This pumpkin is what I brought home from Publix on Sunday.

This is what I found when I woke up this morning!  What the hay?  Aren’t pumpkins supposed to last longer than 3 days? 

I didn’t even get to carve the darn thing.  No.  Dudley did.  With his teeth.

I didn’t even want to open it.  Dudley did.  With his teeth!

Well, sayonara Fort Doberdale pumpkin of 2009.  You are now in a trash truck somewhere headed to the dump.  With Dudley’s teeth!  <kidding>

Last night was run-throughs.  Woohoo!  Leissl has her first AKC agility trial on Saturday, and this will be my second one, so we are cramming.

I discovered something amazing last night.  I have to figure out how to tell my partner where she is going next before she takes a jump.  Because what we are doing now is a one-by-one jump-and-now-what? sort of routine.  I think this is because  I can’t keep up with my dog, so when I send her over the jump I am talking to her butt instead of her head when all is said and done.  I will figure this out eventually.

It’s the same concept in tennis.  When you hit a shot, you figure where you are on the court and where the ball you are hitting is going and where your opponent can return that ball so you can anticipate where to be next.

Meanwhile, I think Leissl has doggy ADD.  She will be going along on the weave poles, as I am losing my breath saying, “Weave” six to twelve times, and suddenly stop and want to:
a.  come to me to say hi;
b.  sniff the air;
c.  examine a crack in the ground.

Or, she will forget to take every pole, and take the first one, skip two, and take the last one, then swing around and take one as she’s doing a u-turn.  Then somewhere amongst all this creativity, her light bulb comes and stays on, and she will get it and do them right for maybe 2 or 3 run-throughs, but I will have to keep the beat with “Weave, weave, weave…” or she stops.  I have recently changed that to “Go, weave, go, weave, go, weave.”  For some reason, I don’t lose my breath as much with that little ditty.

I just want to mention that I hate weave poles.  I would have stuck all six of mine into that smooshed pumpkin if I’d thought about it earlier.