Arizona2

We drove across miles and miles of scrub brush between the Hoover Dam and Scottsdale. There wasn't a sign of life - not a bird, no road kill and not even any bugs on the windshield. Unfortunately, the absense of bugs didn't last. At one of our stops, the girls all decided that we didn't need the facilities quite THAT bad but thought we had better get the dogs out. A quick trip onto the sand and we were off again - with hitchhikers. The boys fell asleep and the girls were driving, about 5 miles down the road, Mona mentions that she is itchy. Diane admits that she feels the same. A quick check on the walkie talkie confirms that Pat, in the other van is as well. We had SAND FLEAS!!!
We itched, scratched, swerved and cursed our way down the highway for many hours with only the thoughts of a real hot shower to kill the little beasties keeping us going. We finally saw the cacti and knew we were getting closer.

We arrived at West World in Scottsdale, on Thursday, in time to set up our benching area and meet some of the other teams. The venue was amazing and the excitement was hard to contain.

Friday morning dawned and we couldn't wait to get started.
We didn't need to compete on Friday as we already had a bye into Saturday but thought it would be nice to get a feel for the lanes and let the dogs wear off some of that energy from being contained for so many miles.

We left minus 20 degrees celcius, snow and ice but by 10 am we were stripped down to shorts and t-shirts. The weather couldn't have been more perfect. The racing was set up in blocks so that there was plenty of time for shopping and watching the other events that were taking place. There was dock diving, agility, frisbee, lure coursing, freestyle, and herding. The herding was RIGHT beside the flyball lanes! With 2 of us owning border collies that knew how to herd, we were a little afraid....
Thank goodness flyball is pretty important to them both!
We were seeded 4th in Division One and by the end of the day we were thrilled to find ourselves in 2nd place!