Many things have transpired since I last wrote... we did not go to Heartnut as planned. I received a call from my sister, Kathie - who was visiting with my folks down in Vero Beach, Fl. My Dad had taken a turn for the worse and was rushed to the hospital. I grabbed a flight on Northwest Airlines from Indy to Orlando on Sunday. I was scheduled to arrive there around 10:15a and Roni, my middle sister, was scheduled to arrive around 2ish. The plan was for me to wait for her, rent a car and drive down.
That flight never left the ground due to a left engine that would not start. I was re-booked onto American Airlines thru O'Hare. I didn't arrive in Orlando until 6:30p. I had 1" blisters on the balls of both feet from walking thru the O'Hare terminal. Roni did not wait for me. Kathie, however did show up, but my luggage did not. After filing a missing luggage report with American, we made the trip down to Vero. My luggage finally arrived on Tuesday night.
Kathie and Dad had made the decision to move from the hospital to hospice over the weekend. They told him that they would keep him comfortable. Because he was coughing so badly, they gave him some extra morphine to make the trip. He never woke up.
By the time I got there Sunday night, he seemed to be resting comfortably. I did feel him squeeze my hand when I told him I was there. We all stayed with him until he passed very peacefully on Wednesday morning, September 12th.
Kathie, Roni and I stayed with Ma thru the rest of the week. Kathie drove back to Texas and Roni and I flew out of Orlando - all on Saturday.
The next two weeks, the kennel club was closed for the installation of the new floor. This week we returned to class after a whole month.
we had a combined class last night... that means the novice, intermediate and advanced dogs all ran courses. we got to run our course twice and she did great on both! i was so sure that she would be totally flaky since we haven't run since 9/4... well, except for practice in the back yard.
the course was the tire (1) on a bending left line to a vertical (2) and the a-frame (3) (with tunnel entrance on right). after the a-frame a right 90d turn to a square oxer (4) and another 90d turn to 2 verticals (5,6) and a tunnel under the dogwalk (7). a 180d from tunnel to up the dogwalk (8) and then to the table (9) for a down count of 5. on to the weaves (10) (with her on my right makes for a difficult entrance), a back-track to another tunnel (11), 90d left turn to vertical (12), 90d left turn to teeter (13), back thru tunnel (14) under the dogwalk and then thru tunnel (15) under the a-frame.
the main problem we had was speed. this new floor absolutely PROPELLED her! she hit the table so fast, she slid off and she also slid off the teeter sideways. the second time thru she slowed herself down to compensate... the #3 was still an issue... with the tunnel entrance on the right of the a-frame, she thinks i want her to go to the tunnel instead of up the a-frame... because i have to fade out to the right to run by it... i finally had to do some interesting footwork and stand in front of the tunnel entrance to send her up the a-frame, then scoot around the tunnel to catch up with her on the down side of the a-frame...
No comments:
Post a Comment