It's Haute TRACS time again

SUMMARY: Big four-day trial this weekend.

This is probably the last year of this gigantic super-duper four-day USDAA trial. It's so much work to put it on, and attendance has waned. Personally, I'm just as glad; three-day trials are hard enough on me, and four is right out. That's why I'm only doing Thursday thru Saturday.

Technically, it's two adjacent two-day trials. This allows the two clubs (Haute Dawgs and TRACS) to do cool stuff like: TWO steeplechases in one weekend! Well, one thursday, one saturday.

In class last Thursday, only 4 people showed up, so I ran both dogs. For a while. Tika was super-Teek for the first two runs, flagged a bit on the 3rd, and was visibly slower on the fourth. Sure, she was initially propelled by a long absence of any kind of agility practice or trials, but I'm starting to wonder whether I've overextended her by signing her up for everything this weekend. She used to be the Energizer Agility Dog--could do runs until way beyond when I ran out of steam.

But she is 10 now. And I'm--well--9 years older than when Tika first came home with me.

Dogs have six runs each on Thursday--seven if we make it to Steeplechase round 2. That's a LOT of runs for me with two dogs, and maybe too many for Tika? Another six runs each on Friday. "Only" five each on Saturday. I sure hope Tika holds up through the weekend-- now I'm flashing back to our 3-day Labor Day trial, where I had to scratch her from everything on the third day. Really don't want to have to do that again.

But I'll do what I must.

My goals for this weekend are pretty much the same as always:

• Boost needs 3 Snooker Super-Qs and 3 Jumpers for her ADCH. Still. Always. We have two chances for each this weekend.
• Tika needs one Standard Q for her Performance ADCH Bronze. We have two chances at that, too.
• Try to remember to have fun and enjoy my dogs and my friends.

On the way home this evening, the pre-sunset skies and then the sunset colors were so lovely that I stopped repeatedly to snap photos. Hope you liked these couple of teasers--might post more tomorrow if I have time, between working and packing and getting to bed really REALLY early for that gawdawful 4 a.m. start to my weekend.

And I hope that you all have wonderful beautiful skies and weekends.