Friday afternoon I drove to Brandon, MS. I got there as it was getting dark and moved into the Red Roof hotel room with Tracey, Sparkle, and Lego. Lots of dog show folks there so we visited while the dogs got last call each evening. The hotel experience was nice. Tracey and I watched snippets of movies on TV... Fri night we watched the end of National Treasure which I had not seen. On Saturday we caught the end of The Princess Diaries (both of us commenting that Julie Andrews seems so put together) and the beginning of Father of the Bride (Steve Martin...a man able to laugh at the absurdity of life). It was fun to see some chic flick material as I don't view much around the house.
Saturday morning I took my camera out to the field beside the arena to take photos. I found a nice collection of wildflowers blooming. There were some very small lavender butterflies zooming around but they proved too fast and too photograph. I included a few pictures of the photogenic/prettier flowers. The tall white flowers were a huge 4" - 5" flat bloom. I was amazed at the variety I found in the field when I walked slow and looked carefully to see the small bits of color blooming.On Saturday, Grace ran only FAST. She was a little tentative. She was trying to herd me which meant I had no "out" for the send. The herding caused us to not make good time and we didn't run the FAST course I had planned before the buzzer sounded so we missed some contact obstacle practice. On Sunday, Grace ran both Novice Standard and Novice JWW. We had much better runs on Sunday.. no weaving so we were not hoping to Q. This despite an overheated Grace Saturday afternoon, a very crabby Grace Saturday evening, and a crying Grace during the thunderstorm overnight Saturday.
Bern gave me 2 great sets of weaves on Saturday. Unfortunately we knocked down a bar on the JWW course and he got called for a couple of refusals in the standard run due to poor timing by his handler. Bern lost his "out" command on Saturday. He did find "out' on Sunday and went way "out" around the end of the dog walk to the wrong end of the tunnel on Sunday. Judge Carol's courses had twisty beginnings and endings.. I thought I handled these extremely well with no off courses. Bern lost his weaves on Sunday and really didn't try hard. Tracey says I need to try and fix the Open JWW sets since we can have 1 refusal and still Q.... next trial I may try this. Several folks commented that our runs looked very smooth and my handling was really improving. Personally I feel in a much better zone out there, now able to make some handling adjustments on the fly, and enjoying the run as opposed to just trying to get through the course. This is true for Bern, I'm not anywhere near here with Grace but we improve some each time we run together.
The trip home was uneventful. I made it back to Baton Rouge in time to unload the car, shower, and dress in RSR clothing. RSR played at FUMC for Sunday evening chapel. Rev Mike successfully wove the music theme into the message so we seemed to fit into the service better than sometimes when we played. Most of the music went well.. there are still a few rocky spots to iron out before we play the music at the AGEHR festival in June.
