CPE Trial This Weekend

SUMMARY: First without Jake. Haven't been practicing hard. Will be working hard.

It's another 2-ring CPE trial, in Turlock this weekend. I've signed up as co-crew chief for one ring, so I'll be busy all the time I'm not working my dogs, making sure workers are in place and know what they're doing and have gotten their raffle and lunch tickets. It's so much easier with two people per ring. The first time I ever did this job (10 years ago this month), we were still working under the model that you needed only one crew chief, and it so ruined my weekend (with only 2 rings, too) that I vowed never to do it again.

Except that I got talked into it again November of the following year (ah, how quickly time dulls the memory of the horror! the horror!) with a co-crew chief. We still had only two rings, but we were still tearing our hairs out by the end of the weekend, trying to keep track of two rings and our own dogs and all.

I don't know whether it's when we went to 3 rings that we finally realized that we needed to divide up the work by ring, and then somewhere along the line some crew chiefs just put their feet down (which makes it hard to run a dog) and said they wouldn't do it alone. So now most clubs in this area assign two per ring.

It works well, especially if the two have dogs in different heights and/or different levels, so one is usually available even if the other is busy. Still, you really don't get much time to yourself. Which is probably good for me this weekend. (And not that I usually have time to myself--I'm one of those people whom we joke about not needing to bring chairs to a trial because we're always up and about, helping, working, hobnobbing, filming, whatever.)

I've been working on Boost's weaves a little bit. And on Tika's! Tike the wonder weaver who has pulled out of weaves on 3 occasions so far already this year! After 4 years of totally reliable weaves no matter what else we've had trouble with. Sighhhhh-- it's always something.

Otherwise, the last couple of weeks I've been quite desultory about training. Which is too bad, because the merle girls are much better behaved and happier in general when their brains as well as their bodies get workouts. Well--should be an interesting weekend. Weather's supposed to be lovely.

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