We were up VERY early Saturday morning, October 18th, 2008; we actually left the house at 12:45am for the 8+ hour drive to Grafton, Connecticut for an AKC lure coursing trial put on by the New England Rhodesian Ridgeback Club (NERRC). I had decided to go to this trial as the course plan on Saturday looked like one of those 'agility' courses that would be good for my little girls (Avery & Marseille) and the judge was not one that I was familiar with. Of course there was a judge change at the last minute, which was not a good thing for me, AND they modified the course to take out all the little zig zags that made it an agility course and turned it onto a speed course. Needless to say, my little girls got the two lowest scores on the board - :(( Greyhound, Ruby, got to run with some of the toughest competition in the US or Canada & while not quite last place, she was close, although she ran safe and had fun. Saluki Zuli ran well (with a male Saluki also named Zuli!) and ended up in a tie for 1st place. Unfortunately, when I got her out of the van to do her run-off, she was on three legs with a very swollen toe - :((  All in all, not a vey good result for that long a drive!

One of the nice things is that Laurie Soutar, a Greyhound person from Canada and also a Lure Coursing judge, offered to share her hotel room with me and even bought me dinner! How nice can a person be??? We enjoyed our carry-out Chinese dinner and then chatted way later than we should have. Thankfully the swelling in Zuli's toe went down rather quickly and she was almost completely sound by bed time, much to my amazement.

Morning came all too soon and we chatted more over our morning coffee and were nearly late to the trial. Zuli's toe was back to normal and we couldn't even tell which toe had been swollen. I wrapped her feet to support the toe and managed to keep her sound enough to win Best of Breed for the last points she needed to finish her LCX-2 title. Seeing as how that was one of the main reasons we went all the way up there I felt that it was a very good weekend, even though none of my other dogs got any points.

The drive home was a very long one, with bumper to bumper traffic all the way across Connecticut, but 9 hours later we arrived back home all in one piece.

~~Joanne