Living it Up

The Tailwaggers club was hosting a three day USDAA trial down in Vero Beach this past weekend. Since we could not afford to do all three days, and what we really needed were standard, pairs, jumpers, and maybe a Grand Prix Q, it worked out perfectly that these classes were being offered on Sunday. We still need two snooker Super Q's, but snooker is offered more frequently than pairs certainly, and usually we only end up doing jumpers once as well. My friend Terri and her lovely dogs were there for the weekend, and she very graciously offered for me to crash with her Saturday night at the Motel 6 where Kaylee and I used to always stay. That sealed the deal.

We did some practice Saturday morning, took care of some chores and shopping, and hit the road around 4pm that afternoon. It had apparently rained buckets on the days previous, and the weather folks were predicting more. I was fortunate not to encounter any storms along the way and made great time to the hotel. The best thing, well perhaps the only good thing, about the Motel 6 is that it has lots of grass to walk the dogs on. Of course, since it is dog friendly, it is also a minefield of poop. In spite of that, we had a nice walk and stretched our legs before going into the room with Terri's dogs. Xander has been around my friend Lara's energetic dogs, and loves to play with Sting, but typically he ignores other dogs. Due to his difficult relationship with Kirby, I am always a little hesitant of his reactions to other dogs if they act dominantly toward him. I was blown away by how wonderfully he behaved in the tiny hotel room.

Terri has two border collies of her own, and then travels and competes with two of her clients' dogs, a pair of lovely aussies. Harley is a big, goofy, loveable red merle that is a little over two years old, and very much a puppy still. He and Xander had a wonderful time wrestling on my bed, and in my lap, before Harely was put in his crate to allow Bella to play. Bella is a gorgeous black tri and a huge flirt. Xander thought she was VERY sexy and put on his best show of posturing and the two of them had a long wrestling session with occassional attempts at humping.

Eventually, everyone settled down. This involved Bella pushed into one side of me, and Xander curled up on the other near my head. Needless to say, I did not get lots of sleep, but enjoyed it just the same. Terri and I talked about food and travels and dogs until late into the night before we finally went to sleep. At around 4am, Porsche, the eleven year old began pacing in the tiny bathroom. The bathroom was so small that the door would not close unless you lifted the tiolet seat first. Terri woke up fearing she was having a stroke, but we soon heard the cause of her anxiety when a loud crash of thunder and lightning knocked out our power and thus the extremely loud air conditioning unit. The storm raged for a while, but passed before our phone alarms woke us at 6am. Our power was not entirely restored however. I'm not sure how, but we had enough power for our lights to flicker dimly, but not to come on completely. It was like getting washed and dressed by candlelight. Agility is always an adventure.

The rest of the day was gorgeous. The sky was blue, the sun was warm, but the temperatures were mild and made for delightful agility weather. Although the trial is undercover, when it does rain, the tin roof makes a deafening noise and the crating areas tend to flood. I was glad I had arrived just in time for good weather. The big dogs ran first, which is always my preference since it doesn't give me time to psych myself out. We hadn't competed since early March, and at that time I was stressed out about the potential job and could not relax or focus. Our performance suffered obviously, as did my enjoyment level. This day was like a bonus and I had no expectations and no reason to be stressed out. I was only thinking of the two weeks until our wedding and honeymoon, and how much I enjoyed hanging out with Terri as well as regulars such as Kelly and Gail. I love USDAA folks. Previously, we have suffered from "one little thing" syndrome in standard and could not buy a Q. We had one, but single bars, tires, and other minor things had been keeping us from a clean run. Sunday morning we went out and had a beautiful clean run that was even good enough for 2nd place! Finally, our second standard Q was in the bag! One more and we will have our MAD!

After this came pairs, and for some reason, Xander and I have issues with it. Fortunately, Terri and Vette had issues with their half as well, so it wasn't one sided for either of us. It didn't bother me though, since the standard Q had made my trip worthwhile all by itself. Next up was Grand Prix, another class where we could never seem to qualify, although we don't run it terribly often. We had earned one last September, which was enough for our ADCH requirements, so this was just for fun mostly. We did Q, although it was not smooth enough to place and our lovely Vette won the class! Funny enough, I came home to look at our competition record and realized it was the last tournament Q we needed for his Tournament Master title! Good job Xander!

Finally, jumpers was built by around 1pm. It was so awesome to have four runs in about five hours, my kind of agility trial. We had two jumper legs going in, the course was fun and fast, and we came through with another 2nd place Q! That put us at three out of four runs for the day, a definite success! This means we need two snooker super Qs, two jumper, three pairs, and three standard Qs for our ADCH. Not bad for our fourth time in Masters. He really is such a good boy and does so well when MY head is in the right place! Best thing was, we made it back to Jax in time to go swimming at the dog park and wash off the clay. They all had "cheeto feet" after running in it. We were home before 6pm and in bed by 8pm. It was a great day.

Now Terri has convinced me to go to the regional to team up with Vette and Donna Brian's lovely dog Sting. Perry in June, our first regional event, why not?!