Clackamas Kennel Club Day 1

There's a little sneak peak at Ruthie courtesy of Danielle!! I love this picture!


Oh my goodness what a day it has been! As I mentioned yesterday, I had Bess entered in rally and conformation today. Excellent was starting first thing in the morning, and I like to get to try to get to the show grounds early so that I can get set up, get the dog(s) to potty, and just generally have time to get settled. All of that means that I generally get to grounds roughly an hour before ring time. So we started our day relatively early.


I will post course maps tomorrow. At the moment the maps are sitting on top of the crate that has a little frenchie girl who just went to sleep and I don't want to disturb her by going and getting them.;0) The courses were nice and I am especially appreciative of the judge's conscientiousness in where she put the honor station. Now that Heffner is at that level, I'm a lot more conscious of where the honor station is and hoping for enough space that he doesn't feel uncomfortable. But back to the course itself. It was a nice course, and it would have been REALLY nice to actually finish it......


I really should have seen this coming and I was actually a little afraid of what our performance was going to be like today after the match on Thursday night. I was optimistic that even though our Novice run didn't go that well, hopefully she had some positive associations with those rings from getting to "play" a bit in them. That was NOT the case. Setting her up at the start was painful. When I finally got her to sit and we got the go ahead from the judge, I started to heel. And Bess eventually started as well. And then once we halted at the first station (which was a 90 degree left pivot), she stopped in a stand and wouldn't move. Period. Wouldn't sit. Wouldn't budge. Even with me hopping, clapping, and squeaking at her to get attention. That actually garnered her turning her head away from me. Awesome. After what felt like forever of trying to get something from her, I just finally asked to be excused. Blarg. First time that's happened with her. And it totally sucked. I scratched her from her Advanced class as well. I wasn't about to go back into the ring and potentially cement that behavior. And we had such a lovely warm up!!


Once I scratched her, our morning was suddenly open. I noticed the french bulldogs starting to show up, but I didn't know what Ruthie's owner looked like, so I waited for Jill and Danielle to get there and asked them to show me who she was. Then I got to meet Ruthie!!

She was so happy and bouncy when she got out of her crate! And she let me squish her!! She's totally squishable! I was able to hang out around the frenchie ring for a bit getting instructions on Ruthie, watching the start of the classes, and just chatting. Then it was time to go get Bess and Ruthie set up outside the dane ring. The carrier that I brought for Ruthie was just a smidge tight. She had room in there, but not as much as I would have liked. Bess and Ruthie got to meet through the soft crate. Neither one was terribly concerned about the other, but I wasn't about to test anything out when I was the only one holding both leashes!

After a little bit of waiting it was ring time for Bess. Where she got third out of three. Damn! Double strike for the day! Oh well, tomorrows another day.

Meanwhile, we've got a new toy!



Bess got to meet Ruthie at the show grounds as we were walking to the truck with everything at the end of the day. My friend Nicole helped me haul dogs and assorted show crap. Heffner has seen her through the window and through the screen door, but he hasn't gotten to meet her as of yet. Since he can be more likely to guard his mommy, we'll do some slow introductions through a fence where both dogs are getting lots of treats and I've got Adam helping me so that both dogs can feel safe and comfortable meeting each other.