I promised to report on the trial Chico and I attended last weekend, just after I picked him up from his stay in Pennsylvania and my trip to DC.

So I picked him up in the afternoon, drove to Massachusetts, stayed with friends, got up early and drove to the trial. We didn’t even get in a good walk, and our first class was the first class of the day. Not surprisingly, Chico and I were not in synch for that run. Or the one later that day. Or the one the next morning. But on Sunday afternoon we had a qualifying run in the open standard class. And since no other dog in our class got a ‘q’ we also won the class. That is so going to end when we ever get to excellent level.

The final class was in the heat, on a super fun course (which included back to back tunnels that were actually easy-peasy but looked hard and made for a total psych out for many handlers in open, and had the course builders who run excellent dogs saying “*I* want to run that course!”) and we were so slow and careful that we were only tenths of seconds under standard course time.

All the runs had their moments and the photog got great pix of a happy dog, so I know Chico was having fun. And we socialized up a storm and met classmate Katherine’s new puppies and won treats that Chico really, really likes in the worker raffle. And it was one year ago pretty much to the day, in the very same ring where we q’d in open, that we did our first B match. Chico, you’ve come a long way baby.

And on Monday, we went to the (tiny) Guilford, VT fair (Chico’s first fair, at least with me) where he raised nary a lip to any of the other dogs – often choosing to keep me between us (nor did he pull to meet them – mostly), he pressed into my side in the cow barns and had me run interference while watching 4H heifer judging:

“I better keep my person between me and those funny smelling horses.”

“Well, they seem to be confined in the ring, I guess I could look closer.”

Later Chico ventured to the edge of the midway before it was too much, then sat and watched the midway for a bit and had some cookies, and lay later politely at our feet while we ate the BBQ chicken we bought to support the Guilford Fire Department.