Shiny Happy Tika

SUMMARY: Day 1: Team Tournament--we won, we won!

Today was all team, all day. The Dog Agility Masters (DAM) tournament consists of four individual events and the 3-dog relay--or, for Performance dogs, 2-dog relay. Boost was in regular, one among 27 teams, and Tika ran in Performance, one among 15 teams.

Our first run of the day, Standard, set the pattern. Tika and Brenn both ran nice, smooth, clean runs. No bars down, no missed contacts, reasonably fast. We didn't win the Standard event, but we were I think 2nd or 3rd combined. ALL THREE DOGS in Boost's team popped out of the weaves early and then took off courses for Elimination. Sheesh! In Team, the penalty for off-course is very high. We landed at the bottom of the 27 teams (with at least a couple of others who E'ed with all 3 dogs), and determinedly held that position all through the day.

Second run, Gamblers, had some interesting nonstandard rules. Tika did well except that I mishandled her going into the weaves in the opening and I went back and redid them, meaning that we didn't quite finish our last 5-point obstacle before the whistle, so ended in 5th[?] instead of 2nd individually; Brenn did better than that, and combining our scores after the first 2 classes landed us at the top of the 15 teams, and we determinedly held that position all through the day.

I've always liked how Tika and Brenn complement each other. Brenn did better than Tika in Standard and Gamblers; Tika did better than Brenn in Snooker and Jumpers, in fact taking 2nd place (of 10 in her height group) in the Jumpers class with a very nice, fast, smooth run.

Boost also had an amazingly smooth and fast Jumpers run, although she had 2 bars down. No refusals, no runouts, not even significant hesitations. It was a joy to run her there.

I messed up Boost's very short Snooker run; she did her part in keeping the bars up (yay!) but I didn't handle her well; I also am mostly to blame for messing up the gamble run because I changed my course at the last minute which turned out to be a mistake.

When we got to the relay, Tika and Brenn had only about a 25-point lead over the 2nd place team. Relay *really* counts heavily against your team if you off-course--150 points. So if either one of us were to go off course, we'd plummet through the rankings like a boulder dropped from a cliff. We could *conceivably* earn enough 5-point faults between us--knocked bars, popped contacts, like that--to drop below the 2nd place team, but it seemed unlikely. And, indeed, Brenn ran clean and Tika's only fault was ticking the broad jump with a toenail as she went by; it's metal and boy could you hear it!

We celebrated enthusiastically--neither of us have ever been on a team that even placed in a team event, and this time we won gold medals. Yeeha! (Dang, medal is turned sideways in my snapshot:)

[A friend took photos of all of us; will get them eventually.]

It's funny to see how DAM team works: You don't have to win everything (or even anything), but if you do WELL and do so CONSISTENTLY, you beat out everyone who had issues of any kind with any of their team. So--neither of us won any individual class; our combined scores didn't win any of the classes (although I think we were 2nd & 3rd in a couple), and we came in pretty low in the relay based on our speeds plus Tika's 5 faults--but we had enough of a lead that, since we held it together, no one could really expect to catch us at that point.

Meanwhile, Boost's 1st teammate ran very nice Snooker, Gamblers, and Jumpers rounds; the 2nd teammate was having a lot of problems and ended up scratching from the rest of the day over concern that the dog might be ill or injured.

So we went into the finals--in last place--with one "E" automatically against us because we were missing one dog. We both ran fairly nicely, though--we might have pulled out of last place, but I didn't get a good look at the scores.

Sooo the day went well, I am a happy TMH Human Mom, weather was just about perfect, dogs are healthy, friends are fun to hang around with--OK, I'm up for another 2 days of this!

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Exercise and preparation

SUMMARY: How the dogs and I are preparing for our long agility weekend.

Seems to me that Tika tires out faster than she used to. OK, sure, she's 8 and a half now, but it also occurs to me that, since I'm now combining 2 dogs into one class and mostly focusing on Boost, she hardly ever gets a lot of long agility sequences to do. In the yard, we tend to focus on maybe 3 or 4 or 5 obstacles for some particular thing we're focusing on.

