Instead of going back to Hanover today, Pat and I drove down to Suffolk, VA to the monthly SHOT practice, so that her puppies could get some exposure to the lure and get an opportunity to run.  Lauren did OK considering that she's only 9-1/2 months old, but Toby showed no interest at all.  We'll see about him since the boys are always slower than the girls. 

Painter ran once with Aren, and ran clean.  Then he got a second run with Lori & Ken Stebritz's Frisco and again ran clean, so I feel good about entering him at the next opportunity - probably the SHOT trial in March 2009.  There really isn't anything within driving distance between now and then.  Next project will be to see about getting him box trained and see if he'll race clean.  Fingers crossed on that one!

After practice we went over to Evelyn Jones' house (she's the president of SHOT) for the Christmas social.  It was a very small gathering this year, unlike the last time I attended a couple of years ago, but we enjoyed ourselves even more for being a small gathering.  Ended up getting home just about dark which is actually pretty early this time of year.

~~Joanne