BevLive: Notes from the trial field

Beverly Lambert has agreed to post a live, on-the-spot reporting of her upcoming trip to the Western trials (which will encompass Soldier Hollow, Meeker, and the National Finals).  Here is her first blog entry, as she prepares for the journey:

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I'm going to give blogging a shot and try to share my western trip with anyone who is interested in a very personal look at western dog trialing and big rig traveling.

I figured I would start with a short biography of the participants in the blog so you would all know the main characters of my story.

 I am Beverly Lambert. I'm a full-time librarian and a part-time dog handler. This blog will be the story of my trip to Soldier Hollow, Meeker and the National Finals. I won't bother to explain what these events are in more detail now, figuring anyone interested enough to read this blog will know already.

  I'm going to be traveling with four dogs on this trip.

• Bill (photo on right) is my 9-year-old pro. Bill and I have been trialing together for about six years and he has run in all of these events before and I'm counting on him for the sort of reliable performances he has given me for years.

• Mirk is my new boy. I only bought Mirk in May from Florence Wilson who was not getting on well with him. Flo hoped that in different hand Mirk could sort of start over and realize the great potential she felt he had. I agree with Florence's judgment on Mirk and I'm really excited about running him at all of these tough events. But he is very much an unknown quantity for me. He had a brief chance out west in May when I first bought him. But he has never run at anything as hard as these three trials and this is going to be a test for Mirk to see if he is up to the work I need from my teammate. I sure hope he is as he has completely won my heart. I'm crazy about him and can hardly wait to see how he will do in the big time.
• Hemp is my third open dog. He belongs to my husband who has kindly let me train and run him. Since all three of these trials are limited to two open dogs Hemp is mostly along for the ride and work experience I can dig up for him along the road. He is also the back-up dog incase, heaven forbid, Bill or Mirk should be sick or injured.
• The final member of the team is Huck. He is my nursery dog for this year. He is a full brother to Hemp and is entered in the nursery finals in Sturgis at the end of the trip.

There are a couple of other actors in this drama. Two of them are my truck and trailer. I am hoping that they are sort of non-active participants. The trip will be a lot more fun if you don't hear anything more about them. The other participant is Heather Nadelman who has graciously agreed to help with all of the technical parts of this and get the blog up and running. I am also counting on Heather for some heavy duty proof reading when I start driving. I'm a pretty dedicated sort of cross country driver but not a clear writer on fewer than five hours sleep a night.

I got home about 8:30 last night from the Leatherstocking dog trial in Cooperstown, NY. Mirk ran really well, winning both days and giving me a nice boost of confidence in his ability.

However, I didn't take my trailer up to the trial, figuring to save on gasoline and travel time. I slept in my car. Well,  I'm getting a little old for that sort of adventure. While it wasn't tooooo bad. I was really tired and slept in this morning making up for missed sleep over the weekend. I didn't manage to get any dogs worked or packing done for the "big trip."

I leave on Friday and have a ton to stuff to do before then so I will have to get busy when I get home from work tonight.