Mt. Baker dog show

I'm just going to go ahead and give you the blow-by-blow of the weekend, but I will warn you that I'm a little tired and my brain is a little befuddled.:O) It was a lot of fun though and I learned more about handling, but unfortunately we didn't get any points. Which is a bummer because it was a three point major for bitches. Next time though! Alrighty, here goes!

Bess and I headed out Fri. at about 12:45 to go pick up Karen and her rhodesian ridgeback, Hunter. Bess' breeder, Georgia, handled Hunter this weekend at the show. We've met them before at another show and it's always great to carpool when you can to help cut the cost of travel. And they're fun, so it worked out well! The trip started off REAL fun when I got stuck on the bridge getting into Washington because the draw bridge was up to let a boat through. Traffic is bad normally getting over into Washington on I-5, but this made it just AWFUL! Thankfully the temperatures hadn't gotten warm, because we were at a stand still for a little while. I have yet to get stuck on the bridge when it's been up, so this was a first. I chatted a little bit with some other drivers, 'cause really, what else are you going to do?

Once we got moving again, we picked up Karen and Hunter and headed up to Lynden, which is normally about a 5 hour drive. However, we hit some nasty traffic along the way that turned it into a little over a six hour drive. Good times! Again, thankfully the weather wasn't that warm and all was well. We got to the fairgrounds and got settled into Georgia and Jack's trailer. We had an alarm set on Karen's phone, but I'm always paranoid about oversleeping and kept checking my cell phone during the night. I really don't know why I was worried. We had two dogs in the trailer with us, it gets light fairly early, and we were staying at the fairgrounds with a bunch of dog people. Many of whom had dogs to groom early and 8am ring times.

Sat. the danes didn't go into the ring until 1pm. Pretty unusual considering we're usually the ones who go in at 8am. And it totally figures that the show where I'm actually staying at the show site and don't have to do any driving is the one where I have late ring times both days! Sat. went well enough. I was happy with how we did in the ring, but we took second in the American Bred Bitches class and that was that. However, Hunter went Winners Dog for his very first AKC point!!

Since we had such a late ring time, this was the first time that I've actually stuck around to watch group! It was pretty neat! And I do have to definitely say that the working group is by far my favorite group! I know that I'm a little biased, but seriously, we have the most awesome breeds in our group! I managed to take a little video of the end of the working group.

Once we had rejuvenated a little bit, we went over to Georgia and Jack's to see the litter of puppies that she has right now. They were still pretty young so we didn't touch them, but we did get to soak up the adorable cuteness!! It totally gets my puppy fever going! From there it was off to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the lovely town of Lynden.

Once we got back to the fairgrounds we took the dogs out for a little potty walk just down the street.

Lynden apparently has a large dutch population and there were these cute windmills every where!

After checking a few things out we headed back to the fairgrounds where we heard a band of some sort starting to warm up in one of the fairground facilities that wasn't being used for the dog show. As the night wore on, it was apparent that this "little" party was going to be going on for a while as people were coming in and leaving pretty continuously. At about 10:30pm someone called the local police to monitor the noise level, which was VERY loud. Nothing much really happened after that. I concked out a while the party was still going and woke up at about 5:30am when the rest of the RV area was seeming to wake up. Which meant that OUR dogs thought it was wake up time as well!

Danes were in the ring at 11:00am on Sun. We did win our class today, but didn't do anything after that. I did get many compliments on Bess and I'm confident that I'm not totally ruining our chances by handling her myself!:O) I learn something at each show regardless of whether we win or not, so there's always something good that comes out of it.

Then it was back to the trailer to load everything up and start the trek back home! Thankfully the traffic was MUCH better and we made really good time. Heffner was happy to see both of us back and now I just need to finish unpacking and get ready for work in the morning. Ug! It's really hard for me to come back to the "real world" after spending a weekend away at a dog show. You get so wrapped up in and you're talking about dogs the whole weekend and trying to learn things and figure out why things turned out the way they did. And then I have to have such a change in mind set to go to work! Sigh.......if only........:O)