The Trials of a Trial (written 8/28/25)

A few years ago, a very accomplished obedience handler and judge shared a nugget of wisdom that has stuck with me through all the ups and downs since.

Looking across at the anxious, tight-lipped  knot of competitors about to participate in the next obedience class she would judge, she allowed a long pause, took a breath, and with what I assume must have been very deliberate eye contact, she dropped the bomb.

“Remember,” she told us, “it’s only a dog show.”

Only a dog show. And yet, so many hopes and dreams are driven and dashed at those events. So much work and effort – both physical and emotional – goes into those “only a dog show” experiences.

For me, it is no different.

Tassie and I stepped into our first ring at the Topeka dog show Thursday morning, and even though it was just barn hunt and not the high-pressure confines of the obedience ring, I still had a lot riding on this “only a dog show.” We were finally competing at the Seniors level of barn hunt, an advanced class and quite a step up from the intermediate level Open class. It had been so long since I had earned a qualifying score in an advanced class, in any sport, with any dog, and I really needed some yes on this one. It would take three qualifying scores to earn our Seniors title, and we were entered at this show four times. Theoretically, it could happen.

I sent Tassie out of the start box, and she began touring the course. Within less than forty-five seconds, she had hit on the first rat. She scratched on the tube hard, I picked it up, handed it off, and let her keep searching for more.

She gave another good, hard scratch on plastic to indicate another find, and then, just as I called “rat!” she turned away and left the tube, and I knew I had just screwed everything up.

It was a litter tube. Not a real rat, but a decoy tube filled with bedding that rats had lived in, so that it smelled stinky. If I had just given her one or two seconds more, she would have moved on. But, because I had called it as a rat, we were out of the ring with a non-qualifying score. Tassie was pawing and scratching at the next real rat tube as I slipped her leash on and led her out.

I wanted to scream. Or bang my head against a brick wall. Or, most appealing of all, I wanted to crawl into a deep, dark cavern, inaccessible to everyone else, and cry for the rest of the day.

That blunder had been totally and completely my fault. It was a stupid mistake, one that I knew better than to make, and, qualifying or not set aside, my dog deserved better from me.

There are times when I wallow in a stinking, sucking quagmire, realizing that all of my dogs deserve better from me. They deserve more opportunities to train, to compete, and to socialize. They deserve a more stable person who doesn’t slog through each day with discouragement and regret and negative outlook as her constant travel buddies. They deserve a person with eyes in her head, who can drive, and read, and actually watch what they’re doing and trying to communicate in the ring, instead of messing up their efforts and their loyalty.

From that morning until the next afternoon, I struggled and sulked. By then I was exhausted, and thoroughly sick of the whole thing. We went into the ring that time with my sole aim and ambition being just to get it over with. I didn’t care if we qualified or not.

And so, of course, we did. We took every second of the three minutes and thirty that were allotted to us to climb, tunnel, and find all four rats. But we qualified, and that was one leg toward the three we needed for the Seniors title.

I wish I could say that magic happened, and that Tassie swept the competition and notched up those next two q’s two in a row without ever looking back. The truth is that she got one more. It was much prettier than our three-minute-and-thirty-second run, this one bringing in a tidy time of two minutes and twenty-five. Oh, and she did get a first-place ribbon and a high-in-class award for that run too. Yeah, that was kind of a rush.

But so it goes. Up one minute and down the next. Good days and bad days. Failure and success. Sometimes it’s so mixed up together that it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends, or why I’m doing this “only a dog show” thing at all, when it really doesn’t change anything or have any lasting impact.

Reyna with Tassie, her dad, and her mom.

But then I think of my good little dog, and I run my hands over her silky head, and she puts her front legs in my lap and snuggles, and I remember the effort and the heart that she put in for me this weekend – that she puts in for me every day, and I think, surely I can return the favor.