Pesky Flies

(Las Cruces, NM) Another weekend is here so back to the agility field we go. This time we took all the soft sided crates that we own - hoping to help keep the flies off the dogs. We're short one crate so we'll have to alternate dogs.

The weather both Saturday and Sunday was very nice...low 80's. They have a hose there so it was very easy to get Wazzu wet before each run...well actually it was easy to find enough water but it was very difficult to get Wazzu to hold still. Good thing leashes are strong!

You know how some dogs are petrified of fireworks or gun shots. Well our dogs could care less about noises. But have ONE fly get into the RV and they all start having panic attacks - literally. They even taught that to Boogie! Argg.

The first couple hours each morning were okay. But after that the flies were truly unbearable. The three big dogs had to rotate between the two large crates. But there were so many flies flying around the crates that they were really scared even in the crates.

To make matters worse, I went back to the car to get something and looked into the crates to make sure everyone was doing relatively okay. When I approached the area, it smelled horrible. I figured the hot weather was warming up all the horse manure and making it stink. But it turned out that Slugger had major potty troubles. Poor guy, he was locked in a crate with all that mess. As you might imagine, this was really drawing the flies. There were so many flies on the crate, you couldn't even see in! Totally disgusting.

We got Slugger out, washed the crate the best we could with limited supplies, and set it FAR away from the car. Slugger had done one run in the morning but was super slow so now that we knew he was sick, we pulled him from his other run for the day.

Wazzu's first run of the day was Jumpers. I thought it was cool enough so I didn't wet her down. Can you believe that Wazzu didn't make Novice Vet time! What's up with that! Silly Wazzu. After that she turned into a different dog. She Q'd in her remaining three runs - including Elite Chances!!

Sparkie on the other hand was in perfect form....literally. She Q'd in all six runs and came in 1st place in every run - except in Chances as there are no placements. I think she was running really fast to keep away from the flies! There were relatively few flies on the course and I don't think the dogs or the people noticed them at all there.

Boogie had fun a couple times during the day playing with an Irish Terrier puppy named Korke. Boogie was about 1/4 the size of Korke but he seemed to on top most of the time with Korke on the ground - which seemed just fine by both of them. They were great playmates. Even though we let them have some good play sessions together, it didn't seem to tire either of them out in the slightest. The rest of the day poor Boogie was covered with flies. They'd land on his nose and he'd go cross eyed looking at them. He'd then slowly raise his nose way up into the air. I'm not sure what his plan was with that.

We were all very happy for the day to be over and we couldn't get out of there fast enough! Mike really didn't want to go back for Sunday. You know the flies were bad if Mike doesn't want to go back after going 6/6 with Sparkie.

In the evening, Harriet came over to Meg's and we all had a very nice dinner together. Meg barbecued chicken on the grill outside and made some other really good food as well. She is a GREAT cook. In addition to great food, we had a really nice time visiting. Boogie and Mimi had a great time too - as usual. Mike thinks we should take Mimi home with us (for good) so that Boogie will have the perfect little playmate. I'm pretty sure that Harriet has no plans to let Mimi go.

Sunday morning I had the great idea to see if Meg would be willing to watch Boogie for the day so he wouldn't have to spend the day covered in flies. Meg, being the great "mamu" (sp?) that she is, was very nice to keep him.

Believe it or not, the flies were even worse on Sunday. Totally miserable. I'm so glad that Boogie got to stay with Meg.

Slugger seemed to be feeling fine this morning so we decided to let him play today. Mike ran him (like always) for his first Regular run. Slugger did okay but was really slow and ended up well over time. Mike got discouraged and said he was going to pull Slugger from the rest of his runs. I decided to try to run Slugger and see how we could do. So I ran the next Regular run with him and he even did the distance portion! We ended up with a 1st place 10 point Q! Near the end of the day we ran Touch N Go. He was fairly eager and was doing great. But just before the dogwalk something in the grass grabbed his nose! It was like his nose was chained to the ground. It took a while but I finally got him back on track and he ran fast. But his little sniffing episode took us over time. So he only ended up getting one Q out of four chances for the weekend.

Sparkie continued her amazing running from yesterday and went 5/6 getting first place in every run she Q'd. The sad thing was that in her Chances run (which was really hard) she did the whole entire thing except the very last jump. It was a three jump straight away out of the ring. Sparkie did the first two jumps and then started to turn back to look at Mike and ended up running by the last jump. Big groans went up from everyone. But you still can't complain about going 11/12 for the weekend with all 1st's. Good job, Sparkie!

I made sure to hose Wazzu down before every run. She had a lot of fun and actually ran very well....except for the weaves when she went a little slow. The only run she didn't Q in today was Elite Chances. Darn. She actually started out really well and was running super fast. But one of the challenges was weaves at a distance. Surprisingly she entered the weaves! But she was so fast and happy that she didn't want to spend time in the weaves - so she popped. She did the rest of the course perfectly. Shucks....so close. But 5/6 for the day was really great.

Meg met us outside with Boogie the minute we got home. From what Meg said, Boogie had a great time today. I'm guessing it was one of his favorite days. He got to spend time with six other borders. In addition to that he got to spend time with Meg most of the day and he got to follow her around in the kitchen while she cooked - what could be better than that. And how nice of Meg - she even gave him a bath! When we got home he smelled so good and was so soft. I didn't ever want to let him down but he had places to go and things to do.

We stayed outside playing with the dogs until after dark using every minute we had to utilize this nice fly free yard. So very pleasant.

Debbie
11/10-11/07