Dally Takes on the AKC Nationals Pt 1

After what has seemed like a whirlwind weekend of travel, runs, sightseeing, and lack of sleep, I'm finally back from my travel to Reno while Dally is en route to Lexington via Roger's car. We've completed AKC Nationals 2012, and I don't know who's more exhausted (by this time tomorrow, that answer will be Dally, as she'll still be travelling!).
I'll probably try to review the weekend in more than one post, just because there's so much to tell...
Last Monday Dally began her trip West with Roger and five other dogs: Gus (Papillon), Hope (Pembroke Welsh Corgi), Scribbles (French Bulldog), Aussie (Australian Shepherd), and Keebler (Pembroke Welsh Corgi...with a tail). Roger drove for three days, stopping in North Platte, Neb., the first night; Salt Lake City the second; and finally in Reno the third. We flew out Thursday morning, so the reunion was a sweet one that afternoon. I was so happy to see my Corg, and she was pretty excited, too.

After being reunited with the furkids, we set off to check in at the Expo Center to get our exhibitor packets, sign-up for our Friday warm-up run, and settle things in our stall. Check-in was fairly easy, and that allowed us to get in and get out, and then head for a late lunch/early dinner at a Mexican restaurant (agility people love Mexican, ok?).

See the wild horses in the background of Dally's profile?

After a little bit of relaxing in the hotel room, we set off on an adventure to find wild horses in the desert mountains with some friends of Roger and Elissa's. We took the dogs with us, which meant Dally got to see horses and bark....a lot.
After some wild horse spotting, and a few candid photos, we found two of the (many) brothels in the mountains and I took the opportunity to get a photo of Dally in front of the Wild Horse Brothel and Mustang Ranch--goal #1 complete of my photo tour of Reno!

We turned in early to prepare for Friday and our warm-up Standard run.
At the AKC National Agility Championships, there are four rings going at once--three in the main Expo Center, and one in the Livestock Pavilion, which was also where our inside stall was. Ring 4 was also smaller, and darker, than the three other rings, and we got to run our warm-up and Jumpers run in that small ring--yippee.
Dally handled the warm-up run just fine, minus missing her weave pole entrance and then popping out at 10. (She was going at a good clip in the weaves, and I didn't want to stress her in the ring before the big event, so I just pushed her on--so what if she's not clean in the warm-up round, right?)

The "roomies" in front of the Reno Livestock Expo Center.

We didn't enter Time2Beat on Friday because I knew she didn't have the chance to be the fastest dog for the automatic bid to the Challengers Round, plus she's not really a three-day trial dog--I needed her at her best for the next two days.

So after our warm-up runs, we did some more sightseeing--this time driving up into the (prettier) mountains to find Lake Tahoe and see it from the mountains and from the shoreline. It was beautiful! We saw lots of snow (we only had one day of snow all winter long), and took some photos of the pups in the snow with the mountains in the background. We got up to at least 8,1000 feet in elevation when we saw Lake Tahoe from above--it was very cold and very windy up there. Then we made the trek back down the mountain to see the lake from the shore--talk about peaceful, I could stand and listen to the waves crashing on the shoreline all day (if it wasn't so gosh darn cold!). I took some photos of Dally on the beach, until the waves crashed up and spooked her, then we drove back towards Reno via Crescent City, which was a nice change.

We had dinner and relaxed in the hotel room, in preparation for the big event to start...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Together in front of Lake Tahoe.