And with that we fall back into the oh so fun and interesting world of Novice. We are officially in to the AKC trial here in La Crosse next month! Everything came together at the right time and AKC was incredibly helpful in overcoming my extreme procrastination. Granted, I paid for it ($50), but I e-mailed Secret's PAL registration on Monday and they sent me the number on Wednesday. She is officially recognized as a border collie through AKC. Yay....
I signed Kaiser up for his Canine Partners registration on Monday when I learned that I could e-mail the PAL for Secret. They give you the option of choosing two breeds/mixes to put on their certificates and I stubbornly put nothing. I certainly wasn't going to choose the generic "mixed breed," but I was tempted to choose "Siberian Husky" for giggles. Ah well. Whatever; I'll get over it.
I dropped everything off at Family Dog Center last night after work and tonight when I got home the registration was in my mailbox. Kaiser is entered in Standard and JWW on Saturday only, just in case we run into any problems with his measurement. Secret is entered in both classes both days -- They are offering T2B, but I figured we'd start off slow and just do the basics, especially since I did opt to go ahead and enter Secret at her regular height of 24". We'll see how she deals with it and if she thinks it's sucks we will drop down -- Although I'll probably make her suck it up to complete any open titles we may be working towards...
I've had the opportunity to play with Secret at home a few times this week and she's had no problem with 24". I even set up a double & triple spread by just lumping my jumps together and she didn't have any issues with those, either. We'll see how it goes!
Tomorrow we leave at buttcrack-o-thirty (4:00 a.m.) for our USDAA trial at Think Pawsitive. Secret is running all five core classes, which is a lot to ask... Thankfully our Pairs Relay is the third run, so hopefully she still has gas in the tank for that one. Unfortunately Gamblers is fourth, which is when I'm sure she'll be winding down. Standard is last. I think we are one dog short for keeping the SQ in the 22" class, so once again we'll be combined with the 16" group in Snooker. I think there are three SQ to split between us, so we'll just have to wait and see how that turns out. Jumpers will start our day and if Secret runs clean that will be her first Performance Champion title!
The reason I ended up entering this trial vs. the one up in Ham Lake this weekend is because I thought this one would go faster (this one is split into two rings with all of our Masters classes in one). Yeah.... We ended up with nearly 400 runs in the Masters ring alone, so it's going to be a long, long day.... At least Vet/Performance is running first so we can leave when we are done and won't be the last dogs of the day to run!
We went over 70 degrees today! We were only forecast to be in the low 60s and it would have been the first time we've hit 60 since December 3 (we tied with the latest date to reach 60, for the record). Instead we blew that away and apparently this is the first time we've seen 70 since the end of October. Seriously, longest winter ever...
This week we decided to go exploring a new section of the bike trail on which we walk. I'm not totally unfamiliar with it as it's out by where I used to board my horses, but I've never taken the dogs out there. It's a great section of trail in that it's far from any roads and it's not parallel to the train tracks like the other trails we walk. Originally I also thought it was a bonus that the trail was fenced on both sides, but that actually turned into a heart stopper on our first walk...
The dogs were having a grand time on Wednesday chasing the bazillion squirrels we encountered on the new trail (that was our first night exploring). Everything was going dandy and we were a good mile and a half in when Secret went FLYING off the trail to the left -- and right through a barbed wire fence. I'm pretty positive she hadn't seen the low wire and she caught her left hind leg on it and stopped dead in her tracks. One of my friends recently had her dog's leg get really ripped up in a similar situation and my gut immediately dropped when I saw what happened.
Secret still hadn't moved when she looked back over her shoulder at me. She was a fair distance off the trail where she was and there wasn't much I could do until she got back to me, so I told her she had to come back. She hopped on three legs to turn around and then didn't appear thrilled when she realized she had to come back through that fence to get back to me. She managed, and hopped back over on three legs, her hind leg hiked high in the air. Oh crap.
I immediately started looking her over from top to bottom. Nothing. Literally not even a scrape or patch of hair missing. Um, what? What's you're problem, dog? I stretched her this way and that with no reaction. In the end I have to believe she just scared the crap out of herself and got a bit of a zinger as her foot slid over the fence (likely not on barbed portion, blessedly!). She walked herself out of fairly quickly, but I still kept her on leash for a while to make sure she was okay as we walked back towards the car.
I eventually let her off leash again when it was obvious she was fine. She wasn't favoring the leg at all and was soon bounding off towards the squirrels again -- including going under a couple more fences, so obviously nothing was learned from that little experience.
We went out again last night and walked in the other direction. We didn't encounter squirrels and we didn't have any more fence incidents.... I think we'll enjoy this section of the trail this summer!
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