Saturday AKC trial

We made it to the show. Riff wasn't as energetic as usual, after his illness yesterday, but he ate his breakfast with gusto. He was bright-eyed and eager enough that I took him over to the fairgrounds at about 9:am. What can I say? I like to compete. I like to think my dogs like to compete.

It was a chilly morning. No snow (alas), but the thermometer said it was 28 degrees on the backporch of our house, at 5:am. Plenty of chill (for California). And what a gorgeous, gorgeous, clear, star-studded sky! At the fairgrounds, I covered three sides of Riff's crate, and made sure he had his binky and an extra blanket.

This was how a lot of folks looked this morning:


I totally went with the Layers, but I don't have any "people heat" devices, nor do I have a "dog coat." I'm thinking about buying a dog coat. Mostly because the kind I like (see photo above) reminds me of the coats we used to put on our horses. (Bearing in mind that our horses had much, much finer coats than our border collies do.) I'm not in line for a propane heater. I move around too much at trials, and my heater would go untended.....

Riff wanted to break his start-line stay in his first-ever Excellent Jumpers class. I lined him up very close to the feet of the scribe/timer, and I think that shook him up a little. He stood up immediately, and moved forward. I said "SIT!" and he did. I decided to move to the other side of him. I thought, "AKC rules say that I can still run this..." and I moved to the other side of him, looked at him, said "OKAY" and ran....
...
...

In hindsight, I should've taken him off after that first break.

He ran pretty well over the jumps, considering I was on the wrong side of my planned route. But he missed his weave entry....twice....before he got it. In Excellent, you can't have any mistakes. Ah, well. I celebrated his jumping.

We still had Open Standard to go, however, so we waited for three hours. I walked him several times, played games with him...and took him to the practice jumps twice, to work on start-line stays. During this lay-over, I found out that the people near his crate had been feeding him. Why do people do that?! They fed him salmon brownies, and cheese. They said "He was being so good, he was so cute. We decided to reward him." I tried to be nice about it. But when I took him to potty....yuck, yuck, yuck. Poor Riffle! I told my neighbors, Please Do Not Feed My Dog. Especially When I'm Not Here. aka: Ask Me First!

During our Open Standard course he broke the start-line. We left the ring. We went home.

He seems intestinally fine this evening. I'll keep an eye on him, and decide whether or not to go to the show tomorrow, by 9:am.

Tomorrow is another day. A whole new day. Anything can happen.

Ever onward!!!!