SUPER SILKIES!

I'm a bit late getting this update out...where did last week go? For the matter, where did OCTOBER go?? Or 2009, for that matter. This year has just whizzed by, it seems.

So, what was the news from last weekend? Well, it's the absolutely stupendous job that Abby and Zack did at the last NADAC agility trial of the year. It was the ScallyWaggs' infamous annual "Howl-a-ween" agility trial, where half the fun revolves around taking advantage of this ghoulish time of year to create a very fun atmosphere for the weekend. Between costumed people and dogs, and a rip-snorting competitive crate decorating contest, it was sometimes difficult to get our minds back in the groove of actually running agility courses.

Island Dog Sports created a great crating area for our canine contingent, duded up to look like a graveyard. We thought we had the crate-decorating prize in the bag...until we saw the Washington State contingent busily carting in an amazing number of bits and pieces which, when finally cobbled together, created a wonderful pirate ship around their crates. We were sweating bullets as the judging took place...and were relieved when the decision was that it was a dead heat between the ship and the graveyard. We split the prize.

On Friday evening, Abby and Zack each posted a Q, in different events. Not a bad start, I thought. Saturday morning, things kind of sputtered...we did not have an auspicious start to the day. Zack, for some reason, took exception to the judge on the course, and stopped and stared at her whenever we passed close to her position. Not sure what that was all about. I thought we might still pull out a good time, until Zack spotted France Jackson sitting in the far corner as ring crew, and off he went, full speed, for a very enthusiastic visit—which France did her level best to ignore. He finally came back to finish the course, but my thoughts were that he just wasn't going to be on the ball this weekend.

Wrong. After that run, he was pretty much right on the money for the rest of the weekend. By the end of Sunday afternoon, he had racked up an amazing eight Qs! And Abby was right in there behind him, with seven. They both appeared to finally have found "overdrive" on their internal gear shifts. Abby would have had eight Qs too, if I hadn't had a brain fart and removed her leash too early at the start line on one of our runs and got us disqualified from that run as a result. We still ran that course, but it was a very relaxed run because I wasn't worried about whether or not she would Q. And she ran it beautifully. (Just to see how far they've come in the last year, I checked back in my files to see what their results were for the Howl-a-ween trial last year. Zack had 4 Qs last year and Abby had, well, none. So Zack did twice as well as last year and Abby went right off the scale of exponential improvement.)

The icing on the cake? At the end of the trial, much to my surprise, Zack was awarded the "Novice High in Trial" trophy. We were tickled pink. I hadn't even thought of that as a possibility. In fact, I had totally forgotten that there was such an award. So I'm sure I was beaming from ear to ear when I heard our names called. The trophy now has pride-of-place in the den, by the bulletin boards with all their Q ribbons.