OUR P.A.L.

We have a new acronym in our vocabulary: PAL. What does it mean? According to our NADAC agility judge this past weekend, it stands for Personal Assistant for Leashing. And we have a PAL extraordinaire in George, as can be evidenced from the picture above. Whenever we had to walk an agility course prior to running it, we would all hand our dogs' leashes to George to hold, George currently being the odd-man-out in not having a dog running in agility these days. From left to right, the crew is Emma, Betty, Swift, Switch, George, Pecos, Abby, Zack and Gemma.

There were some stellar performances put in by our gang...some pretty impressive Q totals as well as some "personal bests" for a number of the dogs. Zack got motivated (some of the time, anyway) by hot dogs. Who knew??? He chalked up 5 Qs. Pecos "broke out" and Q'ed in a bunch of classes where he hadn't had very much success in the past. Abby and Joe battled it out in the 4" division, with each of them tallying 8 Qs. Betty shone: she too made her mom proud by notching 8 Qs. Switch triumphed! He got 2 Qs, I think—an absolutely wonderful outcome for him and Peni. Swift didn't knock down any entry or exit jumps. Mylo did his best on Saturday, and we missed him and Lorri on Sunday. Emma reeled in a couple more titles (I'm not sure what her final Q tally was). Gemma gets the "social butterfly" award for never once finishing a run but rather making a grand tour of each course to visit the ring crew and judge. But then again, this was her very first NADAC trial, and her very first outdoor trial—so lots of distractions for a puppy brain to pursue (she's only 20 months old, so has lots of time to nail down her agility skills and to learn the fine art of focusing).

The icing on the cake from this weekend? Abby currently holds the household bragging rights by having brought home the Novice High in Trial award—the award that Zack won last October at the Howl-aween trial. I tried to rouse her up a little while ago to take a picture with her trophy but she was having none of it...she just wanted to snooze. So when she's feeling a little less exhausted, we'll snap a photo and post it here on the blog a little later. There may be some pictures taken by other folks at the trial which we'll have access to a little later as well, so stay tuned for perhaps a couple of action shots from this past weekend in the weeks to come.