First time for everything

We headed back to Texas for another Run As One agility trial this weekend.  This time the location was supposed to be outdoors on grass at a ranch north of Dallas.  We had been promised the location was lovely, and about an hour closer to home for us so we were excited.  But due to the amount of rain they have had in texas they warned us late in the week there was a chance the trial might need to be moved to their regular covered arena location south of Dallas, where we went in November.  But by Friday morning we got the all clear that we were good to go at the Denton location and no one needed to change hotel reservations.  Friday we drove to Denton without incident and settled into our hotel for the evening.  Right before we shut off the lights I checked my email one last time and found out that there had indeed been too much rain and vehicles who had attempted to set up at the ranch were getting stuck and sinking into the mud.  So, the trial would be moved to the Terrell location, 70 miles from our hotel.  But with a 10:00 start time to compensate.

So, we got up, made the drive and had a relatively nice day.  I only had the girls in 4 runs each.  Lyric picked up a tunnelers and a regular, but pooped out and didn't really run for me in jumpers.  Legend had a wild run in weavers, picked up one regular and had a lovely chances run except for not doing the out barrel.  Really, a barrel in chances?  She doesn't even know a word for barrel, much less recognize it as an actual obstacle with specific performance criteria.  But the rest was nice, she did all the parts she knew how!

The initial plan was to hope that the field in Denton dried enough to be used Sunday but with more rain expected that wasn't going to happen.  Now, why didn't we just stay at the back-up location of the horse farm?  Because there was a horse event there on sunday and they didn't want to cancel.  So we had to pack up the whole trial and move to the back-up back-up location of the trial host's home!  They had their property nearly ready to hold a trial anyway and the location really is lovely.  They even invited Linda and I to stay with them Sunday night rather than drive the hour back to the hotel for the night.  We decided a nice home with friends sounded better than the Motel 6 so accepted their very kind offer.

But Sunday came along and the dogs were not running well.  Lyric was slow, Legend was not doing much better than her sister and Chesney was distracted.  By 1:00 it was sunny and 80 and I wasn't expecting much from Lyric for the rest of the day.  All that remained was regular and Legend doesn't really need regular Qs so I proposed we head home and have all day Monday to enjoy rather than drive.  So we packed up, thanked Ed again for the offer and headed home.  First we got stuck driving around a construction detour trying to get back on the highway, then we stopped twice to let storms pass, then it rained for two hours after it got dark.  I finally arrived home after 11:00.  Not exactly the reasonable hour I was hoping for and totally exhausted, but with an interesting story nonetheless.

Today I enjoyed sleeping in, and taking my time getting unpacked, cleaning out the truck and cleaning up the house.  If it was not so windy I might get some things done outside, but we will see!