If you don't like the weather...

Cold and damp Friday-40 degrees. Moderate and dry on Saturday with a little wind. Hot, humid, windy, rain, hail, thunder and lightening on Sunday. 80 degrees.

That folks, is Iowa.

Friday we leave for Dewitt, IA for one of my favorite dog shows of the season. The site isn't perfect. The pie is awesome-I had strawberry rhubard. The show rings, dry and very dusty. The company-impecable. We always have some sort of good showing here, either performance events or conformation. This year we stayed in the conformation rings.

Let's see-Mr Charlie Bear was WD for 2 more points on Saturday. He showed well, still has issues with the elevator butt on the table but knowing his security blanket, aka, rePete was waiting ringside, he was a happy boy. Thinking about changing his name to Linus. rePete was RWB to a lovely girl, Angelica, owned, bred and shown by Connie Whan. Spitting image of her mother-wow! You never even can complain when the compeition is that good. Russ and Alec went BOB for another 5 pt towards his GRCH. That makes, I think 4 majors now? I'll have to double check.

The only comment I have on the cardigans was that people need to let their dogs move out in the ring. Granted it's not a race, but man, these slow walks around the ring really don't do the dogs justice. Some dogs just can't move, that I get, but some dogs can but aren't allowed to. And stringing a cardigan up to show like a toy dog-seriously people, get a clue. Work with your dog to keep their heads up or at least not on the ground. Okay, two comments. Hello, hasn't anyone read the standard about the coats? This is an ongoing FB discussion. Blowing a coat such that it's open, totally not correct. Poofy and toy handling was in the other building. Sorry, three comments. Condition of your dog. Be aware of that! Bigger is not better, especially if the fat makes your dog sluggish in the ring and that you can see it giggle as the dog moves.

Enough said.

Collies.

Eghads, we showed collies this weekend. I have now mastered the art of grooming a rough collie. Once you get past the myth of dealing with all that hair, there's really nothing to it. A correct dog needs almost nothing done to it. A little moisture in the coat, some chalk on the feet and brush, brush, brush, brush, and brush. We got into a wonderful discussion about brush types. I almost lost my favorite to Rebecca, because it's her favorite brand too. Luck has it I put my name on all my brushes! Now the goal is to find her a new one as her old one is on it's last leg.

29 rough collies entered. 20 of them Rebecca's. 18 shown. We had a spreadsheet. Seriously, you needed one! Meredith even got a chance to show a very unique looking blue dog-he was ash in color, hence his name, Ashton. Overall, I had a blast and love working with Rebecca. She has great dogs with wonderful structure and super breed type. She's a great person to learn from and I'm so happy that Alec is working with her now.

Alec and Connor took the smooth bred, Rebecca with Jerod the old man, took rough breed. So that meant I got to show Ruffles in group! None of us got a thing, but we had fun.

Sunday Russ took Select dog in cardigans-3 pt major and now 2 left to go for the Grand! rePete was once again RWB to Angelica-not complaining there. Charlie was Best Puppy and went on to a Puppy Group 3 :)

Collies-yeah, that was interesting. Judge and I had several conversations in the ring, including that I was in the wrong spot during BOB judging, so I did as instructed and moved up. When she did her exam of my bitch, she realized she was indeed a bitch, I had been in the right place in the beginning and my comment was you never argue when a judge tells you where to go. She laughed and said, you are correct. I ended up with select bitch! Lovely little girl that I've now shown a couple of times for Rebecca.

So packing up, blowing the dust off ourselves, we headed home. I am going to spend the next week getting dust out of everything before we head to Dekalb. The trip home was actually uneventful. It was the pulling into the driveway that just about caused an accident.

Less then 2 mins after we got home, we had HAIL! Lots of it. 1/2 dollar sized hail. Managed to get one dog out of the Big Tow, the crates off the hitch plate and into the house before God's Wrath came down. No major damage but the ground was covered. Really. And David's truck has a couple nice dings in the hood as well as the Big Tow with a few nice bumps.

And that my friends, is the short version of our dog show weekend. We came home to dogs very happy to see us. Chicks look like Chickens and are roosting anywhere they like-sides of the brooder, top of the water containers, you name it. Time to move to the chick chalet! No meetings this week, I need the catch up time.

Cough, sputter, hack--sorry, dust in my....well everywhere!

Later gators...
C