Wednesday, September 12, 2007

9/11/07 This Campground is Going to the Dogs!

Yep, that's right, this campground is going to the dogs....literally! Today participants in the Sullivan Dog Show that is being held this coming weekend started arriving.

The first one we met was this gentle giant, Jacob. Jacob is a five year old Irish Wolfhound.


Jacob's owner/handler is Matt, 31, who hails from West Palm Beach, Florida. Matt spends most of his time on the road doing the dog show circuit. He has been doing this for the past 16 years now. To make traveling easier Matt had this truck/camper custom made to meet his needs. The back fourteen feet of this vehicle is a kennel in which he can transport four dogs at one time.


Jacob has won Best in Show several times now. We wish him luck this weekend.


The second to arrive was Pandora.

Pandora is a Harlequin Great Dane. She and her owner (I didn't catch his name) are from Long Island, New York. (I did catch the accent) Pandora is five years old and this type of Great Dane is rare in her coloring/markings. Pandora's "aunt" has won Best in Show for the entire country. While she does several shows a year Pandora and her family aren't as active in the dog show circuit as Jacob and his owner Matt.

We sure wouldn't want to have feed these dogs! Even more so, we wouldn't want to have to pick up after these dogs!

I'm sure more beautiful dogs will be arriving over the next few days. Miss Kitty, the campground cat, doesn't know what to make of dogs this big, she's use to the "toy" sized variety.

According to our game plan today was the day Bob was to put the brake thingamajig on the truck. Didn't happen. This was the day I was going to steam clean our carpets. Didn't happen. So much for our game plan. Instead Bob rearranged, once again, our basement area and put more outside things away. In doing so he found not one, but two, Black Widow spiders. Under two of our outside ornaments we had plastic flower pot bottoms, inverted, so the ornaments had a stable, flat surface on which to sit. When he picked those up on the underside of each one was a Black Widow. (The hair on my arms is standing up just having to type this)

You probably think of the Black Widow as having the red hourglass on it. You would be correct if the hourglass was on the belly of a female. These were adult males and have red dots on their backs. Doing some research on the net, Bob found that some have perfectly shaped red hearts on their backs.

I'm glad these were discovered in the last days we were here rather than in the first days. I just don't "do spiders" and would not have been comfortable at all with the thought of Black Widows crawling around. I'm ready to get on the road all the more now.

So our game plan is out the window and I'm thinking maybe us getting out of here on Thursday, Friday at the latest isn't going to happen either. Dan and Barb did say we could stay as long as we like so that isn't a worry for us. Getting road ready is taking longer than we expected. Of course we don't have to be anywhere until October 10th so time isn't of the essence right now.

Let's see how much we get done tomorrow.

No comments: