It’s here! It’s here! Nationals week is here! And because we can’t do anything halfway, Heather and Jenny decided to make use of the overnight stop on our way to Minnesota. Jenny saw there was a show in Seward, NE today and asked Heather if she would mind making that our stopping point on Saturday. Heather, as always, thought it sounded fun. The plan was to enter Indy in Novice A (Obedience) and Conformation, Halo in Conformation, and Gunner in Beginner Novice (Obedience.) We would need to leave by 10:30, so if ring times were late we would have to forfeit those entry fees.
Unfortunately, Heather missed the entry deadline, but fortunately, the BN ring time turned out to be too late anyway — so no money lost! Luckily for our kids, Novice A was first in the ring at 8:30 and then Vizslas showed at 9:35 after 7 Boxers — couldn’t have received better times if we had made the schedule ourselves!
Yesterday, we drove out to Seward with no delays. We even managed to find two GREAT stops. The first was in Sterling, CO were the rest stop has a FENCED dog area! Awesome. We stopped there last year too 🙂 We let the dogs get in a good 30 minutes of leg stretching and then headed out again. Our second stop was in Kearney, NE where we found a great dog park. If you are ever in the area, or driving through, you should go! After another good run, we were back on the road until our final destination of Seward!
Saturday night was pretty laid back, settling in the dogs, a quick drive over to the show site to figure out the lay of the land, and then dinner at the local hot spot for some Mexican food.
Sunday went so much better than expected. Part of the reason Jenny was so keen on this show was because her favorite judge, Dan Herald (who Indy got two RA legs under and one RE leg.) was judging. Mr. Herald is hilarious, and gives you a hard time, but still is a fair judge (our obedience friends say he has a sharp pencil) so we knew he would be perfect for our debut in obedience. Sure enough, he gave Jenny a hard time, but when all was said and done he awarded us with a Q ribbon, a first place ribbon, AND a gift basket from the Seward Kennel Club! So cool.
Next up was conformation, with the goal of getting Halo one last time in the ring before Nationals. Halo did great with Jenny! She held for her exam and did a pretty decent free stack. We went 2nd in the class, beat by a Pro! But the puppy that won the class actually went WB too, so Halo went back in for more practice, yay! And then to Jenny’s absolute surprise, she was pointed at for Reserve over two other handlers! Wowza! Halo is quite the little show dog 🙂 After Reserve, Jenny took Indy in for Breed and Indy went Select! What a day for our kids!
After we were done showing, we loaded up and hit the road — next stop, Minnesota! The road trip was pretty uneventful, we just couldn’t get there fast enough. Once there we checked in, said hi to a bunch of friends, and then found a dog park to burn off some Vizsla steam. Then it was back for dinner, socializing, and finally…BED! Tomorrow is agility and we can’t wait!