AKC Agility, Kiln, MS with Swamp Dogs

Spice earned Novice FAST Leg #1

Our weekend in Kiln, MS at the Swamp Dogs agility trial was fun. I drove over early Friday morning to catch up with Tracey. Mike was off his ambulance this weekend so he joined us for the day on Saturday.

The weather took a temp nose dive over the weekend.  It went from running the AC full blast in the camper wearing shorts + t-shirt to digging out the electric space heater and sweat shirts + coats by the end of the weekend.  Swamp dogs kept with the Halloween theme... we carved pumpkins and had squeaky ring gates.

Grace ran well during the weekend.  She came home with 2  Open FAST legs giving her the Open FAST title.  We came very close to getting Qs in Open Standard as well.  Darn the knocked bar!

Grace earned her Open FAST title!

Spice was very happy and maintained her special "jumping bean" style all weekend.  I was very pleased with the speed but I need to work on not pushing so hard into the turns - I'm sending her WAY off course.  We are a work in progress.  Spice decided that she would try going to the crate for cookies on Saturday afternoon about half way through a jumpers run.  Lets just say it didn't go like she thought it would - no cookies and upset Mom, Dad, and Aunt Tracey (oops!).  Sunday morning she happily stayed in the ring with me for all 20 obstacles of the T2B course.  Spice came home with a Nov Fast Q and some valuable lessons.  Her "new" Nylabone crate worked great.

There was pumpkin carving on Friday night.  I was asked to design and carve the Great Q Pumpkin.  Folks were rubbing it for good luck all weekend.  I enjoyed the carving party - we had a great time.

I carved the Great Q Pumpkin!

The arena site was functioning great.  We did have a slight mishap Sunday morning when a new foster dog got his leash caught around a PVC water spigot.  The PVC pipe was brittle in the cold weather and snapped off flooding an area near our crates.  Luckily the agility group included a retired waste water treatment plant operator - Joe put a temporary riser on the pipe and shot the water off to a drainage ditch via a hose.  The  water redirect kept us from having to be true swamp doggies and run agility in the standing water.  Our hats off to Joe Lapine and his support team.

The beginning's of Joe's "repair"