Ice Follies

The Lovely One herself (photo by Nick Diana, City Puppies)

Greater Lowell Kennel Club Show, 1/13/07
1st Place, 12-18-Month Bitches

Since Dinah did so well at the previous Fitchburg show, I let myself be talked into entering this show. We'd had reasonably mild weather thus far, right? What could go wrong?

Actually, Saturday's weather wasn't half bad. It was warm-ish for mid-January (40s) and had stopped raining, so the trip down was actually quite bearable (for all that we had to get up at 5 AM for a 9 AM ring time). Since there were approximately a gazillion Corgis (Pembroke) and Collies (Rough) ahead of us in our ring, we had plenty of time to get settled, help Kathy set up, and socialize before our presence was actually required.

I'm happy to report that Dinah finally beat Cocoa in the ring, but I can't say much else for the judge's judgment. He placed exclusively from the Open classes, so we didn't progress very far. Ah well, there's always the next day...

Only there wasn't a next day. It had iced over during the night, though I'd had no idea how treacherous the going was until I drove down Route 4 myself. It took me over an hour of 5 mph driving before I called Kathy to tell her that we just couldn't bend space and time to make our ring time, at the rate at which we were going. Some friends collected my stuff and brought it back for me.

That's it for shows until the end of April, at the earliest. No more winter shows!

Looking Back Already?

Even though it's technically way past New Year's Eve now, folks continue to look back on the past year. Everywhere you turn, there's another Year in Review -- top news stories, top sleazy celebrity gossip stories... you get the idea. Usually, I just shrug them off -- I'm just not the scrapbooking type -- and then my friend Val (Traveler's mom) started looking back on the fairly amazing year she and husband Pat have had showing Trav. He's done really well for himself -- finished within a year of their starting showing him, got his HIC, and has 8 Best of Breeds to his credit.

It got me to thinking that we haven't done so badly ourselves. For what it's worth, here's a stab at Dinah's Year 2006 in Review:

• 3 breed points
  
• Best Puppy in Show, BCCC National Specialty
  
• Puppy Group 2, Mid-Coast KC
  
• 1 Best of Breed
  
• 5 Best Opposites
  
• 4 Best of Winners
  
• HIC title
  

I'd say we did okay for ourselves. We do have work to do when the season starts up again in the spring, though. Looking ahead, I'd like to see us achieve a few things in 2007:

• Finish Dinah's US champtionship
  
• Show her in Canada and make some progress toward her Canadian championship
  
• Enter some herding trials and get her HT and maybe her PT
  

Those plans look simpler on the screen than they probably will be in real life, but it gives us something to aim toward, right?