Good dogs

We've attended a couple of coursing events over the past month that have really been enjoyable. First was the Whippet National, this year held in Atlanta. Coursing was at Chattahoochee Hills Farm in Fairburn, GA, a huge, beautiful spot with multiple fields suitable for coursing. What a nice treat that turned out to be! Most everyone was in a good mood and had a good time. Dogs didn't do so great with Everett taking an NBQ. Of course, Ev is seven and Lobo will be seven this month making them among the older of the Field Champions. They still hang with the younger dogs pretty well!

This past weekend we travelled to Boswell, OK, a beautiful spot in the middle of nowhere south Oklahoma for the ASFA International Invitational. I love Don and Sally's place! It's something like 40 acres, footing is wonderful and hospitality can't be beat! The bad news for this weekend was the rain that came in Wednesday night and Thursday morning dropping something like 6-8 inches on the grounds. This made for a soppy mess when people pulled in Friday night and Saturday morning for the trial. We all got in and set up well on Saturday, but another 2-4 inches of rain during the day made the entire grounds a quagmire. Most everyone had to get pulled out with Don's tractor. What a mess!

Lobo was entered in FCh and finished just out of the ribbons both days. Lobo really isn't a warm weather dog, but in the Winter he's usually unstoppable! We had Everett entered in Veterans for the first time at this II and he proceeded to win the Veterans stake both Saturday and Sunday. He lost BoB on Saturday pretty obviously to a wonderful dog named Bonzer. On Sunday, the competition came down to Everett and Vidalia, a little bitch owned by Deb and Maurice Bahm. They tied a couple of times again after the FCh was knocked out in the first run. Vidalia ended up taking BoB Sunday over Everett. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed, but I know that running as well as he did and hanging with a Whippet of Vidalia's caliber is nothing to sneeze at! Additionally, Maurice and Deb are sportsmen, true competitors but gracious in victory and defeat. I'm happy to call them friends and happy that we could share those run-offs.

These were a couple of really nice, relaxing trials. The people I think made the biggest difference as there wasn't the petty BS that we've had to put up with so much in the past locally. The Region 4 people did a great job with the II and made it a friendly, stress-free experience.