Squarely in the middle-A Team Small Dog update from Day 1 of the Southwest USDAA Regionals.

Gustavo's team did not come in last! In fact, they came in right in the middle. Just out of Q range, but far, far, far from the bottom. A huge victory, as far as I'm concerned. Gustavo ran great, he missed a couple weave pole entries that cost tremendous amounts of points, and I made one of those dramatically horrible errors in the snooker opening. And one of his missed pole entries was another dramatically horrible handling error from me where I screamed like a harpie at him, thinking he was going to mess up his poles when in all actuality, he was about to hit the entry just fine. I almost scared the pants off the poor little guy! I guess I'm just a drama queen. Someday I will get my agility head screwed on straight.

I was nothing but proud of Gustavo. He ran like a champ. Thank you, BAG Ladies, for letting us be on your team!

Otterpop had a good Steeplechase and made the finals cut. Barely. She did some kind of weird faceplant trip in the middle of the first set of poles and poppled out and I had to restart her. Cost a lot of seconds but she was super speedy after that and qualified. Hooray for Otterpop and hooray that her sore foot appears to be a distant thing of the past.

It's a much smaller show than the Regionals last year or the year before. Since the Nationals are in Kentucky, I think fewer people are spending the money to travel. It didn't seem quite as festive today as it used to. Not sure why. Maybe it needs pinatas. Or a disco ball? I had a lot of fun, though. I hope everyone else did.

I needed to work a lot in the rings. I think that means if I'm working in every single class, that some people are not helping out. Maybe everyone could help out, just a little bit? My feet are tired! I still have to empty the trash cans!

The most exciting run of the day was Olga Chaiko's snooker run with her dog Yankee. A big brown dog busted out and ran into the ring after her dog and she just kept running through her closing. Olga stayed all calm and cool and sent her dog into the weaves, the big brown dog chasing along after. I don't think he wanted to eat Yankee, at least I hope not. They are one of my favorite teams to watch and that was quite a spectacle.

I can't tell you who won the Team competition. I was busy playing frisbee with my dogs down on the soccer field when it ended. That's their favorite part of the day. Flocks of border collies getting their frisbee, and one little black dog team flying after theirs. We couldn't end an agility day without it!