So yesterday, we drove up to a CPE dog show in Petaluma. CPE dog shows, my non agility friends, are sort of like the flip flops to your vintage Frye engineer boots. Not to be confused with non vintage ones purchased at full price through some swishy online retailer that sells the Perfect Belt for $340. Sort of like the Mazda to the F-250 truck. Your basic tract ranch with wall to wall berber to your sculpturally restored Eichler. Like it gets you where you want to go. Just has sort of a different vibe than USDAA. Kind of agility for the rest of us.
So when kicking back in a tract house in your flip flops, 6 year old Mazda parked in the pretty clean driveway, there's not a bunch of cares in your world. Crack a beer, turn on the tv, flop back in the slightly stained couch with a polar fleece throw to hide it and you hang out. Sort of like at CPE. USDAA show, you got your boots that are so perfect broken in and you had to make sure to do the truck maintenance to keep that big truck running good and running strong and there's always stuff to attack on that Eichler at all times to keep it stunning and better than the other ones on the block.
So you get it. Just different strokes in these dog shows. I go to both. One way, not so stressful, one way more of by way of aspiration work in progress. I think that makes me a slip on navy blue Vans wearer driving a 1999 Honda CRV living in a vintage wood paneled 1940's beach bungalow that still needs work. We took our friend Mary and her dog who live down the street so we carpooled and how green is that and her big dog had to sit sort of smashed up against my small dogs. I think they all had a nice time of it anyways. Is fun to bring a pal to the dogshow! Thanks Mary! She tore up the Level 3 CPE stuff this weekend.
My dogs had a swell time. Really can't complain. I know that they were all Qs, all the time. Now it's all a little foggy, I know there were some weirdo start lines for Ruby in the morning that went away by the afternoon. Cost her some time, cost me some concern, but she never looked sore and by the end of the day was running like that finely tuned big truck I always hope her to be. Just tried to keep her out of weave poles where I could. One bar late in the day at a double jump out of a blasty tunnel. One bar, whole day. Hey Ruby thanks! Our big goal here was testing out her super fast and CONSISTENT running dogwalk contact we've been working away at but this was nearly a dogwalk free dog show for some reason of mystery not figured out by me other than CPE judges not dogwalk fans? Is somewhere in the rules? Dunno. The one she did in her Standard was fast and feet ran straight to the bottom of the yellow like we've been practicing practicing practicing but no way to tell was it fluke or fact.
Otterpop continued in her newly scrubbed off brain idea of it is not so bad out there in that ring. Loped around like in the hunters. Can't say she's looking like the fastest dog in town like she does when she practices in a ring she deems safe and sane. She only likes sheep and horses to watch her. And have beloved frisbee there. But had a nice working canter, like if they had a hunter division for scrappy little Otterpops she'd be right in there. Would have to braid her tail somehow though. But just a steady, confident dog out there and I see her getting nothing but better and easier out there and not searching so desperately for zombies at every turn. In the world of CPE, this means she wins prizes and such, although I still need to check and see what they were. I kind of don't actually care though, so maybe tomorow. Or the next day.
2 comments:
I'd like to see more dogwalks at CPE trials. More contacts in general. Chairperson can probably request that when asking judges to come judge us.
-ellen
I'd like to see more dogwalks, too, but emphasis on the *see*. I've been having a touch of the sciatica, and so I've been going to physical therapy and pretending that I am going to practice the Pilates stuff they tell you to do, you know tighten this body part, but not that body part and breathe in and out, during the right body part clench (it's sort of like just as hard to do Pilates as it is to do agility, except that obviously the Pilates doesn't involve a dog, and I really don't find it sufficiently fun that I would want to, for example, get up at 4:15 a.m. to do it) -- because I actually do now want to run around, on a semi-regular basis (like for 35 seconds at a time), when for the last probably 40, okay maybe 45 years, running was not of interest to me. And then at 4 a.m. or so this morning I got the REAL sciatica by apparently rolling over in my sleep. And so I got out of bed because it hurt so much, and then I couldn't walk because that hurt so much.
So, now maybe I'm going to try harder on the Pilates.
Or maybe not lift dogwalks? Or maybe not pound nails into the hard dirt for the tunnel tie downs? Or maybe not pull up the rings stakes out of hard dirt at the end of the show? Or maybe not tug with my dog? Or maybe someone just has a vicodin prescription leftover from the last time you went to the dentist?
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