We flew out to St Louis, and the next day Rick and I judged the first field events, him the X & Q and me the C. "Poor Sketch" was so upset at not being able to go fetch things he broke out of his soft crate and screwed up the zipper. Sigh. He did get to be pick up dog during the water series at least.
Next up was obedience and this year it was all breed. A pair of high powered BC folk showed up, but other than them Sketch was a star. He was HIT & HC Curly, plus Third in Utility and Second in Open for two more points.
The next day was the Upland test, which Sketch is already titled in, so we did tourist and went to the Meremec Caverns.
It was way cool but a looong walk!
Next day was Sweeps and Sketch was actually a show dog! He won his class in Gundog and then went on to BOS in Gundog Sweeps.
After that it was just dog show, beginning with the CCRCA breed classes. Sketch was fourth out of four in Working Retriever dog but I handled Harper to an Award of Merit, and took some other dogs in the next three days (oh my aching hamstrings!).
Montana was a bust - there were barely enough entries to make for points and of course someone was absent. I thought about not going and I probably should have gone with that, instead of wasting all that money on just two points from earning two 197+ scores. He did win 6 out of 8 classes and a High Combined, but as it turned out, by the time we got back to Oregon he was actually tired!
It did not go well - he FLUNKED everything until the last day when I finally got it together and he won Open for four more points and a run off for High in Trial.
Next, we are off to Purina Farms for the CCRCA National Specialty!
