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The Louisiana Agility Adventure (long)



 
 
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Old June 29th 04, 03:22 AM
Robin Nuttall
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Default The Louisiana Agility Adventure (long)

The first thing you need to know about driving from Central Missouri to
Northern Louisiana is that it's a damn long trip. And it's even longer
if you have a brain fart, get on the wrong road south, and go 100 miles
out of your way. Nothing like turning a 10+ hour drive into an 11.5 hour
drive, almost all on 2 lane because neither Missouri nor Arkansas seems
to allow 4-lane highways to run North and South, only East and West.

The second thing is that Southern Arkansas is, well, UGLY. Not just a
bit plain, but UGLY. Flat, poor, trashy, and it stinks from all of the
paper mills. From what I could see, Southern Arkansas is apparently pine
forests, with a few peanut farmers thrown in. The Big Three in Arkansas
are Sonic, KFC, and Western Sizzlin, (over 80 items on the buffet!)
You'd drive along to a teeny little town and there wouldn't be a gas
station but the Big Three were there every time. Arkansans also really
like naming things after their towns. So in Pine Bluff, you can find the
Pine Bluff mortuary, the Pine Bluff bank, the Pine Bluff hardware store,
the Pine Bluff tattoo parlor, the Pine Bluff Nissan dealership, and Pine
Bluff park. Apparently residents have difficulty remembering where they
live. And they have a big THING about not driving on the road shoulders.
There were literally signs every 3 miles telling us we couldn't drive on
the shoulder. Why do we need to be reminded that often? How short IS
their attention span??

Northern Louisiana is marginally prettier than Arkansas. Still flat and
still stinks from industry or paper mills or whatever, but there's
spanish moss, live oaks, and huge magnolias. There are also mosquitoes
the size of housecats. Honest to pete, the mosquitoes there are
literally a half inch from nose to tail. You don't swat them, you knock
them off you and stomp them dead. Oh, and don't forget the fire ants.
Viva got bitten badly on her left foot Friday and I had to soak it in
benadryl gel 4 times a day for the rest of the weekend.

The agility facility was great--an indoor dirt/clay floor arena with air
conditioning and high permanent stadium seating--super for observation.
They certainly LOVE air conditioning there--the ambient temperature was
just a hair above meat locker. We all froze our butts off but the dogs
loved it. Good judges, good clubs, but I was surprised by some stuff.
The weave poles were all dinky handmade rebar. Flimsy, and the poles all
stuck up at slightly different angles. Cala kept getting tangled in them
and even Viva missed a Jumpers Q yesterday after she got hung then off
stride and skipped one. She hasn't missed a center pole for 2 years. All
of the equipment was good quality but looked like it had seen better
days. I think it would have helped if they had actually scrubbed it; the
obstacles were dirty enough that it was almost difficult to tell the
contact zones from the rest of the obstacle. The clubs refused to use
electronic timers because "they're too expensive." This also didn't make
a lot of sense to me. You've got a 4-day 600 run per day trial here.
That means a gross of $36,000--and you can't spend enough money for a
decent set of weave poles or a $1,500 set of timers? For that matter,
there was a big group down from St. Louis (home of signature gear), they
probably could have rented timers and brought them down, which is very
reasonable to do.

Viva and I are in our typical pattern, which is basically that we almost
never Q. She only had 2 jumpers Qs all weekend. No standard. Right now
I'm in a funk about it. I'll get over it, but sometimes I need to grump.
I really wanted to at least have the *chance* to go to Florida this
year, but it takes 4 DQs and with no more trials until September and
only 1 in the bag, it's not looking likely.

Cala, OTOH, is coming along nicely. She's still very green, but she
finished her NA in 3 straight runs, got a second JWW leg, and nailed and
held her contacts ALL weekend. Her contacts were the talk of the trial.
I've got a picture coming--it's a great one showing her on the aframe. I
blew a titling run in Jumpers with her yesterday because I thought she
had missed a weave pole on her first pass through so tried to pull her
to do it again--and she took 2 jumps and a tunnel on the way back. Turns
out the judge told me she hadn't seen her miss one. If I'd just gone on
she would have been clean and finished the NAJ. But she's not at all
ready for Open yet, so it doesn't really matter. I'm keeping her in
Novice until she can run without refusals and wrong courses, so probably
all of September, depending on how things look maturity wise at that
point. Then I'll move her up to Open on both sides at the same time.

Overall a good weekend. Unfortunately in our delirium of exhaustion we
took a wrong turn AGAIN on the way home and the return trip ended up
taking over 12 hours. I'm whipped. Glad to be back in a place with
normal-sized mosquitoes, rolling hills, and people who use real luggage
instead of trash bags when they travel.






 




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