Swissy Drafting Trials: Another year of Luna trying to get her title again!
By Rebecca Smith
As some of you might know, I’ve got a lot of dogs. Well, I mean, I’ve been told four is a lot of dogs… Of the four, three are Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs and of those, two are infamous in Pickering’s newsletter from their pandemic puppy days. And the very first Swissy puppy to come to the lab was Luna; if you can believe it, she turned six this summer!
My husband and I do various dog sports with all our dogs, but Luna is the only one drafting with her little cart. She’s been doing it for a couple years now and looks very cute in her pink outfit. And it is a good thing she’s cute, because we’ve managed to “flunk” our Novice Drafting Dog test every year so far! But it’s about the journey and not the destination. 😊
Earlier this year, we joined the Golden State Greater Swiss Mountain Dog Club in normally beautiful Napa Valley for our latest attempt at our novice drafting title. We enjoyed getting completely drenched on a spring weekend full of rain, puddles, and petulance. Luna is not a big fan of the rain (California girl?) and honestly, neither was I after a couple days camping!
As part of the weekend, the club threw a Saturday afternoon carnival which was fun for the whole campground… or would have been, if the rain hadn’t kicked back up as soon as we were set up to play our games! We still had fun, huddling under awnings and eating soggy hotdogs, but the highlight of the carnival were our carnival games illustrations!
A gigantic shout-out to Pickering employee Yuliana Lopez, our amazing Artist in Residence, for her support for the club’s big weekend!! The Pickering team here was able to watch in the weeks leading up to the carnival as Yuli hand illustrated signage for the various carnival games – the GSGSMD club fundraiser – and her artwork was a HUGE success!
Everyone loved them and the club snatched them right up for future events! And while the rain came rushing in that evening and put the carnival on pause, the displayed artwork had time to be admired even if the games themselves were only just starting to get any use!
These drafting pictures do not begin to fully illustrate our WET and RAINY experience. Luna was once again a crowd favorite (she’s quite the clown for an audience) but she didn’t appreciate the rain making her harness all wet (nor the grass she was supposed to sit on).
Overall, the judge said Luna did much better than last year… but she still hasn’t quite put it all together for a passing run to earn her drafting title. There’s always next time! In fact, she’s going to give it another shot in October in Boise, ID for Swissy Nationals. It should be a fun time and if you’re in the area and looking for entertainment, we’d love to see you.
