Actual Agility Video Footage!

SUMMARY:

Last weekend I promised to post some videos. OK, here ya go. I take my camcorder to every trial with me, but almost never remember to ask anyone to tape us. Last weekend, I finally did--on 4 runs only.

When transferring from my camera to computer, there was this odd jumping thing it was doing, like it was skipping frames or something. Not sure whether camera, tape, recording, playback--and I didn't feel like futzing with it to figure it out.

Round 1 Steeplechase

Tika wins in Performance, Boost Qs in Championship even with a bar down, because she was plenty fast.

Boost's run: Note that, on the first A-frame, I release her quickly, and on the 2nd Aframe, she doesn't bother actually doing 2 on/2 off or waiting for a release. And at the very end, instead of running ahead of me over the last line of jumps, she's kind of waiting for me and looking back a bit.

Tika's Run: Note a huge wide turn after the first Aframe, because I'm trying to get in front of her to make sure she gets a foot in the yellow zone so she thinks we're going straight instead of turning left.

Boost's run:

Grand Prix

Tika takes 2nd place.

Masters Jumpers

Boost and I still have some issues. Like, I'm trying to give her plenty of room to take a jump right in front of her before rear crossing, but she just won't do it, backs around it, and backjumps it. Most of the run isn't awful; she sends out nicely to one jump but, near the end, comes in around a jump I was trying to send her out to. And a bar down. Ah, well. Mostly she's starting to run instead of looking at me all the time.

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Boost Plays to the Max and Tika Has a Lot to Say

SUMMARY: Small dogs come visiting.

On Friday, an irrigation specialist person came here for an hour to discuss my irrigation mess, and he brought his Italian Greyhound, Dante. Dante and Boost couldn't have been happier. Dante chased Boost, and Boost blasted through the various tunnels full speed, then would skid to a halt inside one end, Dante would run over and bark at her, and she'd u-turn and skeedaddle fast as lightning to the other end, Dante would run over and bark. Repeat. Until that tunnel got dull, then there'd be sprinting into other tunnels, behind shrubs, and so on.

Very happy dogs.

(Although Tika is a little suspicious about the whole thing:)


And Boost got well worn out.

Tika, who is funny funny funny, isn't much into playing with other dogs (although she and Boost played the same way when Boost was younger--Tika doing the chasing and barking for the most part--and they still wrestle with each other pretty much every day). But she gets off on the excitement exuding from the other dogs, and she barks BARKS BARKS!!!


For some inane reason or other it never occurred to me to get my camera out.

The next day, a friend and her two French Bulldogs came to visit. Now, the older Frenchie--Elliot--and Boost are about the same age, and they had several opportunities in hotel rooms and when visiting each other when they were between about 6 months and a year and a half to play play play, and they loved it! And they still remember each other. (Dang, thought I had photos posted from wayyy back, but not finding them.)

The problem is that Elliot is recovering from a damaged disc in his spine and wasn't supposed to be playing. Boost tried and tried and tried to get him to play, and he tried and tried to play with her, but his Human Mom kept putting the kibosh on it. So sad! The other, younger Frenchie was delighted to play with Boost, and they did a bit of running but mostly wrestling, although Boost kept going back to Elliot to try to engage him.

Ah, well.
Boost: Elliot, c'monnn, play with me!

Elliot: Boost, c'monnn, play with me!


Boost is so gentle with the tiny dogs. And she gets right down to their level to play, like she's doing here with Babette.


Babette always looks so cheerful AND has a pointed tongue. How cute is that?

OK, really, I'd never have a Frenchie myself, but just look at that face on Elliot!


Meanwhile, Tika had a lot to say about all that excitement, too. MAN, she has a loud bark!

I did finally remember to get my camera out, after they were all pretty tuckered out.

Babette's and Boost's tongues hung wayyyy out. It was a good workout for them both.


Boost got well worn out AGAIN.


Life is good.

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The Evil Devil Floor(s)

SUMMARY: Boost's brain explodes over--flooring.

Boost has been known to have brain implosions over various terrifying things. Like the radio controlled car. The guys tossing a football in the street. Some odd smell at an agility trial. Things that make her tuck her tail and melt into a pool of miserable and mindless terror.

She gets better as she matures, but I know that if I start to see those little signs at a trial, I'd better get a toy in her mouth as fast as possible and devote my full attention to her.

So. Back in March, we did a CPE trial up in Santa Rosa and went to the Tie Dye house to spend the night. Because we're friends with Tie Dye, she has kindly allowed us to stay overnight on quite a few occasions. She has a couple of wild little agility cattle dogs who can be a bit overwhelming when you first come through the door, but the last couple of times we spent the night, Boost and the younger one chased each other madly around the house and yard. So we have all been there before, and there was never a sign of Evil.

Until this time.

I don't know what happened when we first arrived. The ACDs were dervishes of bouncing and barking insanity as we arrived at the door, and Boost thought it would be better to turn around and go back out to the car, but I did convince her to come in through the door. Took the leashes off the dogs into a burst of doggish activity, then I hung out with Tie Dye until our tea was ready, when we sat at the table in the dining area.

Realized gradually that I was hearing Boost whining in the background. Did we somehow close a door on her? Did one of the huge dangerous ACDs have her intimidated into a corner? No--she was sitting on the doormat inside the front door, all by herself, noone else in sight, looking plaintively at me and whining.

"Well, come over here!" I said, thinking that perhaps I had said something that made her think she had to stay there. She stood up and moved her feet agitatedly, not quite stepping off the mat, then sat again and whimpered.

And I realized--somehow the wood floor had become Evil. Now--I have wood flooring in my house, but not as much of it. The stairs are wood. The upstairs hall is wood, but most if it is covered with rugs. It's not as if we don't have smooth floors at home. Tile and sheet vinyl as well. Lots of smooth flooring.

With tremendous angst on Boost's part, I managed to get her to scrabble across the small stretch of floor to the carpet in the living room. I figured that, once she was there, everything would be fine and she'd come join us in the dining area.

But--no--she ascertained that the Evil wood floor on THIS side of the carpet was the same as the Evil wood floor on THAT side of the carpet, and none shall pass. She tried and tried, moaning and whining. She'd get her front feet two or three feet out into the wood--stretching wayyyyy out--but her hind feet...the very tips of her back-stretched toenails... remained firmly latched onto the very edge of the carpet.

Apparently Evil Flooring has a thing only for hind legs.

I know I shouldn't have laughed, but I couldn't help myself. I got her really involved in a game of tug-o-war on the living room carpet, because she gives herself 100% and then some into tug. She is a frantic, over-enthused, manic tugger. I figured that, if I gradually worked over to the side of the carpet and onto the wood floor, she wouldn't even notice that she had crossed the line.

But--well--they say that dogs have great peripheral vision. She would be 100% full-body tugging, but the instant that another step would put a foot onto Evil, she dropped the tug. Tried this several times; she knew EXACTLY to the inch where Evil began and she'd have none of that.

I tried picking her up and putting her down on the floor, supporting her. She tensed up so drastically that her toenails stuck out at all odd angles and her legs splayed out as if she were trying to keep her balance on the slippery deck of a storm-tossed ship. And her whining became agonized.

So I moved her onto the dining room doormat, and there she stayed for a while.

Eventually I moved her back into the living room, and then when she became desperate enough to brave the Evil, she managed it on rigid, terrified, crouching legs ONLY by closely hugging the wall, one careful, agonized, whimpery step at a time--I guess so that, if Evil suddenly tried to leap up and surround her, she could climb up the wall. Can't cross the open floor, but with great pain can cross the floor along the wall.

And back to the doormat, where she sat, looking put upon.

At bedtime, I had to carry her from the doormat to the carpeted stairs. I figured that, after a nice quiet night's sleep in a familar (carpeted) room, that the next morning they'd just breeze downstairs without another thought to the previous night's Evilness.

So, up bright and early, down the stairs--and Boost will not leave the bottom--carpeted--step. I coax and coax and coax, and she'll stretch her front feet wayyyy out into the wood, but the back feet will NOT leave the carpeted step.

So. What to do? OK, Tie Dye's kitchen floor is almost exactly the same flooring as in my kitchen--high-end sheet vinyl textured like slate. So I figured (note how much figuring I'm doing here) that, if I picked her up and set her down on a familiar type of flooring, she'd be fine. Figure again! The poor terrified doggie! Took a few excruciatingly painful, stiff, hunched over steps, right up next to the cabinets for safety--sinking lower and getting stiffer with every step, until she completely froze and started yowling in terror.

I laughed until I cried. I am such a bad mom. This is the same kitchen floor upon which she romped last visit. Had dinner there. Drank water there. And on several previous visits.

So I had to carry her back to the front doormat to be able to get back out to the car.

End of story, right? Leave Tie Dye house and whatever trauma had caused this, and life would be good?

So. It's two weeks later, the Monday before Haute TRACS, and we're all going over to KK's house to do scribe sheets. We do this very thing before many, many Bay Team trials. All the dogs go over there; Tika and Boost know where the doggie door is; Dig the puppy and Boost played til exhaustion the last couple of times we were there, frolicking full speed across the (note) wood floors throughout the house. We have been there many times since Boost was a puppy.

We arrive. I make my way through the mass of excited KK border collies, Tika heads out to the kitchen to check for scraps of food that the 3 resident dogs might have missed, and I stroll across the wide expanse of floor to the work area.

And guess who's still stuck on the front doormat, whimpering? Gah!

There is a small carpet in the living room, and as I ignore her for quite a while, she gets up her courage and LEAPS from the doormat to the living room carpet--then hovers at the edge closest to us, whining and looking plaintive.

As the evening progresses, she SOOOO desperately wants to get to where we are, and to get to the fun toys that the other dogs have left around the floor--BUT! There is Evil all around her!

We are astonished and greatly amused to discover that she stretches fuuuuuuurther and fuuuuurther out towards a delectable toy--can't quite get it--streeeetches more--and now her rear feet have actually left the carpet, but they're still stretched out way bhind her as if the were still latched to the fabric... she gets a full three feet away from the carpet, but still stretched out as though anchored by her rear toenails...decides she can't actually get to the toy without incurring Evil, backs hastily back onto the carpet, and sits at the edge and whines.

We lay down a couple of throw rugs so that she can actually move around by leaping from one to the next, like a frog might hop from lily pad to lily pad to avoid getting his feet wet.

Finally, after at least a couple of hours there, she dares to struggle across the actual Evil--tightly hugging the wall and large pieces of furniture for security-- and huddle at my feet under the table. She still lusts after some choice toys, and tries stretching out to them from close by the table--apparently the piece of floor she has currently conquered is no longer Evil, but the rest of the floor has not been exorcised and is The Devil Himself, so she cannot get there.

I wish I'd taken pictures. Or video. Ah, well. Poor dog.

Why did this floor inherit the Evil from the other floor? Why did the other floor become Evil Incarnate in the first place? Why are my nearly identical floorings at home still OK? Mere humans will never know and never understand.

And what will happen the next time we spend the evening at KK's or at Tie Dye's? Tune in for our next thrilling episode of Boost and the Evil Floor.

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Platinum Dog!

SUMMARY: Tika gets a big title! And Boost doesn't!

Tika did it! At the SMART trial Day One today, she earned a Q in Steeplechase Round 1, so she's in the money run for tomorrow AND--ta-daaaa!--that finishes her Tournament Masters Platinum. Like...w00t! Totally!

What is a Tournament Masters Platinum?

• Tournaments consist of:
  • Grand Prix of Dog Agility
  • Dog Agility Masters (DAM) Team Championship
  • Dog Agility Steeplechase
  These are the events that you enter during the year if you want to go to nationals. If you qualify. Enough times. With high enough scores.
• What is Tournament Master? 10 Tournament Qs with at least 2 of each.
• What is TM-Platinum? 50 Tournament Qs with at least 10 of each. Platinum is the highest award that you can get in USDAA. (Until some time in the future, people start getting double platinums or like that, then they'll invent some other titles, like TM-AA (agility addict) or TM-I-didn't-want-to-set-aside-any-money-for-retirement-anyway.)

Steeplechase is tough because you have to be in the top 25% of the competitors to earn a Q, and it's based on time plus faults. So you have to be very fast, or merely fast but accurate, or VERY VERY fast indeed and maybe you'll get away with one mistake. Tika usually knocks a bar, and we're not in the VERY VERY fast indeed category. But today she didn't! Ticked the first bar, giving me a momentary heart attack, but it stayed up!

I am thrilled. She got a whole mess of bits of chicken quesadilla afterwards.

Now I can decide to move her down to all-Performance in the tournaments if I want to (so that she'll jump 22" instead of 26"). Which likely means that this will be the last Platinum she'll ever get (yes, you can also earn platinum in each of the 4 regular classes plus the platinum-ADCH). Because the count starts over from 0 when you move into Performance. And it has taken us 6 years to get here.

So I'm enjoying it while I can.

[Dang, left my course maps at the trial site. Will try to scan them in tomorrow & post here.]

Tika also Qed in Performance Pairs Relay, her first-ever Performance Q, so the count is now up to... 1. And in Performance Snooker, her second-ever Performance Q. So--2! (Had enough points for a super-Q but 2 other dogs were faster.)

She knocked 2 bars jumping 26" in Standard. And the gamble was very hard: Only about 1 in 7 dogs got it. Which is low even for USDAA masters.

Boost--well--she's physically looking good. Knocked some bars but nothing excessive. People watching say that she's moving beautifully. Had a couple of really nice runs that unfortunately ended early because of the knocked bars, but we also had way more than our share of runouts, refusals, and "you-mean-THIS-jump-THIS-one?" dances. Back to square 2. But she is FAST and fun to run when communication occurs with some semblance of success.

And the weather was great. And the chicken quesadillas at lunch were spectacular. And all my friends said how they missed me and hadn't seen me in FOREVER! (I missed one trial only! One! Really!) And I wore my latest new best-dressed-agility-handler jacket:


Could life be any better?

Tomorrow... Jumpers. Everyone has to keep their bars up. Tika, you hear me? You've been jumping 26" for years, you can do it again! Plus oh yeah standard and round 2 of the steeplechase in which Tika could actually come home with, oh, let's fantasize, maybe $6! And Grand Prix.

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Hiking Photos

SUMMARY: Fun in the sun and in the cow plop.

Sunday was just about a perfect spring day. Clear skies, temperatures just on the edge of cool, excellent for hiking.

We started out at 9 in the morning, and the parking lot was nearly empty. The dogs were delighted with the concept of being off leash and exploring. I mean, like, totally and completely delighted. Sniffed at everything. Boost promptly found a dead toad to roll in, and the day continued along those veins.

Wildflowers bloomed in every direction. In particular, lupines were everywhere. Some entire fields filled with the blue of lupines.


The trail ran alongside and across a stream. Somewhere a sign said no swimming, but we couldn't keep the Golden Retrievers out of it. And Tika, oddly enough for a dog who might be, who knows, Australian Shepherd and Husky, loves the water, too.

Renegade amazed me by carrying a toy almost the entire trip. Retrievers! He also displayed his innate agility. He and Boost were in puppy agility class together, but Ren is now retired from agility and spends his days hiking, swimming, retrieving, and writing his memoirs.

Horses and cows had laid out many delectable patties along the trail and meadows. Tika and Boost loved it.

Would you put your hand in there to try to reattach a leash to the collar?

None of the beasts apparently suffers from any fear of heights or of falling down the cliffs. Nice to have four feet and a low center of gravity.

Wendy and Keith and the beasts forge ahead while I--as usual--snap photos and then rush to catch up.

And so another adventure comes to an end. By the time we were home, the dogs were rested up and ready to play again. Everyone got a good hosing down, to their dismay.

These are just a few of the photos; see the rest--lots of wildflowers and happy dogs--here.

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Choices Made

SUMMARY: I make some progress with dogs but not much.

I went ahead and moved Tika down to 20" for this coming weekend's CPE trial. Oh, well, so we'll be competing against more excellent dogs. That's what competition's all about, and maybe she'll jump more comfortably. She knocked only that one bar a week ago all weekend, but she sure wasn't comfortable landing.

I'm moving Tika gradually to Performance (jumping 22") instead of CHampionship (26") in USDAA. I think. I went ahead and left Tika in the two championship USDAA DAM teams for April and June (so far)--which means she's still jumping 26"--and have left her in championship Steeplechase and Grand Prix so far--because she still needs ONE tournament of any kind for her Platinum Tournament Master. And 26" in Standard and Jumpers, because she needs just a few more of those for her ADCH-Silver. But I'm conceding to her repeating soreness and moving her down to 22" in other classes. We'll see whether it makes a difference.

I'm supposed to be giving Boost a complete rest from intense running for 2 weeks per physical therapist, just giving her excellent, long hikes over varied terrain. Well, after 2 days of 2-mile walks over level sidewalks, I decided that I'm just too busy to go driving for an hour to get to someplace where I can let the dogs off leash to hike, and I'm just not going to do it. I have to drive 15 minutes just to get someplace with uphills and downhills, and I'm just not going to do it, even though I could use it, too.

I worked on lots of tug of war, set up a cart with a platform so she could put her front feet on it and push it around with her rear legs (both dogs, actually, for everything), one exercise from the PT, and practiced with their rear legs up on a step and streeeeetchhhhing them out (also from PT), and working on sitting up. Tricks.

And by Saturday evening Boost was going nuts. Pulling all the toys out of the toy box and chewing on that. Poking at the space heater because she knows it gets my attention (dammit!). Throwing her bedding around. Standing in the yard and barking at phantom ideas. In short--that dog needs more exercise that I can give her around here without running her (dammit!). Good thing she's not *seriously* injured. We'd both go insane.

So I went back to running her in the yard. Mostly avoiding agility equipment except using a 4" bar to practice handling maneuvers, and a straight tunnel to try to avoid banking off the sides.

She's also on prescription anti-inflamatories for 3 weeks to see whether it makes a difference in her movements. I avoided paying another $100 at the vet's for supplements that I don't even believe will do anything based on recent research.

So many decisions to make, one after another. And so many of them affecting my dogs' lives and health.

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Boost Visits the Orthopedist and Tika Goes For a Hike

SUMMARY: Boost looks good but there's work to do.

We drove wayyyyy out of town this morning--about an hour and a half--to the current favorite dog sports orthopedist, up in Marin, north of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. A long way from home.



And there in the lobby was an agility friend who lives a few blocks away from here, picking up her dog. Small world.

Dr. S did a quick physical exam and said that nothing seemed amiss, except that she didn't want to extend her rear legs but that could be pain or it could be that she just doesn't want to extend her rear legs. So he agreed that x-rays of her pelvis would be good to eliminate anything structural.

We left Boost to be sedated and x-rayed and went in search of the Oakwood Valley Trail in the Tennessee Valley. (I thought that was farther away than Marin, but what do I know?)


It was a lovely day for a hike, we found the trail easily, and I thought we had a couple of hours, so we set out briskly. It was muddy in spots, but otherwise the trail was wide and comfortable with a slight uphill grade.


They had told me that this was a dog-friendly trail, and indeed the only people I saw on the trail were five other lone women with their dogs (three black labs, a husky, a golden retriever, and a black and tan coonhound I think). No men, no dogless people. Interesting. And for some odd reason I didn't take photos of any of the dogs.

Tika behaved VERY well, met each of them fairly comfortably. No shrieking and throwing herself at the end of the leash. Odd.

We were about a mile out when my cell phone rang to tell me that Boost would be available an hour earlier than estimated, so we turned and went back. (I'll load more photos of the hike later.)

Dr. S showed the x-rays, and said that she could be the poster child for excellent OFA hips. Nice deep sockets with the leg bones well-seated. However, when he pulled on her legs, he can none-the-less feel that they're loose--the hip moves slightly out of the socket and back in again.

