Agility team of the year!

We have the best friends.  Like ever.

While we were in Garden City two weeks ago, one of the clubs we belong to, Longs Peak Dog Training Club, held their annual banquet.  We were really bummed to miss it, but an opportunity to do both agility and conformation at one site doesn’t often present itself.  We were thinking that Karma (and Jenny) had a really good shot at winning the Top Agility Team of the Year award, so we had asked our friends to keep us posted.  But Thursday night came and went with no texts — figuring we didn’t win and no one wanted to let us down by text, we proceeded with the weekend.  And that was a really busy and fun weekend too 🙂

Jenny and Karma take a late agility class (8:00pm up in Greeley) on Thursdays.  This is the class that really made it all click — our instructer is AMAZING (Sarah Stremming – thecognitivecanine.com.)  It started out as a 2×2 weaves class and kept progressing.  We started it last January, and for the most part it’s been the same group of people for the past year — our agility family, the Honey Badgers.

It was quite fitting tonight to have a surprise ceremony with all our Honey Badger classmates.  They have watched us grow up so much in the last year, they’ve witnessed all the sweat, and they’ve been educated on the difference between a duck and a quail.  Our classmate Ginger had us all go out into the lobby and then gave a super sweet speech about our accomplishments and then presented the trophy.  The trophy is so cool.  I don’t know if you can tell from the photo about but there is a hologram inside the crystal of the Golden Retriever that the award is named after.  We are in good company too — our friend Dale & Chili Pepper won in 2009 and Katherine and Jazz won in 2010.  The 2011 winner is our friend Kathy, who won with her Sheltie instead of her Vizsla.  So cool to be on a trophy with all our friends, but seeing Dale & Chili makes it extra special.  Every agility trainer Jenny has worked with has been told that our goal is to be as good and fast as that team.  In fact last weekend Dale and Chili made it to the FINALS at AKC Nationals — the first 20” Vizsla to make an appearance!  They are good role models 🙂

Besides our super cool trophy (which was already engraved with our names — super classy touch!) we received our plaques and title plates!  With everything laid out, it’s pretty apparent that Karma had an amazing 2012 — a lot of hard work and too much fun!

After the little ceremony it was back to class to run our dogs — followed up by cupcakes that Heather brought to help celebrate.  It was a pretty perfect night 🙂