The Dog Show Life

When we first started competing at dog shows, my daughter and I often traveled to shows with family and friends.  But occasionally, we struck off on our own, often with humorous results.  I was recently reminded of one trip we made to a show one weekend in early May. The show was being held at a campground up in Maine.  My small car was packed to the brim with everything we needed, and we planned on arriving at the show site by dinner time.  My daughter and I, and two collies, all squeezed into my car, and we headed off to the dog show. 

We left in the afternoon, right after my daughter got out of school, and what should have been a four hour ride ended up taking seven hours! There was a serious accident, with a roll over tractor trailer that shut down one of the highways we had to travel.  We barely moved for almost three hours. Of course, traveling with dogs, and being cooped up in the car for so long, came with its own set of challenges. After so many hours, Mariah, Kia's junior showmanship dog, let me know she had to go to the bathroom, urgently!  We were stuck, with the only exit more than an hour down the highway because of the accident. So I put the car in park, as we weren’t moving anyway, and I walked Mariah and Lad, our other collie. I was worried about walking the dogs so close to traffic, but with the accident no one was able to drive faster than 5 miles an hour so it was safe enough.

When we finally reached the campground, hours later than planned, it was dark. It was the kind of darkness that can only be found in the Northern woods at night.  With the heavy clouds obscuring the moon and stars it was not just dark, it was dark-dark. There were no streetlights, no neighboring houses, and not even the comforting glow of civilization in the distance.  The manager of the campground looked at my car and asked me, "Oh, did you already drop off your camper?" I smiled back, exhausted and hanging on by a thread, "no, we are tenting this weekend." He just looked at me and said "Oh" in a confused manner.  When we drove to our assigned site and got out of the car I understood his confusion.  Though it was May, and Summer was just a few weeks away, it was still very chilly up in Maine.  It was getting late, so I directed my headlights over our campsite and quickly began trying to set up our borrowed tent. I say "trying" because we couldn't find the directions, even though we had been assured that the directions were there.

I had a mild panic attack at the realization that I had no directions, and no idea on how to set up the tent! I had thought of trying to set it up the day before at home, but with work and packing, I didn't get a chance.  It was at that point that it started to rain, and after watching us struggle, a man in a neighboring campsite took pity on us and came over to offer his help. He was camping with his wife and their mini-bull terriers. Between the two of us we managed to get the tent up. After I thanked him repeatedly, he left to return to his huge motorhome, and Kia and I unpacked our sleeping bags and arranged them in the tent. (It was after 10:00 at this point.) 

We fed and walked the dogs, put Lad in his crate in the car with water and crawled into the tent with Mariah. I made us a couple bologna and cheese sandwiches and we ate them huddled around our shared flashlight. The humor of the situation hit us and soon we were both rolling on the ground laughing. All around us were expensive campers, RV's and motor homes, we were the ONLY ones tenting it. The next campsite had a huge, expensive RV. Inside, sitting in the heated RV, watching a movie on their flat screen TV, was our kind neighbor and his wife. And there we were, in a tent, on the ground, with just a flash light eating bologna in the rain! Kia made me laugh even harder when she said, "Sure, they may be in there watching movies, enjoying their nice, warm camper, and probably eating a casserole! But that's ok, because we have BOLOGNA and a FLASHLIGHT!”

The next morning we woke up early, around 6:00 A.M., to the sound of voices passing by our tent.  (There is no sleeping in late when you are in a tent!) It was a little boy, asking his father if people were actually staying in a tent?  It turns out my daughter and I were the only ones brave enough to camp in a tent, in Maine, that early in the season.  But the day began relatively sunny, and we finally caught a break from the rain. When we opened our tent flaps we were very happily surprised with the sight that greeted us…we discovered we had a campsite with a beautiful view!  What we couldn’t see the previous night was that we were given a campsite right on the edge of a lake.  The water and beach were just gorgeous, and almost made us forget the horrendous journey to get there.

The collies were both happy to get out and walk along the beach after the long day of travel and the cold, rainy night.  Lad, being a young dog, had enjoyed the new experiences.  Mariah was a retired champion, and before becoming my daughter’s juniors partner, had traveled to countless dog shows, often staying overnight in hotels.  She had never been camping, so she was very confused about the whole experience. A few times during the night, I caught her staring at me, as if to say, "Why are you making me sleep OUTSIDE? Don't you know I sleep INSIDE, on a BED?" But being a collie, she adapted as best she could...

We had survived the exhausting trip to the campground, we had survived the night in the tent on that cold, hard ground, and it was time to prepare for the dog show.  We got Mariah and Lad ready at our campsite.  Kia showed Lad first and he won Winner's Dog, which made her very happy.  Then it was time for the junior handling competition.  Kia and Mariah won 3rd place, which gave her more points towards her top twenty junior handler ranking for the Collie Club of America.  We also discovered that a friend was staying at a campsite near ours. She invited us to come sit by her fire that night, and if we got too cold to stay in her camper with her. We took her up on the offer to hang out by her fire, but we managed to make it through another night in the tent.  So while the weekend had gotten off to a rough start, it was still a successful one, and it was quite an adventure that we will always remember!