There Is No Joy in MuttVille

SUMMARY: Everyone struck out.

Apparently eating 3 or 4 days worth of dogfood at once gives Boost diarrhea. Before bed (clean up long hairs on backside and tail), in the middle of the night (at least she asked to go out, then clean up long hairs etc.), in the morning when trying to get ready to go (clean up etc.). Then at the trial. Made sure she got out of her crate often. There are tons of vet-medical personnel at agility trials and she got some antidiarrheal med and it stopped.

When the alarm went off at 5 a.m., unlike my normal wont I lay there, eyes closed, thinking hard about not going to the trial. I was so tired, I was so liking lying there, I was so realizing (again) that 3 weekends in a row is on the edge of too much for me. But--I've skipped trials I'd registered for only twice: Once when Remington was very ill, I loaded everything and me and the dogs into MUTT MVR, drove to the freeway entrance, turned around, and went home and back to bed. And the second time was the morning after he died. But the following day I *did* go to the 2nd day of the trial.

The point being, I finally got up and got dressed, dealt with Boost, spent 15 minutes (really) sitting in MUTT MVR trying to figure out how to get back to the spot in the murder mystery tape in my tape player that I had left it at (what is it with the tape player--eject it and reinsert it and it starts playing way before or way after that spot?), never figured it out, headed out anyway.

Luckily still got a good parking spot and good set-up spot.

And here's how the day went:

Tika: 0 Qs for 5
Boost: 0 Qs for 5.

It was very hard for me. Like a punch in the gut with each one, making it worse and worse.

Jumpers: Tika, beautiful fast run, fastest of her whole class. But knocked a bar. No idea why this time, she just did. Boost, wow, a very nice beautiful fast run, but knocked a bar. They were nice runs, but no Qs and no Top Ten points.

Snooker: Boost knocked the 3rd of 4 reds (all 4 needed for a Super-Q), then doh! in the closing I took my eyes off her completely and she ran past a key jump, so not even a Q. Embarrassing that I had to ask the judge what she did to cause it (turned wrong way out of a tunnel). Dumb handler, just dumb. So no Q.

And Tika--SUCH a Tika course! Beautiful high-point opening, and then at the beginning of the closing I didn't do a crucial front cross--I did it with boost, for why didn't I do it wiht Tika? i don't know, and multiplied that by yelling "come!" instead of "tika!' which I *know* doesn't work, and push her right into an offcourse, so no Super-Q, no Q, no top 10 points. And we had plenty of time, too. Just stupid.

Gamblers: It was a hard gamble. No Championship 16" or 12" got it, only 1 26" ch, and only 8 of 50 22". In performance, only one 22", no 12 or 8". Boost did not get it, maybe because I bobbled the beginning of the gamble and ended up on the line with no room to push her out. But she had something like 9th highest of 50 dogs opening points, very nicely executed. But no Q.

Tika was not the 22" who got the gamble. I lost control of her in the opening so we didn't end up with high points (again whistle blew on 5-point teeter so we didn't get it), and then, sheesh, i pushed SO hard that she went out BEYOND the gamble obstacle that no one else was even able to push out TO. We're the only ones out of 100 or so dogs to do THAT. So no Q. Oddly enough, 3 top ten points for 2nd place. But disappointing not to get it.

Standard: Tunnel wrap onto dogwalk--oops, nope, back into tunnel for off course. Otherwise mostly nice. Tika--what a real heartbreaker--I worked SO HARD to pull her off the jump after the chute, and she ALMOST took it but I succeeded in pulling her off--and realized afterwards that she was SUPPOSED to take it. Don't ask me, I ran the same course with Boost not 15 minutes before that. I sat and cried over that one, after everything before it today, and it was such a beautiful run otherwise. What a dork. It's just a game.

Steeplechase: Boost knocked a bar and then when I sent her to a tunnel, she pulled off it, twice. Most of it was very nice but in this crowd can't waste time especially after knocking a bar, so no Q.

Tika had the fastest time of all 6 22" dogs, but once again knocked a bar, don't know why, and because there were only 6 of us, they combined our scores with the 16" mostly border collie class and they pulled the average down so that Tika missed a Q by just under a second. She still gets to run in the money round tomorrow, but no Q.

With each run I started feeling less and less competent, less and less happy to be there, more and more like I really should have stayed in bed. I debated packing everything else and not going tomorrow but, no, I left my stuff there so I have to go back tomorrow.

It is so demoralizing. I mean, knocked bars sometimes happen, they just do, but when I do such totally dumb things, just dumb, and then the things that just happen happen also, miserable miserable me.

I tried to enjoy being around all those people I like. We're lucky to have such a great collection of people and so many of them are so very nice. And we saw some awesome successes today: Two Bay Teamers finished their Lifetime Platinums today (500 masters/p3 Qs), and we got cake for that, which was scrumptious. And before I left the site, I sat with my car's instruction manual and figured out how the tape player worked, so I could find the right spot in the books-on-tape.

But I am beaten up emotionally. Maybe more sleep tonight will help and maybe tomorrow I'll survive the day. And tomorrow morning on the way there I can listen to the denouement of the murder mystery--if anyone there survives, too.