Of shows and spiders

127 days to go...

With a few moments to spare I thought I'd post an update.

A relatively busy weekend, though most of it not to do with the dogs - darn Christmas rush! Billie was entered in shows both Sat and Sun, and though she is out of coat I decided I'd still go so did the whole bath/blow dry/beatifying process Fri night. And she did look nice (even after half her coat blew away during the drying process).

I will divert from the story at hand for a moment to mention that also on Friday night, happily updating my Facebook status, my internal spider proximity sensors started to alarm and sure enough when I glanced up, there was a huge spider sitting on the skirting board over the computer. (For those of you who do not know me, I am a terrible arachnophobe). Speaking calmly to myself ('It's just a spider, it won't hurt you, it isn't going to launch itself off the ceiling and attack your face when you move') I managed to remove myself from the room whilst maintaining a relatively cam demeanor. Once out of the room, I retrieved my phone, placed myself in a spot where I could watch every move the spider made (from a safe distance) and proceeded to text Chris and tell him he needed to come home ASAP and remove said spider from my computer room. Then I texted my mum who I knew would appreciate the situation I was in (she is also lacking in any ability to deal with spiders - I guess it must be genetic). With Chris assuring me he would be home soon, I dragged a chair opposite the doorway to the computer room and settled in to try and read a book whilst monitoring the spider's movements. At first the outlook was quite positive. The spider hardly moved the whole time I was watching it. However, the inevitable eventually occurred: I glanced up and in between the gap of 2 seconds since I'd LAST looked up, the spider had completely disappeared. 2 seconds after THAT, I heard Chris's car pull into the driveway (bloody typical that it would wait until then to disappear).

So now, having horrors that I would never again be able to enter that room, I fair dragged Chris in and insisted he initiate a thorough search to find the wayward creature. After a cursory glance around the walls, under the curtain and behind the desk, Chris concluded we were never going to find the spider and it had probably gone back outside (which was answered by my shrill cries of 'You know what this means? I can never go in that room again. Perhaps I can permanently borrow the laptop from work... No, of course it hasn't gone back outside, they NEVER go back outside, they hide and then reappear out of nowhere and give you a heart attack!')

All of which Chris managed to suffer through with an admirable control of sarcasm and exasperation. At my instruction he then also turned off the computer and retrieved my shoes so I wouldn't have to go back in. I then closed the door, stuffed a towel against the crack under the door so the spider wouldn't remove itself to the house at large, and wished fervently that by morning it would reappear and Chris would be able to remove it. (Despite my fear of spiders, I still don't like to kill them - another fact that almost drives Chris mad).

Sure enough, next morning I insisted Chris re-enter the computer room and was extremely disappointed when the spider was nowhere in sight. However, luck finally turned my way when Chris managed to spot a few legs just visible on the top of the window frame. With considerably more calm and bravery than I could ever show, he caught the spider in a glass and remove it to the park across the road (the extent of my involvement was holding the front door open and saying 'Don't get it anywhere near me, I don't even want to see it').

Now, that had nothing to do with dog training (thought I suppose I did impact on my ability to update this blog) so to bring this back to a slightly on topic post, I will discuss our experience at the show on Saturday.

Since I have been focussing on the boys' agility training, Billie has had very little (ok, ZERO) show training. We have been doing crate games but definitely no show stuff. So it's hardly surprising that she wouldn't gait properly, she was either looking at me or looking elsewhere rather than go in a straight line, she decided she didn't like the judge examining her head and contorted herself in all directions to escape him, and generally put in a less than brilliant performance. (She ended up RBCC). After this, I made the decision that we would not show on the Sunday, firstly because I really had too much Christmas stuff that still needed doing, and secondly because I don't think it is fair of me to put her in that position to keep failing when it's my fault for not having trained her to do it correct in the first place.

It did get me thinking though - would I enter my dogs in an obedience trial before I could be confident of them not ony passing but passing on a high (190+) score? Would I enter an agility trial before my dogs were confident, fast and knew the equipment back to front? No. Yet I would take Billie to a show and expect her to know how to move, free stack, stand still and happy whilst enduring a much more thorough exam than in the obedience ring, and generally do exactly what I want without KNOWING what I want. Put like that, it seems ridiculous. So Billie will not be re-entering the show ring now until I have put some serious time into teaching her the RIGHT way to do things, so we can both enoy ourselves and she can show herself off to her best advantage.

More to update later on the boys' 2x2 progress... but that will do for now.