I've been getting better again about getting out for a mile-or-more brisk walk with the dogs nearly every day, but that's not the same as running.

It was just wayyy too hot over the weekend to want to do anything--here's my indoor/outdoor temps midafternoon on Saturday; I missed the 105 and 106 showings Sat and Sun!-- but on Monday I set up a sort of course in my little crowded yard that allows us to do 16 or more obstacles over & over to get into shape. Discovered some interesting handling & performance issues with both dogs, so we got to do some actual practice on stuff as well as doing 16-obst courses several times each day.
[Insert course map when I get replacement activation code.]

I'll probably do once around today with each dog, plus bar-knocking drills, because we're coming up on a 3-day USDAA trial starting bright and early tomorrow morning. Fortunately the heat has dropped way back, and so last night I got my Wednesday hike in with the Sierra Club for my own physical conditioning (it's still not running, jogging, or wind sprints, but it gets my heart & lungs & legs working for sure).
Hike started at about 2300' above sea level (long drive up from the valley), dropped to below 2000', and peaked at 2572, so we got some good ups and downs.

As is typical on hot summer days, it's hazy looking out across the coastal range.

And as the sun sets, we had this intriguing view of the top of Mount Diablo, 100 miles away, floating disembodied above the (cough cough) haze that hides all the mountains between us and it, with just a bit of gleam of the san francisco bay upper center (you'll want to click to see the larger image on this one for sure).
Parts of the trail that were fire roads, and well-traveled by vehicles and bikes, were incredibly dusty, with that superfine dust with texture finer than talcum powder, so no matter how gently you set down your foot, a puff of dust rose. And we were hiking in a large group. Stayed well back from the people ahead!

OK, so this weekend: Team on Friday. Tika's first Performance team, and we're teaming with our ofttimes partner Brenn (from our one appearance in the finals at Scottsdale). How can these dogs be old enough to be in Performance? Gah. Brenn has arthritis in her feet, Tika in her neck. Me in my knees. Pfooey.

Saturday and Sunday is everything else plus Steeplechase and Grand Prix. You know that I'm getting my expectations set high for Tika in those in Performance--her first two times out, she won 1st round steeplechase (and 2nd round, too, the one time we stayed for it) and came in 2nd in grand prix. I'm going to try not to expect too much, but it's hard to avoid.

Mind you, there's a difference between expectations and goals. My goal is to win. But if I *expect* to do well and don't, I have trouble letting that go.

Tika still needs a Standard and 3 Jumpers at 26" for her ADCH-Silver. We've been practicing the last 2 weeks at 24" and 26", so hopefully she can keep her bars up, although mixed with the 22" classes all day friday and some the other days--dunno. We'll see.

Boost still needs one--just one, dangit!--Jumpers leg for her MAD... funny to see that she also just needs one pairs leg for her Relay Bronze! Of course, that's the only course where knocked bars and refusals don't wipe you out. I won't even go into looking for the ADCH--Snooker Super-Qs and Jumpers legs evade us at every turn.

But the weather should be nice, the friends should be nice, and we'll just see what happens.

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Dog Agility Goes Mainstream

SUMMARY: We're in the funny papers!

Hard to believe my eyes: A mainstream syndicated comic strip (Rhymes with Orange) today featured agility dogs!

View the page I found this on; view the comic's home page.

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Ooooh Noooo!

SUMMARY: Agility trial angst.

Wait--how is it possible that I'm already almost at this weekend's 3-day USDAA trial in Prunedale? Starting FRIDAY morning! Ack! Have we practiced ANYTHING that we need to practice? No! None! Nothing!

And I just realized that of COURSE we're not having class Thursday night this week because half the class will already be down there camping out and the rest of us will be going to bed very early.