This might not be a problem; there are apparently many many loose-hipped border collies that never have any issues. Or it might be a problem; some of those border collies develop arthritis. There's no sign of that in Boost at this time. So Dr. S. said that he sees no reason why she can't do everything normally.

Then we did the physical therapist. She ended up doing a thorough and deep massage to be sure there were no soft-tissue issues, and indeed she found that Boost reacted with discomfort to pressure on a couple of small, deep muscles under her rear legs, and a bit on the shoulders where she said that she'd expect a dog to be compensating with her shoulders for soreness in the rear.

Boost, after initial misgivings, really relaxed into the massage except for raising her head and glaring when the sore spots were hit. Didn't hurt that there was still a lingering bit of sedative.

Then we talked at great length about exercises to strengthen and tighten her hips, abdomen, and lower body in general. I have so much homework to do! I have a video now, too, that explains some of the exercises.

I didn't get home until after 6 this evening, so gone for 9 hours. A long day. I'm tired. Glad there's nothing serious with Boost, but the physical therapist suggested a couple of weeks of rest with no intense, driven running. Just lots and lots of hiking. Ack! More time that I don't have! And that's just NOT going to burn off the energy!

Well, we'll see what we come up with.

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Ribbons and Choices

SUMMARY: Tika does well but is sore; Boost runs a lot; TMH can't make up its mind.

These March winter mornings in Turlock started with frost on the grass but the sun rising bright and clear. By early afternoon, people had stripped off their coats and some had started hosing down their dogs to keep them cool. But when the sun set--Brr!

With Boost's agility career on hiatus while I figure out whether she has a physical problem, all my hopes for the weekend rested on Tika. If Tika can keep her bars up, she usually excels in CPE events. This is good, because I'd like to eventually earn enough Qs for her C-ATE (250 about), and she has a long way to go. We do few CPE trials any more, so every run counts because Tika is 8 and comes up sore more and more often.

We had 10 runs this weekend, and I promised myself that I would take Boost out after every one of Tika's runs and do something physically and mentally stimulating with her in lieu of a run.

First thing in the morning, we always play a bit of frisbee to loosen up the dogs and burn off the edge so that they'll relax in their crates. We did so Saturday. Then, on our way off the field, a friend with border collies that Boost loves to chase headed out to the playing field, so we went back out and ran a bunch more.

I try to keep the frisbee low so that the dogs aren't leaping and torquing their backs, but a couple of times I missed and I cringed seeing Tika's leaps.

Tika Sore? About 2 hours later, when I took Tika out of her crate for her first run, she emerged hunchy and stiff. Well, crap! I've driven all this way, paid my entry fees for the weekend (which are now nonrefundable), have only one dog to run, and this is one of the few CPEs for us this year. Plus when I've scratched Tika in the past, she often then goes blasting around the field full speed after squirrels, so how sore can she be? She is a known drama queen when it comes to injuries, too, so I have to take that into account.

I massage her, stretch her a bit, try to get her spine and shoulders mobile the way I was shown. (I'm not very good at this.) First run is Colors, only 11 obstacles, so what the heck. She runs fairly well, keeps all her bars up, but I can see that she's catching herself roughly when landing after each jump. But she's bright-eyed and eager and fast. Ends up 3rd fastest of all 58 dogs, all heights/levels, on the same course.

She's the ONLY dog in her level and height--24"--so she's guaranteed first place every time unless she eliminates, and there's not much chance of that. But I'll take the ribbons only if we've earned them.

She gets a doggie aspirin, more rubbing, and then I take Boost out for some running and training.

Boost Play and Training. I manage to keep my promise to Boost 8 out of the 10 runs for the weekend. I start and end every session just as if we were going into competition, using the right leash, the right toy, the right warm-up, then the right back-to-the-crate routine with treats and all. While she's out, we practice a variety of things:
* Sit-stay and down-stay, including with lots of excitement and toy throws. Even did a little out-of-sight stays, which we've never worked on before. Only 5 seconds, but she held it.
* Down from a distance while she's moving. Took her a couple of tries to realize what was going on, but then she got it and did very well. None of my other dogs have been able to do that without a lot of work, and even then reluctantly. But Boost has a super-fast down and seems comfortable doing it.
* Lateral lead-outs. Goal was to ensure that she was looking at the jump, not me, before I released her. We've done these before, but obviously not enough. It took her a very long time the first couple of times before she stopped staring at me and looked in the general direction of the jump inadvertently, at which point I released her and threw the toy. What a quick study she is!--By the end of the weekend, she was back to doing it pretty reliably.
* Sends to a jump from various directions (just a jump frame with a bar on the ground).
* Lateral "out" commands (around garbage cans) while we're moving together.
* Sitting up on her rear legs.
* Rolling over.
* "Close"--command for running next to me instead of ahead, until I say "go".
* Various running and moving ground exercises.

She seemed to enjoy it and didn't look disappointed or confused when I put her back in her crate, since I was following the same competition routine. (Unlike Jake who was quite disturbed and sulky about doing the agility that he expected.)

Plus she got to Run With The Border Collies for about half an hour at the end of the weekend while I packed my car.

Tika Still Sore--Or Not?
Tika came out of her crate with the same hunchy look for almost every run, although she always perked up completely when i presented treats. Did lots more massaging and stretching than I usually do with her. She loves the attention.

I couldn't decide whether to scratch her from the rest of the weekend. I really didn't want to, for my own sake, which is not how you're supposed to make decisions for your dog. On the other hand, she was always excited about running, enough so that we were having troubles with our start-line stays, and she always did the over-the-top grab-mom's-feet thing at the end of every run. And this is a known issue, not some mysterious malady.

Tika not looking at all wonky:


So I ran her all weekend, although she was landing heavily and grunting after her jumps and turning wide the whole time (except for one run), not her usual effortless flowing jumping and tight turns.

That Dang Snooker. The only run of the weekend where she didn't come out of the crate looking sore--and didn't keep her bars up--was the last run on Saturday, Snooker. The sun had already disappeared and it was much cooler. Maybe she liked the coolth.

Snooker in CPE is different from USDAA Snooker, in that you MUST successfully complete three reds to be able to earn a qualifying score (if you then go on and earn enough points in the closing). There is a fourth red on the course, but you can (must) take it ONLY if you knock one of the other reds. I explained this to a few people during the briefing.

Tika was the last dog to run of the class and of the day, so we ran a couple of hours after the briefing. I put her in a down stay and started my long lead-out to get into position. Next thing I know, there she is right next to me, bright eyed and bushy nubbered.

I set her up about 12 feet off the first jump to give her the right strides to get over the jump without knocking it. What she does when she decides she's going to self start is to stand up, slowly creep forward until she's right up before the jump, then takes off without enough space.

I looked back and, sure enough, the bar was down. I had hoped for a 51-point (perfect) run, but that was out of the question. And then my 12 years of USDAA experience kicked in: If I did just the two additional reds and the closing, I'd still have enough points to qualify. So that's what we did, and we did it quickly and smoothly. And we got to the end, and the judge comes over and says, "Did you realize that you could have taken the fourth red and still earned a qualifying score?" Oh--well--crud. I can't even remember my own advice for two hours! So we got no points for the closing at all and no Q.

You Know What Happens When You Assume. Our only other non-Q for the weekend was the preceding Standard run, which Tika did nicely all the way to the 2nd to last obstacle, which was a dogwalk-tunnel discrimination. I yelled "Climb!" and raced ahead, assuming that she'd do it because her arc from the previous obstacle led there--but Nooooo! Silly mom, tunnel much easier when mom's ahead. Body language takes precedence over voice commands.

Tika--Yes--Still Sore, But Happy.
In Snooker first thing Sunday morning, we had short weaves in the opening for for 7 points. Every time, Tika--my superb weaving dog--either went into the weaves on the wrong side because it was closer or went into the correct place and came right back out again. Wasted a tremendous amount of time in the opening, so we missed our perfect 51 points by less than one second! Argh! It was a qualifying score, but still, I didn't understand.

Until, before the next run, I had her do figure-8s around my legs, and the first time, she yelped and stopped! OK, sore side-to-side, too. So we added additional manipulations and stretchings and bendings, and she was decent after that, although still slower in the weaves than usual. And I didn't try pushing her speed during our runs, which I usually would do, to get her more excited and driving.

Qing and Firsts.
In all, Tika earned 8 of 10 Qs. It's always better for me (I feel better about my first places) if there are other 24"-jumping dogs in my height and level. But the two catahoulas weren't there, the BCs Annie and Django who sometimes jump 24" weren't there, and BC Brenn has moved down to 20".


As a result, to make me feel that we've earned our first places, I compare our scores and times to every other dog, all heights/all levels, who have done the same course. This time, Tika was never the top dog, but out of 50-60 dogs, she was still between the 3nd and 10th fastest or highest-scoring dog, so I felt that the 1st were earned.

Note that, in USDAA, if we weren't feeling well and were making mistakes on the course, we'd be wayyyy down in the rankings somewhere, but here in CPE, Tika is still near the top.

The only two dogs who beat us consistently all weekend were a fast little sheltie who has running A-frames and--in point accumulation classes--5 more seconds than we do, and a Border Collie in the 20" group.

The Horns of Height Dilemmas. Now, Tika is eligible to run 20" in CPE. I do 24" because she has to jump 26" in USDAA. So I could move her down to 20" for future trials to see whether that's better. Here's my personal dilemma: Because the 20" BC made no mistakes this weekend, and is also at Level C, if Tika had been running at 20", 7 or 8 of those 8 pretty blues would have been pretty reds. As much as I like competition, I must admit that a guarantee of not getting 1st is rough.

When Tika is 100%, we can almost never beat those other dogs on speed, so in timed courses, we usually win only if they make mistakes. In points courses, we can win when we create a cleverer, more efficient way of collecting points than the others, which is possible sometimes but not always.

Here's the second dilemma: in USDAA, I could move Tika to Performance and jump her at 22" instead of 26". But: I've already signed her up for the next two DAM Team events with 3-dog teams, with Tika at 26". And they'd be fun teams. We already have our team names (not always easy) and one even has a logo already. And I'd like to run with them. But if I go to performance, I'd have to find different teams. And closing is only a week away for one of them, which would leave that team stuck without a 3rd. But I want to do these teams!

So I'll probably stay at 26" at least for those. Maybe move her to Performance in some other things. And stay higher in Steeplechase and Grand Prix until she earns her 50th tournament leg.

I hate this. Dogs shouldn't get older and sorer.

But I Had Fun. In all, though, it was a good weekend. So I wasn't even particularly annoyed when I left the grounds around 7:30(!) Sunday evening. Especially because Boost got to romp with a ton of other Border Collies the whole time I packed.

Here's Bump, Dig, Boost's half-sister Quas ("Kass"), and Boost--who always just watches and outruns the other BCs:


Never thought I'd be able to tell one black & white BC from another, but over time, I've gotten to know some reasonably well. Here are housemates Bump, Dig, and Styx (with Cattle Dog Skeeter in the back), then blue merles Boost, sister Bette, and Quas.


It seemed like a lot of dogs milling and dashing around! (Easier to count when they're in a snapshot.) So sometimes we hardly noticed when other random dogs joined the crowd.


Skeeter is largely blind due to glaucoma; has only one eye left. But her Human Mom can get her to leap and play by shrieking and doing monstery things with her arms. It's very cute. While Boost sits, poised, waiting intently for a border collie to start running.


Tika kept rushing back to the van and looking hopeful. That's because they usually get dinner right before we go home. And we know who's the chow hound.




And I wasn't even annoyed when, while heading to the freeway, the car felt funny handling, and I wondered whether I had a tire problem, and then the tire-pressure light came on. I pulled into the Jack-in-the-Box, and sure enough, one tire's pressure was 5 lbs lower than the others, and it had this little ding.


Safe to drive? Dunno. Don't want to have blow-out on the way home; that WOULD annoy me. So I called AAA to have them look at the tire. Took less than half an hour to get there, but it gave me plenty of time to enjoy my healthy french fries...


to watch the moon come up over JITB...


to take endless sunset photos...


Here's a scenic one of the sunset reflected in my minivan's window. Glamorous, huh?



Then AAA arrived. He said: Dunno, but he'd replace the tire to be safe rather than sorry. He had the right tools to do it in about 3 minutes. Amazing.

Got home VERY late and slept VERY well for many, many hours.

Had These Photos And What To Do With Them? But lastly--just for you, gratuitous barking grassy Bump photos:

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Things To Do When Not Doing Agility #27

SUMMARY: Trimming Shrubbery

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Dog Dreams, Boost Balance, and Just Tika

SUMMARY: Where my mind goes at night, and what we're doing during the day.

Last night was a night for dreaming about dogs. I dreamed that we were at a picnic at the beach, sitting at a weathered gray picnic table on a rocky crag (which is what surrounds a lot of beaches here on the west coast). It was very cold; we were wearing winter clothing. And Mom mentioned that she had seen Sam recently.

Well, Sam was our old family dog. She came home with us when I was in 5th grade. I hadn't seen her around in a long time. So I was a little excited. I got up from the picnic table and called "Sam!", and there she came, up from the beach onto the rocks to see what we were up to. And she was kind of old and needed her back rubbed, so I massaged her back and neck really good, and she stood there taking it all in on a gray and almost foggy coastal winter day. And I thought, wow, I regret not having done more of this her whole life.

But then Remington, lying on a blanket in a little cozy indentation where the sand met the craggy rocks, snarled at Sam, and Sam thought better of being there, and trotted away again. And I think I knew that Remington was ill or he wouldn't have been so ill-mannered, but he was happy when I came over to him.

Then, much much later in the night, I'm sure, we were going to set up a barbecue out on a grassy island in the stream. It was very cold; we were wearing our winter clothing. (I'm catching a theme here: winter and picnics and water. Perhaps I was cold and hungry and water? In the middle of the night under my dry and toasty warm down comforter?) This time it was my ex and my mother-in-law.

And I was trying to figure out which shoes to wear to get through the river without getting my feet wet. Decided that my agility shoes wouldn't work, and probably not my hiking boots. And I have these old giant rubber boots that my ex gave me years ago for wearing on wet agility mornings, and they've been sitting out on the porch and when I looked at them last month they're all cracked so probably not waterproof (this isn't in the dream; this is real). So in the dream, I pull them out of the truck and almost wore them, but then decided that since the water was going to be up to my waist that it was pointless, so just waded in.

But as I was wading in, an incompetent frisbee-thrower (and I don't know who that was) somehow ended up losing BOTH of my frisbees from the back of the van into the really rapidly flowing middle of the river, and right downstream there was a sharp drop where the water really rushed through, big whitewater thing, and I started to race down the bank to catch up with them, but then Boost leaped in and was caught in the flow and disappeared downstream much faster than I could get through the thick woods.

So we went downstream, wading the whole way, for miles, looking for Boost, even though my sister kept asking me to look for chrysanthemums for her wedding (apparently they spring up in the river if you look closely enough), and I said I wasn't looking for anything until I found Boost, and I was so scared because she hates being in the water and it was so cold. But finally I found the 2 frisbees sitting on the bank, neatly placed there, and I kept looking around, and sure enough, there was Boost, half curled up, exhausted, in the grass on the riverbank, so beaten that she couldn't even lift her head, but the tip of her tail wagged and I was so glad to find her alive.

I know you wanted to know all that.

So we move on.

The vet/masseuse I mentioned in A Break for Boost and More About Boost OKed listing her name: Cindy DiFranco. She's based in Arizona but gets around a lot in California.

Boost and Tika have been working on their balance and coordination exercises.

Backing up stairs: Boost always wants to start by first putting a front foot up one step and to the side, so that she's going up almost sideways. Although a dog who goes up the stairs sideways might be entertaining, I work each time on getting her to start straight back. This is a long-time thing, and I just haven't worked on it conscientiously until now. Tika does very well going backwards up the stairs and always has.

I pumped more air into my 25" exercise ball so it's much firmer, so the dogs are finding it easier to stand on. Tika seems so huge even on that big ball! At the moment, because she started doing it automatically, she's got her hind feet on the ground and walks forward, rolling the ball under her front feet. She's getting it pretty quickly, although she'll often just let it roll away from her so that she can lean her chest on it so it doesn't move. Pretty clever. But I also get her to stand on it in a stationary position.

Boost once again showed how she watches and learns; when I first had Tika on the ball after our session with Cindy, giving her rewards for it, then bought Boost over, Boost immediately leaped up onto the ball. I have had them on the ball from time to time in the past, but not very much; not enough that I'd expect that from Boost if she hadn't seen Tika getting amply rewarded for it. She wants to sit right away on the ball (I'm supporting it so it doesn't move), which is pretty funny. Since she wanted to go up on top right away, I let her get her balance, reward, and let her off a few times in a row. Then I move the ball backwards just a little (so she has to move her feet forward to keep her balance).

I think she'll get this pretty quickly, although a solid ball or keg or such would be easier than the flexi ball--but the latter is better for balance and using the related muscles.

Different from agility.

I haven't gotten the boxes out in a couple of weeks (progressively smaller boxes for them to stand in). Boost is better at smaller boxes. It is funny because I don't think their body lengths are much different; just Tika is 3" taller. Hmm, will have to measure shoulder to hip to know for sure.

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More About Boost

SUMMARY: Orthopedist appointment in 3 weeks; pelvis comments.

I've set up an appointment for x-rays and exam with an orthopedist for Boost in 3 weeks--first appointment that's available. It's about a 90 minute drive one way. I am so not looking forward to 3 hours of the dogs in the car, resting and storing up energy, while I'm tiring myself out, driving. But I sure think it'll be worth it.

Meanwhile, I forgot to mention that the vet/masseuse also commented that Boost's pelvis is a little flat and a little short. She said that what this means is that she might be less "scopey"--the scope of what she can quickly and easily adjust to might be less than dogs with a differently shaped pelvis. It's not an insurmountable issue. Just might take more or different training. Which was an interesting observation.

Who ever thought, back in 1995 when I started going to class for something to do with my dog one night a week, that I'd ever think about anything like this?

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A Break for Boost

SUMMARY: Taking Boost out of agility for a while.

I've commented here about Boost's bar knocking, about my lack of success with bar-knocking drills (which actually work well with Tika), and about some of the spectacular all bars down, all the time runs in class lately.

The next step is to evaluate Boost's physical status. Yesterday, I took her up to Power Paws for a massage and evaluation with a well-regarded DVM/masseuse who specializes in performance dogs (got tired of dealing with "overweight, out of shape pet dogs and their owners") and who participates in agility herself. Boost took a while to relax (one reason I don't do a lot of stretching and rubbing with her--she's not much into being touched, although she puts up with it, and never relaxes much), but by the end of the session her body just flowed out onto the table, eyes half closed. She still resisted some things just from being that kind of dog, but mostly she got into it--as most dogs do. Jake and Tika always liked getting worked on.

The evaluation--and this is in my words: Boost reacted in pain to some work on her right rear leg. Hard to tell exactly where, but DVM thinks lower back or pelvis. Says that Boost's legs are all spectacularly muscled, which would most likely eliminate dysplasia. But her lower back and abdomen need work to develop the muscles there. (Just like us humans with back issues! She and I now both need to start doing crunches!)

The suggestion was to not do any agility with Boost for a while, to continue evaluation of what the problem might be, to give her body time to heal, and to work on developing those other muscles. Got the thumbs up to keep doing what I've been doing, and even more of it--the exercise ball, backing up the stairs, long hikes and running, just not jumping and like that.

