No Practice Makes--What?

SUMMARY: Lack of classes, lack of practice, but Tika's fine.

As of this week, we've had no class for 3 of the last 4 weeks. Yikes. And that's after I cut down to one class a week, so I'm sort of sharing Boost's class time with Tika, so it's not superly sufficient anyway.

And just not motivated to work on jumping drills in the yard. Bor. Ing. Would be more interesting if I had enough space for the dogs to open up and actually practice something, but now I can set up two jumps 20' apart--and then we're out of room. Makes it hard to trick them into thinking we're doing something else.

So we have a CPE trial in Petaluma this weekend, and who knows what's going to happen.

Tika's anal gland, meanwhile, looks just fabulous, to my inexpert eye. She's had oral antibiotics for 10 days, plus twice-daily cleanouts of the gland with antibacterial ointment and hot compresses and massages. She wasn't thrilled with the process, but we came to a working agreement. Went much better than any kind of work at the vet's would have gone, I think.

Gave her painkillers for about the first 3 days, rimadyl as an antiinflammatory for about the next 5 or 6, and she is just absolutely frisky and happy the last few days. So she should run fine this weekend (says here), if she can keep her bars up. It helps that, in CPE, she jumps 24" instead of 26"

And I entered Boost at 20" instead of 24" this time (she's actually eligible for 16", but since she has to do 22" in USDAA, I prefer to stay in that range), which might or might not help with her bar knocking.

And we'll just concentrate on making sure we do weaves correctly, and contacts correctly, and I hope have just a grand old time.

If only this smoke would go away. It's been weeks, now. California's just burning up. I guess I'd rather deal with mere smoke than with a fire creeping up on my house. Oddly, my allergies and asthma seem to be far more subdued than usual, although my throat's a wee bit scratchier. Anyway, it's mostly just ugly stuff.