Need to practice Tika jumping at 26"! Need to work on Boost's bar-knocking exercises! Ack! No time! Too hot! Boring! [wait--subtract that last one--one is supposed to MAKE the things that you have to do FUN so that you do them. ... OK, BORING!]

Ack ack ack!

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Sister's Family and their Really Big Jumping Dogs

SUMMARY: In which my nieces and sister do some fun stuff with their animals in the heat, and I watch.

Saturday morning, I tossed my borrowed SLR camera into MUTT MVR and swooped up to Portola Valley to finally (after meaning to do it for years) watch my nieces and sister ride their horses. It was wayyyy too hot to consider taking my own beasties along, so they stayed home.

It amused me to see how very similar to agility class their jumping classes are, talking about the line that you use to get from one jump to the next, what lead the animals are on, how your body affects the critter's actions, how many strides the dog--er--whatever--should take between obstacles, being careful about memorizing the obstacle sequence so you don't go off course, whether they should be bounce jumping (well--sort of--), watching the instructor change the jump heights (I'm tellin' ya, those are REALLY big dogs they have up there)--

I espied these nifty but humongous jumps in one of the fields.



In dog agility, it's the *humans* who wear the ankle and knee braces. (My sister's jumping animal.)
My sister didn't actually tell me that she was jumping *before* my nieces' classes, so I got to admire her animal up close and quiet after they were already done. He had to sniff my hands very carefully, just like normal dogs, except with nostrils about the size of some dogs' heads.

Here are my nieces, cantering their really big horse-sized dogs:


What ranch would be complete without a ranch dog? (Shaved just in time for the summer heat wave.)

Or a rambunctious lab puppy helping with the grooming?

Or a visiting dog, watching his human practice her horsework, and expressing his opinion about the whole thing (in between bouts of being a cute corgi)? (Owner claims this dog is sitting. With corgis, who can tell?)

I took a squillion photos of the riders and jumpers and will get around to posting the rest on my photo site sometime very soon. Really. Any day now.

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We're Havin' A Heat Wave

SUMMARY: In which we attempt to get the TMH dogs to go swimming in an actual swimming pool.

106 F (41 C) today on my back deck. Yeesh. (Although the official temp, at the airport, closer to the bay, was a mere 94, the Los Gatos temperature, which is farther up the valley, more or less parallel to where I am, came in at 105. What a difference 10 miles makes!)

So we invited ourselves over to my sister's yard, in which they have a swimming pool. I know for a fact that Tika likes to get into water where she can swim a bit; likes getting into the ponds here in my yard (one ankle deep, one chest-deep when full). Figured that she, at least, would like the pool, especially if I were in it with her.

Boost isn't keen on getting into the ponds unless there's a toy there, and even so she attempts to get as little wet as possible. But she loves playing in the hose spray. And her sister can't be kept out of the water. And there are so many Border Collies around who love water. I figured that with a little frisbee, she'd be in, especially in this heat.

Didn't work that way.

Worked slowly at coaxing each onto a shallow step, then a medium step. Actually lifted them, I think. It's all a little fuzzy now. Spent about 2 hours trying to gradually get them to where they'd actually swim. Coaxing, lifting, holding, praising. It was quite an exhausting experience on all our parts. Finally got boost to hop in from a step under her own power--once--to get the frisbee. First time that I took her in and held her until she was making swimming motions, she wanted nothing to do with the frisbee and instead wanted out. By that time, had a decent but not perfect idea of where the various steps were. After that, though, she wanted the frisbee badly enough that I was able to lower her into the pool in my arms, aim her at the frisbee, and she'd get it and make a beeline for the exit.

Tika came down to the deeper step for food, but she wasn't happy about it.

Ah, well. I think we all got a good workout. I took a camera but didn't actually put it into someone's hands and say "take photos of this!" Oh, well.

Photo: Why you shouldn't slack off on trimming your dogs' toenails if you're going to carry them into the pool.



Photo: Afterwards, lying in the shade and drying off.

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Dog-Food Eating Zombies!

