totally work like a well oiled machine. But it doesn't have embezellment dramas either I guess.

Ruby was awesome, I had a refusal at the chute in her pairs class. Now that I am moved down to the lower performance level with Ruby, I didn't even realize I don't need pairs Q's anymore. They are just for fun apparently. But it's still a class to run in. She still got a Q because her time was ok. Our partner was someone we've been partners with before, a little bit of a character on the agility scene but a very nice lady. I think a lot of people are little bit of characters. This one talks to herself when she walks courses and is I see her a lot coming out of her motorhome with a cigarette dangling. But she is a darn good agility handler with white hair and her husband is basically a professional dog show worker.

Otterpop had her advanced standard class and it was probably her best run ever. Totally fast, like she is when she practices, no problem on teeter, contacts, nothing. Just an awesome run. She got a Q and won it. Her next class was snookers, it was very slow and she got a Q but not how I want her to run. Same thing happened in jumpers. Was a stressed out kind of slow, sniffy, and we got a 1 second time fault. Horrible! So she didn't Q and I was mortified to have a dog with a time fault. She runs out of the ring though all amped up and ready to play frisbee. A lot of her speed is still frisbee dependent and I have to figure out how to make her excited about agility when the frisbee is somewhere else.

Ruby had a great standard run, and I think won the class. I know she got a Q. I frequently forget to check since I am not a ribbon person, have way too many dog show ribbons from Ruby's first years of showing to get ribbons. Otterpop will never know. So a lot of times I forget to get my scores, then I don't know how fast I was. Now that we are in performance, I am only competing against about 5 or 6 dogs, so a win isn't that big of a deal. But they are all good dogs that have moved down like Ruby to a lower division, so we are in very competitive company. Someone after wards told me that the way I sent her into the weave poles was just like a big dog. Of course it is!

Her jumpers run had a screw up by me and I made her hit the bar. It makes me sad she is still hitting bars sometimes at 12". Not as much as at 16" but she still does. Sometimes it's me (it was my timing in this case) and sometimes it is just the way she jumps. We had a good time though. I just love going to dog shows. Next week is Petaluma. Going to be a long week.

No comments: