Wags was somewhat of a disappointment this year. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances, the fair extended it’s dates, which threw the horsepark out of whack, which in turn simply knocked Wags off the calendar. I know the organizers scrambled to find a venue large enough to accommodate all the activities and vendors and did the best they could.
Still not sure how they ended up deciding to have it at a mall, but there you go. The part that kind of sucked was it was split, with most of the events at the mall, and flyball and disc dogs about a mile and a half down the street at a high school. Made it nearly impossible for flyball competitors to wander the vendors, cause we’d have to pack up, leave our dogs, and miss some races to do so. Also, the grass at the high school was really dry and by the end of the weekend, most of the disc dogs had dropped out and many of the flyball dogs had really sore feet. I know somewhere in the last three races of the weekend our own beloved Karma ripped open all four of her feet. Three torn pads and a fourth was sliced up the side. Too much hard running on dry grass with stickers in it. She hung in there and didn’t complain a bit until she got home, and then she tuned into a total pathetic drama queen who was about to die from the pain.
We raced the whole gang Friday, Dyson earned his FDX - yay D! - and took Saturday off to check out the happenings at the mall. Karma raced all three day with a different handler on Saturday, and Sunday Josh raced her. Karma is a flyball machine, and other than sore feet, made it through the weekend without a hitch.
I was on the fence with the mall thing. They did provide lots of shade and water, but it’s not as much fun to sit on the concrete to watch. We missed the herding dogs a lot - apparently there is just no where to put sheep in a mall! Splash dogs was much cleaner, as the pools were on concrete instead of dirt - that makes a huge muddy mess - and everyone was happy that the waits were so much shorter this year to use the pools and do all the other activities, but I can’t help but think that the waits were less because there weren’t nearly as many people in attendance. Absolutely ridiculous gas prices have impacted people’s willingness to drive anywhere - this is not the only dog event that has suffered this year.
I hope they raised a decent amount of money, I know our flyball raffle did fairly well - but I’m hoping that next year will be a bit better. Better grass, more (cleaner!) human potty facilities, more people, and hopefully they’ll be able to put it all in one place. Maybe the mall can handle it, or maybe we can take over a college campus somewhere. Who knows. It was just such an amazing, huge, awesome event in years past, this year was just a bit of a let down.
Posted on August 1st, 2008 by michelle
Filed under: My dogs, Random run ins, Training
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