There was rain in the forecast for Saturday afternoon into Sunday night with a possible accumulation of 2"! It started to rain during the Novice Standard course, the last class of the day. I was scribing the class and got to see my friends Gail and Marilyn run their dogs--Sizzle and Summer. Both Q'd, and I was so happy I had a front row seat. (Love scribing. Does that make me an agility geek?)
Sunday morning it was still raining hard as Gail and I traveled to the trial site. At 6:30 a.m. it was still dark, making it difficult to gauge the condition of the rings. By 7 a.m. we were walking inside the rings. O.M.Goodness. The rings were nothing more than 2 inches of muck. I had on calf-high boots, and the tops of my boots were covered as my foot sank. Gail's dog Sizzle is just coming back from a shoulder injury. Cosi doesn't slow down for conditions. Therefore, it was a no-brainer for us to say, "We're not running today." Would the club cancel? We left.
Gail called me later in the afternoon to tell me what happened. She learned from a friend who stayed that the club was going to cancel and give a partial refund. (Yea!) However, a bunch of selfish idiots (the I.D.10.T factor) complained, "We need double Q's for Nationals!" So the club set up a one-ring trial IN THE PARKING LOT. The ring was part grass, part muck, and part asphalt. IMHO anyone who would run a dog under those conditions should be banned. If you need double Q's for nationals so badly that you run under these circumstances, you're too selfish to own a dog. What if the dog (or you) would ruin a knee, elbow, shoulder? Now who's going to Nationals?
As you can tell this has hit a sore spot with me. At what cost do we do agility?
