Of Cankles, Corn Fields, and Chicken Shows

I thought maybe some TurdiTude would make us all feel better. There. Much better.

Now on to discussions of cankles, corn fields, and chicken shows. Ever been to a chicken show? Nope, neither have I. Julie had mentioned last week she was going down to work dogs with Kelly (something about a corn field) and did I want to go? All I had to do was show up with my dogs at her house, and oh yeah, stop by a chicken show with her. Sure, I'm a dog-working ho, I can do that. Bribery works for a reason.

I was having images in my head of chickens being paraded around a ring on a leash and collar. Imagine my dismay that they actually just line chickens up in cages (one per cage) and you walk around... and look at them. I was wooed into doing this based on the idea that there wouldn't be much to look at. Oh but no. They were having a sale outside so the cankle and I wobbled around with Julie and looked at it all. Actually the chickens were all gorgeous - and there were even some big old badass gigantor chickens that will eat your children. Seriously. There were turkeys, rabbits, ducks, some chickens with floofy heads, rat terrier puppies... lots of things to look at at this chicken show thing.

On the way out Julie decided to buy a trio - two hens and a rooster. The dude she bought them from was stuffing them in a box when one of the hens made a jailbreak. She came flapping and squawking past my head and I might have let out a noise. So OK birds flapping and squawking past my head freak me out. This guy about 10 cars down on the other side of the path actually snatched her out of mid air! Julie went to retrieve the hen while the seller basically looked at me accusingly, like, why didn't I catch her? I mean, really, had he ever seen me trying to play softball he'd understand why not. The interesting thing, to me, was that when the hen was flying ALL of the other birds were *screaming*. It was like the silence of the lambs... except not. When the guy caught her it was like turning off the light switch.

I had fun, actually. Who would have known a chicken show could bring such excitement? However, my cankle was a bit unhappy by the time we left.

So we met Kelly out to work her sheep in a recently mowed (mowed? eh, whatever they do to make the corn go away) corn field. It was a beautiful place, and I'm always up for new places and new sheep to work my dogs on. Nick was his normal self - albeit there were a few exciting moments, and he got some good work in. Linc... Linc didn't have his listening ears on at first. It took me some time to get ahold of him, but after that he was working really nicely. It was a good experience in a new place - and I had a ball. Poor doughnut was terrorized though... she (he?) took a swim, and then decided to lay down on Linc. Linc didn't send her swimming though. Then... of course... both of my dogs managed to get into the pond that they weren't supposed to. Oopsie! Oh, and I almost forgot. I managed to more or less throw myself down some stairs and almost turned my ankle again. Duh.

Needless to say by the end of the day after walking around a chicken show and trudging around an uneven stubbly corn field my ankle was a very angry cankle. It's healing, but it's slow. The swelling had gone down before this past weekend, but I spent most of Sunday with it propped up. This of course gave me opportunity to watch lots of movies and just generally be a slug all day.

Nothing like a shot of those big ole bat ears fully unfurled to make a girl feel better.

There's a lot of stuff going on in my life that I can't talk about yet, but could really use some prayers or good vibes, or whatever. I've not sent in any trial entries for the next few months - so for the moment I'm just holding what I've got.