So I'm going to get her x-rayed at a well-regarded dog sports vet if I can get an appointment any time soon. Then we'll see from there what more to do. Like: To work on: Teach her to sit up (some people have taken to calling it "sit pretty"--what was traditionally called "beg") and even to do squats. I've seen videos of dogs doing it; if they can stand on their hind legs, and if they can "sit pretty," then it just takes some additional work to get them to go from one to the other. Maybe it'll motivate me to do more like that, too.

So I've scratched Boost from the next 2 CPE trials in March, although I've left Tika in (since I've promised to be the chief score table czar). Next USDAA is the big four-day Haute Tracs extravaganza in 2 months. Would be too bad to miss that with Boost. But--well--we'll see.

Meanwhile, I'm also going to take at least one six-week session off from class; Boost can't participate, Tika and I can always use practice but it won't hurt us badly to miss it; and I'll be needing the time and money for Boost's work.

The interesting thing was my first reaction to the suggestion to stop agility with Boost for a while: A sense of relief. Like, maybe this is a fixable issue and if some time off is mostly what it takes, hallelujah! Like, someone is giving me permission to not do agility. Isn't that funny, what goes through one's mind?

It'll be tough, being at a trial and not being able to run Boost. I'll try to still take her out and play with her just the same. Have to remember to do that and not start putting it off because it's "not important" (like doing a run you've paid for).

After the massage, we went for a drizzly walk around parts of Power Paws' open fields.

Just about the only shot of Tika, because she always wants to be out at the farthest distance, exploring:

Both dogs seemed intent on grazing, since the sheep were in a different field and not doing the job. With San Jose spread out below and vanishing into the glaring mists of that steady, steady drizzle.

We walked up over the rise where the big agility field is and down the other side. There's Tika, as far away as she can get (to the right of the tree near center--really, she's there!).

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Dogs' Birthday Photos

SUMMARY: Boost turned 4 on January 31; Tika turned 8 on Feb 14.

Lots of people with rescue dogs celebrate their dogs' "gotcha day"--the day the dog came to live with them. I've always been more traditional and picked an approximate birthday. Boost's birthday I do know for sure; Tika's I picked because it was easy to remember (Valentine's Day) and also my sister's birthday. This, of course, was 4 years before I knew that my next dog's (Boost's) birthday would be my birthday. Keep it all in the family.

I meant to post some early photos of both of them, but didn't; was just reminded by Lola's gotcha day photos. So here are my girls as seen when they first came home.

Tika was a big girl when she came home, but in some photos she looks so scrawny at a year old! Plus that was when, sometimes, both of her ears would tip over nicely. Now that one ear never does, even when I press it into place. (The photos were scanned by the photo processor from my 34 mm film and I think they had it set to some weird setting because all the rolls from that set came back oddly done--but the actual prints look OK. Someday I might try rescanning from the negatives.)






Boost was three months old when she came home with me. She was still darned cute, although already past the roly-poly puppy stage.

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Dogz Yardz Dragonz Toyz

SUMMARY: A busy afternoon out in the back 4. (Not enough space to be 40.)

Note 1: OK, yes, I am really stupidly going to upload 32 photos to Blogger, 2 at a time. I hate this photo interface except that it conveniently resizes them and makes thumbnails.

The shrubbery has gotten out of hand. And out of feet. And probably arms and legs, too. All 90 feet of it. Here is quite a bit less than all 90 of its feet. There is a fence in there somewhere. I swear it.

This is what I am prepared to do.

This is what Tika really wants me to do.

Boost's darned ear doesn't understand the proper way for an ear to behave in public.

Mr. Rusty Yard Dragon is being overgrown by Mr. out-of-hand shrubbery. However, he remains silent on the matter.

Mr. Triceratops is not, technically, a dragon. He is a token dinosaur-that-might-be-dragon-like-kinda. He sleeps with the gravels that the dogs slide through, pushing them up gradually until they mostly cover Mr. T and then I unbury him. He continues to sleep. Extinction is like that.

I think Tika is gorgeous. Whether or not she's all Aussie. Someday--maybe--the DNA test.


Boost is pretty gorgeous herself.

What Boost likes to do while I am trimming shrubs. Waiiiiiiiting--



until I toss a branch, and then--leap and grab! Leap and grab! ...Leap! and Grab! ...






Then--waiiiiiitingggggg....


...and leap and grab!



Tika does not get this game.

This is what Tika really wants me to do.

This is what happens to the nifty yard-waste basket that you can collapse into a flat package and store neatly in the shed, when you leave it uncollapsed and sitting out conveniently in the yard 24/7 for several years where you can get at it at a moment's notice to toss yard clippings into.

Leap and grab!



The shrubbery is looking so much better. Only another--uh--70 feet to go.

Mr. Rusty Yard Dragon is no longer being devoured by overgrown shrubberies. However, he remains silent on the matter.

I like Mr. Rusty Yard Dragon (for short, I fondly call him: Mr. Rusty Yard Dragon) because he looks cool and he's supposed to be rusty so he takes no maintenance. Just hangs around.

Really, Tika wants me to do this.

Boost wouldn't mind some of that, plus agility tunnels would be cool, plus her ear is inside out. Again.

Leap and grab!

This is what I should really be doing, according to Tika.

This is a history of what happens to purple Jolly Balls in our particular back yard.

#1 slowly developed little cracks from all the sharp doggie teeth digging into it to play fetch and/or tug-of-war day after day, week after week, month after month... but it is still throwable, fetchable, and tug-of-warable, and is really floppy so is fun to shake if you're a dog who likes to shake things, so we can't get rid of it yet. #2 unfortunately developed a problem with the handle, as in it is no longer there. Plus it got left on the patio in 100+-degree heat, and that concavity thing is what results. #3 is slowly developing cracks, too. Plus it got left on the patio on another 100+-degree day. It does not roll so well any more. #4 is our current experimental subject. #5 is also apparently experimental, because it vanished about 7 days after it had been put, brand new, into this very back yard. We have had 2 dogs and 2 people looking for it off and on for months. It has experimentally vanished into some odd backyard thin air.

Could the shrubbery have eaten it? The shrubberies are very overgrown-- I CAN take a photo at 1/10 of a second without a tripod, I can I can I can! ...Or maybe only if you squint and look at it in really small resolution so you can't see how fuzzy it is...Does this look like a JollyBall-eating shrub to you?

I am not complaining about tonight's sunset. Over the neatly trimmed 20 feet of shrubbery.

Now I can see the neighbor's tree house against the sky in the leafless winter tree.
Note 2: OK, yes, this photo upload process was astonishingly tedious and time-consuming. Plus reviewing images, moving them to match text--Bleah--Blogger is NOT designed for posting photos. In future, must revert to diverting you-all to my Smugmug for bigger photo collections.

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More Bored Dog

SUMMARY: It's eleven at night, we should either be playing or going to bed.

I hear a ferocious growling...silence...growling...silence...from the corner by the dog beds, which is out of sight behind my desk. I go to investigate.

Boost sure knows how to get me out of my chair.

Lurking in the dark (revealed by the camera's flash)...waiting to pounce, I guess...

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Boost Almost Does Standard

SUMMARY: Video of one of Boost's better runs.

An agility video service (Agility In Motion) for whom I did a really tiny favor at the November USDAA trial actually videotaped one of Boost's Masters Standard runs and sent it to me. Here's what I wrote about the run in my private notes: "Very nice--nice table, nice cntcts. Turned wrong way after rear X and missed wv entry on a bad pull (meant to front X but chickened out) but going ahead @end and no ref/rnout."

And if you want to watch a fun archival video of theirs of me and Jake doing a Masters Jumpers course in April 2003, go here.

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Rear Crossing Tunnels

SUMMARY: Trying to fix Boost's problem again.

Boost has never seemed to figure out rear crosses on tunnels. (That's where I send her into a tunnel and cross behind her, so that she needs to come out aware that I have changed sides.) She always turns towards the side I originally started on.

I've tried tackling this before, with a greatly shortened tunnel, running into the rear cross from different angles, tried starting from different distances from the tunnel to give more or less space for me to cross before she went completely in, tried being quiet, tried yelling her name, tried yelling "left" or "right" just so she could take the hint, tried doing exactly the same thing over and over to see whether she'd figure out that when I did XYZ, I always ended up on the opposite side... but no, I could do it 10 times (as an experiment) and every time she turned to the original side. So much for dogs figuring things out by repetition.

This weekend, what I finally hit on that seems to have some response is this: run straight down one side of the tunnel (parallel to the dog as she goes into the tunnel and runs through it), and she turns towards me. Repeat. Run straight down the other side of the tunnel, and she turns towards me. Repeat. NOW try a blatant rear cross, and she catches it. I've tried a few combinations of that sequence, and she seems to get the rear cross by comparison with running straight.

But if I go off and do a sequence of obstacles leading into a rear cross, boom, she's turning the wrong way coming out again.

Will have to research this a bit more. It's just very odd to me. Obviously some cue that I think that she should be getting that she isn't, or doesn't understand what it means, or that I give in different situations that means something different and I don't realize it. Maybe later this week I'll get out the video camera and try taping some sequences.

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Boost Claims To Be A Master-Level Dog

SUMMARY: In which Ellen is surprised by where we are.

I moan often about the fact that I can't get around a course decently with Boost, that we have all kinds of refusal and runout issues, that bar knocking is a big problem, that our weaves are off-again on-again, and that she's starting to lose her perfect contacts.

It came as a surprise to me when I pulled my head up out of the part of the database that summarizes issues we need to work on and looked at how many Masters-level Qs she actually has, to discover that she has 16 Masters and 5 Tournament legs. It's not a lot for an almost-4-year-old dog by some measures, but it's sure a lot more than I THINK of us as having! I feel better now--

4 Standard
6 Relay
3 Gamblers
3 Snooker
3 Grand Prix
1 Steeplechase
1 DAM Team

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Recidivism

SUMMARY: Dang Boost at night.

What, is Boost reading my blog now? She made me get up at 1:00 this morning to let her out.

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The Dog In The Night Party Umpty-Ump

SUMMARY: Boost's nights seem to be back to normal.

In the last month, Boost has asked to go out during the night only twice: Once at Scottsdale, which was my worst night hacking and snorting with the miserable cold, which could've just woken her up thoroughly, and once more on Nov 11. But otherwise, she's sleeping through the night.

Was it the 2nd round of tougher antibiotics for a longer period? Was it putting her in her crate after she came back in after insisting on going out? Don't know, but something worked, thank goodness.

For previous posts on the topic, click the Housebreaking label. (At least...it should bring up 4 other posts...)

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Interesting Lesson On Running Fast

SUMMARY: What I learned today about keeping up with Boost.

A friend watched me do some long runs trying to get Boost to run ahead of me over a fairly straight line of jumps instead of waiting, turning back, or spinning. She told me that I keep slowing down when Boost gets ahead of me. Of course I don't mean to; what I *do* do is point with my arm to try to keep the pressure on and yell "go! go! Hup!"

This was a "Doh!" moment. Apparently I cannot run as fast with my arm pointing ahead of me, while yelling, as I can when I just pump my arms, shut up, and run like hell bent for leather (whatever that means). When I did that, Boost didn't get quite as far ahead of me, but furthermore, the important thing was that she kept going straight, over jumps. Not super-driven going confidently away from me, but not stopping or doing refusals, either.

OK. We're going to try that this weekend if the opportunity arises.

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Rain. And Phone Books.

SUMMARY: Boost does some surprising fetching and is surprised by water from the sky.

It last rained in San Jose on March 15. Yesterday's forecast called for rain last night and this morning. An agility friend posted on her web site, "I wonder what rain feels like?" Anticipation lay low, humming, in the background of all conversations in the valley. Rain. At last.

Every morning, Boost fetches the newspaper for me from the driveway. Today, she woke me at 5:30 demanding to go out (drat, are we not over this yet? And it was going so well--). The ground was dry. Another wet forecast turning out to be all wet?

Since I was getting up at 6:00 anyway to go for an early hiking adventure, I opened the front door to see whether the paper yet sat in its plastic rain-bag at the end of my driveway. Nothing was there. But Boost burst past me, down the sidewalk, and skidded to a halt next to a dark, hulking, plastic-wrapped shape near the roses, and began to work at grabbing it. --What on earth--?

I walked out to the sidewalk, and discovered that the Phonebook Fairy had left the new phonebook for me, carelessly wrapped in plastic so that one end was protected from potential rain but the other end lay completely exposed. And dry. Boost was wrestling enthusiastically, trying to find some pages to grab, as the whole thing was, shall i say, a wee bit larger than even the usual Sunday-supplemented Saturday paper. I hurriedly aligned the phone book with the spine towards her, to prevent having the entire M section ripped out with a too-effusive effort to Get That Newspaper.

I didn't think she could actually manage it, but with several bits of assistance and several drops and re-pick-ups, she managed to get that whole huge thing into the house and deliver it to where she always delivers the paper. Quite an entertainment for her mom early in the morning.

As I gave her some thanks-for-fetching treats, the sky opened. How grateful was I now for being wakened early and also having the dog run out the front door without permission? Had she done neither of those things, I'd now have a sopping wet gigantic blob of former phonebook.

A few minutes later, Tika put up a big racket about Something Dangerous In The Front Yard. I peered out the door, and sure enough, the paper itself had arrived. So I fetched Boost, lined her up, said, "Ready....Get The Paper!" and released her. She blasted down the steps to the sidewalk--and skidded to a halt. She jerked her head and body left and right. She ran to one side. She stepped back. She looked at the roses like she might be about to spook. She started to wuff a "Danger! Unknown danger!" wuff, when I realized what was happening: She hadn't been rained on in 7 and a half months.

So I had to run out into the rain to reassure her, run with her down to the paper at the end of the driveway, and then follow her as quickly as I could as she dashed back inside, plastic-bagged paper grasped firmly in her jaws. OK, so now **I'M** wet, but at least the phone book is dry.


(I'll try to get my hike photos up soon. No dogs this time, though.)

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No Dog In The Night (and Other Gratitudes)

SUMMARY: Boost sleeps through the night, and otherwise also a good week.

I hit Boost's not-sleeping-through-the-night issue with a two-pronged attack: shock and awe... (No, wait, that was a different campaign.) ...really, Plan A: 10 days of antibiotics plus Plan B: every time she gets me up, she has to sleep in her crate when we return to bed.

This isn't a tremendous hardship, as she slept there every night for her first year here, and she still sometimes sleeps there voluntarily when maybe Tika or I toss and turn too much.

Before Plan A and Plan B, she got me up 10 out of 25 nights (after I started tracking). That included one stretch of 7 nights where she *never* woke me up, giving me false hope, but NOOooo, then 5 out of the next 10 up.

So we get to Plan A and B. After the first full day of antibiotics, she let me sleep. Then ditto for the next 3 nights. Wow, thought I, it *was* some insidious infection. But NOOoooo again, 4 out of the next 6 nights she got me up. Each time, I zipped her into the crate afterwards. She grumbled some and hit on the door a bit (it's one of those lightweight pop-up nylon crates), but I told her to knock it off and she settled in each time.

I also started Plan C: When *I* was up in the night on my own for any reason (last night: something banging around on the deck. Maybe the wind.), I did NOT let her out just because she asked. She pestered me a bit at first but since then, just accepts it. Because I think that's what started the problem--a bout of insomnia, where I just let her out every night in the middle of the night when I was up and she asked.

So then...looking promising...after the last day of antibiotics, we went 6 nights with no out--ah, ha! it WAS an infection?!-- but wait: then one night of out plus crate, two nights off, one night of out plus crate, and now 5 more nights off. So only two nights of the last 15 has she gotten me up. I can only hope. It's still a little unclear whether it was an infection or behavioral, but I'm leaning towards the latter.

Boost resting up from a hard night of sleeping through. Uzza wuzza cute widdle feeties all gathered up!


I am also grateful that I can now comfortably wear all those pairs of jeans that I haven't been able to wear since October. Thank you, Weight Watchers (no meetings this time, but using their strategies).

I am also grateful that I saved $200 on my auto/house/umbrella insurance yesterday. Thank you, Geico. (Used to have Geico auto insurance for years and loved them, but 7 years ago they couldn't insure my house and now they can. Go figure.)

I am grateful that, on very short notice and at essentially the last minute, I have found excellent DAM teams for both dogs for USDAA Nationals. Thank you, agility friends!

Let's hope that things keep looking up.

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Shouldn't Complain Too Much

SUMMARY: Tika vs Boost as younger dogs.

It's two years after Boost's first trial; she's competed in 33 trials (24 of them USDAA) and has 9 masters legs, 3 Grand Prix Qs, and 1 Steeplechase Q.

Two years after Tika's first trial, she had competed in 44 trials (20 of them USDAA) and had only just completed her AAD, so was in Masters only in Standard, with zero Qs out of 5 attempts, 4 Grand Prix Qs, and 1 Steeplechase Q.

(After Tika's 24th USDAA trial, she had 4 Masters Qs including one Super-Q, 6 GP Qs, and still only 1 Steeplechase.)

Sooooo it'll come eventually. I hope.

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Sunday Results

SUMMARY: Generally had a good time. But pretty awful in the Q department.

My first run of the day was with Tika in Grand Prix, and like yesterday's first run, it was lovely and gave me hopes for a successful day--cool weather, Tika was jazzed, we connected well, and although she slammed a bar that I thought had cost us 5 faults, in fact it never fell, so she Qed and was one of only 5 of twenty-one 26" dogs who ran clean, for a lovely 5th place grand prix ribbon. We run clean so seldom in GP--and place almost never--that it delighted me.

A friend also delivered our custom-ordered fancy ribbon from the earlier trial where Tika finished her ADCH-Bronze, so I got to hang that on her crate and enjoy it all day.


However--that was it. Snooker--I made a bad mistake and knocked us out on the 2nd obstacle. Jumpers: One bar down. Standard: Missed getting a toenail into the A-frame contact zone by a hair's breadth, according to the judge. (She could've gotten a toenail in and it would've looked the same to me: Dog flying off the Aframe. So I'm glad that the judge is looking! Or maybe not!)

So much for Tika's 50% Q rate in USDAA. Last time she had a USDAA weekend that bad was 3 whole years ago--34 USDAA trials ago--where she managed 0 for 10--and before that, a whole 'nother year back, where she had 3 trials in 3 months with 0 or 1 Qs.

So that made me sad. On the other hand, I made a special effort to get her revved up for every run this weekend, no slacking off (could the bars and contacts be a byproduct? Perhaps, perhaps--) and she ran very well indeed and it was a pleasure to be in the ring with her every round.

Boost continued today with refusal, runouts, and bar crashing, although she did weave poles just beautifully in all 3 classes that had them. In fact, she completed a beautiful and difficult opening in Snooker, requiring her to take a jump after I led out 2/3 of the way across the field, wrap around the Aframe into the weaves, and then complete the weaves as I did a rear cross. It was lovely. And then we went back into refusals/runouts/bar crashing.

I managed to laugh after our last run of the day, Jumpers, which was so full of errors that it was hard to do anything but laugh, but really can't I figure out how to run with this dog? All those entry fees for nuthin' are an expensive way to not have as much fun as I'd like.

Walking the Jumpers course (including Team Small Dog Leader) to show what nice, pleasant weather we had and of course since it was Team Small Dog, I had to get a different angle on the whole thing. Hmm. This could work. Must practice technique more.


I'm threatening to go up to Power Paws every day this week just to run jumpers courses for an hour (with breaks). Maybe I need another private lesson for more suggestions, because some of the ones I've worked on don't seem to have the desired effect. That's a lot of time, though, and I'm busy busy busy...

Here's most of the 16" USA World Team dissecting a course run. I'll bet they practice at Power Paws a lot more than I do. Or somewhere.


