Wow, what a crazy and yet awesome weekend!
Friday night we drove down to the show. We stayed at the Wingate hotel--the nicest hotel I have ever been in that allowed dogs! It was wonderful! We were smart this time and brought two jugs of water from home so the dogs would not go "off" from new, strange water like they did at Homecoming. It made things much less stressful. Smile
Those of you who were at Homecoming know that Zak has always been the one to show Leo. First, Leo is definitely Zak's boy, and second, Zak has the longer legs!! I can only keep up with Leo in a full extended trot if I am flat out running, and I'll tell you, in the shape I'm in I can't keep that up for long! :P So we started out as usual with Zak taking Leo into the ring in show number one.
It didn't go well. Leo bounced all over the place and generally made it look like Tina's first outcross must have been kangaroo!! He was the only Shiloh (Kyrie was only entered in show three as we didn't have a lot of money for this one) and so he got Best of Breed, but he did not even get close to placing in Herding Group. We were demoralized and poor Zak, who loves his Leo, was so frustrated.
We did have something nice happen, though--Christine Rydzeski with Mazie and Barbera Betcher came to the show to visit! Barbara and her husband Stephen were the owners of Betterways kennel and the people who created and ran our awesome pedigree tracking programs, and Christine is their daughter! We were very happy to see them and even in the face of Bouncy Leo Syndrome the ladies were very encouraging. And Mazie is a beautiful dark sable, and such a sweetheart! Here is a picture of Barbara (left), Christine (right) and Mazie (bottom, in case you couldn't guess!).
I had worn my "show clothes" just in case we had decided to enter Kyrie in more shows at the last minute. I went out to trot Leo in the parking lot (hoping some exercise would take the edge off). When we came back in I trotted him up to Zak to show him that Leo was behaving better, but Christine told me that Leo and I looked really good together, and Zak asked me if I wanted to take Leo into the ring for show number two.
Now, I was nervous as all get out at the thought of taking Leo into the ring! Kyrie, she's a pushbutton dog--simplicity to handle, stacks in five seconds, easy as pie. Leo is a challenge! He is so big and so fast and he is one boisterous, silly dog who does not like to have his feet put places. But even more than that, I know that Leo is an amazing dog when he is at his best and I worried that I was not good or experienced enough to get his best out of him, and that I would keep him from doing well. I did finally agree to take him in, mostly because Zak was obviously so frustrated.
I got some tips from other handlers and headed into the ring. Leo wanted to pull but he did look a little better thanks to a friend with shepherds who advised me to start him out a little slower. It wasn't as terrible as I feared and the judge took me aside to ask me if Leo was the same dog she had seen in the other ring. She told me he ran better for me, which did WORLDS for my confidence. Maybe I could do this after all? Maybe I wouldn't trip over the dog and make him lose? Maybe! In Herding Group for show number two we still did not place, though. Here is a picture of a tired-out Leo in his x-pen at the end of day one!
I tried to not be nervous about the next day and decided to try to stay calm myself so maybe Leo would be. I also ran Leo around like a crazy woman, back and forth practicing trotting (and my handling)! Zak reminded me that Fred Lanting had told us not to worry about running in circles--just practice getting a solid trot back and forth, back and forth. We did a lot of that, because Leo would get bored and anxious waiting to go into the ring--so we trotted! And I could see the moment it "clicked" in Leo's head! Finally, maybe we would do okay the next day!
(and what DID happen the next day? Well here's a hint:
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