Looooong weekend

 When your club hosts an obedience trial, it's kind of like Christmas: you spend ages getting ready for it, making lists and checking them twice, can't wait for the big day(s) to arrive, then time flies, all of a sudden it's over  . . . and you're both disappointed and relieved.

For Phoenix and I, it was a weekend of the good, the bad and the ugly. He did a lovely job on his Open individual exercises both Friday and Saturday, with improvement in both animation and accuracy on Saturday, but walked out on the long down both days. Sigh. 

The best thing about obedience people is everyone genuinely wants to help and I got tons of very sincere advice. Than you, everyone! It's all spinning around in my head and I need to sift through it all and decide how I want to approach working through this problem. I'll be eating a couple of entry fees for trials that have already closed but I don't want Phoenix to keep practicing stress-ball behavior.

We did Graduate Open today and won the class for his first GO leg. Apparently he knows more about Utility than I realized. Good Skinny Little Dog!

Jamie won Veterans on Saturday and was 2nd today with a 196 and 4 points off for a couple of no sits. Sweet old man. If you don't want to sit, you don't have to. It was fun to heel with him again in the ring although I didn't realize how different his working style is from Phoenix.

Our teams Saturday were spectacular. We had so much fun! I have never laughed so hard both inside and outside of the ring. Jamie was in his element on Senior Moments and Phoenix loved being the only boy dog on Flower Power (he even happily wore his neck boutonniere with good will and totally ignored the fact he had a bouquet on the back of his head! In fact, that might have been the nicest heeling he's ever done. Can he wear flowers all the time?). 

I will definitely do team again but next year, but I'm only going to be on ONE team! Scrambling to change clothes, switch armbands and handing Phoenix off for stays (thanks, Renee!) got a little hectic, but 3 other handlers were doing the same thing so it was a bit of a free for all at times.

Tons of people took tons of pictures and video so if  any get circulated to me, I'll share. The other teams included the Red Hat Ladies (Knockers up!), the ICDOC Dumbelles and Team Nauti-Pom (2 PWDs, 2 poms, all owned by the same people).

It's been a fun three days and I am thoroughly exhausted. G'night.