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It’s national specialty week for the English Cocker Spaniel Club of America (ECSCA), and I’m here in Milan OH at the national specialty. On Monday, Madison made her agility debut in FAST (did the send successfully and racked up 35 points before we made the critical mistake of retaking the A-frame…oops!) But she stayed in the same ring with me, worked the whole course, and didn’t check out to do her own thing once.

Then on Wednesday, she put together a lovely run in Rally Novice B, tied for first place with a 98 and ended up in second place (Rally ties are decided by course time.) I was really happy I’ve kept her in Novice B, on lead, to get as much experience showing her as possible and let her work the kinks out of the whole thinking-dog thing. Best of all, co-owner Lisa got to see M’s run, and she was happy and impressed. All wonderful.

But on Tuesday, I learned through email, phone calls and txt messages that the R&D division of my group based in Syracuse will be closing no later than end of 2010. I’ll just be 55, so if I can hold onto my job until then, I should be okay. If my job is eliminated before the move, I’ll be a year short of 55–and lose about two-thirds of my pension.

On one hand, I was philosophical about the announcement meeting when I left on Friday–I couldn’t change the meeting, so I might as well enjoy my national, a show I’ve been planning on for months.
Today, though, philosophy lost out to figuring out how I could survive.

It’s hard to think that the company didn’t do this on purpose–evaluate the ages of the people at the site, and then select the closing date and job eliminations so that they could avoid paying full pensions to those who would hit 55 within a couple months of the relocations.

And knowing that the job front is in upheaval at home sure makes it tough to keep my head in the game on a dog show vacation.