Hello everyone! It has been a busy week. Not until now have I had time or mental energy to sit down and write a post! How has your week been? I hope with this rising Delta variant you’re all staying safe and taking whatever precautions you need to. And I do hope you aren’t losing heart too much; it can definitely be discouraging to see things starting to slide backwards again. So hang in there, yeah? Chin up. There is hope to be found, and I’m here if you need someone. Fair disclosure though: my attempts at comfort pair best with tea. By which I mean they are dry, Britishy, and leave you feeling either starved or far too full with no in between.
At any rate. Today I want to finally tell you about the corgi race, and update you on all the rest of Cordelia’s adventures lately.
Emerald Downs Corgi Races!
I mentioned in this post that we were going to be attending the Emerald Downs corgi races. These were held on July 25, 2021. It’s an annual event (but it wasn’t held in 2020 for obvious reasons). So if you have a corgi and want to enter next year, I would keep an eye on their announcements. Registration is completely free, but only a limited number of dogs can enter, so once sign-up opens you need to be quick!
Of course, first things first on the morning of the race. I had to prepare the Motivational Bacon-Wrapped Cheddar Hotdogs™. Trigger got one just for being the goodest of good boys, but I told Delia she was going to have to wait and get one at the finish line.
I offered her only half of her usual breakfast (Gotta keep her hungry so she’ll run! Like the hot dogs, this excellent advice came from Sheri, the owner of the lovely Ivee, who took second place of the whole thing in 2019.) But she didn’t end up eating even that much. She knew we were getting ready to go somewhere, and she’s not usually very hungry in the early morning anyhow. This was good, because it meant I could sparingly use some low-value treats at the track without worrying that she would get too full.
You need two handlers for the race: one to hold the corgi at the start line and one to catch them at the finish line. So Delia’s Uncle Jack-Jack, one of her favourite humans, graciously agreed to be my second handler.
For some reason, even though Delia loves riding in the car generally, she never settled down in Jack’s car. I think maybe because it’s a very sporty little car so the back seat is quite narrow and not super comfy for sprawling out on. She never went to sleep like she usually does on road-trips, even though it was a lengthy drive, and she didn’t really lay down much either. But she was quiet and didn’t seem too upset.
We got there early and had to stand outside for about half an hour before we could get in. Delia met a lot of other corgis, and we chatted with Ivee’s owners.
Everyone thought it was hot, but it felt good to us, coming from Eastern Washington where we’ve been having some intense heat waves!
Finally we got to go in, get checked in and everything. They had a nice big shade tent set up for us, and we had brought camping chairs. It was nice getting in and snagging a spot before it got super crowded.
They were filming for ESPN, and a camera guy was coming around getting video of individual corgis. When he came and sat in front of Delia, she started barking at him. And then I realised she wasn’t barking at him at all. It was the fuzzy microphone cover on his camera! It looked like a toy.
Oh, Delia.
(The races will air on ESPN on August 8th, apparently!)
Anyway. Here’s a screen-cap from Emerald Downs’ Facebook live where Delia looks stinkin’ adorable and I look like Sloth from the Goonies.
Delia was No.11 in the 5th heat. Check-in started at noon, so we had a while to wait. But in the meantime, we got to meet some other corgis and also introduce the breed to spectators who were allowed to wander through the tent and meet the dogs. (Not that corgis are a super rare breed that needs promoting—rather, I hope the amount of barking in that tent gave people a realistic picture!)
Actually though, I was pretty proud of the corgs for not barking nearly as much as you might expect! Of course, there was barking, particularly when the horses would walk by down on the track, and as soon as one corgi started barking for any reason, many others would join in. Some clearly did not know what they were barking at. But in general, the humans were far noisier, and the dogs did pretty well.
I was proud of my Delia girl. She did bark a few times (and one time was captured on Facebook live, which was excellent.) But for the most part she just turned and looked at me when the other dogs would bark. She doesn’t tend to bark much in unfamiliar environments, which has nothing to do with training and everything to do with her confidence level. Not that she’s anxious (we’ll get to that in a second!) but rather that she doesn’t feel like she is the one responsible for maintaining the order of the situation, and she will happily defer to whoever that is.
But yeah. She met some other doggos, including 3 lovely corgi gals who are from the same breeder and related to each other, but not to Delia. Although Freya’s younger brother is Delia’s half-brother. And he’s technically Freya’s…nephew? I think his mom is her half sister? Man, I need a family tree! But yes, there’s a connection there somewhere.
And then it was time for the races to open with the parade of corgis. We all walked single-file onto the track. All 72 corgis and their handlers. There was barking, there was pooping, there was rolling in the dirt. There was even eating of the dirt. And that was just the humans! —Sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me this week. My jokes are always bad, but now they’re bad in a way that isn’t even my style. Oh boy. Let’s just pretend that didn’t happen.
I don’t know what I expected the ground to be like, but I didn’t know it would be so soft and fluffy. I’ll bet it’s tremendous on the joints. And I wouldn’t mind taking a fall on it.
And then we got to go back and sit some more. While most of the other dogs were understandably quite restless and alert, Delia decided it would be a very good time to jump up on my lap, sprawl out like a baby, and have a little nap.
I say little nap, but she was dead to the world. Any time there would be some kind of ruckus going on, she would pop one eye open, look at me, and shut it again. And it was a deep sleep too. When I woke her up because it was getting close to our turn, she was all groggy.
