Little Bits of Life

I decided to enter Zoey in the Coeur d'Alene show after there was a judge change in Missoula. I had only entered Zoey with women judges since it had been a man judge that started her scary judge reaction last fall, but the judge change in Missoula had been to a man and Zoey's reaction was, "whatever" so I felt confident in entering her in Coeur d'Alene with two male judges.

Coeur d'Alene is usually about 2.5 hours away, and it seems like a lot of driving just to show a dog but shows are far and few between so I had to take advantage of this relatively close opportunity. I did not have a readily available dog nanny (that traitor Galen) so I did the round trip both days. Well, I forgot that in the summer they take those orange things out of storage -- you know -- the road construction orange things??? In the winter they are hidden away someplace but in the summer they save money on the storage costs by storing them on highways.

And so the drive was even longer because they had to try and pretend the oranges things were really doing something -- so lanes were closed for MILES, blocked by the orange things, and the speed limit was not Montana Fast by any means. All of this is to say that it was over three hours -- each way!!! This made for a long day for the other dogs :(

But let me start at the beginning of the day... Six dogs is probably too many for most people, but I am not sure it is too many for me. Knowing I would be gone for over eight hours, I got up early and made sure every dog did something. Maize and I started by heading to the arena to get it ready to train and water the half that has new grass seed growing -- and guess who was there?! HEIDI MARIE!!!! Yes, there she was munching on my new grass not at all concerned by my presence, or my indignant, "HEIDI MARIE - what are you doing?!" However, she took off when Maize made her presence known and Maize got to feel all smug and important from having chased off the intruder :)

And so I went back and forth with various dogs between the house and the arena so everyone was trained and exercised, and during one of the trips little Chippy caught me and said, "excuse me but could I please have some of those yummy unsalted peanuts you got from Costco?" He did this by waiting on the stump and looking very cute and expectant :)

And so I delivered Chippy's nuts, trained dogs, scolded Heidi Marie, and watered the new lawn -- and then it was 7:45 a.m. and time to drive to Coeur d'Alene with Zoey.

We made the long drive, shifting lanes here and there as directed by the stupid orange things. I gave Zoey a quick bath when we arrived -- it was a small show at a very nice fairground and everything was easy and convenient. Zoey looked beautiful, as usual, and we went over to hang out by the ring.

As we were waiting we made friends with a little girl named Kinzie. I asked her if she had driven a long way to the show and she told me, "no, my mom did" -- I love four year olds!!!! So I had fun visiting with her and she admired Zoey's pink bling bling breast cancer awareness leash, and wanted to learn the names of all of my dogs, and all of Zoey's nicknames and and my middle name, which happened to be the same as hers to her great delight -- and so on -- four year olds are quite entertaining :)

It was finally time for us to show and I told her to make sure and cheer for Zoey -- how cute was it that we heard her yelling, "YAY ZOEY" as we were in the ring?! :) And when Zoey won, she gave us a big thumbs up :)

And so ends Zoey's six days of showing -- her coat is coming out so we will be waiting a bit before going after her majors. Zoey showed six times in the past month in three states at four different show venues -- she won every time she was shown. Those of you who show dogs can attest that this is unusual consistency, even with a nice dog! Zoey is a very, very good show dog -- well trained, flashy and best of all -- happy :) I am REALLY proud of her :)

But Beauty Queen Zoey is still Air Zoey -- she came home, got her ball, and played some fetch...





In the words of our new four year old friend: YAY ZOEY!!!!


I hope that you have had an excellent weekend, full of success -- and I hope you are looking forward to the promise of a new week :)