Cold, Wet, Fun Weekend

SUMMARY: I do like CPE and hanging out with my friends. Rain and cold, not so much.

My evil plan for the weekend was to earn first places in everything with both dogs and to have the fastest and/or highest-scoring points of everyone who ran the same course regardless of height or level.

After three of the four Saturday classes, things were looking pretty good on all counts.*

* Colors: Out of 59 dogs on the same course, Boost's time of 13.71 was the fastest, Tika's 14.17 was 2nd fastest; one dog came close at 14.66 but the next closest was 15.83 and most were 19 seconds or slower.

Wildcard: Out of 64 dogs on the same course, boost's 17.11 was fastest, Tika's 18.51 was 2nd fastest, and the next closest was 19.28.

Standard: out of 64 dogs on the same course, Boost's 34.92 was second fastest (I held her on the contacts to be sure she got them), with the faster dog at 32.65. Tika was 4th fastest at 36.22 with the intervening dog at 36.01.

Didn't end up quite as perfect, but I'll talk about that tomorrow.

The weather had called for rain showers on Saturday. This is what it looked like--All. Day. Saturday.

(Funny note: At the Motel 6, we had to fill out the usual registration form asking for our car's license. I put MUTT MVR. The clerk looked at it and said, "Could you please put your license number? It's important that we have that information in case we need to contact you about your vehicle."

"That is my license," said I. "I mean," he said, "the number on your car's license plate." "That IS my license plate," I said. "It's a personalized plate." He looked at it and looked at it. "I've never seen a license like that before." Interesting--do people who can afford personalized plates stay somewhere other than at Motel 6? But, as usual, I digress--)

If there were separate rain showers, each pretty much began as the last one faded. Dreary. Discouraging. This Human Mom was not interested in tossing the frisbee for the poor Merle Girls in the swampy grass field; not even thrilled about taking them out of the [fortunately] covered arena for potty times.

And it was cold, too. Thank goodness for fingerless lined gloves to enable my score-tabling activities.

And the calf-length down-filled grotesquely purple coat.

But O.M.G. this huge container of the best home-made toffee in the universe ruined my other usual evil plan to lose 5 lbs over the weekend. (Thanks, Gwen! (Take that both ways.))

The rain did break gradually on Sunday, so when the competition had completed and we were packed and ready to go home, out we went into the now-sunny swamp.

It's 5 hours later and both dogs are still damp and encaked with mud (despite my best attempts to hose them down at the site). Gah. But they seemed to have fun, and that's what the weekend was all about. (And Tika showed no signs of soreness or age! Yowza!)

I had fun, too, hanging out with friends, joking, enjoying people's successes (yes, including my own), running my dogs full out with their enthusiasm overflowing. Enjoyed myself enough so that I'm thinking [perhaps in a deranged, sleep-deprived, toffee-overdosed haze] about once again chairing a CPE trial so that we can once again have one that is more local. Will have to decide in the next couple of days about that. It might be just one too many evil plans for my own good.