And the Wiener is...Well, They're All Wieners Really

Today was Jenny's big day - the 9th Annual Wiener Nationals in San Diego. This year they were held at the rugby field at Qualcomm Statdium. We had a lot of fun there were about 225 dachshunds at this year's event. The winners are supposed to go on to some kind of semi-finals - notice the lack of knowledge regarding this next step, obviously we won't be going on to that round - and then the finals will be held during the Holiday Bowl with contestants from around the country. I know, you don't have to tell me.

We decided to walk to the event this morning and crossed the Qualcomm Stadium parking lot to get to the event site. Pretty much from this angle, we were at the farthest possible point away from where we needed to be - and I have the blister to prove it. However, I want you to look closely at the picture below. If you notice in the forground, there are some people walking through cones in the parking lot. We thought - hmmm, what are they doing?

Several of the car clubs come to the stadium parking lot to set up a cone tracks and then race their cars on non-event days. So, we thought maybe they were walking the track before they got in their cars to race. Each person or pair of people was walking almost exactly equidistant from the next set of people, say 100 feet apart from each other. And the track zig, zagged making a fairly large walking area so there were tons of people out there (I know its hard to see in the picture). Anyway, it turned out that these people were just walking. It seems that some group must set up this track and people come down and walk/run for exercise. My thought is: Mission Bay is only a few miles away - wouldn't you rather walk along the bay than through Qualcomm parking lot?

So, after some confusion over where the racing area actually was - (they had said something about it being close to the trolly stop. Thinking - cake, walk toward the trolly stop - I hadn't bothered to read the directions or instructions on exactly where we were supposed to go (I'm not the best when it comes to direction follow through). So after navigating our way through the walker track and around the stadium, we reached the trolley stop, but no one was there! I thought - oh, my gosh, is this the wrong day? is it Friday and I forgot to go to work?) - we got registered and waited with some of the other owners for the races to start. - P.S. the news was there, too - can I just say how wierd it is to watch the news people do their live thing in front of you - where they are talking to the people in the studio as if they can see them in the camera? What a stange job.

Here's a look at what one of the preliminary races looked like. This year they ran on grass instead of sand and a lot more dogs actually ran.

But, not all of them...

Despite bringing her favorite green hippo and wearing her new bandana with the evil lady bug, Jenny had no interest in running down the track. She's smart and knew that my husband was behind the starting gate. So after he tossed her through the door, she waiting until they closed the gate, then walked back around to find him. She did stay in the race though by walking in front of him all the way back to the finishing line with a final time close to a minute, rather than the 3.5 seconds needed to get to the semi-finals. But, that's ok, we love our little girl and she seemed to enjoy herself even though it was pretty hot and she kept seeking out the pitance of shady spots she could find.


So, that's it for this year's Wiener Nationals, but we will be back next year - whether Jenny likes it or not.