Week of June 27: Spent the day at Roxy's fourth agility trial. In 12 ring appearances, she's got three qualifying scores, which is a pretty good percentage, considering. Today, she excelled at Jumpers with Weaves but had a little more difficulty in Standard. Every time I run with her I'm reminded how "obstacle-focused" she is. Both runs today started with her taking off like she was shot from a gun. The standard run was jump – dog walk; she was up at the top ramp of the dog walk before I could catch up with her. She got sucked in by a table. Who ever heard of a table-sucking dog? Other dogs suck to tunnels or seesaws; Roxy sucks to tables. She was a bit apprehensive about the closed tunnel (chute) as well. All things to work on between now and her next trial, which is 8 weeks away.

Still no estrous cycle. Monday, she will visit the vet and we will maybe draw some blood and make sure her thyroid hormones are okay.

Week of June 20: Working on Roxy's stays, maybe two or three minutes a day. Boy, her stays suck. I am working with her both from the sit-front and down position, and I can take a step to the side, maybe out to 4 o'clock or 8 o'clock (taking a clock face with Roxy at 6 o'clock). By the end of this week, I'm hoping to make it around the back, but each time I try that, she busts and we have to start over. She just can't bear to not look.

So there we were, watching Gigli – truly one of the worst movies either of us has ever seen – and Roxy alerts to something in the backyard. She insists there is something out there. So, disbelieving, we open the door and let Roxy out in the pouring rain. She comes running back in, and Rosemary screams, "She has a rat!" We walled her off with baby gates and finally got her to release what she had. It wasn't a rat, but rather a young rabbit, about the size of a rat. I wasn't sure whether to dispatch it myself or let it try to recover, so I put it out in a box in the carport. Checking later, it was quite dead. It looks as though she broke its back. So, here's the box score so far. Annie 0, Dylan 0, Kodiak 1 rabbit plus 1 squirrel he swallowed whole, Roxy 1 rabbit.

One year ago, Roxy took her first out-of-town trip with us, four days after arriving at our house, when we made our annual pilgrimage to the USDAA Regionals in Perry, Georgia.

This time, it was an opportunity to retrace some of our steps, and re-introduce Roxy to the people who had seen her last when she was a wee pupkin. Now, of course, she is fully grown.

Annie has qualified for this year's Cynosport World Games (a.k.a. Grand Prix) to be held in November in Scottsdale, Arizona. However, her two qualifying scores only entitle her to a berth in the quarterfinals. It's quite possible that we would drive 1300 miles one way only to spend a few seconds in the ring. So, it was important to us to try and get a top 50% berth in the Performance Grand Prix Regional Qualifier, so that I could ensure her of two runs – at a minimum.

Of course I screwed that up, by giving her a wrong course over the A-frame in Round 1. Otherwise, it was a beautiful run and I'm not sad I gave it a try with her. She worked beautifully for me.

Roxy will not be old enough to run in USDAA until September, so for her, it was a bit of a vacation. Annie got a chance to see what her retirement will be like. There was lots of swimming, and she even took time to give swim lessons to a Border Collie.

The weather was stormy, so Roxy and I only got one good chance to walk and work on her heeling. We will have to make it a point to go to PetSmart for some air-conditioned heeling practice.

So we did go, on Tuesday night after we graduated another group of Basic Home Manners folks. Roxy and I had walked two miles before class, then she got to do the "demo dog" thing during class, so she was suitably tired out. We did some heeling practice, and did a 3-foot recall and some brief stays with me stepping to one side or the other. She's not solid enough for me to wander around much more than that.