Off to the Races

Here come another two days of USDAA competition. Our last was 2 weeks ago, when both dogs managed only one qualifying score each. The crowd is going wild with anticipation:

• Will it rain all weekend?


• Will there be minitornados? (weather service issued a warning today for Salinas area)


• Will Tika get the up contacts on her dogwalks and finally get that last annoying novice standard leg?


• Is Jake healthy? Will he run? Will he jump?


• Will Jake get another of the only 2 gambles remaining for his Performance "championship"?


• Will Tika stay at the start line every run? Even if she merely stands up but doesn't move forward?


• Will Ellen be awake and alert?


• Will either dog earn a Grand Prix qualifying score towards getting into the Nationals this year? (Both got the required 2 last year but so far this year both are 0/2--or is that 0/1? I'm losing track--)


• Will USDAA ever get its act together and decide to announce whether the Nationals will be in TX or AZ? (Makes a big difference to those of us CAers who can't get to Texas.)


• Will Tika leave all the bars up in her Jumpers run?


• Will Jake get a whole bunch of Q legs and manage to squeeze up into the top-200-lifetime-points earners? (I haven't double-checked to see whether there are new titles posted--he was 206 in September but probably other dogs have been out competing and earning points and we haven't been.)


• Will Ellen die of starvation after forgetting to take a lunch because this is the first trial in over 100 trials and 8 years of competition that is not making food available on site at all?

Stay tuned, same dog time, same dog channel.