2009 Farm Show

The Pennsylvania Farm Show is the largest indoor agriculture show in the country. It spans two weekends and it is quite impressive. In Pennsylvania, dogs are a part of the Department of Agriculture (Bureau of Dog Law) and so Sunday was the day they had multiple dog demonstrations.
The dog related demonstrations started with herding. I was invited to represent "shelties" and of course Rincon was the one who went with me. My friend Helen and her dog, Spice, represented the Samoyed. The event started and ended with a parade of all of the herding breeds. There was an AKC Herding Rep. MC'ing the event and she went down the line and spoke a little about each breed. Helen and I were very disappointed that she forgot to mention the unique thing about Samoyeds is that they herd reindeer!
After the parade, a few different breeds demonstrated different herding styles and stages of training.

After the herding, the Dog Demonstrations continued with a fun agility event. Bonnie Frank, who owns- Acadia One No Trump, NA, NAJ (Mike) was there with another one of her dogs, Cosi, to participate in agility. She and I got to catch up on things and it was really fun to see her and "talk dogs". The agility group set up two identical courses in a mirror image and then they had "races". It was fun, fast, and the crowd seemed to enjoy it. Bonnie's dog Cosi won his race. The race ended with the dogs doing a down on the table- when Bonnie released Cosi from his down, he ran to the weave poles and did all 12 again. It was really cute.
Bonnie's blog also has a post about being at the farm show- she even has a picture of the two of us and our dogs and a link to a video of her agility run.

The last Dog Demonstration was flyball. Helen and I didn't stay to watch that. I hope they had fun too.

This picture was taken by Helen while we were sitting in the loading dock area waiting for the draft horses to be done with the arena.