Put this down in the books to one very weird weekend. I was suppose to go down to Wichita (about a 2.5 hour drive) on Thursday night with Andrew and deuce. Wednesday night, deuce started shaking his head and panting about 1 am. I got up and checked his ears and sure enough, one ear was very goobery with some black foul smelling stuff coming out. Great. He has never had ear issues before so I filled his ear with epiotic and cleaned what i could out with several q tips. Made a mental note to call my vet in the morning if he was still restless/shaking his head. Well of course, by the morning he seemed fine so I went about my life and went to work. When i got home, he was back to panting/shaking his head so called my vet at 5:13 pm and begged to have him look at him. He had a slight yeast infection in the one ear and the canal was very inflamed, probably from him digging in it with his foot. The other ear looked fine with minimal yeast/inflammation. They did a deep cleaning and gave him a steroid shot to help with the inflammation. Then they told me the good news. He would probably drink water all night and have to go out multiple times. Huh? I can't do being in a hotel by myself with a baby and be taking a dog out multiple times a night. Called my friend in a panic to see if she could cancel the room, which she did. Whew. Decided i needed to stay home and deal with this at home. At least if he had an accident, we had wood floors. .
Anyway, got up at the butt crack of dawn and loaded Andrew and deuce up and headed to Wichita. Made the trip fine, no potty breaks for deuce and a sleeping baby pretty much the whole way. Got to the show site and set up and started walking the courses. Noticed that the dirt was a little loose but didn't think anything about it. Didn't even put my cleats on. BIG mistake. Ran T2B first which I love to use as a warm up. Almost fell 3 times!!!!! Deuce had like 5 bars and we watched team after team after team decimate the course. I am pretty surefooted and agile and I almost biffed it so I know the footing was super bad. JWW was next and I was beginning to think this was a huge mistake to even try to run. He had one bar and a beautiful run so that made me feel a little better. Standard had a HUGE pull to the close end of a tiny tunnel after a long straight line. I figured if led out enough and pulled, he would get it. He ignored the pull as he usually does and made a bee line for the wrong end. In hindsight, as far as I lead out, I could have done a FC on the landing side of the jump to help him but you know what they say about hindsight. Oh well, the rest of the run was gorgeous, well except for him not reading an ill timed, ill performed ketcher but i will take it.
Got back to the hotel room and went out to eat at the cracker barrel at which Andrew at dumplings, green beans and mashed potatoes. BOY is this kid growing up too fast. Was back at the hotel, had Andrew on the bed, turned my back for a second and he fell off. This is the first time he has ever fallen off of anything so I was very, very upset. Glad my roomie was very calm and kept me calm. Tried to remember what we tell students about their dogs falling off of obstacles but i was literally sick to my stomach with worry. Some part of him hit the ac unit and that thud is still stuck in my head and will take a long time to go away. I know you can't wrap them in bubble wrap but the rest of the weekend, he pretty much played on the floor the whole time unless I was in bed with him with a hand on him.
Didn't get much sleep that night worrying about him so figured Saturday would be interesting. Got a Q in T2B and beat some really nice dogs for my first run of the day. Still only got 8 points but it was a nice proactive handling run. JWW was next and we had a line of three jumps with a 180 going back the other way. There was a nice off course jump after the 3rd jump in the beginning line just calling their name. I knew if I didn't time it right that he would go full speed ahead and not read my lateral motion on the 180. So the opposite happened, i didn't support the third jump enough so he skipped it completely and came with. Nice read of lateral motion Mr. deuce! The rest of the course was nice till he dropped the last bar which was a double. Beginning to get a little nervous about this dropping doubles and triples. Standard again had a very hard pull to the end of a very short tunnel. He got the pull but spun in front of the tunnel and then went in. SO weird. He never gets refusals on tunnels but i remember as he was going to the tunnel i shouted GO WEAVE so maybe he was wondering where the heck the weaves where? Again the rest of the course was beautiful, no dropped bars per what happens when the mistake is on me. Took Andrew back to the hotel and just hung out and played the rest of the afternoon. Missed dinner because he was napping but got dinner later at mcds and got some ice cream which Andrew thoroughly enjoyed!
Woke up around 3 ish with a massive sinus headache. Couldn't get in any position to help the pressure. Finally got up and started pacing, was in so much pain. I knew if I didn't get relief soon that I would be puking. My roomie woke up around 4:30 and found me some advil. At that point, I was just praying i could keep them down long enough for them to work. Some how managed to keep them down long enough for the pain to go away but the stomach was already upset so I prayed to the porcelain gods for a while. I knew there was no way I could run my dog but I had no clue how I was going to drive 2.5 hours back home either. I some how rallied myself into some adrenalin high and post puking, drove home. It was the longest 2.5 hours I have ever driven but I made it safely home. I regret not running my dog but I don't think I could have handled the dirt again. The weird thing was, it didn't seem dusty in the arena at all so not sure why the sinus impaction. I have trialed for almost 13 years in dusty arenas and it seems like now, post pregnancy, I get sick every time I am in a dusty arena. It usually happens post show but this time it happened mid show. I really don't know what to do about this. There was a show in Lincoln the same weekend with about the same driving time but i hate the roads from here to Lincoln. All backwoods and scary and no shoulders to pull off on if you have car trouble or if you need to console a baby. I have an older van with much mileage so I prefer to stay on well traveled roads, least I break down.
Anyway, it was just a weird weekend. The courses were super nice, fun yet challenging but the footing was super crappy. The club tried everything to remedy the situation so I feel really bad for them as I am sure there was backlash. Need to figure out how to remedy this whole getting sick issue. I just don't have time to be sick thanks to being a mommy now and having another life form dependent on me.
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