Great Weekend!

I just want to start this blog post off by saying WOOOOOO HOOOO!!!! We got a freaking three point major on Sat.!!! That's right! Now on to the details.:)

We were up in Shelton, WA for a three day dog show. Fri. was a double specialty for great danes and a very full day. I drove up with Bess that morning. It was a gorgeous day that promised to be a little on the warm side. There were plenty of shade tents and I got us all situated under one.

To the left is my friend Marian's boy CH Davishire's Meant to be Mor "Morgan" and to the right (even though the crate is empty) is WCK-Olympus' Rockin' Red Racer "Cabo." As the temperature went up, I needed to put Bess' cool coat on her to keep her from panting. You want to have your dog pant as little as possible while in the ring because among other things it can throw off the way their head looks. If they're panting, they're also probably "droopier" and generally just not looking their best. So you try to keep them as cool as possible inside and out of the ring. If you watch a the breed ring you'll notice that when the judge isn't looking at the dogs, the people handling the specials (those are the finished champions competing for Best of Breed) usually have someone on the sideline with a rag, spray bottle, and/or cool coat. That way they can keep their dogs as fresh as possible and at their best.

Unfortunately, Bess HATES her cool coat. It seriously makes her depressed. I haven't used it a ton, but I've used it enough on her that she should definitely be used to it by now. But she still hates it. So that made for a dog who wasn't really all that thrilled to be there. And I feel that it showed. She wasn't very happy in the ring and she was a bit on the sluggish side. And it was a long day. We won our class for both shows, but that was as far as we got. I did manage to take a video of the breed ring. I think this was from the first show of the day. It wasn't quite as hot yet.





And from the Sporting Group ring, that I just happened to go and watch!

I was staying with Bess' breeder and her husband on the fairgrounds, which was really nice! It's a huge relief to not have to drive any where and already be at the show grounds for those 8am ring times! Kim Broenneke had the other trailer next to us. We had quite the little camp going on!

Sat. was definitely the best of the three days for obvious reasons! When I took Bess in for our class, after the down and back the judge asked me to really let her out when we went around the ring. I took this to mean that he definitely liked her. If he didn't, he wouldn't have even wasted his time mentioning anything to me. Thanks to this little "tip" in the class, I had a good idea of what I needed to do for the Winners Bitch ring. When we went in for Winners Bitch, I made sure to let her out on a loose lead and really move. The judge pulled out his favorites and Bess was the second to get pulled. I knew at that point that I really had to work it to make sure that the judge was looking at her and really showing her off. Thankfully it paid off! I wanted to squeal (and sort of did when we went to collect our ribbon!) when he pointed at us and said "Winners.":o) It was soooo awesome!! That's our first major out of the two that we need (in addition to fulfilling 15 points under at least three different judges)! That puts her up to 8 points so far! And of course we got a win picture afterwards and I'll be sure to post it!

Today was the final day of the show and we did decently enough. We won our class again, but didn't do anything in the WB ring. But hey, at least we got our first major!!:)