Debate – Speech – Dogs – and More Debate That about sums up our lives around here lately. Bebster and Chetta had a speech and debate tournament two weekends ago. The tournaments run from morning until evening on Friday and Saturday with seven rounds of debate over two days and three rounds of speech on Saturday. Bebster did debate and Chetta did speech. Bebster and her teammate only won round, but came out on top of the team that finished second in the tournament. They had one bye, and 4 of the 5 other teams that defeated them placed in the top 5 in the tournament. They drew some tough rounds. The good thing is that Bebster improved a lot over the weekend. Chetta did an interpretation from a portion of the third Millie Kieth book by Martha Finley. She was quite nervous in her first round, but by the second round placed 2nd in a room of 6 and in the final round with three judges received one first and one third placement. Last weekend there was another tournament only an hour and a half from where we live. One of Bebster’s club teams was debating (conflict the prior weekend) I took her up on Saturday to watch. The speech and debate really isn’t about winning, although that is nice when it happens. The girls want to become better prepared for sharing their faith in Christ when the opportunity arises, and this seems like a great place to learn to speak to others and in debate to learn to listen and share based on what you hear. ~~~ A friend of ours from the dog world teaches rally obedience classes once a week and has invited the girls to come participate. It is very different from the classic obedience style work the girls normally do with their dogs. In this, there is a snaking path set up with cards. Each card tells you something different to do with your dog, like circle to the left or right, stand your dog and walk around it. You get the idea. Our friend thought Ellie was getting bored and that this would help get her focused on Inky better. She hasn’t been as focused in the past year or so, and the rally does seem to be helping her. We will see when she gets to her first dog show early next month. The dog show we normally go to that is close is only doing obedience once this year instead of three times, so we went on-line to find some other ones to go to this spring. We thought Ellie might also do better in the cooler weather of winter spring, than the dog days of summer. Inky and Ellie just have 7 more doubles of the required 15 to get her final title, the GOCH. There are 4 opportunities at each show. So far she has obtained 8 doubles in 12 tries, which is a pretty good record. (I won’t bore you with the details of what a double is, but if you are interested, let me know.) Doing all of our normal tasks involved with cooking, cleaning, and home school, we are keeping more than busy, but in a good way. ~~~ Verse of the Day ~Proverbs 19:21~ Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. I pray that it is the Lord’s purpose that we follow in all our daily activities. ~Blessings~ | 
