AKC Nationals

Its been raining for the last 4 days. Saturday it wasn't raining first thing in the morning ,but we were suppose to have a down pour all day. So first I took the dogs to the State Park for a nice long walk. Right when I got back to the car it started raining. My timing was just right. Then I decided to go watch some nationals on Saturday because what else could I do with all the rain. Stephanie decided to go with me and we left around 10am. It rained all the way up but not so bad you couldn't see out the window. We got there about 12:30. They had signs up that said parking was 3 dollars but no one was taking money when we got there. We sat in the main arena, but I couldn't see the weaves from where I was, but I didn't want to move. Stephanie was excited because the dog, or one of the dogs, from "Marley and Me" was there and you could meet him. She is obsessed with fame. Marley is famous and of course he was touched by Jennifer Aniston and Owen Williams. That made me laugh. I told her there was someone more famous then Marley walking the course right now. She said who. I told her Greg Luganis. She said, "Who's that". So then I told her, she wasn't to impressed. You know the dog was touched by famous people. Hard to compete with that. The picture above is her with Marley, which I'm sure you guessed.

Anyway , I got to see a lot of runs. Its so fun to watch people's dogs who are smoking the course. I wish I had tape some of the runs so I could analyze them when I got home. Like Marcus Topps run. He makes it look like he isn't even working hard. Yet he dogs gets such a fast time. I love how his dog reads him so well. I wonder if its all body language or if he is giving verbal cues too when he is running a jumpers course. I also saw this lady run a golden retriever that was awesome. She had some type of disability and couldn't run. Her dog had such distance. They were running to the final jump and the dog couldn't see the handler and stop right before the last jump ( which was a double or a triple), then he must have seen here coming and jump over and didn't even drop the bars. And to top if off had a fast time too. One thing that I saw happen a lot which was concerning was dogs going for their leashes. AKC has this new rule about the leashed not being on the ground for the dog to get. Most clubs have gone to putting the leashes in a bucket and then on a chair. But at nationals, the leash was sitting on the seat of a metal folding chair. So the dog would run to the chair to get his leash and would clothes line itself. I hope none of the dogs got hurt. It really seemed dangerous to me. The other thing I saw a lot of was running backward into a front cross. I can barely do it running forward. I'll kill myself if I have to learn that. But it seemed to work really well for the people using it.

We stayed there about 3-4 hours and then left to go eat dinner and go to that outlet mall to shop. We ate at a place called "Razzoo", I think that's how you spell it. It was Cajun food and I was worried Stephanie wouldn't like it. But I wanted to try something new , at a place we had never been before. The food turned out to be good and the restaurant had cool decor. We did do a little shopping but finally I told Stephanie we needed to go home so I stop spending money. It was still pouring down rain when we left at 7pm. We got to the other side of Charlotte and it had stopped raining and the sun was out. The buildings from the city looked wild with the sun reflecting off of the windows. We tried to get a shot of it. This is the best we could get.

So today (Sunday)is sunny. Yea. Also on a high note, Miley has not broken her start line stay since last Tuesday when I posted about it. First I relaxed about it. Second, I started making her stay when we go out the gate to the front part of the house. And before we go in to see the ferrets. She is always very excited about both of those things. So I'm not sure what it is, but it is better. Yea!!