RCC Wrap Up

Lets see, I left off with Day 2, which was Thur., with Bess getting her second Beginner Novice leg. Friday was a slightly less busy day that had Bess and I competing in Rally in the morning and a later ring time for danes meant no ring conflicts!! Three days of no ring conflicts! Woo hoo!!

I would post the Excellent and Advanced courses that we ran on Friday, but the print outs weren't all that great and things were not entirely clear. This was one of those times where a walk through was a necessity. Our Excellent run wasn't too bad. I had some glimmers of Bess perking up a bit, though she still seemed stressed. I'm changing up our warm up routine quite a bit and I think it's helping at least a little. We ended up qualifying with a score of 87. After the last time we were in the ring, I will pretty happily take that score.

Next up was Advanced. I walked the course. I even watched the competitor ahead of us correctly finish the course. For some reason, I thought it would be cool to create my own station about half way through the course.:o/ I was so convincing to myself that I didn't even consciously realize what I had done. Until the end. When the judge let me know what happened. Ug! Regardless, our Advanced run was better than our Excellent run and I was throwing a party when we crossed the finish line. So NQ and no RAE leg. Bummer! However, things are looking up for Bess and I in rally!

After we were done with rally I took Bess over to the FitPAWS booth so that I could say hi to Bobbie and also check out some of the equipment that they have and see what I needed to add to my list of must haves for this year. Specifically I wanted to try Bess out on the donut and see what she thought. Since she's gotten so used to getting all four feet on our giant core disc, I had a feeling that she would most likely try to do the same thing with the donut. And she did! Let me tell you, that thing is a lot harder to stabilize when you're not entirely ready for a large dog to do that! Bess enjoyed herself and got to try out a variety of products that we don't already have. Bobbie gave me some ideas for additional exercises to try. And since it just wouldn't be Rose City Classic without me doing some shopping, I bought the donut and then on Sunday I went back and also picked up the inflatable ring to help stabilize it a little bit better. New toy!

Saturday I was only doing conformation with Ruby. I had no desire to compete in any performance events over the weekend when the spectators come out and things get crazy and annoying! So instead, I did some shopping!:0) I picked up some awesome new collars for the dogs that I'll share in another post.

Sunday was conformation again and thankfully slightly less crowds which was really nice! While I was somewhat glad that things were coming to a close, I was also really sad to see everyone go. There's the closer to home crew who hits up all the relatively local shows that I always love chatting and hanging out with. And then there's the people who travel from a greater distance that I don't get to see terribly often. We had people from California, Arizona, and Canada at this show. It was fabulous to have everyone together and have multiple days to hang out and chat. It was just sad to see them go and know that it was going to be a while until I see them next. Thank goodness for Facebook.;0)

So that was our crazy extended weekend in a nut shell (I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post, hopefully I can make up for that soon!). Lots of fun, great people, good show, and great dogs. I have some videos that I need to find the time to put together. Kennedy was nice enough to take video of our Beginner Novice runs! I'm not exactly sure when I'll have those videos together because this upcoming weekend is the Clicker Expo in Portland!! This will be my first time going and I'm really excited! I'm signed up for all three days!:0)