NICELY DONE AT NADEN

Island Dog Sports headed out to the navy base at Esquimalt for our fourth year providing agility demos at the military families fun day. Once again, we were at Naden, but this time we were much closer to the action instead of down on the field, far away from the main attractions. Our neighbours were the folks from the base fire department, who had a number of popular activities for the kids going on—like getting to shoot the fire hose at a mock "house-on-fire", or taking a ride in a fire truck. We finally convinced Brianna and Ann to take Landon on the truck ride...so that Landon could have fun, and the gals could scope out the firemen. ;-)

This was Shirley and Maggie's very first agility demo, and they did just great. You'd think that they'd been doing this for years, instead of just 6 months. Shirley and Maggie have come a long way in a short time, and it's always wonderful to welcome new faces to the demonstration team.

Mylo came along with Lorri and Randy for the first of our two demos, and got to have the bandage removed from his tail in our own impromptu M*A*S*H tent as Peni and Lorri stuffed him with treats at his front end while Pia cut the bandage off at his hind end. He hardly noticed what was going on in his nether regions!

There were some strange characters walking around the site, and one dropped by to watch the dogs in action (I mean the character on the right, not the fireman!). We put on two shows for the folks to enjoy, one around 1 p.m. and the other at 2:45 p.m. We had a bit of musical competition during the first show, as there was a live band playing on the stage just below our location. Luckily, we managed to get our second show in before they started another set. Then we cooled our heels, sitting around in the tent, shooting the breeze for another hour, as we couldn't bring the truck and trailer back up to load until the fire trucks had finished their tours—at 4 p.m. Then we all headed home, exhausted. Both people AND dogs. You'd have thought we'd all run a marathon. But it was just a day of fresh air and sunshine—and very good company—working its magic.