If you are reading this on Monday, likely Otterpop is safely stuffed back into her tote bag, and we are on the airplane, heading west. Back to the beach by way of Arizona and L.A. on one long flight, back to where you can’t order cinnamon sugar cream cheese topping for your fries, back to where our leaves are green and our wood is red. And where people don’t say ya’all.

I say ya’all now. Because I’m learning to talk like ya’all. And in Canadian. I am digging the Canadian. I took walks in amazing autumn colored parks, got very close to a haunted tuberculosis sanitarium, hung out a lot with my agility pals, met a lot of new agility pals, and watched a lot of top notch agility.

I liked the dog show. I heard lots of complaining. Yeah, it was in a cement monolith and the dirt footing was dusty and loose, but I actually had a grand time. I think it’s good to have a change from the normal. I’m not going to line up in the whiner line. Change is good. I spent a week in a state I’ve never been to and saw as much of it as I could. You know what? I like Kentucky.

I spent a week with just Otterpop, and we had a blast. Far more excellent than I thought we would. Turns out Otterpop is a travel dog. She’s ready for the next trip. We could to to Florida. Texas. Japan. We’re ready. I sure do miss home and the other dogs, but it was great having such a good traveler.

Our agility? The wheels fell off. We narrowly missed my goal of Grand Prix finals. We did have some good runs in the qualifiers, and got a 2nd in one of them. There were good parts to every other run, but all of them had a flaw somewhere.Sometimes major. I had a great team mate, who had a far less experienced dog than I. Her dog ran great, got prizes, ran around like a pro. Otterpop? Usually the consummate team mate, experienced and consistent, comes with an experienced handler good at racking up points and negotiating courses? I dunno what happened. When a bad moment happened, it happened bad. Me and Otterpop had some of the worst runs of our life in Kentucky. That I have now moved on from, and would like to leave in the past. My confidence got shaken good. It’s happened before, but never on such a large scale.

I felt bad for my team mate, I never would have predicted those disastrous runs. I’m not sure exactly what happened. Mega disaster getting dished out that I wasn’t sure how to fix. I felt like a pretty big loser. No. That’s not true. Like a huge loser. No. Wait. Even bigger. Mega gigantic supra loser. With half the internet watching. Which is unproductive. So I had to keep moving on, and work to improve things. I wasn’t myself, Otterpop wasn’t herself. Nowhere to go but up. So I patched up Otterpop’s startline, refocused my attention on my courses, and we ended up far better than those days in between.

I was lucky to have my friends there, very experienced competitors both nationally and internationally. Thanks you guys! We explored parks and watched a bazillion dogs run and ate fried green tomatoes. That seemed very Kentucky. They had their ups and downs, big victories and moments of defeat. Same as me. Different kinds of pressure, but really just the same. All of us, just a bunch of dorks that really love our dogs. And french fries. They’ll help me get better. I think they’ll help me get a lot better. So by next year, we kick some serious ass. In Kentucky or wherever the show goes. I am sure of this. We have a new project, that starts now.