Baby, It's Cold Outside!

It seems as though I only wrote one blog post for the entire month of September.  The one blog post does not nearly reflect my September at all.  I will try to catch up because BRRRR it's cold outside and there's nothing much to do but stay bundled up!

I left off after a perfect weekend in Castle Rock.  The next weekend, Layla and I played agility in Golden, CO- outdoors too!!  Running on grass is just my favorite.  The weather was so gorgeous with plentiful sunshine all weekend.  Layla rocked it on Saturday.  She earned her 7th QQ.  Sunday, we NQ'd in standard.  Lay dropped a bar and that really worried me because she NEVER drops bars.  I would safely bet that Layla has dropped single digit number of bars in trials during her entire agility career.  The opening was chute, hard 90º right turn and then I had to front cross to another jump.  The bar came down on that first jump out of the chute.  I couldn't believe it.  I was so bummed that I didn't watch her contacts at all for the rest of the run.  Unsurprisingly, she blew them.  My friend and I watched the video over and over again and we could find nothing wrong with what I was doing.  I though, maybe I was cuing my front cross too soon, but that definitely was not the case.  It seemed to us that Layla just didn't get enough speed off of the start and didn't have enough time to think about picking her feet up once she turned toward me to find the jump.  That's the neat thing about agility- our dogs really do keep us humble.  We ended the day with a nice jumpers run.  To add to the excitement of the weekend, Jade earned his CGC with flying colors!!  I am so proud of my little man.  He was just 6 months and 1 day!

Last weekend, I worked at USDAA Nationals just on Saturday.  I worked the Grand Prix Semi Finals ring, which was really exciting.  Even more exciting was seeing all of the fantastic handlers (some familiar faces) from all around the country and the world!  I learned a lot helping out and I am so motivated to run USDAA with Jade.  I don't know about Layla quite yet.  We are working so hard on this MACH, so maybe after that.

On Wednesday, the University of Denver hosted the first 2012 Presidential Debate. There was definitely a lot of commotion going on just a few blocks away from my house.  Megan, Toby (her boyfriend), and I walked the three dogs through campus, but much was blocked off. We sure saw a lot of crazy people though.  It is very cool that my school could host such an important event.

Friday morning I woke up to SNOW on the ground.  WHAT??  I am not ready for this yet.  It is only the beginning of October and the temperatures have not gotten to 40º in the past two days.  I am bundled up and usually under covers unless I am moving.  I am so not a winter person and I feel like our beautiful fall was just ripped out from under me.  I was wearing shorts on Wednesday.  All three of the dogs, on the other hand, LOVE the snow.  This was Jade's first time to see snow and he was beside himself with excitement.  He refused to come inside when I called him.  I looked out to find him tearing across the backyard doing all sorts of crazy spins and circles.  He makes me laugh!

Tomorrow Jade and I are off to Fort Collins for a field lesson before my next crazy week begins!