I received a call on Thursday afternoon, the day before the WPBTCA National Championship was supposed to start. It’s a Friday-Sunday event, and I had been looking forward to it for a while- catching up with old friends, people involved in dog sports, meeting new people. The phone call was from the club’s president, stating that the Championship may be cancelled. Why? Because the flight with our main “open” competitor would not allow her dog. It was scheduled in advance, they knew the size of the dog and crate, but now, before boarding the plane, she was notified that her dog was “too big”. The only other flight out of her area was going to cost well over $1000 at this point, too.

Wow.

So, what now? I don’t think we can cancell- we have other people coming from out of town. Sure, we can inform the people that we know are coming, but we can’t possibly tell everybody. Setting up a weekend seminar is a possability. . .or. . .well, I was asked to promise to never make our club president watch my dog track again. Turns out he was willing to overlook it so that we could have some dogs show at the event. SO. . .without much in the form of preparation (we track and do obedience weekly), my 10-year-old retired dog is dusted off and entered. We have a couple other locals that are able to do the same. The show will go on!

Aja and Esco: High Tracking, High Obedience, High Protection. . . High in Trial!

Turns out Esco wasn’t too shabby. It was probably his best tracking and obedience performance I’ve seen in a while, and although we had a few control problems during protection (we hadn’t trained in over a year) he still gave us enough to earn another title, AWD3. Good boy! I can thank K-9 Kraving for his good health and agility at this age. Who else knows a 10-year-old dog that can jump a 1-meter jump without touching and scale a 6-foot wall with ease??! We were certainly thankful for a good showing and accomplishments for the weekend, even though we hadn’t planned an entry.

So, what happened to our competitor? She routed us on from California, and has decided to boycott Southwest! I would too, after that. As a matter of fact, I will.

Now, we didn’t enter in the events to qualify for the National Champion title this year. (As some of you may know, Esco was the WPBTCA National Champion for 2009.) He definitely didn’t have the juice for ALL that would have been required for that. Okye and Torque take the title for 2010. New competitors Noelle and Diesel take the Novice Champion title, and Will and Action take the Novice Vice Champion title. What a great showing! It was a pleasure to see everybody’s dogs in action. To view pictures of the event, please visit the club’s Facebook album, here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=281211&l=714ed62c8c&id=285509266881

Next year’s Championship should be in California. If you couldn’t make it this year, hopefully we’ll see you there!