ESRA Carolinas Struts our Mutts!

Knowing we couldn't travel to California to be part of the national ESRA fundraiser Strut Your Mutt on September 24, Barbara King invited some North Carolina Springer lovers to participate with "the King Boys" in a unique Springer event. We gathered a group of 15 Springers — well, admittedly there were two Springer "wannabes" but we were glad to have them — and enjoyed a morning of "just being dogs" under the watchful eye of dog trainer Don Brown at his farm in McLeansville NC in an off-leash program that he has developed and calls "Walk-About."

Our event was quite a success and we all had a great time! We have uploaded a gallery of unedited photos of our wonderful morning for your enjoyment. And have uploaded several raw footage videos to You Tube to add depth to our event. We hope you will enjoy all of it as much as we did! We're so proud of our contribution to the national ESRA fundraiser Strut Your Mutt — raised just a little over $300.

We had torrential rains in the Piedmont area of North Carolina the day before our event so we were a little concerned about the weather report but hoped for the best. Most weather prognosticators said that Saturday would be clear, but we woke up to drizzle and fog and little hope that the skies would clear by our 10 am start time. Undaunted we had travelers come from the Asheville area in the western NC mountains, from Cary and Raleigh and Winston-Salem. All arrived on time and ready to face whatever the morning would bring.The morning did indeed bring some fairly heavy rain and a few claps of thunder but we were safe and where we wanted to be. Soon enough the weather lifted and we proceeded to the open field where the adventure awaited!

Here's the link to the photo gallery: https://picasaweb.google.com/106227144809387150824/September24201102#

Here is some of the raw video footage — just random unedited clips:

Our participants were as follows:

The dogs wore different colored bandannas to help Don know their age ranges from afar. Teal for the young ones, red for the 3 year olds, navy blue for our biggest age group, the five- to eight-year-olds, and khaki for our "senior citizens" including our near twelve-year-olds Pepper, Blake and Indie.

What a handsome group we had. And fun! Mud and all! Don shared some great information with us and we all went away with new tips on how to connect with our dogs in the right way. Listen carefully to the videos for Don's commentary as well as some of the overheard comments from the participants. My favorite "pearl of wisdom" is something like "a dog that is allowed to make his own choices will respect you better for allowing him to choose." Of course you have to hope he will make a wise choice — reminds me of raising teenage sons!

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