Morey Hits the Road

Well, Morey went to his first wheelchair rugby tournament this weekend. It was in Dallas, a 3 hour drive from Austin. His trip involved a van ride sharing his space with 3 rugby chairs, staying in a hotel, and hanging out at the gym. And, as usual, he added even more fans to his ever-growing fan club! I took some pictures to illustrate parts of the trip.

I brought a collapsible crate for him to stay in while I was playing in games. We have a guy from Japan playing on our rugby team this season and he was amused by the crate, which he called Morey's "house". It was nice to know that Morey was safe while I was crashing around on the court.

Between our games we had several hours and so we used some of the time to play and train. We played fetch in the gym and the guys on the team all wanted to take turns throwing the ball for him. I also had him play "find" with his tennis ball. I was impressed by how good he was at this. There was a large area to cover and lots of things to hide the ball in, but each time he kept going until he found it. We do this at my office, but there is a limited number of places I can find it. At the gym it was more of a challenge. At times, it took him up to 5 minutes to find, but he kept searching and using his nose to sniff it out. He drew quite a crowd of people watching him do his search for his favorite possession.

At the hotel, Morey walked right in like he owned the place. He approved of the bed and as the picture will show, he was quite comfortable. He was really tired both of the nights because I don't think he slept much during the day. He is still kind of a bed hog, so that is an issue we are still trying to work out.

Morey's first rugby tournament was just another adventure he handled with the confidence and poise of a seasoned service dog. Good thing, since in 2 weeks we will be flying to Las Vegas for a tournament.

For those who were wondering about our rugby results, we went 3-3 during the weekend and came in 3rd place. (Lost a heartbreaking game by 1 point at the last second and during our game playing for 3rd/4th place we beat the Utah team who had beaten us the night before.) This was the first really challenging tournament our rugby team has been to, so it was exciting to see how we measured up. Unfortunately I re-injured my ribs that are still healing from a rugby injury in December and so I wasn't able to play in the final game. Hopefully I will be up and rolling again soon!