Pity Party

It's been a lousy weekend for me and the dogs. I've spent the last few hours crying, swearing and questioning my decisions. Welcome to my pity party. To be honest, I debated on whether I was even going to post this.

Trooper: As you know, Trooper went to North Carolina this weekend for a bunch of shows, including the Southeast Futurity/Maturity show. We thought he was ready. We were wrong. Trooper has decided that NOW is the time to be a headstrong adolescent. Sigh. He's not having a good time and he's making sure everybody knows it. I watched him on FB live streaming and my heart dropped. Trooper's not cooperating with his handler and refusing to let the judges touch him. He was excused from one show, and dead last in the next. J-Lyn and I agreed to pull him from the last two shows. Trooper doesn't need to develop any bad habits in the ring (like thinking he can get his way by acting the fool). Nor does he need to show his ass in front of everybody at the Futurity. We feel we made the best decision under the circumstances. Unfortunately, I don't get my entry fees back.

I've already paid for four shows the first weekend of April. I'm not getting that money back either. We'll try to show him again -- maybe he'll do better with me present. If not, we'll pull him then too. Either way, I plan to stop showing him for the next 6-9 months and allow him to mature. J-Lyn suggested that we focus our energy on fun, performance sports in the interim to help build confidence and self-control -- things like Fast CAT, dock diving and barn hunt. Speaking of barn hunt . . .

Jedi: Hubby, Jedi and I spent the weekend in Deland. Our favorite trial site was offering an advanced BH workshop on Friday night. Jedi has just moved up from Open to Senior -- a big jump in both difficulty and entry prices. I was hoping the training would give us an advantage for Saturday's trials, so I forked out the workshop fee plus a hotel stay. I was wrong. Jedi did the U-shaped tunnel. I was afraid he wouldn't. But he only found 2 of the 4 rats on each run. Jedi still doesn't seem to realize there are additional hides. (And this was not addressed in the workshop. Grrr.) Hubby recorded our runs. On playback I could see that Jedi was frustrated and spent a third of our allotted search time checking out the spectators. 

My weekend

Me: I added things up. I probably shouldn't have. This weekend was a $300 disaster. So now I'm wondering: WTF am I doing? How can I fix these issues? Should I even try? I don't want to frustrate my dogs. I also don't want to waste money on frustrated dogs. Hell, I'M frustrated. I probably shouldn't make any major decisions right now. I think I'm going to lick my wounds, eat some cheesecake and take a long nap. I'll make decisions later. Until then, -- K