Friday, August 03, 2007

York Days......


For the past 20 years (as near as I can figure) Piscataqua Obedience Club ... my dog club...has been invited to do an obedience demonstration for the York Days Celebration. York Days is a week long event celebrating the town of York, with all sorts of entertainments. Some nights its music in the gazebo, puppet shows, sand castle makings on the beach... a wonderful firework display... and the dogs!!!! Actually, the dog show is one of the most popular events, and if you check out the crowd in some of these pictures, you can see that its true. This year the weather was just perfect!!!and the crowd was as big as ever.

I am the MC at this event, mostly because its the town I live in, and it sort of fell into my lap a number of years ago. I always get so nervous before this event, and I really don't know why. I don't mind speaking in public, I know what I want to tell folks, and I can always count on a big number of other POC members there to support me.... but I still get the "jitters".... I try and change it up each year, because I know we have people that come to watch year after year, and I try and keep it fresh and fun. For the most part, it always goes off without a hitch, but this year, we did have some trouble with the music, and a couple of the dogs... mainly my Moxie... had their own idea of how the "show would go"...... (ie: barking at me, jumping over the jumps that she wanted to, taking her old sweet time on her come... and the more the crowd giggled, the "worst" she got!!!) But I think that the crowd likes to see that sort of thing, and one other thing... it goes to prove that our dogs are "just dogs" and that anyone can and should owe a well behaved pet.


We do all sorts of things, try and show all the different levels of obedience, work a whole crowd of dogs together (the people are really impressed with that!!!) and of course, our flyball team is always a huge success!!!! After we do a couple of runs with the teams, we pull kids out of the crowd and have them race the dogs!!! THAT is a huge crowd pleaser!!!!

And then, after the show, we invite the crowd to come and talk, meet the dogs, ask questions about obedience and all that sort of things. I think that's the part the dogs like best, because they certainly get a ton of attention. This is when I breath a sigh of relief and consider doing next year's show (though I always think ... this is the last one!!!) and think of what I might do different the next time around. So, I guess that means, I'm not ready to retire... quite yet.....