First Shout-Outs of the Year

Congratulations (slightly belated) to our long-time Dog Show Newbie friends Barb Rimoshytus and Rio the Papillon! Rio earned his AKC championship at the Worcester County KC show on 12/4. His handler Courtney Pray finished him, and she sports a great grin in the win photo. If you're a friend of Barb's on Facebook, you can see him with Courtney and with judge Ruth Zimmerman. The win was a little bittersweet for Barb, who couldn't be at the show, and who wishes she could have been holding the lead that day... but the deed is done. Rio is now officially CH Brookfield's Slam Dunk, and he might also have some Rally title initials after his name. Rio and his Golden roomie Tazzy have both been doing rally this past year.

Another old friend picked up some alphabet soup at this year's Springfield Thanksgiving shows. Deb and Richard's Moxie was already a Canadian champion, but now you can call her Am/Can CH Cameron's Kiss Me Quick. Moxie's long march to the CH was even longer than ours. Even with the slightly reduced number of dogs it takes to make a major in our region nowadays, it still took forever to find majors, and for those majors to hold. I'll have to ask Debbie how many points Moxie finished with. Dinah has something like 24 or 25, and Rowdy Blue had close to 30 by the time he caught his big break.

Fiona needs only two more singles, and her brother Brae finished this past fall at the age of only 17 months -- that's a month younger than his sire Traveler was when he finished. CH Bramley's Green Mountain Boy CGC and handler Brian Kirk made a great pair. Brae took his last points with another handler whose name escapes me, but whom Brae's owners also like very much. Good work, kids!

Okay, I admit that I feel just slightly nostalgic for those days in the classes and all of the socializing that went along with them -- but the whole ordeal of hunting majors feels somewhat like having kids. You have to forget about the pain before you're prepared to have another. We have no room here for a puppy anyway, much less a litter. Maybe someday it would be nice to start again, but in the meantime, it will be fun to cheer for Cash/Casey, Bonnie, and all the new kids. Good luck this year!