The Main Event: CPE Nationals

Over the next three days, Dharmaspoon Guy and Gal participated in the three day Canine Performance Events National Event. There were about 300 dogs and each dog had three runs a day. The event was held in an air conditioned sand floored arena. Arena comes from the latin word for sand. Sand was used during the time of gladiators to absorb the blood from the various fights, as the show promoters wouldn't want anyone to slip as they fought each other to the death. Eventually the places in which these events were staged were known as arenas.  Anyhow, there was no bloodletting at this show. There were a few slips and falls, and many many stairs to climb, as the crating was on the upper level and the rings were below:

During the event, we competed in a variety of different types of agility, including standard, jumpers, wildcard, colors, full house, snooker, and jackpot.  Here's a link to the rulebook if you're not familiar or are really curious:
http://www.k9cpe.com/forms/2010rb.pdf

Maebe and Django competed in all of the available agility runs while Cadence learned to be in the hectic environment. Also, out of necessity, he learned how to negotiate more stairs than he had ever seen in his life. We live in a ranch with no basement and here we was, having to climb hundreds of them a day. With some patience (on mom's part) and lots of cheese, Cadence ended up a champion stair climber.

The dogs did well on the first day:

On the first night of our trip, we hung out with some relatives. We went to a dive of a Chinese restaurant down the street. The wait was long, the people friendly, and food good.

Day 2 was another great day. Everyone did well and had fun.

In the evenings we would walk the dogs and relax with nice cold beer:

The third and final day went well to, with Django finishing with a very nice snooker run. We ended up with a lot of ribbons over the course of the long weekend. Maebe got 4 firsts, 2 seconds and a fourth.  She recieved the distinction of reserve high in standard for her jump height, which was quite an honor, especially since the year prior, she couldn't even quality to go to the event.  Django had four qualifying runs and was awarded fourth at his jump height in the Veteran's Game classification. We were both very proud of his years of consistent performance. Here's what all of the weekend's winnings look like in one place:

We had a wonderful time, got to know some of our fellow competitors better, got to see family we hadn't seen in awhile, and most importantly, got to spend some quality time with each other and the dogs.

Caves to Cold Beer

At the county level, Kentucky has some Talibanesque laws around one's ability to purchase alcohol. This in a state that produces 97% of the world's bourbon.  The practical result of these laws are that the problem drinkers, rather than drunk walk to party store down the street, are drunk driving across the county to get to a place where they can buy their hooch.  There's actually research to support the idea that county specific prohibition reduces highway safety. 

Now, the Dharmaspoon Guy is not a heavy drinker by any means. But when he's on vacation, he wants to have a nice cold one at the end of the day. At this point in the trip, he was unable to do so...and after all of the ticks he removed from EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, he really needed one. 

Luckily, on the third day of our trip, we were leaving the place of no beer and plenty of ticks and caves and ponies and dinosaurs behind us as we headed to Georgia.

With Dharmaspoon Gal at the wheel, we took off in earnest to Cordele. She always drives. I always park. That's the division of labor we agreed to. Driving keeps her awake (and safer, for those who have driven with me) and the backing up the trailer is this inborn skill that I discovered I had when we got the thing.

The day was a long one. And not just because of mileage. We had to drive through Nashville at rush-hour, 

make a detour around a sinkhole that devoured a section of the Interstate, sit in construction at the Tennessee/Georgia border, and drive around Atlanta just to get at our destination, a former Pecan plantation next to an abandoned truck stop (which I assure you was much more peaceful and scenic than it sounds.)

We were ecstatic to discover that the campground store carried some very well-deserved ice cold beers, which we thoroughly enjoyed:

We settled down early in the evening, in preparation for the push into Florida the next day...