The Weekend Report: Lions and Tigers and BEARS, Oh My!

This weekend, Jimmy and I were back at the farm out in Reva, Virginia. The weather forecast was for "occassional"  rain on Saturday, but mostly just overcast. Well, occasional turned into "steady" rain. There were lots of muddy dogs and cars by the end of the day!

At the start of each class, there is a judge's briefing. They go over the safety rules each time, ask if anyone sees any course design that might be too risky to the dogs, etc. This is also the time when the dog club that is hosting the trial has a chance to give announcements. This weekend they wanted us to know of a few "Don'ts".....Such as..."If the animal isn't yours, don't feed it!" There are horses and a couple of pet pigs close by, and it seems the pigs were sick from all the snacks they received at the last trial. Oops!

Here are those cute little piggies....pretty hard to resist.....When you stop by the stall to say Hi, they run over squealing and wagging their little piggy tails just like a dog. Freaking adorable! This variety only gets to about 50 pounds, so a really good pet size.

Lula and Dixie

My hand is added for scale.

The next Don't was "Don't walk your dogs along the treeline next to the barn, or on the hills behind the barn" and this was because a family of black bears had moved in....A momma and two cubs plus her yearling from the previous year. Unfortunately I didn't see this, but the yearling was spotted moseying through the field where we all park our cars (but not too close, at the back of the field) and then tried to cross one of the horse paddocks. He was quickly run out of town by the resident horses! LOL!

Fortunately, the rain (and the bears!) did not effect our success level! The judges designed some very fun and flowing courses that were really fairly easy.

Here are Saturday's maps:

Jimmy qualified in both runs, pulling off Double-Q #17 toward our PACH title.

This club gives very pretty ribbons!

Sunday was a much cooler and beautifully sunny day. You could see many of the dogs were feeling extra "up" for the event, loving cool temps as they do.

Jumpers was our first run of the day. It was a lot of fun and Jimmy did a great job, earning first place! For the Standard run, it was a dogwalk to the tunnel, which I knew from past experience would be our make or break moment. Unfortunately, it was a break, totally my fault due to a bad handling decision causing Jimmy to blow his dogwalk contact (the yellow zone at the bottom of the down plank).  The rest was fast and furious and, of course, clean! Oh, well, no double-q for Sunday. We need three more to get our title and are down to just two more trial days this year so the PACH will be waiting for the spring trials.

Sunday's maps:

Tracking Jimmy's PACH progress:
Very 1st Double-Q: Saturday 06/21/2014
Masters JWW legs: 29...MJP Title 01/25/15 MJPB 10/11/15
Masters STD legs: 28...MXP Title!10/24/14 MXPB 10/11/15
Double Q's: 17
PACH Points: 1299

AKC Nationals 2016:
Double-Q's: 10 (out of 5 needed)
Points: 781 (out of 600 needed)....We QUALIFIED!!! 10/11/15
Masters Legs: 35 (out of 20 needed)