Westminster MD

After having two weeks off from competing in agility, I was very happy to show again. I entered Bunzella in 8in preferred novice. I keep playing with the idea of officially retiring her. She has taught me so much. Obedience, agility, earthdog, and flyball. She has her very own wall of fame in our house. She going to be 11 years old in Aug. and I think it may be time for her to be a couch potato and just go for walks and enjoy treats without having to do anything for them. I think her hearing and sense of smell are still good, but I wonder about her sight. I think she gets depressed if I don't do anything with her, so sometimes I do the occasional show, jump, drop on recall, or just tell her to find the "RAT".
I remember the first time I took her to an earthdog trial, she grabded a hold of the cage with the rat in it and wouldn't let go. Everyone kept yelling at me to grab her tail and I was clueless, I just stood there thinking OMG. Someone else grabbed her tail, and she let go of the cage.
In Obedience we were testing how reliable our dumb bell retrieves were. I threw a dumb bell that was big enough for a German Shepherd to retrieve. God love her, she ran out and retrieved it. Too funny.
With agility, it was a very, very, very hot day and I did not hose her down before I ran her. The third obstacle was a tunnel, she went in and wouldn't come out. It was dark and cool in there. She's no dummy. My punishment for not hosing her down.
Flyball; I spent months teaching her how the retrieve a tennis ball. (All done over my lunch hour.) At the time I was traveling to Washington DC to do flyball because there were no teams in our area. After awhile it just got to be too much.
She's defiantly been a lot of fun.

Zedd, Zedd, Zedd. What can I say. He tries really hard. I just had him entered today. Our first run was jumpers and he was outstanding, focused, and fast. I couldn't have asked for a better performance from him. We Q'd with a second place. Yee Haw. 5 hours later we ran standard. UGH!!! He was a wild man. He just wanted to go, go, go, run, run, run. It took me three tries to get him through the weave polls before he did all 12. Blew off the contacts completely which I was not happy at all about. After he blew off the dog walk contact I just took him off the course with the "terrier walk of shame." He had just lost his mind and there was no sense in continuing. I didn't feel it was fair to him or I. People think he's having fun out there, but it's really stress. He has too many channels going on at one time. (As Leslie Mcdevitt puts it.)
The best part of our standard run was the table, it was excellent! I put a front cross before the A-frame, and he read beautifully!!! Oh, how could I forget, I got a lead out. Whoo Hoo.
I believe beyond a shadow of a doubt that Zedd sitting and waiting for 5 hours before his second run was just too much. Next time I'm in a situation like that I will take him for a nice long walk, play ball away from the show site etc.....
I'm learning quite a bit from him and it's worth the journey. He's actually a good boy and fun to run when we are in sync.