It’s Jade’s Turn

Good morning and Happy Halloween! It will be an interesting night. We are never sure from one year to the next what our volume of trick-or-treaters will be. We buy the same amount of candy every year and I hoard the peanut butter cups and hand out the rest. I think we handed out everything (except those peanut butter cups) only once and I doubt that will happen again this year. I do know that Halloween and trick-or-treating as we have come to know it will be different this year, and that’s okay. I’m just glad it’s happening.

Dog shows have resumed during the Covid pandemic too, and also not as I have come to know them. We started to show Jade late last year, and despite her inability to stand still, she did okay. There were plans to enter her in some spring shows too, but everything began shutting down as Covid-19 spread, including dog shows. I noticed late in the summer that some dog shows began to resume with mask and distancing requirements and a number of other safety and sanitation practices, especially for indoor shows.

I knew we would need to resume showing Jade at some point, and work towards that 15 points for her champion title. But how and when we would resume was still uncertain. Attendance at dogs shows, even in their new limited capacity, was still a concern for me. My involvement in the shows that Jade has been entered in is literally to transport her there and back. A handler takes her into the ring while I stand…somewhere…and watch. Her breeder is usually there and takes care of any grooming needs which are usually minimal, this being a short haired breed. We also learned while showing Halo that I’m not allowed to stand close enough to the ring for my dog to possibly see me because it might affect their behavior in the ring. Yes, I have clingy daddy’s girls. As long as they can’t see me, they know they’re perfectly fine with the handler.

I got a call from the girls’ breeder a few weeks ago to talk about moving forward with trying to get Jade’s champion title finished. Most of the littermates that are showing have finished now, so she wanted to focus on Jade, and she had come up with a plan. She had been working with a handler who had shown some of Jade’s littermates, and wanted to know how I felt about letting this handler take Jade for a few weeks to work with her and enter her in some shows, and I was totally okay with that.

I met up with the handler at the beginning of the month and handed off Jade to her. This was not a tough decision either which surprises people. Some mistake my casualness about it as an indicator that I may not love Jade as much, but that isn’t the issue at all. Believe me, there was some crying in the car on my way home from that meeting, but proper training is not something Jade has had very much of here, so I knew this experience would be good for her for that reason alone. It isn’t all work and training while Jade is away either. This handler raises and shows dogs of her own, as well as boarding and showing a few other dogs, including one of Jade’s gorgeous littermates. So Jade now has new doggie friends which is fantastic because we have not had much opportunity to socialize her with any dogs outside of our social bubble in the last several months. 

Jade has also earned several points towards her champion title at shows that she was entered in the last couple of weeks. She’s showing well, and is getting much better about the judges examining her. Jade’s breeder, who hadn’t seen her since December, thinks she grew up very nicely and should do really well showing. As with Halo’s show career, the points and the ribbons are nice, but whether she wins or not, my dog is always Best On Show to me, and I’m just happy to say….

Six weeks was the original plan for Jade to be ‘on tour‘ as we’ve been calling it. It’s been four weeks now, and we do miss her. It has been really peaceful here though and I won’t lie, it has been nice. There’s certainly been a hell of a lot more room in bed at night. But we all miss Jade very much, especially Halo, and we can’t wait for her to come home. 

That’s all for this week. Have a safe and happy Halloween!