'tis a puzzlement

It's Friday night. Two days before our trial. It could be THE trial. If we do well, we'll go home with our new championship title. If we don't . . . we won't. And that's all. Nothing bad will happen. We just wait until next time to try again.

We dropped in to a Rally class today to practice. I wanted to practice chillaxin' in the ring. I wanted to work on being aware of my body language, my voice, my stress, my tension—all that good stuff. I felt fine; I thought I was fine.

And the first time we went to do the course, we did fine, too. Pretty good, actually. The next run wasn't so good. The third one was pathetic with a capital S-U-C-K. Here we were in a what I thought was a completely low-pressure atmosphere  (It was a tiny class. Just me and Iz and two other dog/handler teams) and my dog checked out. Way the heck out. I'm talkin' she went where the busses don't run. I wish I understood what was going on.

So, we'll see what happens on Sunday. It's possible we'll do well. It's possible we'll fall on our faces.

Either way, we're going home together.