Well we got lucky yesterday in that the rain came before and after the Cornfest. The fair was fun and I got to know Bonnie, my fellow member of Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association better sharing a booth. She had her poetry and I had my knitting book and my sweaters.
There were no other Samoyed lovers there so the book didn’t sell, however, luckily for me there were those with other breeds, who admired the sweaters and placed orders to have them custom knit for them. Since it is not too late in the year, they’ll have them to wear for the Holidays.

The rain on the way home was spectacular. Big black clouds and jagged bolts of lightning lighting up the sky. The rain pounded down and I had to wait till it let up a bit to make a dash for the door when I got home.

The dogs were glad to see me, though I had to put up with the once over since I had been petting other dogs at the show. I told them that they wouldn’t have liked it because it was very hot and humid all day, but of course, they would have loved all the attention. Young Brigid is becoming an attention junkie with all the therapy visits we’ve been doing.



I haven’t told you about the therapy visits. This year I had fun developing a square dance group with dogs as part of Cheshire Dog Training Club. I took traditional square dance steps and worked out patterns that incorporated all the obedience commands. Then it was set to music and everyone had a ball. The routine we do takes less than ten minutes and we’ve been using it as an opening and closing for our visits to nursing homes and hospitals. After the opening dance we introduce each dog and tell about the breed, demonstrate some obedience exercises and then visit everyone. This is Brigid’s favorite part. She is a monumental people lover. She is also an obedience comic. I started training her about a month and a half ago and she took to it beautifully. The only problem being the stays. As part of the dance routine, we line up, put the dogs on a down and then march around, weaving through the group of dogs, snakelike. They’re good on staying down, till we finish and start back to stand in front of the dogs for the finish. Inevitably, Brigid sees me coming up the row and breaks to come see me. She gets a laugh from the crowd and now thinks it’s funny. I’ve got my work cut out for me getting her to do it right before we try for her CD. Unfortunately, she’s so cute doing this, it is impossible to get mad.
The group has a wide variety of dogs so it really looks interesting when they are all dancing together. Above is a photo of the group that one of the nurses took at our visit.