Rally Novice Title!

This past week has been the Tarheel Cluster Kennel Club Dog Show at the NC State Fairgrounds. It is Wednesday through Sunday and each day is sponsored by a different local Kennel Club. Today, Saturday, was Raleigh Kennel Club, and tomorrow is Fayetteville Kennel Club. I attended Wednesday through Friday with Pogo to get him used to the environment. It's a breed show as well as an Obedience/Rally trial so there are 13 breed rings going on along with one Rally ring and one obedience ring. It's really loud inside the big echo-y Jim Graham Building with all the hair dryers, dog grooming, dogs barking, PA system, A/C kicking on and off, etc. Pogo was a little freaked out the first few times we were there but I fed him yummy treats and he started to get the idea that it was a good place to be and started paying attention to me.

 I arrived early on Saturday to make sure I was on time. They ran late, as usual it seems, so I didn't end up in the ring until closer to 1pm when it was supposed to be 11:15am. I was first in for Novice A, which was kind of scary because I didn't get to see anyone do through the course, but it was a pretty simple course so we did fine. We got a 99 out of a possible 100 points. Another team got a 100 and another got a 99. The team that got the other 99 was a big retriever and so did the course faster than Pogo and I, so in the case of a tied score the times are used to break the tie. So we ended up with third place but he did so well and paid such good attention to me that I was pretty happy with it!

Since this was our third qualifying novice score it means we earned our rally novice title and can now move up to advanced. Technically I have 60 days before I have to move up to advanced. But I don't see any reason to do novice again. Even if we do poorly in advanced at least it'll be more experience for us. Advanced is off-leash, which is a HUGE difference from novice so I'm a little nervous but we've trained off-leash almost exclusively and I think we can do it.
Wish us luck tomorrow, we'll see how it goes!

Crazy Days!

When aren't we busy? I always am, I think I prefer it that way.
I celebrated my birthday on February 24th with some friends....I may have gone a little overboard because I ended up in the ER the next night with two sprained ligaments in my ankle (hmmm, good birthday present, right?).

Clearly I had my priorities in order as I took this photo while at the club immediately after I hurt myself. I didn't fall, luckily, just kind of fell off my shoe, well my heel, four inch heel that is.
As of today (Friday) I'm two weeks into a 4-6 week recovery process. I sure know how to have a good time.

The next weekend was my actual birthday. So after a horrible, exhausting, stressful week at school I headed off to Winston Salem. Friday, March 2nd was our (Pogo and I=our) first Rally trial!

 This was after the first day...we're both looking a little rough in this picture. It was almost 10pm and I had had an engineering test that morning at 8:30, gone to class, packed and drove 2 hours to Winston, not to mention the actual Rally part. So, we're both a little tired....excited though! First leg (a rally title=3 legs) with a score of 93/100 and third place, not bad at all!

This is the second day, we finished second place with a 94/100. I'm looking a little more rested, although we had a very active day (Saturday). Brittney and Bryan showed me all over downtown Winston (where they live) along with Raley and Pogo. After the tour we drove over to Reynolda Village and walked around the gardens for a while. We found a stream pretty close to the path and Raley LOVED it! However, the bank was solid mud so she got a bath when we got home :-)

The next day we went out to Yadkinville where Britt rides a horse for a woman who can no longer ride him. Apparently Bryan and I were supposed to be taking pictures of her riding, but instead we took dog pictures.

Britt's trainer (shes in the back of the third pic) has the two german shepherds. The smaller one (black & tan) loved playing with Raley and the bigger one (black) LOVED playing with Bryan!

This past week has been spring break...but it hasn't really been a break. Only from school. I've spent the week catching up on my internship responsibilities as well as developing activities for the outreach program in the College of Engineering at NCSU.