A Bust at the Chili Cook-off

Our weekend didn't go exactly as planned. In my mind, I thought we would go to the Arkansas State Hillbilly Chili Cook-off, maybe get some story ideas, eat lots of chili and come home and take antacids all night.
Turns out, I took antacids, but it wasn't due to all the chili I ate.
You see, Dakota, our weiner-beagle, had other ideas for her Saturday morning. I keep the two little ones on leashes to save them from the bears, coyotes, big cats (don't know if they're technically mountain lions or cougars or if that's the same thing), snakes and if they make it to the shore of the lake - steel jawed traps.
However, the little dogs just want to be dogs too and so we usually feel sorry for them and allow them to roam free in the yard while we're outside. Usually this is not a problem. On Saturday, it was.
Dakota was gone for 2 hours, at which point, I was getting pretty frantic. I refused to leave the house while she was in the woods by herself. What if she got caught in brush or more horribly -one of those traps and started yelping for us?
At 12:30, she finally wandered back to the house, tail waggling as if to say, "I'm home and I'm thirsty, why are you so upset?"
I totally missed the deadline for getting my quarterly taxes postmarked and by the time we got to the chili cook off, they were out of chili - a full 2 hours before the advertised ending time to the festival.
I started out the day thinking I would find a good story or two on a festival and maybe a profile on a crafter. But the story Gods had something else in mind. I'm not sure what story I can pull out of Saturday, but there must be a story in there somewhere - other than how well Malox works on a stomach wracked with stress and full of fried foods we ate at the diner on the way home.