My shoulders have nearly bought the farm--I'm doing physical therapy now, and the right biceps hurts SO badly most of the time. Not sure what aggravated them more now, as they've been off & on bad for a few years now. But they're baaaaaaad in the very bad sense. Had to borrow shade space from a couple of friends because there was no way I could manage a canopy. It worked out very nicely. (Boost's crate covered or she throws herself wildly against the sides when she sees dogs doing anything interesting, knocking over the water and putting holes in the crate and like that.)


We also didn't manage to win any free entries in the workers raffler, but we did land this catch instead (I think I dropped one ticket in because, what the heck, who doesn't need dogfood?). Tika thinks this was the best raffle prize ever and wants to know when's dinner?


Lastly, I remembered to take a picture of agility feet so that we can compare and contrast to hiking feet. What to do with the comparison is left as an exercise for the student.

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Saturday Results

SUMMARY: Not the way I had expected the day to go, exactly--

Boost started the weekend by earning that 3rd elusive Masters Standard Q! It wasn't the most beautiful run in the world, and we HAVE to fix that thing where she lifts her elbows off the table, but it wasn't particularly ugly, either, felt pretty nice, and made me very happy. Woo! Seemed like the weekend would be great!

However.

All the rest of Boost's runs--Gamblers, Steeplechase, Pairs, and Jumpers--were cacophonies of runouts, refusals, bars knocked, leaving contacts early and turning back to me, and even a bonus pop-out-of-the-weaves for good measure. A mess altogether.

Tika seemed quite happy to be out doing agility again, after our 5-weekend break, so she ran fast and pretty smoothly. Except.

Standard: Knocked a bar. Steeplechase: Popped the Aframe. Jumpers: Knocked a bar. Pairs: Knocked a bar AND popped the Aframe. Gamblers: In the opening, knocked a bar and popped the dogwalk, so a fairly low opening points of 40 instead of a nearing-top-range opening of 46 points. And then she took just a step! Just one! past the tunnel opening in the gamble, negating it, although she then completed the rest of the hard part with complete perfection.

So Tika, whom I can count on to get about 50% Qs at USDAA trials, got zilch, nada, zip, zero, none.

Still, she runs so nicely, and when she's so fast and excited, I do love running her.

But Boost's herky jerky not-doing-obstacles and nearly tripping me trying to get around her and such are NOT fun. She's not moving around the course fast because she's not moving around the course; I'm herky jerky to make up for what she's doing; it just feels ugly and stumpy and uncoordinated. It is not fun. I even picked what I thought was a pretty smooth gambler's course and she knocked the first 3 bars and ran past a couple of tunnel entrances and like that. Not smooth. Not fun.

So.

Hope tomorrow's a little better in the Q department.

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The Dog in the Night Follow-Up

SUMMARY: Boost is fine probably.

The vet found nothing wrong with Boost even after doing a culture of her urine and testing for a few other things. So we're going back to the assumption that it's probably behavioral, because everything else that could be medical is both rare and harder to diagnose.

However, he did say that certain bacterial infections won't show up in the culture especially if they're mild, so let's try 10 days of antibiotics anyway and see whether it helps because sometimes it does. I'm leery of antibiotics just on general principles, but he felt from our long discussion that I had asked the right questions and tried the right things and said that, if it were his dog, he'd do it. So, OK, we're doing it.

I picked up the pills right before leaving town midday Friday and just got back. The dogsitter (Renter) said that she didn't wake him up at night and he saw no signs of puddles in the morning. Of course, I haven't even been up to my bedroom yet, so who knows--

But I'm back on thinking we'll simultaneously treat it as behavioral. Starting with, if she gets me up, she goes into her crate instead of on the bed when we come back in.

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The Dog In The Night

SUMMARY: Boost and her potty habits. Or what.

I am exhausted. Boost has gotten worse about not sleeping through the night. Last time I bemoaned this, someone suggested maybe she had a bladder or other urinary-tract infection, but no, I was sure it was just some sort of training that she had figured out was being trained when in fact it wasn't being trained, it was all a misunderstanding.

So I determinedly walked her out back before bedtime and insisted on a good pee and then we'd go to bed. And it got a little better sometimes, and then finally we had a good solid run of a whole week, 7 days, with no asking to go out after bedtime. Then we backslid for a few days, then we had maybe 5 days with no going out, and then the last couple of weeks it's back to almost every night.

What still doesn't have me convinced that it's a UTI is that she sometimes goes ALL DANG DAY at an agility trial without wanting to pee, so if it were a real problem, wouldn't it affect her all the time? And then the usual pattern is: pee and go to bed, then maybe within an hour, ask to go out again (what, is she holding it back?) then maybe or maybe not in another 1-2 hours ask to go out again but almost never after 1 or 2 in the morning. Then she's fine until whenever I wake up for real, which sometimes these days isn't until 9 because I'm so wiped out from being woken up.

Anyway, OK, now i'm going out of town for 2 nights without the dogs and realizing that I have to explain this to my renter, who's watching the dogs for me. I did not have to explain this back in May when I went to Arizona for a week. So clearly it has gotten worse, not better.

So this morning I went out with her, wearing rubber gloves (me, not Boost), and shoved a little baby-food jar into the appropriate location to gather a sample. Now we have a vet's appointment for tomorrow morning. The receptionist said, oh, no, they'll want to get their own sample. I seem to remember from a past dog, ages ago, where the vet said it's sometimes hard to get their own sample so if I could get one, that would be helpful. But that was then and this is now. And maybe I don't remember that well. So should I dump the sample? Nah, guess I'll hold on to it for a day and let it brew. Or maybe try again tomorrow morning just in case.

Meanwhile, Boost enjoys a little boxing. I spend money on dog toys why?

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Things Become Clearer

SUMMARY: Boost is not ready for prime time. Tika's backside is why she's been pissy and clingy. Probably.

Boost and Tika chasing the Frisbee Friday evening.

Boost weaves

Well, practicing weaves Friday night by finding ways to get Boost to pop out paid off. On Friday, it was 7 sets with 6 popped out early. On Saturday, she reversed it: That morning, I decided to risk Snooker with all weave-pole #7s to see what would happen. She nailed all three attempts perfectly.

Then she nailed them in Standard.

In Grand Prix, she popped out early and I made her lie down and then finish them.

In Pairs Relay, she nailed them. And in Steeplechase Round 1, I *think* (but it's getting hazy) that she did TWO sets nicely. So I believe it was 7 perfect and one early pop-out.

Today backslid a bit in a couple of ways; started missing or skipping entries (or making the first pole and then circling back to see why I was behind her). Popped out once or maybe twice. So, of four attempts, one good one and three with either entry or pop-out problems.

So much work to do!

Boost loves stalking other Border Collies more than she likes playing frisbee. With her ears turned inside out for that tough street-wise look.

Boost otherwise

Boost's runs for the most part looked like barely Novice runs. Or, excuse me, after watching one round of Novice Snooker, I apologize to the Novice dogs: Boost isn't even ready for Novice yet. If there's a chance at a runout or refusal, she takes it, and the rest is fraught with knocked bars. In fact, in today's Jumpers run, we were such a disaster that the judge finally asked us to leave the course. It WAS a difficult course--for example, only 3 of about 28 dogs in 26" earned qualifying scores--but we made it look nigh impossible.

We got lucky on Saturday with Pairs Relay and her half did NOT have runout/refusal setups and she kept her bars up and we Qed with our partner's also clean run.

And today's Gamblers layout allowed me to pick a course also with no runout/refusal setups, just straight lines, calls to me, front crosses, and contacts, and one beautiful set of weaves. She scored 2nd highest opening points and if she hadn't skipped the weave entry TWICE the second time around, we'd have had 4 more points than the highest opening points. But we had a little issue with the gamble itself, so it wasn't a Q. (Too MUCH independent out!)

Tika's Friday and Saturday not bad

Recapping Friday, turns out that she was 6th of 24 dogs in Team Snooker and 3rd of 24 in Team Jumpers, and slightly better than average in the other Team events. So that was OK.

Saturday, she had a really beautiful Snooker run, completing a 4-red strategy with a 6 and three 7s in the opening (based on watching the first half run, where only one dog managed to do four 7s and successfully get through the end) for a total of 58 points--and then in the second half of the group, another 7 managed it, and there were 7 super-Qs, so even one of the "perfect" dogs ended up without a super-Q. (That was in the 26", with 27 dogs--compare to the 22", where I believe only 2 dogs of 49 earned the full 59 points and all the 58-pointers got Super-Qs. Tough competition in the 26"!)

Her Jumpers run was beautiful, too: Fast, excited, tight turns, kept all the bars up, except I forgot the course in just one spot (couldn't they have overlooked that) and put her over a wrong jump before I figured out where we needed to go. Sigh. But I celebrated with her like crazy because we never slowed down and I think she never knew that anythinng was amiss, since it wasn't her fault.

She and her partner ran very nicely in the Team Relay, placing 7th of 32 teams--beating out Boost's team who placed 9th.

And her Steeplechase Round 1 run was really nice and fast again, but with a 5-second penalty for one knocked bar, she was half a second over time and missed qualifying! Argh! Dang bars! Why pick THAT event in which to finally knock a bar?! Why not the one where I went offcourse?! Shoot.

So only 2 Qs for the day out of 5 chances (Standard we also had a bar and a refusal of some sort I think).

Tika's backside

Then, when I dragged home about 9:30 last night after a VERY long day (dogs running til after 7? with 6 classes for the day), she started dragging her behind on the ground and the carpet and having trouble eliminating. So, knowing that she'd had an infected anal gland a couple of years back, I put on my rubber gloves and checked, and sure enough, one side was very swollen and hard. I couldn't get it to do anything useful.

She was restless a good part of the night, lots of licking. (Why didn't I get these indicators of a butt issue EARLIER? In retrospect, now I'm thinking that the clinginess and pissyness towards Boost, the completely insufficient, difficult, and overly soft poops during the day Saturday, and the occasional yelping she's been doing, have been because of this and I wasn't clever enough to figure it out. Or at least why couldn't it waited to become critical until SUNDAY night?)

Tika going all out for the frisbee Friday evening.

This morning, she was delighted to play some frisbee between bouts of trying to poop, but when I got her out again a little later, she wouldn't do anything--no frisbee, no toys of any kind, no jogging, no running. Low-key interest in food, which is still interest in food but unusual for her. I set her at the start line of her first run anyway, thinking that maybe the usual excitement and adrenaline would overcome whatever she was going through, but she barely got to her feet and hunched forward a few steps, so I scratched her from the rest of the day, dammit.

A very nice vet who was also competing took a look at her and confirmed that it was the anal gland and it was pretty ucky and that it needed to go in to a vet's office where someone could do something about it.

I ran Boost in the rest of her runs, which was mostly a wasted effort (although Gamblers was a Booster Rocket fast, fun 25 seconds of super-Border-Collie), and took Tika out occasionally. She was extremely subdued, didn't want to stand up, would put her head right down as soon as she lay down, and so on. I felt so terrible for her! (And for the vet bill $$ that I could see racking up in my near future, but every time I saw her my heart just ached for her obvious misery). Put a damper on the rest of my day, although everyone who knew about it was very nice and offered to help me in whatever way I needed.

After Boost's last run, I abandoned my score table and others took that over for me, too.

Took Tika to the emergency room after we got home, which is $105 just walking through the door. And a long wait while the REAL emergencies were seen to--like the Boston Terrier who spent too much time on this hot, smoky day romping in the sun with the kids and all of a sudden couldn't breathe. Fortunately OK once put in oxygen.

Came away with antibiotics, rimadyl for anti-inflammatory to try to get some of the swelling of the whole area down, tramadol as a painkiller/sedative. Add another $80 to the bill. Plus I'm supposed to be using a cool compress to ease the pain as often as I want, and call my regular vet in the morning, and we'll probably have to anesthetize her again to take care of it (which is what happened last time, because she's so insane at the vets. Regular sedation didn't work).

And adding a couple spoonsful of pumpkin to her meal to help her move her solid waste.

Friday afternoon, Gadget Guy plays with his kite and Tika chases it, barking. And Boost's brother, Derby, catches some air trying to reach it. (Boost couldn't care less about it.)

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Things Is Looking Pretty Good Here

SUMMARY: Tika has a good weekend and Boost improves.

The weekend was mostly sunny, with a chill breeze, rising to a frigid wind in the afternoon. The shade fabric bellied out like the canopy was making way for Tortuga. This is a site where you have to stake your canopy very well. I know of only one that took flight on this weekend, but there may have been others. Cold fingers, working the score table! But good for running dogs.



Because Tika had been so sore earlier in the week, I scratched her from all but three runs a day. She seemed to thrive, either because she was jealous of Boost getting so many runs, or because of the wind, or because she was just feeling good. On Saturday, She qualified in Jumpers (that's four in a row! Amazing!) without placing. She got very excited for her Gamblers run and I decided to even put her over two dogwalks (something I usually avoid for her in Gamblers) plus two A-frames, and she got all four (barely), and fast, too, not slowing to a cautious pace. Didn't get the gamble, though--I didn't handle it well.

AND Tika qualified in Steeplechase! Two weekends in a row! Now *that's* astonishing. We were 6th of 7 Qing dogs, so again just a little over a second under qualifying time, but I'll take it!

On Sunday, she and her pairs partner ran clean and placed third of 32 teams, woo! She did Snooker, and earned a Qualifying score and again seemed happy and driven, but a little matter of an Aframe flyoff kept her out of the placements. At the very end of the day, we were last in the scheduled runs for Jumpers, with Steeplechase to follow quickly thereafter. I almost pulled her from Jumpers because I wanted her full effort for Steeplechase, but when she came out of her crate and started playing like a lunatic with her frisbee, I decided to leave her in. Glad I did--she won! One of our very few 1st places in Masters--our fifth. Not a huge class, only 17 dogs, but--OK, I'll take that, too! So that's FIVE Jumpers in a row.

And then, for Steeplechase Round 2, she again went for the frisbee with gusto instead of wanting to sniff at the ground. She had a lovely run, although I didn't give enough notice on one turn and she went VERY wide. That probably made a difference in our placement, because she took 3rd and the difference in time between 1st and 4th was only about a second. (Of the fastest two dogs from round 1, one scratched and one had a 5-point fault, knocking them out of the running.) So we got another lovely placement ribbon and another small handful of money to take home.

So she Qed 5 of 6 and placed in 3 of 4 runs today. A very good USDAA weekend for Tika.

Boost had a few stretches or full runs that looked very smooth. Still bobbles with some hesitation or turning the wrong way afterwards, still bars coming down, but not so haphazard and confused-looking as it was even just 3 weeks ago. She had I think the second highest opening points in Gamblers, but the gamble was beyond me and Tika, so I really bungled it with Boost.

Her weaves were spotty--did two sets of 6 in Saturday's snooker, made her entry in Saturday Standard but popped out early, did them beautifully in Steeplechase Round 1 after first turning back to me because she was so far ahead. In fact, other than that and running past the last jump before I caught her and brought her back, her Steeplechase run was lovely--and, despite the two bobbles, Qualified!

That's The Booster's first Steeplechase Q. Her sister, Bette, also qualified with a similar time--we were 13th and 14th out of 15 Qs.

On Sunday, she had a very nice Relay run, with only one runout, but her partner was off-course, so no Q. Her weaves were nice in the relay (6 poles); in Standard, she made the first pole and then turned back to me, then after entering correctly, popped out at the end (our only fault in that class! Dang!). But in Steeplechase Round 2, she did two full sets of weaves perfectly without a blink, with no babysitting.

Furthermore--her Steeplechase run was a thing of beauty! Fast, focused, only one brief hesitation before a jump where I didn't get my front cross in, probably added a second or so to our time--but her time at 29.60 was faster than the winning dog at 29.72. (Compare to the fastest dog--who had faults--at 27.81, and Tika's time of 33.09.) A beautiful, beautiful run with only one, er, well, tiny fault--she cut the corner on the broad jump for an off-course. (I wouldn't have bothered to try bringing her back to correct it even if I could have possibly pulled her away from doing the following tunnel.) The run felt good! She looked good! And she proved that she really does have that speed, even with a 2-on/2-off Aframe. It was a truly lovely way to end the weekend.

So--only the one Steeplchase Q for her, but lots of promising things.



A fun side note is that, of the 7 26" dogs in Round 2, four were from our Thursday night class; one scratched and the rest of us placed 2nd/3rd/4th.

And I had lots more I was going to talk about--what a great group of people to work with at the trials and how they make me laugh; other friends' successes; bittersweet visiting with an agility friend who's back in town because her husband (also agility) recently passed away. Hearing all weekend at the trial how well Ashley and Luka were doing at the AKC tryouts for this year's World Team, and how they won today, thank goodness; as someone else commented, they're the right team for the job, they do so well so consistently and he seems unflappable. The dogs chasing Ken The Gadget Man's (owner of the Segway I rode the other week) kite. Miscellany like that. But I'm exhausted. To bed.

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Whine. Pause. Whine. Pause. Whine.

SUMMARY: Boost is bored.

When Boost thinks that I have been sitting at my computer long enough, this is what she does. Stand outside the door to my office and stare at me. For maybe an hour. How can Border Collies do that? I couldn't stand in one place and stare for even 5 minutes without noticing that maybe the glass is dirty and going and cleaning all my windows.

But maybe I would find it easier to do if I had an extra thing to do while staring. Like Boost does. Whine. Pause. Whine. Pause. Whine. Pause. Whine. For an hour. With brief stretches of bemused silence after I scream "cut it out you're driving me nuts" with my fingers tangled in my hair.

Fortunately today I will be going off to an unopened open space preserve to survey wildflowers. No staring dogs.

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How Danged Refusals Killed Our Snooker Run

SUMMARY: Boost won't go over jumps that are right in frigging front of her.

This is an ongoing problem. There are certain situations on course where she's so busy looking at me that she won't take a jump that's right in front of her. Rear crosses are sometimes the cause, but not always. Drives me nuts. Instructor says her mother was the same way. A friend was shooting photos this weekend and got a lovely sequence that shows her looking back at me constantly instead of looking at the course.

Coming through the #2 tire--we're good, she's fast and ahead of me, which is where you want the dog before a cross-behind. (Although I see in the photo that she caught the tire coming through.)

Uh-oh, already halfway to the blue jump she's looking back at me instead of looking at where she's going.

She's still looking at me instead of looking for an obstacle. Can you believe that she actually finally took that jump without knocking the bar?

As she's taking the jump, she's STILL looking at me and not picking up that I want to go to the left. I think I must have taken the extra steps past the jump to keep her from backjumping it after this point.

And now I'm on the wrong side of jump #3, she's facing me, and we have nowhere to go. She's jumping around in front of me, looking at me, instead of thinking about obstacles.

On this snooker run, we had a lovely lovely opening with me being able to send her a bit over jumps and back through a straight tunnel. She was so good, and kept her bars up, and didn't run around the first jump when I led out quite a ways. Then we rounded the very wide 180 from the tunnel exit to the tire, and that's when the trouble began.

I wanted to send her ahead of me over the blue jump (#3) so that I could rear cross and pull her back over #4. But she'd glance at the jump, then look back at me, so she was running kind of half sideways at the jump, repeatedly. And I'm holding my arm up and saying HUP! and running at the right side of the jump. Instructor said I have to keep going, don't try to cut across behind her until she's committed to the jump. Which, in this case, wasn't until after I was PAST the jump, so now she's between me and #4 and I have no way of getting her there because she's still facing me instead of looking around for obstacles.

When she finally turns, she turns to her left and the wrong end of the tunnel is the first thing she sees, and in she goes, for an offcourse.

And it was SUCH a nice opening, too!

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CPE Weekend Wrap-Up

SUMMARY: Mixed bag again. OK, it's almost always a mixed bag.

Tika ran nicely, for the most part. She really is my reliable agility dog. Finally! At age 7!

