Back to the dogs

Well, back to the dogs I go. I am in the process of selling horses. I have one left to go.

I have agreed to purchase an Open trial dog from Bev and Norm Sommers. His name is Tic and I am very excited to get him. I won't be able to get him until the end of February because of Canadian/US importing issues. Flight rules are changing due to terrorism and we have to wait 30 days to fly him.

I had hoped that we would be able to compete at Sonoma. However, I will only have Tic for 2 weeks or so that is out. It takes some time to get in sync with a new dog. Not to mention the fact that I have not worked a dog for awhile. I am excited and I hope that we can go to some big trials this year. Now I need to buy a few sheep again.

Gloria and I are planning to go to Zamora and watch for a day. Maybe next year Tic and I will run. Zamora is a hard trial to train for because of the short winter days and the weather. I work dogs in the desert to get ready for trials and if we have a wet winter, I can't get out there. Conditioning is also an issue. The Zamora course is huge and the dogs really need to be in shape or risk injury.

The only other thing that I do is work. I work for a new department now and it is much different than the old one. Now, I have to put in for vacation and it has to be approved. Before I used to just put my days on my calendar and that was it. I hope this does not conflict with trialing. I am going to have to plan ahead.

I will try to keep my blog up-to-date in the future.