Dogs, Dogs, Everywhere Dogs

I just got back from taking the kids to watch some of the AKC National Agility Championships, being held this weekend in Concord (about 40 minutes from here). The GPS got us there without a hitch, and it is worth mentioning that I would have been really nervous attempting to take the kids someplace like this by myself, relatively far away and someplace I had never been. But with the GPS the drive was no problem - Yay!

There was definitely no lack of dogs there. Dogs in the parking lot, dogs being exercised next to the arena, dogs coming out, dogs going in, and of course dogs in the different arenas running obstacle courses. We found seats at the biggest arena and watched for quite a while. Rebecca sat on my lap and was just as entertained as Ben was, and she clapped along with everyone else when each dog finished. The dogs had to jump over hoops, crawl through tunnels, go up a see-saw and down the other side and through a bunch of other obstacles all in a certain order and as fast as they could. This kept Ben entertained for quite a while.

When he started to get restless -- saying he wanted to pet some dogs -- we went outside where there were plenty of dogs for him to pet (though I made sure he asked permission first). Ben was very good at identifying the different breeds. If he didn't know what it was he would ask, or if he did know he'd say "Excuse me, is that a .... (insert breed)?" He got quite a few correct, and the owners were very impressed. He even saw and correctly identified a Puli, among others. Way to go Ben - Mommy's little dog breed savant.