• She knocked 2 bars --one in full house that didn't matter, one in Jumpers that prevented a Perfect Weekend of 10 Qs. Back to bar-knocking drills.
• Contacts: Got all of her contacts--barely--but there were almost no contacts all weekend on course! Aframe/teeter/dogwalk in Standard on Saturday (she wasn't entered on Sunday), Aframe in Jackpot on Sunday 3 times, and that's it.
• Most of the weekend, the only dog in her same height and level (24" Level C) was Annie the very fast & experienced rescue BC, who debuted about the same time that Tika did.
• But in CPE, levels 4/5/C run the same course, and sometimes Level 3, too, and even sometimes everyone competing at the trial, all levels. So I can compare against more than just my group.
• Sat Jumpers/no Q: Very fast and smooth, that one dang bar. 6th fastest of 56 4/5/C dogs (faster: Cody the Aussie, Reilly the spotted mixed-breed, Vixen, and Cory the super Sheltie, but not Annie for a change).
• Sat Wildcard/Q and 1st: Really smooth-looking on a twisty course. The fastest of all 44 4/5/C dogs--but Annie wasn't entered.
• Sat Colors/Q and 2nd: Nice but I forgot to call her coming out of a tunnel so she way overshot and had to come back. Still, 6th fastest of 57 3/4/5/C dogs (Annie beat us by 3.5 seconds! Jeez! Also faster: Sydney the Aussie, Cody the Aussie again, Steamer the zippy BC, and some dog named Boost.)
• Sat Full House/Q and 2nd:That's the one where she was a stride away from exiting a tunnel for 3 more points. I thought she had made it, she was moving so fast; had to review the video to assure myself that the scribe hadn't made a mistake. Still, she was 5th-highest of all 114 dogs, with 46 points; Annie had 49 and three had 47 (Django the 24" Border Collie, Sydney again, and Sooner the Papillon, who is fast but also had 5 more seconds than the rest of us).
• Sat Standard/Q and 2nd: One big turn where she headed the wrong way after the dogwalk so wasted time. Still, she was 4th fastest of 49 4/5/C dogs (faster: Annie of course, and Steamer again, and that Boost critter also).
• Sun Jackpot/Q and 2nd: I chickened out when the whistle blew and didn't take one more 5-point obstacle. Turns out that I had 7 seconds left, so I could've easily done it, it was right next to me. I remember that when I ran Boost. So, with 59 points instead of 64, she was only 9th-highest scoring of 114 dogs (all levels same course). (Scoring higher: Annie, naturally, with 61, Boost with 61 (would've had that 64 except she popped out one pole early on her last weaves), Cory the Sheltie again with 63, Chaps the Aussie (who wasn't there Saturday) with 64, Steamer again with 62, and three little dogs who got 7 more seconds--Porsche the Corgi with 66, MeiMei the Corgi with 62, and Beau the mini poodle with 61.)
• Sun Full House/Q and 1st: I thought I had a clever course that would get me 52 points, but it involved lots of tight turns and I didn't call/manage Tika tightly enough. We ended up with 46 points (she knocked one 1-point bar and the wide turns didn't allow time for the one final 5-pointer). (For a change, Annie had only 44--they missed 4 more points on a misdirected jump--but Chaps once again had more with 48, and that Steamer zipped with 49.) So Tika was "only" the 3rd highest of all 101 dogs.
• Sun Jumpers/Q and 1st: A clean, smooth run. Annie knocked a bar and bobbled a jump, so we took 1st again, but there were two other dogs faster among the 55 4/5/C (Chaps 0.4 secs faster, Sydney 2 secs faster).
• Sun Wildcard/Q and 1st: Pretty smooth if you ask me. Don't know that it could've been faster. Annie was over 2 seconds faster but knocked the last bar, so we eked out another 1st. (Others faster in the 64 3/4/5/C dogs: Cory again by 1.1, Steamer again by almost 2.)
• Sun Snooker/Q and 1st: The 7-pointer was a combo of a 20-foot tunnel and 12-pole weaves, but I really pushed her and we made it through the last weave just before the whistle blew, for a perfect 51-point round and a 1st place. Only 3 other dogs out of 68 3/4/5/C dogs got 51 (Chaps again, Cory again, and Ouzo), but Annie didn't run this one, or Steamer, or Sydney--and Boost and I blew it.

Boost had her moments. She's very fast--even sometimes having to repeat obstacles or recover from repeated refusals, she still had some of the fastest course times.

• Weaves: Problems again. She's running past them completely again, or ducking in somewhere in the middle, or popping out. Can't they just stay fixed? If I can be there near the beginning and end to manage her a teensy bit, she's good. But I want independent weaves like Tika's! Out of 16 sets of poles, 7 had problems. Back to the drawing board.
• Refusals: Only maybe 3 really bad ones, one of which cost us Snooker on Saturday when I had to run out of position to get her to take the danged thing. I think rear crosses are the worst. Back to the drawing board.
• Go on: At the end of the courses, where judges like to put several jumps in a run for a really fast fun race to the finish, Boost keeps stopping and looking back at me, while I'm running as fast as I can yelling "go hup! Go! Hup! Go! Hup!" and my arm is up and then half the time we end up with a refusal or two because she's too close to the jump to take it comfortably. Known issue. Work harder.
• Contacts and start line: Lovely lovely lovely.
• Bars: Well, she knocked fewer this weekend than last weekend jumping 20" instead of 24", but still knocked enough to make me go back to my thinking that it's a bar-knocking issue, not a height issue.
• Sat Jumpers/Q and 3rd: Ran past 2nd jump on a lead-out so I reset her to get into position, wasting beaucoup time.
• Sat Wildcard/Q and 1st: Missed weave entry so had to come back for it.
• Sat Colors/Q and 2nd: Yay! Kept bars up! Finished Level C! But looking back at me instead of running to end.
• Sat Snooker/no Q: Started very nicely with 3 sets of weaves but in the closing, that stubborn refusal on a rear cross, leading to a juicy tunnel offcourse.
• Sat Standard/Q and 1st: A really really nice run.
• Sun Jackpot/Q and 2nd: I got into the wrong position so we bobbled some things, leading into a refusal, and she popped out of one set of weaves, but our score was 2nd highest of all 112 dogs, so I shouldn't complain too much. Except that the only dog with more points--that lovely Steamer--was in our height/level again, keeping us from a first place.
• Sun Full House/Q and 2nd: Missed weave entry twice, so couldn't pick up the rest of our planned points. Not a bad score, and also, too bad that fast Steamer is in her height and level!
• Sun Standard/No Q: Bars bars bars, missed weaves twice, looking back at me at the end.
• Sun Wildcard/No Q: Missed weaves, and when I pulled her around to try again, took a juicy tunnel offcourse.
• Sun Snooker/No Q: Lovely two sets of weaves, then she didn't go where I wanted after the 3rd red, and I fell flat on my back trying to call her to me. She came over to tell me to GET UP COME ON! and I petted her, stood up, then just took her straight to the table to stop the clock instead of it occurring to me until the next day that what she did was LEGAL and I could've just stood up and gone on and maybe gotten the Q. But I don't think that fast. Dang. You'd think that after hundreds of snooker runs--this was my 305th, if you'd like to know--I'd have that idea embedded in my brain. But no.

But I had a good time, weather was great, judges were nice, friends were fun, dogs were fast and a joy to be on the course with.

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CPE Weekend Photos

SUMMARY: Today, some photos. Later or maybe tomorrow, some narrative results info and post-game analysis.

	There is always a workers appreciation gift (WAG--isn't that clever? I made it up back in, uh, gosh, when we were still doing trials up on the lawn between the buildings at Hayward) raffle, and you can get tickets only by working. This is what I really want and why I work a lot each trial. Free-entry certificates. I put in many tickets. Did I win many free entries? Not this time.
	But this looked like it would be a useful thing to have around the house, so I put a ticket in here, too. I also didn't win this. I'm guessing that's a good thing.
	This is what most of the raffle offerings look like. It's exciting until you realize that I already have 60,000 toys, rawhides, and leashes lying around the house, many of them never used ever for anything.
	In the Easter spirit, the pens for filling out your raffle tickets are decorated all flowery. Or maybe that's all the time, to prevent the miracle of the pens rising and walking away under their own power.
	This keychain looked pretty cool but as we saw earlier, my keychain is plenty crowded with useless gewgaws already, so I did not put in a ticket.
	Instead, let's look at some entertaining results for ouir runs on Saturday. The darker horizontal lines separate dogs who are competing directly against each other.
	Compare and contrast Tika's results with other dogs. All the dogs on the sheet are at the same level of competition, just different heights.
	If only she had been one stride further to exit the tunnel, we'd have gotten those 3 points, too!
	This is the only thing that kept Tika from having a perfect weekend (10 Qs out of 10 runs)--that danged knocked bar for 5 faults. Dang dang dang.
	This was Boost's really lovely Standard run Saturday. We went downhill considerably on Sunday.
	Ribbon for Boost finishing her last Level 3 requirement, so now she's earned "CL3".
	Our ribbons for Saturday. They don't fit on Boost's crate, so Tika's crate is kindly holding all of them. On Sunday, Tika had 5 ribbons and more firsts, and Boost had fewer ribbons and fewer firsts. It's nice to have two dogs.
	When I'm eating lunch, I have the crates open to toss them orts (there's that crossword puzzle word again) from my plate. The rule is that you can't exit the crate. Tika isn't big on rules. But it took me about 20 shots to catch her, because every time I raised my camera, she ducked back inside.
	The neighboring Little Black Dogs, Sparkle and Scully, get watermelon cut up specially for them.
	Scully enjoys and Sparkle drools. My dogs get Zukes or maybe cut-up Rollover served from my slobbered fingers. As also previously recently discussed. Not watermelon tenderly and loving cut into LBD-sized pieces and served with a fork.
	Wear sunscreen. Wear sunscreen. Wear sunscreen.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

SUMMARY: Is Boost night-trained or isn't she?

When Boost came to live with me, she was about 3 months old and sleeping through the night. We did have a rare case or two of peeing in the crate at night, but at the time I was using a crate with a waterproof base, so clean-up was easy. Eventually, I switched to a lightweight fabric crate, and eventually (like with all my dogs) she ended up sleeping on my bed.

I've never had a problem with my dogs regularly needing to go outside during the night. Usually, if a dog suddenly feels nature calling--even needing to throw up--she'll leap off my bed, which is what wakes me so that I can usher them outside (or, in case of imminent horking, onto the tiled bathroom floor).

In Jake's last year or two, he needed to go out during the night more and more often, but he was 15 when he died, so I'd cut him some slack. Plus he somehow cleverly figured out that, if I didn't wake up and let him out (and I tend to doze off again unless the activity continues), he could walk into my shower stall, do his business there, and get back to bed. How clever is that? I *never* ushered any of my dogs into my shower stall for anything exept a very rare bath.

During the time she was sleeping in the crate and for a while thereafter, I was going through a period of insomnia, so I'd rise in the night, don my robe, and head downstairs for a hot chocolate and a crossword puzzle to put me back to sleep. If in the crate, she'd start to make a ruckus, so I'd have to let her out to keep her from waking my housemate. Whereupon she'd want to go out, so I'd let her. When she stopped sleeping in her crate, she'd just immediately get up as soon as I did, trot downstairs, and demand to be let out. And I'd let her.

I've had less and less trouble with insomnia over time, and now (bless hormone therapy!) it's not a problem at all. So, in recent months, I've realized that she's been waking up in the middle of the night on hre own and needing to go out. Not every night, but I doubt that a week goes by where she doesn't want to go out at least one night. This is the dog, mind you, who can go most of an entire day at an agility trial without peeing and a whole weekend without pooping because things are just too interesting to want to take time for potty breaks. So I figure maybe she's just holding it.

I've started insisting on her going outside before bedtime and waiting for her to potty (and giving the verbal signal and all), but most of the time she just tries to play. (I don't do so, and I take away her toys, but that doesn't necessarily stop her.) It's rare that she'll actually do something at that time under my guidance.

I've started getting pissy in the middle of the night when she wakes me up. Maybe that's the wrong thing to do (she says in retrospect), because now she apparently tries to hold it, which makes her restless, so she moves around on the bed and moves and moves and moves and moves and moves and STOP IT DAMMIT! (or I keep telling her to settle and then rolling over and dozing off).

Two weeks ago, in one of our rare stays in a motel, she DID pee right before I went to bed, and she did get really restless in teh middle of the night and I ignored it, figuring it was the noise of an unfamiliar hotel setting. Finally I rolled over, reclaiming more of my bed--and discovered that it was sopping wet all through my dog-bed-cover, the bedding, the mattress pad, and the mattress. Fortunately there was another bed in the room. I took her out right then and she peed some more.

So I don't know whether I managed to train her to wait for the middle of the night to go potty or whether there's something else going on. We have none of the other likely symptoms of, say, a bladder infection, so I'm just thinking it's a training thing, and I'm struggling with fixing it.

Friday night, she woke me up leaping off the bed and refusing to settle. In the yard, she walked all the way around the yard slowly (not her usual pottying mode, which is a trot to an appropriate location), peed for about half a second, and then came back into the house and settled for the rest of the night. Does she think she HAS to go out in the middle of the night even if she DOESN'T need to go? Dang dog brains.

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Doggie Junk Food

SUMMARY: What wakes up the dogs' salivary glands?

Team Small Dog posted an excellent recipe for dog training treats, with explanatory photos, which you must read before you read this. Because here's my response.

This was an excellent recipe for hot dog rewards and one that I have used on many occasions when chopped-up-tiny Rollover (or the healthy choice alternative^[1], which is what I usually use these days) wasn't quite special enough.

Although World Class Trainers have told me that hot dogs aren't special enough; they should be getting a whole roast chicken, probably with truffle sauce.

I don't get it. If my hypothetical dog (hypothetically named Tika) thinks that stale left-over puppy kibble is most delectable and so salivates heavily about it, why do I need a whole roast chicken? And do dogs really know the difference between orts (that's a useful everyday word I learned from crossword puzzles) of chicken and minutiae of hot dogs? I don't think so. But certain hypothetical big name trainers said that she felt sorry for my dogs if I thought that hot dogs were a special treat for them. Who am I to argue with success? I don't argue, I just usually use the stale leftover puppy kibble for everyday rewards.

And I use chopped-up Rollover (which I still call "rollover" even though I haven't used that brand in years) as a secondary level of escalation, and chopped-up hot dogs for a real treat. And, in-between, when I'm in a hurry and want something moderately stinky, not greasy (which kibble is, actually), very small (so dogs don't fill up on candy between meals), I use Zukes Mini Naturals, which have the added conveniences of being already chopped up into tiny pieces and of coming in sturdy resealable bags that can withstand almost anything^[2].

But I'm still not certain how much difference it makes--at least, with any of my dogs, "high value" treats tend to be either "food" or "toy" but without a lot of levels of distinction within those categories. You know when vendors at dog shows offer your dog a piece of freeze-dried Alaskan Wild-caught Salmon or Free-Range Montana Organic Smoked Buffalo and say, "my dogs really love this stuff, and look, yours does, too!", I frankly see no difference in the quality of the tendril of saliva coming from Tika's lips or the level of frenzy with which she takes the treat and most of the fingers holding it.

I read somewhere recently that dogs don't taste food in the same way that we do and don't make that much distinction among flavors. I believe it, for the most part. Tika can quickly identify whether something is either "food" (snatch it out of midair and swallow in one gesture), "probably food" (including fingers that might be holding "food" but you can't tell until you've actually closed your teeth around them), or "not food" (say, gravel, which you can spit out quickly, or bananas, which are obviously not intended for consumption by canids of any level of intelligence^[3]).

Or there's Boost, who has to (a) evaluate via olfactory methodology whether it's actual food before she'll even open her mouth, and (b) decide whether perhaps there's something going on that might involve running that would be more worthwhile than taking the time to eat. In which case, she might take any kind of food reluctantly after a call to her attorney, but she'd rather not. Hot dogs might make a difference, but it's hard to tell what level of duress she feels that she's under.

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[1]: With a name like Natural Balance, you know that it's healthy, right? Or Science Diet? Or Natural Choice? I'm sure that it's all honesty in naming, so of course manufacturers would call their brand Unidentifiable Ruminant ByProducts if it were really so. Right? Am I right?

(I also need to point out that, right now, the quoted string "unidentifiable ruminant byproducts", when put into google, comes back with exactly 0 results. Let's see whether we can effect a sea change in Google by (a) doing a search right now on the quoted string (quotes are important) "unidentifiable ruminant byproducts" and then by adding it to your web page. Aren't community projects fun? And educational?)

[2]: Except Jake experiencing a premonition that he was going to have massive brain seizures that night and not survive beyond the weekend and so needed to consume all reserve bags of Zukes (and everything else) stored in the van. After he was done, the bags were no longer resealable. But I digress.


[3]: Except Jake, who once ripped open my ex's gym back to get at a banana and, on another occasion, nearly tore his crate open to retrieve one that I had in my gear bag sitting next to the crate. There was a dog whose definition of "food" was considerably broader than Tika's. I had to remove gravel from his mouth on many occasions as he was trying to figure out how to chew it up to swallow it. In his last couple of years, I had to put screening on all of my potted plants because he was starting to eat the soil out from around the roots, and Boost was starting to think that this was a normal thing for puppies to learn from their wise and experienced elders. (See photo of typical agility home's potted plant with screen, dragon head, and Ethernet cable. )

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Knee Bounces Back and So Does the Other Car

SUMMARY: A bad day and a good day yesterday

By the time I had to leave home, I could get up the stairs two-legged using the railing (instead of step/drag, step/drag). The driving itself went better than I had expected; shifting from brake to accelerator didn't bother me at all. Stiff-legged it into my meeting, but the knee had stopped throbbing by then.

What was a problem was the guy who backed into my car in the parking lot. Sigh. So, in my copious spare time, even though it's his fault, I have to get my car inspected, arrange the body shop, then do without it for however long. And the insurance company does not reimburse me for my time and inconvenience. The least the guy could've done would've been to back into my passenger door, which already had a ding in it, but nooo, he had to be different!

At least he was insured, and pleasant, and actually called Geico in the parking lot and we got the "paperwork" done standing there. I also took pictures of the environment, just in case. (As I've said before--always carry a camera! Always!) And it seems to be just the driver's door. Which might not be too bad.

By the time evening classtime rolled around, I thought I'd be able to at least practice some distance work or maybe get someone else to run the beasts, so I went up. My first "run" was a walk and a little iffy; the second one I jogged a bit, then forgot myself and turned sharply at the end, which hurt equally sharply but receded very quickly. By the third or fourth run I was moving out onto the field between runs to help set poles. By the end of the evening I was even running.

We did a timed run at the end. Boy, that Boost is one fast puppy! We missed beating Ash & Luka's time because I didn't want to push it with my knee and so couldn't get to a 180-into-a-pinwheel turn and she went wayyy wide. Still beat everyone else's times by a second, even Steamer's, and we'd have had Luka easily with a tight loop. It's a thrill to watch The Booster run on a straight-out jumpers-with-weaves type course!

This morning my knee feels almost normal. I'll just keep icing & drugging & babying it a bit for the next couple of days. And maybe practice some kneeling so this doesn't happen again.

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Chains (continued)

SUMMARY: Oh! I forgot back chaining!

When I had my first dog, back around 1980, a lady neighbor had a pomeranian that she'd tell "Pick up your toys" and he'd run around the room, picking up his toys and putting them in the toy basket. I was floored. This was just the neighbor lady's lap dog, fer crying out loud! I thought that someday I'd try to figure out how to teach my dog to do that, but had no clue where to start and never did get to work on it. Remington (my 3rd dog) was a great trick dog but not big on picking things up to begin with, let alone on command, so we never worked on that. And Jake, who loved picking things up, had the learning capacity of half a grapenut, so I never tried it with him.

