Dog'ged Juniors

Since the litter went down the drain, we've been showing! Queezle has shown 4 days so far, going Best of Breed every day and then going on to a Group 3 and a Group 4. She is so happy to be traveling again.

Over the next three weeks we have 4 days of agility, 5 days of conformation, 2 days of agility, 2 days of conformation and moving into the apartment (!!!) for the start of school.

Wow, you guys are busy   At least you're making the most of it... I hope your next breeding works out, if you're planning on trying again.

I have been seriously lazy with the dogs lately, between the weather, work and money.  The weather's been so hot I haven't even been doing any backyard agility.  We did the State Fair demo yesterday, and one flyball tournament back in July, but only because they were nearby.  I seriously don't trust myself to drive to any far away events alone until I get a GPS, since my navigational skills leave much to be desired; and my family doesn't want to travel far because of gas and hotel costs, which is understandable.  I still kind of miss traveling though - that was actually one of my favorite parts of dog sports.  Do you have to travel really far to go to all these dog shows, or are there a lot of them in your area?

Mostly I stick close - 1 or 2 hours away. Though my mom and I don't blink at a 4 hour drive to New England or PA either If there are really good judges we'll go farther, and things like National specialties and big invitational shows we'll literally span the continent. I love to travel, and my mom enjoys it too. We've had a lot of really fun trips. I learned to read a map on a jaunt up to Canada for herding... the town we were looking for was in the crease of the road atlas so I couldn't find it!

I am planning to try again on her next heat, though the stud is once again to be determined. Poncho being infertile was probably the most depressing part of this whole saga - we had one shot, and it missed. Oh well. Now I'm looking at some more of that breeder's dogs, and also a couple outside dogs. The trick is going to be excusing myself gracefully if I don't go with one of her dogs - she has been incredibly open and nice to me, but has a reputation for being difficult. Even if I don't breed to one of her dogs now, I am definitely going to want to come back to her in the future, so I don't want to burn any bridges.

The star of the agility trials last weekend was Flash! She qualified in Excellent FAST for her second leg. She also had some nice Jumpers runs, but with bars down. However, she wasn't sore at all, which makes me happy.

Tia was pokey in most of her runs, and the one that she ran beautifully we had a bar down. She has started back up with her coughing/gagging thing. Mom is thinking it's allergy related so we're going to try putting her on albuterol and see if that helps.

Queezle was fast and furious. She did a fabulous job even on hard courses, but is being a beast about the weave poles. Even though she does them fine once she just shuts up and weave, when I send her to them she charges me barking obnoxiously. I've started catching her when she jumps at me and we leave the ring. At home I'm asking her to make really hard entrances and work with crazy distractions, figuring that if she can weave successfully with all that, doing it at a trial will seem easy. She has so much talent though! We're also doing remedial contact stuff... as always LOL.

The Ballston Spa conformation shows have been inauspicious thus far - Best of Breed both days with no competition and nothing in Group. Tomorrow we're the only ones entered and there are supposed to be some other Tervs over the weekend. We shall see!

Well, on Friday we once again got Best of Breed by default and nothing in Group. On Saturday another bitch special showed up, and we took the breed and got a Group 4! Sunday the other bitch won, so we got to come home way early. I was exhausted.

And my mom's Terv Hokey who I sometimes show got his second CDX leg! She is hoping he'll finish this coming weekend, so keep your fingers crossed for the Hoke-man. Can't remember if I ever posted here, but last October he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Mom did all the chemo with him and he's on a boatload of supplements, but he went into remission after the first round of chemo and has stayed there! He has been doing awesome since, and we think some of his motivation issues last summer may have been early symptoms of the cancer.

Wow, that's great to hear about Hokey - I think I remember hearing that he had lymphoma but I couldn't remember how he was doing; I'm generally afraid to ask about these kinds of things, in case the news is bad -- but I'm glad to hear that's not the case (knock on wood)

We're pretty much done with dog events for the summer, unless you count the Labor Day weekend flyball tournament.  In the fall we might be doing a flyball demo or two, and then we're going to the NAFA Can-Am in October.  It's all the way in Indiannapolis (thank god for teammates and carpooling ) but it's such a huge tournament, I really didn't want to miss it. It's crazy how big it is; last year we even had a team fly in from Alaska. 

I also want to try and get to at least one more agility trial this year. I'd like to do a sled dog race, but I think mushing is pretty much off the table for now, since I'm not able to practice and don't have time for it anyway.  We definitely won't be doing any herding in the near future, but I don't really miss that so much... although, like you said, it did lead to some interesting driving 'adventures;' I remember once during a herding clinic in central WI, we got totally lost and ended up on a dirt road, at night, in the rain, in the woods in the middle of nowhere -- we ended up just driving around blindly until we finally found a real road... ah that was exciting.  And then on the way back home the main freeway was closed, so we spend most of the trip winding our way through country backroads.  It was very, very slow, but at least the scenery was nice.

Whoa - that really is far for a team to come! That must be a really cool/fun tournament to attend though.

This past weekend we did two days of agility and 2 days of conformation.

In agility:

- Tia MXJ (preferred) leg #8

- Tia MXJ (preferred) leg #9

- Queezle XF leg #1

Tia almost had a double q on Saturday but just missed the aframe contact. I was thrilled with Queezle's FAST leg because it was the first time she did her weaves correctly and without mouthing off at me all weekend. She also hit her dogwalk contact for the first time in a long time! Flash had a grand time as always but was knocking bars. No more outdoor shows for I think - a flat, even surface should be better for those little old legs

At the breed shows, Queezle went Best of Breed over a large Terv entry both days! This gave her two 5 pt majors towards her Grand Champion - she now has 12 pts, 2 majors out of the required 25 pts, 3 majors. Her hair is now pretty much gone so no more breed shows for a while.

Flash got a Veteran Group 3 on Saturday