First of all, I think the best part of the dog show this weekend was that Team Small Dog now has a jingle. Jim, who many people know as the Jingle Master, came up with it. I forgot some of the words. Some of them were dirty and some of them were about decomposing rodents. If Team Small Dog is ever on tv, Jim will sing it and maybe act it out with puppets. We are very excited about this. Next time you see Jim, maybe he’ll sing it for you. If you ask real nice.

The next best part was that competitors were very good for the most part about not putting their aluminum and plastic into the garbage and used the blue recycling bags. Although on behalf of my loyal friend Mary who wasn’t afraid to empty out trash cans, we would like to remind competitors in the future who have beautiful RV’s and camp out on the grassy lawns with expansive views to please carry their heavy metal car part thingies all the way to the dumpsters themselves.

And then the next best part would have to be the superstar Gustavo. Gustavo had 9 runs over 2 days, and every single one of them was amazing and fast and focused. He tried his hardest, and gave our partnership his all. There were no missed poles. Flawless contacts. He flew around as fast as he could, he listened, he didn’t do weirdo things and frankly, held his shit together. I don’t think I could be prouder of him. I made some errors, cost us some snooker points, but I also tried some daring, aggressive running, and we both had the most fun we’ve ever had doing agility together.

I think I wandered around most of the weekend in a little bit of shock and awe. Apologies to you if I had a glazey look on my face and rambled on about how proud I was of my dog.

I would like to say it’s all our hard work and training paying off. I’m not exactly sure, and knowing Gustavo, it’s entirely possible that he could go out for his next trial and be erratic as hell again. I sure hope not, but this is how he is.

He’s laying here on my lap. Very tired. Monday Team day was a lot for him, especially if he felt the same way I did in the morning after a night of pretty much no sleep due to fireworks trauma. And he has no travel mug. At least I had extra coffees. He had string cheese. I just asked him though, if he wants to work on being a true champion dog now that he knows he can do this.

I can’t tell what he thinks. Because he’s a dog and all. Usually if I ask him a question in the house he’s pretty sure I’m asking where we keep the dog food and he likes to run over there and show me. Just in case. So since he stayed here on my lap, I’m hoping that means Yes.

Here’s a couple his runs from Monday, his Team Standard and Jumpers. Thanks to best videographer Rob!

Team Standard

This was a hard course! I am still a little shocked we ran it clean. This was Judge Peggy’s ring. She always wears the cutest skorts and I love her courses. Always very challenging and fun to run.

Team Jumpers

Oh man was this a jumpers. Everyone ran it different, and very few people had really smooth runs. This was in Judge Tim’s ring. Also a big challenge. I would have changed one thing-not done that panicky front cross between jumps 4 and 5. I just sort of wanted to see if I could. I needed to run faster.