Last month, Elite Forces of Fuzzy Destruction posted a video of her dog picking up his toys. Wow, I said! (I say "wow" a lot sometimes.) I know how to do that now! Plus I have a Booster who fetches the newspaper every morning and will work really hard to do stuff for me! (I suspected I'd have to write off Tika, who also works hard for the clicker, but who had to spend months in remedial retrieving school because she loves to hold onto things if you're playing tug of war but won't bring them back usually.)

After the first session, Boost looked like she was getting a clue. Tika figured out that I wanted her to put her mouth on things, but since she never actually picked them up, progress was slow, although everything in sight was heavily salivated. After the second session, Boost was starting to deliberately take things into the vicinity of the basket, although she'd hover over it and then toss the toy beyond it (perhaps a clicking error on my part that I didn't detect soon enough). Tika was starting to move things, one salivary inch at a time, towards the basket, but since nothing made it more than an inch above the ground, nothing was going INTO the basket.

After the third session, Boost was actively starting to look for the basket and would pick up any objects when I pointed to them. Tika and I had decided that it would be funnier to teach her to stand IN the basket, since that's what she was trying to do anyway to get closer to the food.

On the fourth session, I dared to demonstrate it for the housemate. Boost still needs a little encouragement to pick some things up; needs some discouragement from picking up things that are already in the basket and dropping them back in; and a little reminder that a basket 4 feet away is no different from one 3 feet away, but wow (!), she was really doing it! And Tika was up to having 3 feet IN the basket; I'm having a tough time making the transition to 4 feet just by shaping, but I'll try to be patient.

When both are more consistent and complete in their behaviors, I'll videotape it.

And, yes, I did Boost's behavior using large dollops of backchaining and clicks/treats.

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Chains

SUMMARY: Tire chain, key chain, food chain, DNA chain, chain of thought, hair chainge

Tire Chain

At Sunday's practice, they set up last weekend's Grand Prix run. There's a sequence where the dog blasts through a chute, has to go out to take the tire at an oblique angle, and then pull in to hit the weaves, probably while the handler is behind them and/or working at a distance to set up for the next sequence. In competition, Boost handled this well. Sunday, she did the chute and the tire and then missed the weave entry completely. So I sent her back to the tire--and she ran under it. I sent her again, again she went under it, and I said "No!" I mean, she hasn't missed a tire entry in I don't know how long, certainly never in competition.

I started making the entry easier and easier for her (but the side of the tire was always what I saw), and every time she flew under it, I said "no!" and brought her back. It was on the 5th try where I put her in a sit directly facing the tire that I realized that the heavy (heavy!) tire chain was dangling down completely through the center of the tire. Curses on whoever set the tire! And curses on me for not noticing that my dog was trying not to kill herself. I felt terrible! After a break and some other activities, I put her back through the tire in both directions and she did fine, so I didn't break her permanently. Dogs are so resilient; handlers can be so stupid.

Chain of thought

Cirque du Soleil's Kooza had a fabulous juggler. For me, breathtakingly talented. However, the first thing that caught my eye when he walked out on stage was his breathtakingly glittery silver lame suit. When he took off the silver lame jacket to reveal a silver lame shirt, I was hooked. But he distracted me with 20 minutes of some of the finest juggling I've ever seen, and some of it was the sheer duration without ever missing. Ever. At the end of the act, my first reaction was, "Wow! What a spectacular juggler!" and my second reaction was--and I'm sure, as agility addicts, yours would be the same--"Where can I get an outfit like that to do agility in"? You can watch the first half minute of this video to see the suit, and if you're inclined, watch the rest for the first half of his act.

Key Chain

Agility friend #2 commented this weekend, wow! That's quite a key chain! I realized then that my keychain has gone beyond being a mere utilitarian ring--after all, I have only 3 keys--and has become sort of the Swiss Army/Smithsonian/Andy Warhol of keychains.

Besides the keys (my house key is tie-dyed blue/purple, although it's worn away mostly), I have a sturdy blue metal Maglite flashlight, handy for finding stray doggie deposits after dark, a green LED extremely bright spotlight, handy for blinding yourself if you're holding the wrong end, my Weight Watchers Lifetime Member keychain, a circlet that used to have an "E" attached", the lock/beeper for my car, an I Heart My Dog tag in case anyone doubted it and needed proof, and a dragon caribiner, reflecting my dragon collection, of which I have many more than I have dogs, by a factor of probably 200.

So now you know.

DNA Chain

Quick: Which is Boost? Which is her mom, Tala? Is there a slight resemblance?




And here's a token Tika photo with her favorite Tika Toy, so she won't feel left out:

Food Chain

I keep trying to get photos of the foxes that live in the field behind me. They come up close to the fence to taunt me into frenziedly finding my telephoto lens, only to fade into the distance. They are so CUTE when they leap into the air and plunge nose-first into a gopher hole. Here is the best I've done so far:


Think it's a little blurry? That's because it's enlarged from this original, which is the nearest I've gotten with my 300mm lens for crying out loud!

Hair Chain[ge]

Well, had to make this fit into the "chain" theme SOMEhow. The instructions warn that, if you let the chia grow for too long, they become embedded and you'll have to remove their roots with a WIRE BRUSH. Heaven forfend. So it is time for Mr. Chia Head to say a fond farewell to his copious tresses. Today, we have reduced him to a mohawk. It's pretty pathetic; he needs a better stylist.

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Weekend Videos

SUMMARY: Successes and near-successes

A few videos from this weekend. Didn't get most of our runs, including (sigh) Tika's lovely Jumpers, but by putting the camera where I'd have to trip over it to get my next dog out, I managed to remember it maybe half the time.

Here are some runs. I feel like I'm out there zipping lightly around the course, but here it looks like I'm lumbering like someone whose knees are sore, and it looks like I'm running on my heels instead of digging in with my toes. More to work on... plus the pounds I've put on since Nationals really show. I hate winter! (Doesn't help that I'm wearing, what, 5 layers of clothing?)

Tika's Master Standard on Sunday was lovely. Her contacts were very fast, including the dogwalk, and she kept all her bars up. But she decided to come off the table a second too early, for a disqualifying 5 faults. So sad; subtracting the time she wasted, her course time would've been up in the placements (among twenty 26" dogs):


Boost on the same course was fast, but we're just not communicating, as you'll see multiple times here, once resulting in a knocked bar, which was our only called fault on that run:


Tika's Sunday Gamble was lovely, except that she was fast enough that I ran out of obstacles to do and, not thinking well on my feet, ran right past a perfectly available teeter, which would have given Tika 1st place instead of 3rd (among 21 dogs). But her gamble was lovely (it's jump/jump/weaves/jump after the buzzer).


When Boost ran, now I knew that I could fit in two teeters, and did so. Still can see some lack of communication on where I want her to go, including blowing the gamble entry, but the opening was pretty good, with high points equivalent to the 1st-place dog:

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Home From A Cold USDAA Weekend

SUMMARY: Quick wrap-up: Didn't get what I wanted, but it wasn't a total loss.

It was cold. As in: Saturday morning, all the water tubs and dishes had solid crusts of ice. This is the California Central Valley, remember: It's supposed to be HOT! It was also supposed to rain a lot, but it held off Saturday until the last hour or so, and this morning wee got only a few showers, and the field drained very, very nicely indeed, so it could have been much worse.

Tika needed: Steeplechase. Grand Prix. Jumpers.

What Tika got: Two gamblers (8th and 3rd of 22). Pairs (4th of 30). And--yes! Woohooo! A jumpers! (6th of 24, just one out of Top Ten-point-accrual range).

Boost needed: Steeplechase. Gamblers (had 2 chances). Standard (had 2 chances). Jumpers.

What Boost got: Pairs.

That's 3 Masters Gamblers in a row for Tika, which is cool because it ends a bit of a drought there. And she ran beautifully, fast, happily all weekend, setting aside my concerns about her physical health and age.

Boost looks more and more like a masters dog all the time. Sunday's Standard was lovely but for one bar. We went off course on only one of 9 runs, and that was a bad handling move as much as puppy inexperience. Her gambler's opening today was spot on; lots of points and fast and accurate and no bobbles.

I'm home, I'm finally almost warm, I think I'll go have dinner, shower, & go to my nice warm bed!

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Happy Birthday To Us

SUMMARY: Boost and Ellen's day.

Today, Boost are 3. And I are a bit older than that. Amazing that she's three already! How is that possible?!

She ran in class last night instead of Tika, and she looks lovely! Is coming in to me nicely on serpentines, although still has a tendency to knock bars there and to fly across the face of a steeply angled jump, but SO much better than just a few months ago. And her contacts are so nice! Do I want to break that 2o2o stop on the Aframe to get a running contact? TBD.

Here's the birthday card from my mother-out-law--for some odd reason people think I like dogs!

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Waiting For The Call

SUMMARY: While Tika's at the vet, we have to do something to keep our mind off it.

I get scared about my dogs going under anesthesia. Especially when we don't know 100% what the problem is. I've talked myself into being reasonably calm while a teeeeny wee voice in the back of my head is screeching "panic! panic!" It didn't help that Boost was up about every hour from 9:30 until 3:30 with diarrhea. Seems OK this morning; no obvious cause.

Funny, got email this morning from a friend whose agility dog was under anesthesia YESTERDAY to have the same tooth removed for the same reason (but no swelling in their case). The tooth is a "carnasial tooth"--the largest upper premolar closest to the molars. I've heard twice today that that's the most commonly broken tooth in dogs and that it is commonly removed due to such damage.


(Image from this site.)

Still, as I emailed another friend this morning: After Remington, every little thing now makes me think "cancer!" and then I find myself thinking, "why doesn't everyone just get cancer and die and then I don't have to worry about it any more!" and then I could just kick myself and this morning I was hugging Tika and bawling about I didn't mean it don't leave me, that sort of pathetic thing. She thought I was a little over the top and didn't want to have anything to do with it.

I'm fine now.

Really.

Just waiting for the vet to call.

So Boost and I went for a long, not-too-leisurely stroll along the Guadalupe River. She whuffed briefly at another dog, but by George, I was able to stop and actually chat with another dog owner--something that I cannot do with Tika along and it's so discouraging.

	My vet's pyracantha shrub. Those little tulip ears--surely it's a border collie?!
	Big white bird thing (my mother would be ashamed of me) standing in the Guadalupe. Even swollen with the recent rains, it's not much of a river any more. But it is dammed in a couple of places. The one we walked past shortly thereafter (maybe 20 feet high?) has a salmon ladder.
	Workers need to keep the blackberries cut back to allow flow and prevent flooding. It's a nice urban stroll along here.
	So pretty, so calming. Such a nice morning (but cold--my earlobes were developing icicles as I jogged). Maybe we'll actually have class tonight.
	--Or maybe not. (Back to the real world, waiting for the light rail to cross.)

And of course, where would we be without Mr. Chia Head, who has had a hair-raising experience!

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Mostly Better Than Feared

SUMMARY: USDAA trial went generally well for us, on many counts.

Here's what I had rattling around in the Things To Worry About Department of my brain before today:

• Tika has done almost no agility, and NO 26" jumps, in almost 4 weeks. She'd been sore (briefly) back then. Would a sudden rash of 5 classes in one day at 26" wipe her out? Would she be able to do them at all?
• How come we haven't been able to to get that danged 15th Gamblers leg for our Bronze Gamblers? And will I ever, since I haven't practice distance work with her for 3 months?
• Would the freeway between here & there still be closed due to flooding for our trip up this morning?
• Would the ground under the horse arena cover (for our trial) be flooded? Filled with goopy mud?
• Its been raining and gloomy and REALLY COLD (for rain) with bone-piercing arctic wind all week--this could be a miserable day, even with closing panels on half of the arena, because you still have to load & unload the car and potty the dogs and DRIVE in it.

But I needn't have spent the calories fretting. The freeway was still closed when I got up at 4 this morning, but by the time I picked up my friend with her dogs Scully and Sparkle, it was open. It wasn't raining at all, anywhere along the trip. The temps went all the way up into the mid-60s and there wasn't a breath of wind all day. The arena had one area maybe 10 feet by 3 feet that was floody & muddy, but it didn't really affect us much. The day started with a drop-dead gorgeous sunrise that started out awesome and just got better for the next 10 minutes.

Tika

Tika was SO excited to be doing agility, and no sign of soreness. Her first run of the day was gamblers, and MAN, she flew around that course! Even her dogwalk and teeters were super-fast, as we've been working on (before her medical and rain hiatus anyway). She was one of only about 10 of 76 Masters dogs who got the gamble. I thought that she had actually managed to beat everyone else (rare for Tika) by 2 points total, too, but apparently her fast dogwalk was not as accurate a dogwalk as it had looked to me, because we didn't get points for it, dropping us to 3rd of 19 26" dogs. But I know I shouldn't complain--she ran great, looked great, executed everything beautifully, got a hard gamble, and finished that Gamblers Bronze! (Now it's just the danged Jumpers...)

In fact, she Qed 3 of 5 for the weekend, also taking 3rd of 19 in Standard 26". Also had a nice pairs run, but the course was pretty easy and, so, many many many teams Qed and had very fast times. She and partner were 12th of 27 Open teams.

She knocked NO bars! Woooooo! Didn't Q in Jumpers because I tried to do a bit of a send-and-run, and managed to pull her past a jump for a refusal, dagnabbit.

And she backjumped on a wrap in the Snooker opening, but had successfully negotiated 11 jumps in a row up to that point without knocking any, so that was a bit of a victory.

Boost

Boost ran very nicely, looking more like a Master dog all the time, although the Q rate is still low. I knew that the gamble would be extremely difficult for her, and she failed exactly where I thought she would, but she DID do a serp leading into it with no effort at all--a big improvement. Her opening was nice but did the "THIS tire? You mean THIS tire? THIS one?" refusal in the opening and I just help my position and waited until she took it, so she didn't get all the way through our last Teeter (still in the air)--otherwise she'd have tied for highest opening points.

In Jumpers, she came past a sharply angled jump (my fault for not remembering what a babydog she is) AND knocked a bar, but otherwise she flew around that course without hesitations or bobbles. Looked good.

In Snooker, another babydog/overly assuming mom error--I thought she was with me while running for the next jump, and suddenly realized that there was no dog going over it--nor anywhere to be seen--and she had gone in a different direction than I thought we were going (took my eyes off her, in other words).

In Standard, oh, it was LOVELY, dang it, except for one "THIS jump? You mean THIS jump? THIS one?" refusal--but two in five runs compared to several per run like we were sometimes doing last year is a big improvement.

And in team--whoo!--she screamed around that course (figuratively, not literally--none of my dogs, thank goodness, have ever voiced while running) and her partner was pretty danged fast, too; they were 4th fastest of all 37 teams but she knocked a bar, so Q but no placement. But even with that 5-point fault added to their time, they were half a second faster than Tika's pair. Now, THAT's a fast team!

Overall

I had a good time with my friends, being score table supervisor and keeping busy, taking photos (an assortment shown here), playing a fast, challenging sport with my dogs-- let's hear it for a 2 month vacation from agility and for a 1-day trial. Even my failures as a handler didn't seem so galling today.

As much as it would slow down our Title Chase, maybe I really do need to take more time off from agility. WOuld certainly help my pocketbook, but maybe it would help my enjoyment of the basic experience of agility more, too.

New rescue sheltie, at a year and a half just joining a family dynasty of outstanding agility shelties.

Graffiti.

The photographer is caught at her foul work again.

The remnants of a favorite one of these (I've had some that look like this).

On the trial secretary's box, the added tag says, "How special can it be if there's no beer?"

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I Feel So Safe

SUMMARY: They're barking at--what?

This evening, while cleaning the shower in my bedroom, I hit one wall with the scrub brush. Tika apparently felt that this was indicative of someone trying to break into the house, sprang from the bed, and leaped into the hallway in full ferocious Tika barking mode and wouldn't shut up no matter what I yelled (but I'll admit that I didn't try "speak"-- which works SO much better with her than "quiet").

Boost, apparently startled by the noise and/or Tika's reaction, was in full Repelling Boarders outcry at SOMETHING IN THE CORNER OF MY ROOM when I emerged from the bathroom. I was pretty sure that nothing and no one dangerous had snuck into my bedroom in the two minutes I'd been in the bathroom, but seeing that behavior in your dog none-the-less makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

Until you realize that what she was protecting you against was the blue merle border collie on the other side of the...mirror. Same mirror that's been in that room, in the same place, for the last 2 years and 10 months since she arrived. And she can't spend more than, oh, 10 or 12 hours a day in that room.

I'm so glad that I have such brave dogs identifying such horrific threats in my home. I feel so safe!

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Competing This Weekend and In the Past

SUMMARY: The dogs are looking forward to it, an so am I. Jake always did, too.

First trial since Thanksgiving weekend. Every time I've loaded stuff into the car, the dogs have started dancing around, only to look SOOOO disappointed when I leave without them. Breaks my heart.

Both dogs are in Masters this year, so I can do Bay Team's Masters-only Saturday and then come home. The trial is 2 hours away, so it'll be a long day, but it's under cover, so even if it's still raining, we're good to go. There's one of each of the regular five classes.

Time to remind myself where I am with titles and competing.

Boost: Has two Standard legs and one Snooker leg. In theory, she could get one each of Standard, Jumpers, Gamblers, and Relay and finish her MAD. Frankly, the odds of that are slim to none. I haven't been working on distance stuff with her much at all, AND she's another bar-knocker, AND we still have that refusal problem with jumps. But I'm sure it will be entertaining.

Tika: I would sure like to get that Gambler's leg to finish her Gamblers-Ch Bronze. That 15th leg has proven to be SO difficult to get, don't know why. Of course, I haven't been practicing distance work with her, either, doh! Nothing else is in reach this weekend.

Jake: Well, dang, he's been gone since last February. But a friend pointed out that, with the new rules for Lifetime Achievement Awards now combining Performance and Championship, maybe the little guy could get his LAA Bronze posthumously. So I went back and looked, but no such luck.

He had only 126 masters/p3 legs, counting the Grand Prixs. 52 masters, 12 GPs, 62 Perf's. It seemed like I moved him to performance late in his career, but he had only 4 years in masters and 3 years in Perf, so his "semidachshund semiretirement" went on for a while.

If I had entered him in more than just Jumpers during most of the last year he was competing, maybe he'd have gotten enough. But, no, I entered him in only one class each day at USDAA trials for all of 2005, and then retired him completely from USDAA in 2006. He WANTED to run more, but I was just worried about his arthritis. Just for the record, that's 87 runs that he didn't do in 2005 and 114 runs he didn't do in 2006.

I was NEVER sure that I was doing the right thing for him; he really wanted to run and never really relaxed at a trial until he had been on course at least once, sometimes twice. He did fine jumping at 12" in CPE the whole time, and 16" for a dog who started out jumping 24" didn't really seem like that much. And, furthermore, he never had trouble at 16" while he was doing that. I just didn't want to push it, which was the wise thing to do.

But, oh well--

Historical side note: You know, I think Jake was only in 3 DAM team events ever in his entire 10-year USDAA agility career and never Qed! And only 6 steeplechases, with only 1 Q. Shows how times have changed. Boost's been competing for just over a year, and she's already been in 8 Steeplechases and four DAM events.

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Bored Buried Boost

SUMMARY: Cute factor.

When Boost gets bored, she starts rearranging things. I got up from my desk last night to discover that she had rearranged the dog-bed cushion on top of most of herself, and was lying there peacefully, peeking out over the top of the cushion, resting her chin among its folds.

Is that cute. Or what.




Tomorrow: Brief notes & photos from Rachel Sander's running contacts seminar.

