I have spent the weekend with my wonderful daughter and her husband, who happen to live just a few miles from the site of a very nice show/agility trial so this is a double-duty trip and I have Mac and Zoey with me. Here is a picture of my daughter with everyone's favorite Feline Puppy Nanny -- Noah:
Mac got a second agility leg yesterday but what is even more impressive is how well he handles traveling and shows. My daughter has cats and dogs, and Mac is completely trustworthy and fine with all of them. My daughter, who has been a vet tech and does rescue, commented on what a nice and easy dog he is -- there are not many dogs -- let alone an intact male -- that you could take to a strange house filled with an assorted of rescue animals and know that all would be well but Mac is just a very kind soul.
I want to share about Zoey because I am just really proud of her. You may recall that I shared about a scary judge experience she had when she was 14 months old. She was going through a phase and I foolishly showed her one weekend -- and everything that could have gone wrong did at that show, including having a very large male judge. The judge was nice but Zoey was not alone in finding him very scary, and she refused to stand for him to examine her.
I suppose I could pretend that none of that happened and she has always been fine -- but why? There is no perfect dog and I won't pretend otherwise -- she had some "stranger danger" concerns when she was younger and that is the truth.
Yesterday reminded me of the importance of development -- in people and dogs. I entered Zoey in Best of Breed yesterday but not today because today's judge is the one who scared her 1.5 years ago and I just did not want to go there again. What I did not bother to check was the judge for the working group yesterday -- it was indeed Judge Scary.
Zoey won Best of Breed, which meant she earned a trip to Group. She has not enjoyed Group the couple of times she was there, and add in Judge Scary -- well, I wasn't sure I wanted to show her in Group. But you know what? I did -- and she was perfect. She wasn't bothered by any of it -- the bigger, intense dogs, Judge Scary -- none of it bothered her.
So Zoey went from agility to breed to Group to agility -- she really is a special dog :) Thanks to Bryan and Yoshi for these pictures from yesterday...
Hope your weekend is wonderful, filled with things that you feel proud of...
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