Harrisburg shows, without the flood

August 13, 2011.  Today was the second day of a three day circuit in Harrisburg, PA.  On the first day I went by myself, Sawyer won the Breed and we stayed all day waiting for the group.  My friend Pat and I were carpooling to the shows together for the next two days of the circuit.  We were a few miles from the show site on Saturday when the traffic just stopped.  Panicking that we’d be late for Pat’s ring time, I programmed the GPS to avoid that road and we got off the next exit to make our way around to the show site.  Unbeknownst to us, all the judging times were delayed by 30 minutes because of all the road issues.  Pat made it to her ring time with Halle and John Henry.  Weims were on a little later.  Sawyer showed well but no Breed for us today. 

As soon as we were done we rushed over to the obedience ring.  I had already alerted the ring steward to a possible conflict and the judge gave us permission to move to the end of the run order.  I always say I’m not going to do conformation and obedience on the same day because it’s very stressful to try to manage the conflicts and run from one ring to another.  And of course the rings are always at the opposite ends of the show site.  We did make it over there with some time to spare.  Obedience makes me very nervous, especially the stay exercises.  Sawyer did pretty well on all his exercises. 

He stayed with me on the heeling patterns.

I thought he was going to kiss the judge on the stand for exam.

When we got to the stays I was happy we were on the end because then there’s only one other dog next to Sawyer and we’re not sandwiched in-between dogs.  He did the sit stay but it was obvious he was stressed and panting, which made me even more nervous.  The dog next to him had gotten up but Sawyer stayed.  That dog was excuses so he had a little more room for the down stay. 

The down stay started, I just had to stand across from him and pray that he lasted the full 3 minutes.  And he did!!  What a good boy.  I was thrilled when the judge told us we had qualified.  This was our first Q!  The judge, Betty Brask, was extremely nice.  She came over to me after the stays and asked if I was ok because I was so pale.  I explained the nerves and that this was our first passing leg so she gave me a big hug. 

Way to go Soy Beans!

After all the scores were totaled we went into the ring with the other teams to get our qualifying ribbon.  We didn’t get a placement but that was ok, the main goal was to pass. 

When I asked for our score, it turned out it wasn’t tallied.  When they did the math it turned out that Sawyer actually took 3^rd place.  Unfortunately the judge had to get the ribbons back from the other teams so we could get our 3^rd place ribbon and $10 in vendor bucks. 

I smiled like this for the rest of the day!