11 weeks

Just 11 weeks to go until I'll be packing the Trailblazer to the hilt and heading to North Carolina for the national specialty.  The premium list came this week which was just like Christmas!  I excitedly starting checking off fees for the fun stuff - welcome BBQ (YUM!), awards banquet (Tully will pick up his versatility QW!), souvenirs, catalogs, practice herding runs, and so on.  I CAN'T WAIT for dingo bingo, my favorite, and with a cash bar this year I hear.  That should make things more interesting :-)

Then came the decision of what to enter.  Tully is capable of competing in:

• Utility Obedience
• Open Obedience
• Veterans Obedience
• Versatility Obedience
• Rally Advanced
• Rally Excellent
• Agility Excellent Jumpers
• Agility Excellent Standard
• Agility Novice FAST
• Herding Pre-trial Tested

However, my sweet boy is 9 1/2 years old and with all but herding happening on the same day, it's going to be impossible to do it all.  Now we are deciding which ones to enter.  This most likely will be his last national specialty and I want him to have fun and do well.  I will have to think long and hard about this one.

On a bittersweet note, I decided after the last agility trial to semi-retire Tully.  His back bothers him, yet he's such as sweet boy that he'll do whatever I ask, no matter the discomfort.  This is not fair to him.  I will continue with him in Novice Fast for the next two months and most likely completely retire him from agility after nationals.  This doesn't mean we will be getting fat and lazy!  Nope! It's back to obedience and rally.  We had taken a hiatus while we worked on agility, knowing that agility time would be limited due to his age.  We went back to training for utility obedience this week.  It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't awful.  We still hope to finish that UD and maybe finish the RAE as well.