Saturday, July 16, 2016

Day 98 - AKC Trial & First Hotel Stay

Today we were up bright and early to leave for our AKC trial. Thankfully none of my dogs were entered in the first run of the day, so we didn't have to leave quite as early as we may have otherwise. We were on the road by 5:50, which was a little later than I'd planned, but we still got to Soccerblast a little after 8:30. Due to the early start, Jedi ate breakfast out of a bowl this morning. I unloaded everything from the van before bringing the dogs inside -- Miraculously, I actually managed to find a spot big enough for all three of my crates. I took Jedi and Secret in first and Jedi stayed nice and quiet as I left him to go bring in Kaiser and Kizzy. His crate is in the middle and this setup seemed to work well for all involved.

Jedi did great at the trial all day and didn't bark at all in his crate with all the coming and going. I feel like I got him out a good deal and gave him stuff to do, but there were a couple of stretches where he was in there a bit longer due to some craziness between the two ring schedules. Soccerblast gets pretty crowded and Jedi did really well traversing the cramped quarters every time we went in and out. He stayed low-key and wasn't bothered by any of the other dogs. For the most part he ignored everyone as we walked through, only trying to say hi to a couple all day. We have a young (12 week, I'd guess) border collie puppy crated next to us and they got to meet once.

I finally got around to giving Jedi his lunch around 1:30, I'd guess. I took him into the ring that had the measuring arm set up and we spent most of his lunch trying to get an accurate measurement. Right now I mostly just let him stuff his face the entire time I'm swinging the arm over him, but this results in a lot of movement. I'm going to have to start spending time working on a stand stay for the future. Because of all the moving, the measurements I got today ranged from about 17" - 18". He's apparently had quite a growth spurt! I'm going to go ahead and say that he was 17 3/4" today, as that seemed the most repeatable.

While I was waiting to walk Secret's JWW run I brought Jedi out into the bleachers to hang for a while. It took him a while to realize that there was agility running in front of him because the lower walls are covered with sheets. He got kind of excited when he saw what was going on, but it didn't keep his attention terribly long. I was able to distract him pretty easily with food. While we were waiting for Secret's results to be posted I took Jedi into the arena and we played tug with his leash. He started acting strange and pawing at his mouth. Someone suggested that he was probably losing a tooth. Yup, that was it! She helped pull it out. It was a pre-molar. I didn't even realize he had any of those left.

We're all checked into our La Quinta for the evening. This is Jedi's first time in a hotel -- first time sleeping anywhere other than home, really. When we first got here I gave all of the dogs beef tracheas to keep them busy for a bit. Jedi didn't seem to know what it was at first, but he eventually dug in. Of course his mouth was all bloody from chewing, so we had a minor moment when he moved off the blankets that I have covering the bed and got blood on the sheets. Thank goodness I packed Nature's Miracle along for the ride. And lucky for me, Nature's Miracle appears to clean up blood (at least in small amounts).

I fed the dogs dinner at 6:30 and then packed everyone in the van to go pick up my dinner. Everyone had the chance to go potty then, but I'm guessing we'll make another trip out before the bedtime trip. I have two stuffed squeaky toys here and Jedi is currently bouncing between the bed and the floor with them. The bed is so super high off the ground that I ended up sliding the chair over for the dogs to use to help get them on and off. Jedi is being a good boy and using the chair, surprisingly enough! The only other questionable thing for this evening is the water dish. This is the first time Jedi has had indoor access to water since he was 8 weeks old. So far so good -- fingers crossed.

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