I’m really impressed by her ability to just completely relax in the most chaotic settings. I didn’t do anything above and beyond with her socialisation, and with the pandemic I didn’t even do as much as I would have liked to. So most of that is just genetics and early nurturing techniques from her breeder. After struggling to help such an anxious foster dog, high on my list of priorities was a bomb-proof pup I could take anywhere (within reason for a herding dog, of course.) And oh my, did I ever get that!
I’m not going to recount the whole race, because…well, primarily because I wasn’t watching half the time, to be honest. I had a toddler in a dog suit passed out on my lap. But I want to mention that Outlands Willow Wisp came in first in heat 1!! And Outlands Freya would have placed second in that heat had she not halted at the finish line. (The finish line is absolute chaos of people shouting and waving toys, so a lot of dogs had trouble spotting their owners.) There were 6 heats, 12 dogs in each. The winner and the runner-up from each heat would progress to the final.
I interrupt this post for a cuteness overload!
And I interrupt again with a spoiler!
So, spoiler: as winner of the first heat, Willow made it to the final race. It was a close race, but she is fast and light, and she had just gained an easily discernible lead so close to the finish line when another dog slammed into her. She stood up for herself and scuffled with him briefly. Having seen the video, it looks like she would have been done for at that point even if she had kept running. It was a close race, and being thrown off even for a second that close to the finish line wouldn’t have given any dog enough time to recover.
So, if you want my analysis, Willow was absolutely the fastest, but so it goes… “The race does not go to the swift nor the battle to the crack fighters…because time and chance happen to all of them.” (Ecclesiastes 9:11, Byingtons) And to some of them, getting blindsided by another corgi happens. But it’s fine. No really. It’s fine.
But congratulations to Angus! He was the defending champion from 2019, and he won again.
Anyway, back to our chronological telling.
The time finally came for heat 5! Standing in the sun on the asphalt while we waited was the only time I got hot that day. Jack was very concerned for Delia’s paws, so he gallantly held all 25 pounds of her for what felt like 5 hours.
And there I am with my resting face of absolute misery. I promise I was having a good time!
So? How did Delia do?
Well…
So: when we practised for the race, Delia ran like…well, like there was a bacon-wrapped cheddar hotdog in it for her. She’s always been fast. I love when I call her from across the dog park and there are audible gasps because people can’t believe how fast she is. When Jack practised with us a couple nights before the race, he shouted when he let go of her because he wasn’t expecting her to take off like that—he had never really seen her run before. And he’s generally a pretty collected person. He said there was no way the other dogs could be as fast as her. And with the possible exception of the dog who won her heat, I honestly don’t think they were. Had she run like that, she might have at least taken second.
But she didn’t run like that the day of the race. Oh no.
So first, the good news: what I worried would happen is that her bossy herding instincts would kick in, and she would intentionally run behind the other dogs, nipping and barking to urge every last one of them across the finish line before finally crossing it herself, all wiggly and proud of her job well-done and ready to kiss all their faces. Worst case scenario, because these were fellow corgis and not dog park doodles, someone would resent being herded and there would be a scuffle.
So the good news is that none of that happened.
Instead, when Jack let go of her at the start line, she ran the slowest I have ever seen her run. I mean to say—and I cannot emphasise this enough—that I honestly did not believe her capable of moving that slowly. That is how slow she was moving. Any slower and she’d have been walking. From 15 yards away or whatever it was, I could see the confusion and uncertainty, whether that was in her face or in her movements, I’m not sure. She was all the way at the back of the other dogs, looking at them for clues as to what was going on. She kept moving forward, but excruciatingly slowly. It was all over in a blink: a bunch of dogs had already crossed the finish line as I was processing all of this.
At the very last second, it clicked that this was what we had practised, and even though she couldn’t see me, Delia started to sprint. Because of this, she wasn’t actually the very last to cross. She was the 11th—the very number on her bandana.
Here is the video. She is the second from the bottom on the start line, and then she moves to the bottom just before going out of frame. It’s hard to see, but just before crossing she gets a little burst of speed—the moment I saw it click in her eyes. Even then though, that wasn’t as fast as she runs on a regular basis without the involvement of hot dogs.
It sounded like a lot of the other dogs in her heat had run before, and Jack thinks that next time she will know what’s happening and—he says—she’ll win. I don’t know.
But honestly? What made me prouder than if she had won the whole thing was how calm and happy she seemed the whole day. The fact that she could take a nap in my lap with all that was going on just made me so proud of her. We had so much fun just being there and participating! She absolutely got a whole bag of hotdogs, and she knows she is my bestest girl.
On the way home, we stopped at a fruit and antiques mall. I realised we had Delia, so I just sat outside on a bench with her. She was being her goodest self just sitting next to me and smiling at passers-by, and so many of them stopped to pet her and tell me how well-behaved she was. She makes a lot of people happy, as good dogs do.
At the end of the day, I didn’t get a dog to win races with. I wanted a dog that I could enjoy all sorts of adventures and events with, confident that she would be comfortable and have a good time, and not cause anyone else to have a bad time. And Delia excels at that. I couldn’t be prouder of my girl. <3
Wow! I underestimated how much I had to say about the races! I thought I would have room for other updates in here too. But never mind! Tomorrow morning I’m taking Delia in for her spay. So, wish her well!
And have a lovely day.
