Friday - Fast Day

So much for a restful night last night but we'll catch up tonight. Woke up about 8:30, got Vegas' breakfast started to reconstitute, and went for a walk. She "did her thing" and we came back up in fairly short order (25 minutes or so). We got into the room and Vegas did a funny. I thought she was just going into the bathroom for a drink. I went to do something in my room and didn't think anything of it when she didn't follow me out. When I called her she didn't come. I got up and went looking. She had two paws on the counter and was having breakfast. The counter in the bathroom is easily 4 feet. No matter; she was hungry and my schedule wasn't convenient. Silly girl.

We headed over to the convention center around 10:30. We saw some of the juniors run which was a really cool thing. So glad to see some kids getting started in this sport. They did really, really well. Completely impressive how these young people handled themselves and their dogs.

Entrance to Hall C where agility (and dock diving) is being held

Then I went wandering. As we wandered Vegas PR'd all over the place. She's a complete showstopper. Don't know how I knew that at 7 weeks but our family couldn't have named her better. She must have been petted by 200 hands today and kissed another dozen. She was wonderful, tireless, comedic, and sweet. Just like usual.

We saw the GDCA booth and met Dave Miller and Gordy (didn't get the last name). Chatted with them quite a while and then asked me to try to stop by to do breed PR for a while with Vegas. That was super nice. :)

I did a whole lot of wandering, checking things out, PR, talking to people, meeting people, watching, and just taking it all in. Vegas was with me all along and did fantastic. We finally went and found our crate and hauled it down to agility. I was pooped by then and a little cranky, plus there was a huge (I mean HUGE.) line for picking up packets. I went to the end of the line and figured by the time I got to the front of the line I'd be calm and cooled down. I was the former, not the latter. But I got my stuff and wandered some more.

Somewhere along the way, early on I believe, we visited the FitPaws booth and Vegas got up on the extra giant sized peanut ball. She was so awesome. She turned full circles, sat, stood and was generally a rock star. The took pictures using my camera as well as their own. I dubbed them the peanut gallery and we're going back tomorrow for more. So much fun and a great "warm up" for the day, too.

Fast walk through was 1pm - 1:55. Our estimated time for 24" dogs to run was 4:30 - 5:20 pm. We waited, waited, wandered, waited, met up with our friend, Val, and waited and waited some more. Then we walked and met up with Keri, wandered, waited, and watched some more.

We finally ran around 6. It was a bit confusing. They wanted us to be scanned into the ring. Each dog/handler has a laminated card with a bar code on the back. All fine and good. Vegas' was on her collar - she runs naked. Well, with the major delays and people being antsy (me being one of them), when it was my turn I was r.e.a.d.y. I'm not one to mess around anyway. Just "git er' dun." So I start to go in the ring. They hadn't been clear on when the scanning was happening and I couldn't see it happening as people entered. Well, the lady wasn't paying attention so I'm like, it's our turn, in I go. She stops me three steps into the ring and I have to take Vegas back to be scanned. Well at that point she was already in "let's go" mode. Grr. So she got scanned, which was a hassle as it wasn't a quick "scan and go" as the scanner didn't want to cooperate as well and she wasn't either. But we got it done and went in. I took her collar and leash off and she was already dancing around wanting to take off. I didn't even get her set up and she took off so missed the first jump I had planned on. She did launch over the broad jump for which I'm glad as we may see it in competition so wanted to be sure she remembered what it was. My goals especially after talking with Keri were to not worry about trying the send and to focus on my areas of concern - namely the a-frame and getting the broad jump in. So we went broad jump, a-frame, tunnel, dog walk, jump, weaves, a-frame. She blew her contact on the a-frame so I made her turn around and do it again. She did it successfully and we took the teeter and headed out over two singles. No idea of what time, doesn't matter. We got what we needed done and she was happy to get up and run, she was focused, shes was drivey, and she didn't care what was going on outside the ring. Yay. All this way I would hate to have her change that mental game that we have going.

The rest of our evening dealt with her getting fed, watered, rubbed down, us having dinner, then my taking her out for another potty walk. She's sacked out for the night and that's where I ought to head so we have a good start for tomorrow. Our walk through is 8:45-9:05 am. Twenty-four inch dogs are running (approximately) 9:10-10:55 am. We are the 9th dog running. That's for the Standard class. JWW walk is 2:10-2:30 pm and we run between 2:35 and 4. We're roughly two-thirds of the way through the first group of 24" dogs. I won't have any video until I go home as I realized I forgot my camera cord there, and I'll likely not blog until Sunday since I have to pay for the net each day. Wish us luck - we want four clean runs to get into the finals.