SUMMARY: In the dark, they come and steal our food.

We know that we have night-walking, flesh-eating zombies in our yard in the dark of night from time to time, because I often find plums from my tree that's on the west side of my house in the pond over on the east side of my house with some of their flesh eaten away.

We keep our dogfood in a giant garbage-can-like bin on the back porch next to the kitchen door because there's no room in the kitchen and, even though it's a nice bright kitcheny white color, really garbage can decor is out. Haven't had any troubles with that, except for one year when the really desperate rats chewed through the lid. (Had to have been desperate; who would eat dogfood when there were plums available? And oranges? And apples? And lobelia flowers? OK, I don't know who's eating all my lobelia flowers.)


Thanks to the miracle of white plastic tape--all the versatility of duct tape, except bright kitcheny white--I repaired the lid, so then they chewed under it, so then I had to repair that and also scare them away by putting rat traps in and on the bin for several nights running. Didn't catch anything, just scared them off. Clever rats.


But, to no one's surprise, I digress.

Yesterday morning, I came downstairs to discover the dogfood bin tipped over on its side with food cascaded out across the deck. I don't know whether Tika was more excited about smelling the zombies who were responsible, or about scarfing down the food. Wait--I do know. It was the food. But then, after we had collectively cleaned up the food, tremendous quantities of zombie-odor sniffing occurred.

Last night, after agility class and before bed, I latched down the lid on the bin. It latches pretty good; it is such a secure latching that I have to call a knowledgeable expert, like maybe a desperate 5-year-old, to unlatch it; I personally have to struggle with it for most of the morning to get it open after latching it.

Plus it is a heavy bin with all that dogfood (40 pound bags of food, you know; it takes almost 2 bags. Although admittedly it is now down to maybe 20 pounds) so I know that, with the lid latched, it is one secure mother-feeder.

So, at around 1:00 this morning, Tika informed me in no uncertain terms that zombies were afoot and she needed to go do something about them. Human Mom, however, was very tired and didn't want to get out of the toasty bed and argued with Tika about it for about 5 minutes and finally had to shut all the upstairs windows before Tika gave up and settled back to bed with an indignant Huff.

This morning, the bin was on the opposite side of the deck, beyond the cute little wrought iron table and chair, tipped over, lid off, with food cascading across the deck and over the side into the garden. Tika spent a good 10 minutes checking for food and zombie clues.

Maybe tonight, if Tika tells me about zombies, we'll come downstairs and give them some really good Woofs to scare them off. Might not let Tika loose in the yard; Remington tangled with a zombie one night and we both regretted it for weeks caring for his wounds. We just want to scare them a bit. Of course, these could just be giant mutant angry rats about TMH having wiped out their cousins in the attic. I wonder whether rat traps would scare them off? Or the zombies, either?

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Of course, if I were a *useful* blogger who didn't want to take up all of your time, and mine, too, snapping photos and digressing along, I COULD have had a post that read simply, "Coons getting into dogfood on deck. Must do something." Better luck next time.

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No Training. But Walking.

SUMMARY: Busy but active.

Have been too busy with work (and other important things, like photos) to have the energy to do some actual dog training. Need to get back to the bar-knocking work, as there's a 3-day USDAA trial coming up 4th of July weekend.

However, I've tried to be sure that I get out with the dogs for at least a mile-long stroll every day (except the day after last weekend's trial, when my knee was painful and slightly swollen. Lots of ice ensued).

Yesterday I walked with and without the dogs. Took MUTT MVR in for an oil change. While they're doing their dirty work, the dogs and I walk. We got in a mile and a half before it looked like they were almost done, then we sat in the waiting room and--well, what else do you do in the waiting room?

They have magazines for people who want to sit there for half an hour burning NO calories and getting NO exercise when it's a perfectly lovely day out and there are sidewalks in every direction. Danged lazy Americans!

Knee felt fine, so I left the dogs home (many trails in our area do not allow even leashed dogs) and hiked up Black Mountain with the Wednesday Sierra Club group. Five miles or so, several hundred feet up. Small group this time, not sure why.


