Its done!

Our day started with snow -

 

But improved quickly!  Dodger must have taken my talk about Prado to heart, as he not only won Utility again to finish his OTCh, he won a runoff to do it!  Here we are with our two judges for the weekend.

The club put an announcement on their info board

 

Then, we had to win another run off to get High in Trial!

Afterwards, Dodger had Micky D's ;-)

winter in Montana

So far the trip has been worth it, and worth the COLD.  Dodger and I took a quick walk today between trials - not to look for flowers of course, since everything is dormant here still.  But we did find a few things of interest, beginning in the motel parking lot.

 These are power towers, so people can plug their cars in over night when the temps really dip.  Kind of a scary thought, eh?  ;-)

We saw some Canada Geese in a field near the motel - crazy birds, why are you here this early in the year?

Dodger thought they were very interesting.  When we got back to our room, I told him if he just wins the class this afternoon and again tomorrow morning, we won't have to focus so hard on obedience and he can go back to chasing birds at Prado.  I wonder if he understood?

Insanity

Well, Dodger and I are in Bozeman to see if we can finish off that OTCh.  Problem is, he would have to win all four Utility classes to do it and lately he can't seem to qualify that many times in a row, much less win the class.  Sigh...

Flying into Bozeman

View from our motel room

BUT!  We have to try, so here we are.  It's cold - 38 degrees at 7:30 pm - and the first trial isn't until tomorrow at sometime after 5:30 pm but there is nothing interesting to do. 

I did take some photos of the front garden before we left, so I could remember that at home, it's warm and the flowers are blooming!  ;-)

Dog cars

Another blogger has been talking about the various vehicles that dog people use to get them to their events, and she listed the ones that she had in the past decade or so.  It made me realize that I've been driving the same sort of car for that long!  I don't have any pictures of it, but over ten years ago I was driving a black Volvo wagon and in 2005 we traded it in for a silver one.

 This is it when it first came home - if I remember correctly it had about 20,000 miles on it at that point.  It's got over 185,000 now!

It fits all three dogs and a goodly amount of junk in it, gets great mileage - about 30 mpg on the freeway - and is built like a steel box, which is why I get these cars.  With all of the long distance driving I do, I want to be as safe as possible.  But, it does have it's limitations, mostly that it's not all that comfortable to sleep in, and impossible to sleep in without help if all three dogs are along on the trip.  Here are a couple of views of the inside with crates and dogs.

So the first thing I did, when I quit working and had to start saving money, was to get a tent.

 

This works pretty well but requires that I take most of the stuff out of the car, as the dogs sleep in the tent (and I change clothes in there) but I sleep in the car once it is mostly empty in the back.  So the next try was a motorcycle trailer -

This thing is pretty cool!  It only weighs about 350 lbs so the car doesn't really notice it, and the tongue weight is only 25 lbs, so it is easy to park.  And it's really easy to set up & take down, only takes a few minutes.  Its great to not have to haul crates out of the car in order to have a place to sleep and it's really great to be on the grounds in the morning!

However, I can't drive like a bat out of hell when I'm pulling it  ;-( and eventually it's probably going to upset the car's transmission.  I was planning to buy a Ford Transport but I haven't been able to sell our full sized trailer, so this is just going to have to do for now!

Monday training

Here is most of our Monday morning training group -->

 

Ty is a Samoyed, Parker & Holly are Belgian Malinois, Annabelle is a Bullmastiff, Sissy is a Bull Terrier and Driver is an Australian Cattle Dog.  Off to the left, next to Ty was Tweed, a Border Terrier.  Training groups like this make showing in the real ring a snap!

yayyyy, Prado!

Rick and I and all three dogs went to Prado today for the second time this year (I think - my memory is getting really bad) and the first time in nice weather.  After getting some really nice training in, the dogs went for a runamok

 In the top picture, Proxy is in front and you can see her wrapped pasterns - she somehow managed to rip both her stopper pads!  Must be only a month until the national...

Simple pleasures

Since Dodger has to take so many pills every day, I make it more enjoyable for him by putting them in canned food, either dog food at home or those little spoiled kitty cans on the road.  At home, Kitty demands her share as well, and when we get to the end of a can they both want it.  I didn't get pictures of Kitty digging the last out, but I did get Dodger

and Kitty watching him from her perch

 and the end result - a clean can!