Field Trialing

Oh boy, everyone!! I had quite an adventure this weekend. I went to my first Field Trial. Guess what? I took home a 2nd place and earned my first field trial points. It was kewl and unexpected.

Got this red ribbon, but more importantly, I got this yellow star toy that I can play with!

We had to wake up at 4:30am to get to the Sacramento & N. California Field Trials in Vacaville, CA by 7:30am. We were driving in the pitch black of night. But then it was kewl to see the sunrise.

We has to thank Ms. Sara for telling us about this, and for giving us the info, and for answering our bazillion questions about field trials. She and Jan have Bluefence bassets and they has a real nice crew. Here are some pics of their dawgs:

GFC Bluefence Devoted Sistear aka Cissie, with her son Bluefence Olympic Flame aka Fenris.

Bluefence Take the Like aka Buster Poseyear- can you tell they are Giants fans? Go Giants!! Buster is a nice boy and we were out in the field together a lot.

Cissie in the background with FC Bluefence RC Flying Solo, aka D'Brickashaw Fearguson. D'Brickashaw da football playah!

Thanks Ms. Sara!

Now what on earth is a Field Trial, ya might say? It's ok cuz we said the same thing!

Well, here is the Field:

It was a lovely weekend, but got quite hot in the afternoons.

Bright red tree in the middle of the field!

And here is the Trial: basically, the peeples and the dawgs walk thru the large field, and the bunnies get up and hop away. The peeples and 2 judges observe the trail the bunny took. The 2 hounds compete against each other to follow the bunny trail. Whoever does it the best wins.

There were 13 houndies competing in my Boys' class, both on Friday & Saturday. That means there were 7 braces (groups of 2 hounds that go) to begin with, which means.... lotsa waiting and downtime. Here are some pics from the downtime during the competition:

Out in front is Ms. Sara's Bluefence dawg: Mr. Buster. He's a nice-looking hound, my person says.

Practicing using my nose to find good sniffs

Nesting in the field

Field trial in progress

Some of the new guys I met

I kinda like this Field Trial thing!

But sometimes it makes me hot and yawny!

Here I am examining it...

 There wuz a raffle and I won a huge Natural Balance sausage...

And now here's my buddy examining it... hey wait a minute, that's MY sausage!

I met some nice folks here including Mr. & Mrs. Palmer, who put the trials on. They wuz nice cuz they put on a practice session for us newbies and it musta helped me, cuz I did good the next day. They has a lot of nice dawgs too. Here are a few of them:

Here is Ms. Abby

DCGFC Sanlyn CJ's Misadventure, Missy, the red/white, and Abby, the tri-color.
I believe Missy won the entire Sacramento Field Trial this past weekend (Absolute winner). Kewl!

Missy, Abby, and Delta on the right

I also wanna thank my Auntie M. and new pal Mr. Bo Jangles for coming out all the way to Vacaville to support us! I think Mr. Bo should come Field Trialing with me next year in the S. Calif Chino competition. It would be a fun thing to do together!

Mr. Bo Jangles

My Auntie M and Mr. Bo

Waiting, waiting in the fields...

This Field Trialing thing is a lot of wurk!! Made me SO tired!

Well, it is fun to have new experiences in life. We met lotsa new houndies and their peeples, all of whom were really kewl and devoted to their houndies. I may try this again sometime next year and will keep y'all posted.

Hope everyone is getting a good start to the week,
                                                                 Worm