Dream Fields trial

Poor Lucy. She's such a good girl, running for me (or trying to, at least) when she wasn't feeling well...

Advanced Snooker
I picked a relatively flowing course for her and despite my handling goofs we made it through to part of the closing, but I lost her after she came out of the #4 tunnel when she went off on a zoomy tangent to check out the nearby in/out gates and incurred a refusal. However, the great part is that she did two teeters in the opening with no problem, yay!

Advanced Jumpers
I bungled a front cross in front of the double so she knocked it, one of the few bars she's ever knocked in competition. Later on, she ran past a jump but I didn't bother going back to fix it. Then, when she did a nice rear cross into a tunnel I said "yes" or "good girl" or something and the classic tunnel bungle happened: she popped back out the entry end, d'oh! Overall it wasn't a terrible run but certainly not our best.

Starters Standard - Did not run
Lucy had been shaking her head a lot and scratching her left ear and a friend observed she was even holding her head at an off angle while running. Sure enough, she has an ear infection, poor girl. So I scratched her from Standard because she was obviously quite bothered by it and the last thing she needs is a bad experience on the dogwalk due to feeling off balance.

I have a feeling this ear problem may have played a part in Lucy's "scatterbrain" runs last weekend. I can't wait to get her all cleared up and get this girl back on track! She's so much better than her performances this weekend and last. Didn't get a chance today to see how her frame is doing since there was no frame in the Snooker course and she didn't do the Standard.

So no Qs for either of my dogs today, but we Q'd vicariously when one of our flyball teammates, a rescue who is working hard to overcome her issues, got a Q with a great Gamblers run. Woo hoo!

In completely unrelated news, Woo hoo! to Canada's own Jeffrey Buttle for delivering the goods at the World Figure Skating Championships, taking home the gold medal after today's fantastic free skate. I remember seeing him for the first time when I had tickets to the Canadian National Championships here in Ottawa in 1999. He was just a baby-faced teen at the time and even though he finished well out of the medals, everyone could see his promise even then. Talent, charisma, and great sportsmanship all the way to becoming World Champion! Wonderful to see someone who seems like a nice guy (of course, he could be a nasty, snobby creep in real life, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt...) come out on top. You can watch his gold medal winning free skate here.

Ahem... we now take you back to our regularly scheduled dogs-only programming.