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Retrospective Photos

SUMMARY: From my collection, one of each dog.

For the Power Paws new years party, Instructor N is gathering photos and video clips from students for a show. These agility photos aren't necessarily the best ones of my dogs, but they are distinctive in one way or another. For this blog, for completeness, I added photos of my first two (preagility) dogs. I have very few photos of them, turns out, and most of them are lying down. Wish I had tons more, but nooo--these are the best photos of the whole dogs.

	Amber, my first dog, German Shepherd/Golden Retriever. Here she's about a year old. Got her at 6 weeks; she lived to 13.
	Sheba, our Siberian Husky. Came to us at about 6-12 months just after we got married and barely predeceased our marriage (her: 17 years; us: 19).
	Remington. He was about 10 months when we adopted him, and 3 when he started agility. I chose this one for the presentation because it shows the whole dog and has me in it, and I realize that it's been almost 5 years since I lost him, so there may be many people who know me but don't remember him. Almost inconceivable that it's been that long--he was just lying on that bed in the corner only yesterday, wasn't it?
	This remains one of my favorite photos of Jake, who joined us when he was 6.
	Tika, adopted at about a year old. Picked this photo for the presentation because it's the funniest weave photo I've ever seen.
	Boost is only the second dog I've had as a real puppy--about 3 months when she came home. I don't have a lot of photos of her doing agility yet, but this surely shows off her teeter speed--although lately she's often been sliding into a slam-down, which is a joy to behold.

(Oh, by the way, here's a photo of Boost's mom, Tala. Nah, there's no family resemblance--)

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Merles Darken

SUMMARY: Some merles get darker.

I like blue merles when they have lots of nice, light gray.

Boost has been getting darker over time--compare, for example, the left ear:





In fact, Boost had a white spot on her nose as a puppy that I kept thinking was a flower petal and kept trying to brush off. That white spot has completely vanished.

But here's a really interesting extreme example of darkening.

(Thanks for the post idea, BrisbeeTheWhite aka Elite Forces of Fuzzy Destruction.)

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Turkey Trotters

SUMMARY: #4 of several posts about this weekend. A little info about the Turkey Trot and our Teams

The happy Top Turkey and the nifty embroidered badge we had to wear all weekend under penalty of funky turkey hat.

Blue Chocolate Sandwich.

Tika's Team

We assembled the team on the spot, including Tika, a fast German Shepherd named Trinity who often beats Tika in USDAA, and a pretty fast aussie named Rebel. I cobbled together a team name on the fly: "Tika Rebels against the Trinity." I've known who the handlers were but never talked to them much; talked a little more this weekend as a result of the team, which of course is one of the purposes for doing this game.

The other two handlers are slower than even I am--on this course, it was a bit of a handicap to be a slow handler--but their dogs are fast and all of the dogs are pretty experienced, so we were able to do most of the things that we wanted to do, and luck was with us also. We came in tops of 12 teams in the big-dog division.

Boost's Team

Arranged beforehand. I already knew one handler--we've been competing against each other in a friendly way since she was a teenager with her sheltie, Max, and I had Jake in his prime. She and a friend have very amazingly fast chocolate labs, Cajun and Lula. Cajun was among those topping Tika in some classes, but fortunately was in a different height division so didn't displace Tika's first places. (Whew!) We named ourselves Blue Chocolate Sandwich, and it turns out that we didn't quite synchronize our story and strategy beforehand, so we did more than almost any other team but in fact barely got more credit than most teams, just squeaking out a 2nd place. Still, I'm pretty happy with a 1st/2nd finish with my dogs. (Sure, what the heck!) And the labs' handlers are the nicest young ladies, besides being half my age and almost as fast as their dogs! Nice of them to team with this elderly, stiff-kneed, whiney old lady.

The Rules

Very brief synopsis. I've asked for permission to post the whole thing. The field had 7 different mini-courses of 3 or 4 obstacles. The farther they were from the start line, the harder they were, incorporating more contacts or, for the farthest hidden-in-the-corner wildcard one, a gamble with weaves. Each successful sequence earned you a letter. Goal was to try to spell TURKEY and possibly get more bonus points with wildcards.

Dogs had to alternate on course--do one sequence and get back over the start line before the next could go. You had 4 minutes for your team. Some things that complicated it were that, if you messed up, you had to restart your sequence to earn points (or leave the course and let your partner try), and if your dog accidentally took an obstacle from a sequence that you didn't mean to do, you had to do that sequence instead.

Elements of chance included:

• When you completed a seqence, you got a sealed paper, which you couldn't open until you got back across the start line, so you didn't know what letter you had earned until then.
• The same letter was worth various points at different times, so even if everyone spelled exactly TURKEY, odds were good that the totals would be different.
• The points for each letter were sealed until the scorekeeper tallied them all at the end, so you didn't know the point values that you had accrued. This was tricky when you inadvertently got more than one of the same letter--you just had to pick one of them to use and hope that you were picking one with higher points.
• The wildcards could be used for any letter, but again, the points were unknown until the scorekeeper looked at them, so you didn't know whether you were helping and by how much.

It was pretty entertaining, and there was some strategy to it after we had spent most of the day figuring out the rules, and also some skill in being able to get to the seqence that you wanted and completing it successfully.

As it turns out, Tika's team had 730 points, because we managed to earn two wildcards with pretty high points AND lucked out and got higher-point letter value cards, also. Boost's team beat 3rd place by only 40 points, and that was entirely on the strength of the one wildcard we earned, which happened to be very high points, while all our letter points were lower-pointers.

Might make more sense if I can post the whole thing later this week.

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It Takes Two To Tango

SUMMARY: Agility photo with me in it.

Photographers tell me that most people don't like having agility photos with them in it. Sure, I like having photos of my dogs doing agility, but I do it, too, dangit; it's a team sport and with either of us missing, it just wouldn't work! So I also like photos that show me running with my dogs. However, usually I have to ask for them.

This, of me and Boost, is from a friend who also does agility and photography and obliged me back in August at the ASCA trial.

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Foxes and Sheepies

SUMMARY: A long drive, Boost is a herding dog, Tika isn't, and there's a fox out there in the field!

I drove to Vacaville this morning with a lonnnnng-time friend; we've been vowing to do more things together and, after our trip to Golden Gate Park (sans dogs) a month or so ago, this was our next adventure, since I knew about one microbraincell more about herding than she did--maybe. At least I got to sleep in until almost 6! Not like 4 a.m. for agility!

Turned out to be a lovely day for a drive--beautiful sunrise with just the remnants of what had been rain clouds overnight.

The lecturer/tester, Deborah Pollard, was the one recommended to me by the testers in Arizona. I liked her style of working with the dogs much more, and she was much better about explaining to all of us naive onlookers about what she was doing, what she was observing, what the dog was doing, what might be some training things to note, and so on. All intriguing and educational. Now I know *two* microbraincells about herding.

Tika was the first dog up and really wanted to have nothing to do with it. She wanted to come back to Mom. She'd periodically dive in at the sheep, barking,and then lunge away to try to come back to Mom. Eventually Deborah had me come out in the pen with her, so then Tika reverted to moving away with her back to us and sniffing. D. asked me whether I intended to do herding with Tika, and I said not (especially now that I've seen 2 tests with her where she's not evidenced the moves), and she said that's probably good--Tika could probably learn to do herding, but "her heart's not in it," which I'd now agree with. Written evaluation includes "Nice dog but not for herding. Too much fear/prey drive." Here's a short clip of the first 2 minutes of Tika's session.


Boost, once again, did well. Her strong propensity to stay on her right lead (circle clockwise) really shows why she had no trouble making weave entries when bending to the right but always ran past them when bearing left: She really doesn't like being on her left lead! This gives me something to really be on the lookout for in agility--are there other patterns or situations where that weakness becomes apparent and manifests itself? And I could do some exercises with her just circling jumps on her left lead. Intriguing!

Here's about 5 minutes of Boost's session.


After I got home, I was standing in the kitchen telling my renter about the experience, half gazing out the window at the huge expanse of field (surrounded by suburban housing tracts) that will one day be a park, and noticed an odd-looking cat way out in the golden grass. "Is that a big cat," I asked, "or is it a fox?" "It's a fox!" he said, and we both ran for our binoculars.

Sure enough, there seems to be a fox living in those 300 acres. Wonder what'll happen to him (and, presumably, his friends and relatives) when they finally start building the park?

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Nationals Practice

SUMMARY: Good practice today, but tired.

Every year, the weekend before Nationals, Power Paws Agility hosts a nationals practice for their students. It's lovely--free--plus snacks and drinks--plus courses from previous Nationals Grand Prixs and variations thereof.

Today's weather was absolutely lovely for it. Not too warm, but sunny. Just a teeny breeze. Hazy--apparently we're getting a wee bit of the air crud from the southern california fires, 300 miles and more south from here! Amazing.

I ran Boost, even though she's not competing. She did very well. Knocked a couple of bars when I called her wrong, had a couple of runouts on tough pulls, and skipped the second weave pole on a tough entry that almost everyone (except Tika, woot!) had trouble with, but she got it easily the second time around the course, and not everyone did. And her contacts remain fast and accurate.

Tika ran well enough, but I notice the lack of speed especially in comparison to Boost. She moves efficiently around the course, but she doesn't drive like I've seen her do sometimes, or like when she spies a squirrel, or even when I'm tossing the frisbee. This is summed up as follows: In two of the previous 3 years at Nationals, her speed was plenty fast enough to get her into the Grand Prix semifinals, but each time we had a 5-point fault, which dropped us just below the cut-off point. If she had been half a second to a second faster, even the fault wouldn't have kept us out.

But she did her contacts fairly quickly today, even the dogwalk, which I've been working on lately for speed (although never enough, never enough!).

The worst part of today was how tired and brick-like my legs were, once again, from yesterday's mile test at Boot Camp. First 3 or 4 runs were OK, but my feeble attempts at sprinting became less sprintlike and more thudlike; after run #8 (4 each dog), three and a half hours after the first one, I called it quits for the day.

My first run at Scottsdale isn't until Thursday, so I should be hale and hearty by then. The trick is to keep up with my daily one-mile walks to maintain my stamina for the site, without overextending myself.

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Boot Camp and Boost Can

SUMMARY: First week's Boot Camp report; Boost does good.

Boost's status first--Boost is doing so well in class! We're making mistakes, but really not out of line for the kinds of mistakes that the other, more-experienced dogs and handlers are making. Her weaves remain good. Her contacts remain good. We had class last night, and this morning I got a nice note from our instructor congratulating me on her great improvement over the last month. Sure, I've been working on things, but it really does seem that it's more like something clicked in her collie brain and she's finally put together all those 2 years of training into something that works for us.

She'll be in all Masters classes this weekend, and I'm eager to see how she does. Plus another chance at a Steeplechase and Grand Prix.

I had Boot Camp for an hour on Monday, Wednesday, and this morning. Wednesday night in class with Tika wasn't too bad although my muscles were a bit tired. Thursday I was quite sore all day and really flagged in Boost's class in the evening. Today I was still sore before class (most everyone else was, too). But I managed to jog 2 full laps around the field (1/5 mile each lap) before needing to walk a bit, which is better than Monday and Wednesday.

Today was "Testing Day". First, you ran/walked a mile as best you could and recorded the time. I walked about 3 half laps of the 5 laps and finished in 11:44. Out of 7 people, I had the third slowest time; times ranged from about 9:50 to 14-something. Drillmaster (my title for him) says that the goal is to improve our one-mile time by at least a minute before the last day of class, which is only another 3 weeks.

Second, we did as many pushups, in whatever mode, in our own time, as we could without completely stopping. I knew that this would be hard for me--I did 7 on my knees, not my toes, and I had the fewest in the class. The rest ranged from 9 to 35! (Against the top of a picnic table, later, I did 2 sets of 15, which is better than barely managing two sets of 12--with a struggle--on Monday.)

When I continued to the rest of the day's exercises, I discovered that my right hamstring was very painful and I actually couldn't do some of the exercises with that side. That's the same side as my crappy knee and the same side on which the thigh muscles need improvement. I'm guessing that, if the thigh muscles were stronger and taking more of the load, the hamstring would've held up better, too.

I'm icing and ibuprofening and I'm hoping that it's not going to hinder me in sprinting with my dogs on course this weekend. Everyone else gets the weekend off!

My classmates all seem nice. There's at least one gal in college, and at least one 49-year-old, because they were comparing notes on wednesday about what they each thought they should be able to do based on what the other could achieve. There's another lady who came to Boot Camp with a friend several sessions ago, signed up for herself, and has kept with it; she's now doing two sessions simultaneously! She says that she had never done any kind of exercising, ever; she had never heard the terms "crunch" or "lunge", had never run laps... what's this country coming to? ;-) One lady is obviously more overweight than the rest of us, but I don't seem to be tremendously more fit than she is. Harrumph.

The drillmaster is good; keeps giving us instructions on how to hold ourselves, what to move, what we should be feeling in our various muscles. A good mix of good-natured "keep moving--I didn't say you could stop yet!" and "don't hurt yourself, this isn't about pain!"

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Boost's Weaves are SOOOO Fixed

SUMMARY: I am a happy trainer.

I'd been questioning myself for the last year, after I thought I had taught Boost stellar weave poles from the get-go, but she failed over and over and over. I mean, Tika's were almost stellar from the get-go; had to just practice really fast weave entries over and over because she kept crashing into the second pole. So I knew how to train them, right?

With Boost, after she started out with just beautiful weaves, I worked entries from all angles and distances and speeds. At the end of one day, she'd seem to get the hard ones, and the next day, nuthin'. Even the easy ones were falling apart. I couldn't figure out how I was failing as a trainer. Apparently it just hadn't been 'splained sufficiently to her that she had to work at entering on that side, and that she had to work to finish the poles.

Now that I've found ways to explain these things to her (pick her up and murmur in her ear on the entry; make her stop and come back and do the last d*@# pole to stop the popping out), she's fabulous.

Once again, in class last night, her weaves were, dare I say it, totally awesome. We even had one drill with a tough left-hand entry--the side that had been giving us grief--and of all the dogs there last night, Boost was the only one who got it on the first try, and she nailed it at full speed.

I am one happy momma.

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Speed

SUMMARY: Boost is fast.

Yow. Boost's Advanced Jumpers run was clocked at 7.54 yards per second. Tika's fastest time ever was 7.05 for a Novice Jumpers run.

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Master Dogs

SUMMARY: Sometimes you feel like a Master, sometimes you don't.

Master Gamblers	Tika	no Q. Did hard part of gamble but turned wrong way.
	Boost	No Q. Didn't stick start line, didn't stick her Aframes. Good: did DW in gamble.
Steeplechase	Tika	No Q. Bar and ran over broadjump. 28.86 with fastest at 26.94. SCT of 35.20, but our 10 faults gave us 38.86. Zut alors!
	Boost	No Q. Didn't stick start line and made her come back and sit. Followed by a flawless run but over time.
Saturday Standard	Tika (Masters)	Q and 2nd of 20
	Boost (Advanced)	Q and 3rd of 9. AAD!
Saturday Jumpers	Tika (Masters)	No Q. Smooth but one bar. 27.46 with winner at 26.67.
	Boost (Advanced)	E? Couple of bars plus bad handling for offcourse.
Pairs Relay	Tika (Masters)	No Q. Tika clean, partner offcourse
	Boost (Advanced)	Q and 1st place
Masters Snooker	Tika	Q and 8th of 21; popped one Aframe in opening which = superQ points
	Boost	Ha! 6 points! Tied for 37th of 39
Sunday Jumpers	Tika (Masters)	E; knocked 2 bars so tried risky layering = offcourse
	Boost (Advanced)	E; 20.55 seconds compared to winners (very fast) 22.00; beautiful but sent her into the wrong end of the tunnel twice, plus bar
Sunday Standard	Tika (Masters)	No Q; Knocked 1st bar, popped dogwalk AND aframe
	Boost (Advanced)	No Q; bar, refusal, handling mistake for offcource
Grand Prix	Tika	Q and 2nd of 21; only 3 clean, only 4 Qed; 13 Eed.
	Boost	Q and 11th of 46; only 15 Qed; 24 Eed.

Tika's Contacts

Well, the saga of "Tika has running contacts" continues. Flew off an A-frame in Gamblers and barely stuck the 2nd one and didn't try to fix 'em. Should have. Somehow she hit A-frame and Dogwalk in Saturday's Standard, a challenging course that only 5 of 20 dogs Qed on. But she didn't even pretend to hit bottom. Still, she placed 2nd! Only the second time she has placed higher than 3rd in 70 Masters Standard attempts. In Snooker, we did four A-frames and she popped one of them in the opening, which would have given us Super-Q points. In Sunday's Standard she flew off BOTH the dogwalk and the A-frame--and I made her come back and lie down each time.

So, after that, in the Grand Prix, she actually got feet into the contacts both times (but by slowling way down, and even so, not a hint of a two-on/two-off pretense) and not only Qed on a course where only 3 of 21 of the 26" dogs ran clean, but also placed 2nd! That's the first time she has placed higher than 6th out of her 38 Grand Prix attempts. And only her fourth clean Grand Prix ever.

She didn't get called on her dogwalk up contact all weekend; that's two weekends in a row. So we go from the up zone to the down zone, I guess. Sigh. REALLY need to retrain contacts over the winter and STICK WITH IT, DANGIT!

Tika Over All

So those two second-place finishes were to be proud of, and I'm pleased with them. But getting only 3 Qs out of 9 is low for us. Bars, contacts, and a couple of Stupid Handler Tricks. Back to bar-knocking drills, too-- I think she knocked 6 this weekend, 2 (?) being the first jump of a run, and one triple on a send/front-cross/pull in an otherwise beeeeyutiful Jumpers run.

And what about that Broad Jump in Steeplechase?! RAN across it! Never seen her do that before, and I don't think it was much of an angle, either. That's twice that a broad jump has taken us out in Steeplechase. Guess I gotta haul mine out from under the deck.

Boost's Weaves

Woohoo! Perfect weaves! Every time! Like she's been doing 'em for years! What a difference from Labor Day weekend. We did 5 sets of weaves, from all angles and directions, and she nailed every entry and stayed in even when I moved way away to get into position for the next obstacle. I am SOOOOOOO happy about that, as that has been our killer in plenty of runs in the last year where we were otherwise clean. Still, watching one video, I timed them at about 2.7 seconds, which is half a second slower than we've timed them in the yard and class. They looked pretty fast, but I guess there's still a little confidence issue in competition. Oh, well, that'll come!

Boost's Handling

Boost also seems to be almost over the runout or refusal problems that we've worked on over and over. Only one really bad jump refusal muckup on a badly done rear cross where I meant to do a front cross, and only one runout where I left her in the weaves and ran ahead but didn't give her any clues where to go after the weaves. She handled really smoothly in almost everything else, except Saturday's Standard--where we had a couple of jump refusals (not counted in Advanced) and held it together for a Q, which is all we needed to MOVE UP TO MASTERS in everything! Scary and also a relief to be in the same level as Tika.

Her Grand Prix run--again, a tough one where only 15 of 46 22" dogs Qed--was beautifully smooth. She knocked a bar on a very deeply angled serpentine, but at least she's doing the serps, which a couple of months ago we were still struggling with. She's now really starting to work to take the jumps instead of going around them or stopping.

Her Steeplechase was a thing of beauty. I could not have asked for a more gorgeous Steeplechase run. The run itself was flawless. But...

Boost's start line and contacts

So, my comfort through all those botched weaves and refusals and runouts was that my baby dog has rock-solid start line stays and 2 on/2 off contacts. Naturally, now that the other things seem fixed, BOOM! everything else breaks!

