Weekend's End

SUMMARY: The aftermath.

Am still so glad that I'm just done with Boost's C-ATCH and Tika's C-ATE. Now I can concentrate on other things. Like USDAA, like making progress on my new dog Boost's issues, which are just as rampant in CPE as they are in USDAA, just not penalized as much.

This weekend was quite freeing in a couple of ways:

First, none of the runs except Boost's Saturday Colors felt like they counted for anything--in a good way. I'm not going to try for 230 more Qs for Boost to get her C-ATE or another 230 for Tika's C-ATE-2, and there's really nothing in between. So all of our runs were strictly for fun--and ribbons and glory if we could get them. That really did make them all seem much more fun.

Second, really acknowledging that Tika's hearing problems are responsible for a lot of what's going on on the courses made me feel that I could just concede everything that went wrong to Tika's aging, not to any training or handling issues, and enjoy her just for still being here and having all those years of experience.

I'm sure that this won't all carry over to USDAA, but I do want to keep on doing USDAA and see how well and how far we can go.

Meanwhile, here's Boost's C-ATCH Colors run. You'd think it would be easy to Q on a course with a mere 9 or 10 obstacles. But it has taken us a while. Bars finally stayed up!


And our victory lap. Woohoo! Boost was a little freaked out by the whole abnormal way her time in the ring ended, but she does love running, especially when tunnels are involved.


Other videos are still uploading to YouTube, so maybe more tomorrow.

I had a whole lot of other things that I was going to say, but at the moment I'm thinking strictly in terms of how quickly I think I could fall asleep if I put my head down on my pillow. With visions of Boost's C-ATCH pole and Tika's C-ATE pole dancing in my head.