Flying Poodles

Newport, Oregon…

I drove three hours to Newport, Oregon Saturday. The girls had seven runs total on Sunday. I drove back, three hours, on Monday. I believe the seven runs totaled around 6 minutes of ring time. That makes a ratio of 1 hour of driving for each minute of agility competition. I got one stinkin’ Q in regular and I didn’t deserve it. I saw Dancer’s toenails and they were NOT in the yellow, but I know better than to argue with the judge.

However, it was a wonderful weekend.

Jay and Scott are off for a long cycling trip and so it was just the curly girls and me. The runs were fun, and the trial was great. I’ve been to a lot of WAG (Willamette Agility Group) trials–so many that I’m currently working on becoming a member–but this one was great. Nice location–Newport was cool and breezy after the heat of Portland–great food vendor (ribs Saturday, pork loin Sunday)–friendly people (two different people helped me carry my stuff from the car and set up my tent)–really good courses, including a weavers course that I lovedeven though I didn’t Q on it. (It had three different handling challenges. Two of them were fairly obvious and responded well to direct handling. The third was not so obvious, and that one got me. I took it for granted that Dancer would take a tunnel entrance that was just a little bit offset–and instead my path took her right to the wrong end of the tunnel. I know better than to take anything for granted!)

I had an amazing dinner Sunday night at a restaurant called Georgie’s. I had a pasta and seafood Thai-style dish that was so good I actually thought about staying for dinner tonight so I could have it again.

And there was a really really low tide. Seriously, it was a minus tide of 2.6 feet. The timing was perfect. It was almost dead low at 5 PM on Sunday and it was just past dead low on Monday morning at 8. Because the weather was cool and misty–perfect agility weather–there were very few people on the beach.

Low tide at Newport on July 12

Dancer and Elly had never been to the beach before, and when I let them off their leashes, they ran and jumped and play-bowed to each other. They wrestled and ran in circles and splashed water at each other. Elly tried to drink from a puddle and made a face that made me laugh–then tried a different puddle! Then another one. It took a while for her to figure out that all the water tasted funny. Almost all the water. She found this pool right at the foot of the rocks, where water trickled down the hillside.

Fresh water pool at Newport beach

Elly was fascinated with this animal track. I’m not sure what it was, but my guess would be a really big crab. There were two parallel tracks from a tide pool right down to the water.

Elly following a track

Dancer enjoyed the beach too