8 State Hurricane Kate

When Bandit and I arrived in Shartlesville, PA for the Australian Cattle Dog National Specialty, it was raining. Too bad because they’d had beautiful fall weather leading up to the weekend, and the events were scheduled to be outside. On Saturday, the agility was run in the rain. I agonized over whether to run Bandit since we had come so far and he had been doing so well in agility. But it was wet and muddy, and due to his recent injury I decided to save him for obedience on Sunday morning and herding later in the week. It was fun to see all the wonderful ACDs and their handlers gamely running the course. And I got to meet Luis and his wife Tami, who had helped with rescue transports and had enjoyed Kate’s book. Members of the Bull Run ACD club, they had played an important role in putting on the specialty. 

After finally making my agonizing decision not to run Bandit in standard agility or jumpers that day, we headed to the Hillside SPCA dog walk event where I had planned to set up a table and sell books to help benefit Hillside. I wasn’t sure if the event had gone on as planned due to the rain. When we arrived at the state park, I found out that the event had broken up early due to the weather. But they were also having a spaghetti dinner benefit in Pottsville, PA the following afternoon and invited me to set up a table there. 

By then it was only drizzling, so Bandit and I took a short walk in the state park. Then we found an isolated area to practice our open obedience exercises. I was especially concerned about the drop on recall now that I knew it would most likely be done in the wet grass or mud. Give Bandit an arena full of cows and mud is of no concern, but if he had time to think about it, I didn’t know if he would do the drop. Our practice went well and I thought we were well prepared for obedience the next morning.