Dog Show Recap
I haven't posted here in several days, mostly because driving back from Chicago and almost immediately heading up to Denver for a three-day dog show pretty much wore us out. Recall that the Chicago trip was mostly unexpected; we sold Carol's mom's house in ten days after expecting it to sit on the market until summer or longer. The dog show was on our calendar for over a year, and we had signed up to do various things there in conjunction with the local bichon frise club. We couldn't just not go, but working a dog show is a lot like working an SF con: intermittently intense, with unpredictable runs of exhausting labor. (Dog hair dryers are inexplicably heavy.) We spent most of this past weekend at home just trying to catch our breath.
This was Carol's first time presenting a dog in the show ring, and Aero's first time being shown. But for all his youth and squirminess, Aero got a fourth-place silver ribbon in the "Best Puppy Dog 6mo-12mo" category, and we're all very happy with his potential as a bichon champion. (The judge told Carol that "Aero is very cute, and just needs to grow up a little." I think that's what my mom used to say about me.)
We also did some volunteering with the national bichon frise rescue group, and placed three bichons with new owners after their original owner became too unwell to care for them. Carol washed, dried, brushed, and trimmed them, and I'm happy to say that they bonded well with their new owners and are off to the far points of the compass, or at least as far as Connecticut.
As tiring as the show was, there were some interesting moments. The people next to the table where Carol was grooming Aero were from Brazil, and I heard a lot of spoken Brazilian Portuguese. It's a cool language, enough like Spanish to sound vaguely familiar, but different enough in intonation to sound weirdly alien. Observing the constant freight traffic adjoining the RV lot showed me that the locos put out hugely more smoke when in reverse than when moving forward. I actually watched a pair of UP Diesel locos pull five or six cars forward a block or so, and then back them up onto a different spur in the freight yard after the yard guy threw a switch. It was the same load. Why more smoke in reverse? Pete? (Pete Albrecht is an expert in Diesel technology.)
We also saw and held two litters of literally 36-hour-old bichon puppies. I've never seen puppies of any breed that young before. They looked like white hamsters, and whereas their eyes were still closed, they had sharp little claws and were able to crawl around in our hands and gum the ends of our little fingers. I have a nice video of one litter that I will upload to YouTube and link to as soon as time and energy allow.
We hope not to be traveling anywhere for a little while. I have a lot to do here; being in Chicago for five weeks put me seriously behind on every single project in my Current Projects rack. Yes indeedy, much to do, and some interesting things to talk about in this space. Let me catch my breath, and I'll get on it.