But it was OK to have a small group and no dogs because we saw wildlife everywhere, enjoying the evening. Saw several deer, including mom and fawn. Little lizards skittering everywhere across our path. California quail. Quite a few jackrabbits (two in this photo--one taking off down the left branch of the road, one dark sitting near the junction).

It was perfect weather, and sunset time always produces such glorious light. Watched fingers of fog from the Pacific slowly grasp the coastal mountains.

Saw Lick Observatory shining brightly on Mount Hamilton across the very hazy Santa Clara valley. (Might have to click photo to see the larger version.)


Knee did just fine; still fine today. Class tonight. Back to work.

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All the Agility Course Maps You Could Want--Eventually

SUMMARY: New site--visit, download, contribute.

Team Fernandez-Lopez emailed me a week or so ago about a cool new site that they were in the process of implementing. I got to be among the first lucky non-TFL persons to play with it and to upload a few course maps. TFL was pretty excited about the idea and spent a ton of hours on it in the first few days, and from the looks of it, since then as well.

Check out AgilityCourseMaps.com.

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CPE Trial Sunday The Natural Order Is Restored

SUMMARY: Some quick (I hope) notes on results.

Weather was much more June-like today; getting a tetch on the warm side but not enough to be hot.

Today Tika earned 4 Qs out of 4 runs; much more like Tika at an agility trial. So 7 for 8 overall, with the only disqualifying fault being an off-course that I caused.

And among us, we got a few 1st places today, finally. Still, not many--I'm used to coming home with a boatload of blues from CPE and this time it was 3 1sts (only 1 for Tika! and two for Boost!), 4 2nds, 6 3rds, and the other 3 runs lower. Dogs were competing against anywhere from 3 to 10 dogs, mostly on the higher end, so we were still up there. But still.

Boost Qed twice today, the two non-Qs being--you guessed it--knocked bars.

Now, with Tika, let me tell you that we were knocked out of contention for 1st in Snooker because the judge called one of her A-frame contacts and out of contention for first in Full House because the judge called one of her A-frame contacts. She did 11 Aframes this weekend, so missing 2 wasn't maybe so bad--But.

--see--she has perfect 2-on/2-off (stopping at the bottom) contacts at home. And in class. And at fun matches. Almost impossible to make her blow them off. But at trials? Pfah! I just got tired of reinforcing them and refixing them again and again and again in competition, and since she needs the extra speed, my strategy for the last couple of years has become "try to get part of my body--at least an arm, or all of me if I can force or fake a front cross--in front of her as she comes down to make her think just enough to get a toenail or two into the yellow zone." (I don't think that name for my contact system is quite snazzy enough to catch on, do you think?)

Which means that she no longer has independent A-frames, meaning that I can't send her ahead of me to them, run out ahead of her while she's doing them, or be a long distance away laterally. It's a handicap against better handling strategies.

At the end of the day today, as we were all packing up, someone I know only somewhat came up to me and said that she noticed that I had taught my dog "modified running contacts" and wanted to know whose method I had used for teaching them. I laughed and said "modified is right!--because they're supposed to be 2 on/2 off stopping contacts!" She said that she liked the way that tika moves through the contacts. Tika likes it too, I can assure everyone.

Boost did all of her weaves perfectly this weekend if I remember correctly. Woot! And I only had to stop her once after a contact for leaving early--last class of the weekend--and that was after a class where I released her very quickly from 2 consecutive A-frame contacts, so that was undoubtedly my doing.

We still had issues with running past jumps because she's not looking for obstacles, slowing down and turning back to me rather than taking a perfectly fine straight line of obstacles, or crashing into obstacles because she's bouncing around in front of me backwards while I'm running full-tilt forward, the usual stuff. Sigh. But she had some blazing times on a couple of courses. Someday. Maybe.

So. Gotta go. Maybe more info some other time. Or not.

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