In the first run of the weekend (Masters Gamblers), while I was leading out, a little gray blur shot over the first jump and past me. I called her back and said "oh my goodness!" or something like that and told her to sit, whereupon the judge told me to continue immediately or leave the course. Of course, that would be training in the ring. I decided that that very brief sit was sufficient, didn't attempt to finish my leadout, and ended up behind her all the way through the opening, so we had lots of wasted time and space--PLUS she hit her A-frame bottom but did NOT wait for the release! So on the second A-frame, I really held her. So our opening pointage was low.

In the second run of the weekend, the Steeplechase, I again put her into a sit and confidently led out--and a little gray blur shot over the first jump and past me. I managed to scream her name a foot before she actually hit the A-frame, called her back to me, made her line up next to me, and put her into a sit again. This judge didn't give me any verbal warning, so I completed my lead-out, released her, and continued in that absolutely gorgeous flawless run. But, as a result, we were almost 4 seconds over time.

Still, that and the Grand Prix give me hope for our future in Masters. Plus--we had no more problems with the start line for the rest of our 7 runs, so if that fixed the problem permanently, it was well worth giving up the Steeplechase for.

But she was fighting her sticky contacts all weekend. In that smooth Grand Prix, she came off her dogwalk before I released her, so I made her come back and lie down. That was a 4.5 second delay; the rest was lovely including a teeter that she SLID down the last foot! And stuck it! Beautiful! Her time of 36.34, with that extra 4.5 seconds, was .15 slower than Tika (who was NOT holding her contacts) and 2.03 slower than the winning 22" dog. So she's moving!

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Crazy Driven WEAVING Border Collies

SUMMARY: Boost's weaves are SO much better! Plus she loves watching those Border Collies!

Boost's weaves in class last night were fannnnnnntastic! She missed only a couple of entries when turning to the left, but this time they were barely missed--went in early (wrong side) instead of just running past them on the far side. And she didn't pop out EVEN ONCE, even when I was bearing away from her, running ahead to make a turn, lagging behind for a pull. What an awesome weaving dog!

These are the weaves that I thought I had a year ago. Perhaps they'll stay fixed, if the good lord's willin' and the tide don't rise.

Our midday Wednesday "puppy class" is on indefinite hiatus, since attrition had us down to only four members (one injury and three off to other classes). That's OK; an evening class is better for my schedule, anyway.

For the last 3 weeks, and probably for the long haul, Boost is now in a class with all Border Collies. You could not have a happier dog. And it was fun for me, too. These are all Masters dogs (well--OK, Boost is one Standard leg from being a Masters dog, too; and frankly the people in our "puppy class" were working at the masters level even if they weren't competing much yet), and includes two current and former World Cup team members. (Silvina Bruera and Maja, representing Argentina for the 4th (?) year in row, and our instructor, many-time competitor and current world team coach, Nancy Gyes with her dog Ace aka Mace.) (And that's compared to a mere one world-team-type dog in Tika's Wednesday night class. ;-) (Luka.))

The point more being that, in this class, Boost, who seems to me like the world's fastest, most driven, most spectacular Border Collie, is nothing special. In this class, there are nothing BUT super driven, super fast, spectaclar BCs. Every time I blew something, I felt like such a doofus. But then--everyone was blowing stuff. And these two same world-cup-type people both had experience handling Boost's mom when she was young, whom Boost so greatly resembles, and had challenges with her. Which makes me feel less like a doofus...when I take time to remember that.

We ran a lot of short, fast drills last night along with the usual longer courses. So we ran a lot. My knee felt great (unlike the night before with Tika, where it grieved me), my body felt great, Boost ran fabulously, and I was near exhaustion by the end of the class. But that high-endurance Border Collie thing sure showed up. Not only did Boost do all the drills at top intensity, but sometimes parts of them several times while I figured out my handling. Between runs, she stood up and lunged eagerly at the end of her leash, quiet except for the loud gleaming of her bright, wide eyes, all the time that thos other really exciting dogs were running. For almost 2 hours. When we got home, she leaped on a toy and begged me to play.

"I'm a Border Collie, mom; GIVE ME STUFF TO DO!"

This weekend will be the test of the weaves--and everything else. It seems like, in just a very few short weeks, she's stopped refusing jumps, she's figured out serpentines and turns and taking jumps at an angle, weave poles... AND still maintains really lovely contacts and start lines. I feel like I'm living on the edge-- Maybe she did need more time to mature. Maybe I did, too. :-)

Today's bonus: A machine-translated version of an older Argentinian article about Silvina and her dogs Trompita, Aira the doberman (note translation of name, too),and Maja the BC (name also translated). I love machine translations. Almost as good as some of those badly translated instructions on commercial products.

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Comparing Jumpers and Coming Weekend

SUMMARY: Four agility dogs, different results.

My first two agility dogs, Remington and Jake, hardly ever knocked bars. It just wasn't something we ever worried about. Tika knocks bars. Looks like Boost is a bar knocker, too.

Some numbers: Remington's USDAA Starters/Novice record is vague; Jumpers didn't count for anything back then, so all that mattered was placement, which was time plus faults. I didn't track the faults. He placed anywhere from 1st of 13 to 3rd of 5 before he moved up to Advanced, where he quickly Qed in 2 of 4 Jumpers to move up to Masters (things wuz different then).

Then, he often didn't make time. (This was the long period when I was discovering that he slowed down in reaction to my stress.) When I finally figured that out--and how to deal with it--well, he Qed his last four Masters Jumpers in a row after Qing only 2 of the previous 17.

In all those Advanced and Masters runs, he knocked a bar only once, and he was running with someone else at the time.

Jake didn't come to live with me until he already had his novice AD title. With him, so much faster than Remington at the time, my problems were all learning to handle all over again; lots of runouts and refusals. In the 56 Masters and P3 Jumpers that we did, the only knocked bar I have recorded was after he had already run past a jump and then knocked the bar backjumping.

Tika. Well. 21 starters/novice Jumpers before she got a clean one--actually got TWO that same weekend. Then, in advanced, she Qed her second one, and I thought I was on a roll. ...I was, and it was all rapidly downhill. 13 Masters Jumpers until our first clean one, and that's what had held us back from our MAD forever. Then another 7 until our next clean one. Then the legs are sporadic--10 of the next 24. This spring, we got five--FIVE!--in a row, and I thought I was on a roll! Well... you know what happens... downhill again.

The Booster isn't as bad as Tika, but probably only because I'm not making as many handling errors (I hope). She got 1 out of 4 Startes Jumpers; knocked bars (and other problems) in the others.

Has earned only one Advanced Jumpers Q out of 11 tries. That's enough to get us into Masters if we can get that third Standard leg! (2 out of 16 tries so far) ...Two more chances this weekend at TRACS in Woodland.

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Boost's Weaving Poles--Fixed?

SUMMARY: Sometimes the simplest solutions...

I've picked her up only a few times when she's missed that left-turn entry into the weaves. You should see her working to get in there now! It became clear that she had to work on it after the first couple of times, when she'd blast full speed to just beyond the first pole, then visibly stop for the fractioniest bit of a second and DIVE into the entry, but she's getting smoother all the time.

Now I'm wondering whether it's just that she's stronger with a lead to one side, which makes it easier to turn sharply in one direction, and she just never figured out (or was never forced to figure out) how to change lead to make the sharp turn in the other direction. It's a thing of beauty! We'll see how well it translates when we get to class this Thursday--and in the trial this coming weekend. But it's lookin' good--

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Fixing Boost's Weaves

SUMMARY: Getting the left-hand entrance.

It dawned on me at the ASCA trial a few weeks back that Boost was getting all of the weaves she entered with a turn to the right but not those that she entered turning left. Training since then has focused on that.

I continued to use my little wire fencing pieces to mark the entrance in most cases, or, if I didn't have those, any other object in the vicinity. As long as something was there, she usually (but not always) made that entry. Sometimes, however, she ran right through the wire fence and seemed to give it no second thought.

A couple of days ago, I noticed that, when doing "left" and "right" when sitting, she turned her head to the right but her whole body to the left. Made me start thinking that perhaps there's something structural or somewhat out of kilter. Yesterday I almost called the vet/chiro up in Lafayette--but I just hate the thought of the 90-minute drive, so I thought I'd wait until after class.

Before class, I set her up with the fence in position and tried several runs with her turning left. She got almost all of them. But, when class started, she just blasted through or around the wire time after time. Instructor N pointed out that she's more hyped up in class than beforehand. Said maybe it could be something physical, but if she can make the turn with the wire there, even though it's not much of a barrier, there's no real good reason why she can't make the turn without it there.

The three things we discussed:

• If she doesn't make the entry, just stop, give the "uh-oh, too bad, bummer" talk and just walk her off and let her sit out while the next dog runs. We tried that several times, and on the 5th try, I believe, she made the entry (but now she's seen that same entry all those times). The next try, she didn't.
• Put up a "maze"--basically bits of x-pen or more substantial gates than my little fencing--in places where she's NOT supposed to run, so that if she's blasting through full speed after making the wrong entry, she'll suddenly arrive at a place where she can't get through/over/around. N. said that this has worked for several dogs except one, who figured out that you could skip *two* poles at the beginning and still have it work. So we tried it several times with Boost, and she made a couple of correct entries, and then also skipped two poles. N. did mention that eventually they might figure out to look for the gates up and adjust accordingly. I hate clever dogs.
• Just picking her up and telling her not to do that. I don't know why I didn't think of this before. After a zillion different strategies for trying to get Tika to quit grabbing my feet in the middle of a course, this is something that I came up with on my own, and that's the trick that finally gave me back the ability to run a full course with her. So today in the yard, I tried a couple of fast, drivey weave entries with the "uh-oh, bummer" strategy, and she missed 3 in a row. Then I picked her up, carried her around for about 10 seconds, saying that I was disappointed in her and she needs to get those weave entries. Set her down on the ground at the beginning of the weaves, and she did them. Then we did more fast drivey entries and she got them all. Hoo-ah. We'll see whether that sticks until tomorrow.

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USDAA Weekend Brief Results

SUMMARY: Not what I had hoped for, but there are signs of hope.

What I hoped for on friday and what I actually got:

• Tika:
• Hoped for: Steeplechase Q. Got: No Steeplechase Q. (Knocked 2 bars.)
• Hoped for: Grand Prix win. Got: 5-fault Q. (This extends our lifetime GP Qs to two clean Qs and 17 5-point Qs. Arrrrghhh!)
• Hoped for: Wins or at least placements in everything else. Got: Q/5th place in Saturday Standard (for 1 whole top-10 point); 2nd place and Super-Q in Snooker Sunday (for 7 top-ten points); I'm quite pleased with the latter. (And 4 non-Qs and 2 other nonplacing Qs.)
• Boost:
• Hoped for: Grand Prix Q or Steeplechase Q or preferably both. Got: Neither.
• Hoped for: Pairs Q and Standard Q. Got: Neither.
• Hoped for: Good weave poles. Got: Mixed bag. She missed almost all--but not all--of her weave entrances, but, once in, popped out only 3 times, and I made it a point to do weaves in gambles & snookers for lots of opportunities. So--not as bad as some prior trials. But *weaves alone* kept us from a Steeplechase Q, and *weaves alone* kept us from a Standard Q on Saturday. Sigh.
• Hoped for: Move up to Masters before Bay Team next weekend. Got: Enough Gamblers and Snookers Qs that we can--and will--move up to Masters in those.

Now I am exhausted and heading to bed.

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Another Bar Knocker

SUMMARY: Boost lays them flat.

We've been working on basic serpentines this week at home. Boost is getting a little better about not running past a jump when approaching from a drastic angle, but she is knocking knocking knocking bars.

In class today, I don't think she had a run where she didn't knock at least one, often 2 or 3 bars (at which point we'd stop and regroup and try again).

Our instructor (Jim this time) had me pace off 12 feet, then 10 feet, back from the first jump to put her into a sit-stay. Nancy (and others) have always said that, for ideal speed over the first obstacle, you want your dog to have two full strides before that first obstacle. I've always just put Boost as far back as I could, my theory being that that would give her time to get the feel of her stride. But she was knocking the first bar today, too. At 12 paced-off feet, Boost threw in a half-stride after two full strides. At 10 feet, she did 2 full strides and didn't knock the first bar.

Now I need to remember that in competition; pace off 10 feet pretty exactly and start her from there.

That doesn't solve the midcourse bar knocking. Some of that was me giving commands over the jumps, which is so frustrating because I thought I had that timing down after working with Tika, who is pretty danged fast around a course. But there's something different in their strides that throws me off with Boost somehow, or maybe I'm too worried about her pulling off the jump, which she still does a LOT because her commitment point is so late.

Well, this weekend at the ASCA trial with (in theory) fast, wide-open courses should be interesting. I'm looking forward to it more and more, in part because work is so stressful the last couple of weeks. Nothing terrible, just deadlines and too much to do.

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Boost's CPE Weekend

SUMMARY: Spookiness, pesky jumps, and weaves.

Last weekend, Boost Qed 4 of 5 on Saturday and things were lookin' good.

On Sunday, she Qed in only 2 and spooked on 3 of her runs, and I don't really know what triggered the spooked episodes, although they were just like the previous 2 weeks in class, where she had done the same thing. I noticed that the wind had come up each time. But whether it's only that--goodness knows, she's been around wind--or a combination of that and general insecurity, or of needing to go potty, I don't know. And I throw in the nonwind choices because: This weekend, it seemed that each spooked episode was right after a hard calloff or a big mistake. And, although I try not to be negative, when she blasts past a set of weaves and I bring her back to try again, I know that she knows that that was incorrect.

AND, being an insane working dog, she doesn't want to take the time to empty her bowels while we're out in the field; she wants to PLAY! and even if I withhold play, she has the patience to sniff around only a few seconds and then ASK to play again. Or go check out what someone else is doing. The world is FULL of things that are far more fascinating than pooping! After the third spooked run, she finally did #2 immediately, and it was obvious that she had been holding it for a VERY long time.

So--wind with unusual smells, plus stress on course, plus needing to poop? I dunno. She'd just go into her danger/alert barking, semipanicked ears back, tail down. She didn't even know what she was barking AT. Tried the judge, tried the people next to the ring, tried something off in the distance that I couldn't figure out what.

I have visions of Hobbes the Wonder Baby, 2 years old and in the lead in the GP finals (2001?), going into a tunnel 2 jumps from the end of the course and never coming out.

OK, but about those weaves and serpentines:

• Sat Full House (Q, 1st, and highest score of all 142 dogs competing! (Tika 2nd highest)) 2 sets of 6 not quite straight on, perfectly. But ran past a jump at a slight distance off the line from Aframe to tunnel.


• Sat Colors (Q and 1st of 12 dogs; 2nd fastest of 75 level 3/4/5/C): don't remember whether there were weaves; no probs with jumps.


• Sat Jumpers (Q but no place), no weaves, but ran past two jumps on a plain vanilla serpentine and then did several refusals at a straight-on jump with a sharp turn afterwards.


• Sat Snooker (no Q), didn't try weaves in opening and I forgot what I was doing for an early offcourse.


• Sat Jackpot (Q, 1st, and 6th highest of all 146 dogs (Tika 7th)): Don't remember whether there were weaves. Ran past a jump slightly off the line from tire to tunnel.


• Sun Jackpot (no Q or place): Went into a tunnel and popped back out as I beat feet in a nother direction. HOW can she blast into a tunnel at 100 mph and do a U-turn like that??? Weaves in the gamble, but she came in to me instead of seeing them. When I finally got her to settle at my side instead of dancing around, she SENT 15 feet straight out to the weaves, made a perfect entrance, and completed them nicely (but over time).


• Sun Jumpers (no Q): Didn't run past anything, but knocked one bar early, then after a hard calloff she spooked before the next-to-the-last jump and was looking over her shoulder when she jumped it and knocked it.


• Sun Snooker (Q, 1st): weaves were #6 and we approached them only in the closing, she ran past them completely and then spooked; I did finally get her back and through them, but that meant that we were out of time before doing #7. We did Q, though.


• Sun Colors (No Q): A very sharp angle into the weaves (about the same as sending her to the Jackpot weaves from 15 feet back), and she ran full speed through the first pole, out the other side, and went into spooked mode. I actually had to touch her, finally, to get her attention.


• Sun Wildcard (Q, 3rd): Weaves last obstacle; she entered perfectly, did a couple, then popped out. But at least no spooked dog.

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Weave Poles and Writing

SUMMARY: Boost good in class today, except dang weaves; my fiction-writing past intrudes

Today in class I felt as if Boost and I were really in synch, going around the courses. Not quite as much as Tika and I did on the same ones last night--Tika is running so nicely!--but better than at many other times. But today, ta-da, Boost was popping out at #10 in the weave again. Argh! We shall see what happens this weekend.

Last night in class, Ashley was avoiding putting Luka over the dogwalk because he's retraining for a running contact (which they already have on the Aframe). This made me feel SO lazy about STILL not having dealt with Tika's dogwalk-up problem that I went out and bought some pool noodles (to use as spacers), and this afternoon I set up my video camera to film her doing about a dozen dogwalks to see whether I can see a pattern. (Don't know where to try forcing her stride if I don't know what she's already doing.) Unfortunately, my battery died before I could look at more than just a couple. So...maybe next week.

For some reason, my writing past has been popping up in the last couple of weeks. I'm trying to ignore it. Too much to do. But I couldn't resist this indulgence.

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No, Me Go!

SUMMARY: In which Boost won't take a treat but nearly takes my hand off.

Last Thursday's class found Boost almost over the top, after no class for the preceding two weeks and no agility trials (just the Fun Match) to really take the edge off.

When she did her first Aframe, and it was a really nice 2o/2o contact, I ducked in to hand her a nummy treat, and she just ignored me, staring straight ahead. Nancy calls this the "No, me go!" behavior, which makes me laugh. Me have brain, me use brain simple thoughts, me Border Collie, me no eat--me go! So I have to insist, "No, you take treat!"--that she take the reward I'm offering to emphasize that (a) I'm scripting the show (b) it is a reward, dammit. Then she takes it realllllllly slowly, barely moving her head, eyes fixated straight ahead. I have no idea whether she's swallowed it.

She will, however, always take a toy reward. (Such as playing tug-o-war while holding her rear feet on the contact.) She LOVES her toy reward. She will go NUTS for a toy reward. I need to go back to rewarding her (with a toy & play) for taking treat rewards, since I need the option of using either in different situations.

(In the early part of that class, she panicked about something. We never did figure out what it was. Lasted about 10 minutes. Eventually calmed down and went back to work.)

Fast forward to last night. After Tika's class, I was beat and my knee was acting up, but Puppy had been in her crate for almost 2 hours and as usual I try to get her out just to do a couple of tunnels and weaves before Lights Out on Power Paws field and we head home for another half hour in the car. She was, once again, over the top. (She puts up quite a fuss in the car at times during Tika's class. I keep trying to leave the door open but eventually have to close it to shut her up or at least mute the noise.)

I did a wee bit of warm up, then led out and put her through a chute to practice calling her into a sharp turn after coming through the fabric. She went wide, but did come in to my right side and I rewarded her with the Riot Tug from my right hand. Don't remember whether I kept the toy in my hand or threw it, but I think I threw it. Now, repeat, with the intention this time of continuing to the weaves. She blasts out of the chute, turns sharply to come in towards my right side, and I step forward with right arm and leg (toy clenched in right hand) towards the weaves, and she came past at 90 miles an hour and snapped onto my hand. The pain--was tremendous--

She didn't keep holding--in fact I think I heard her teeth snap shut as she landed about 5 feet beyond me, but I was way too overwhelmed to really think about it. A couple of classmates came running over--from the far side of the field, they had heard a snap and thought it was my knee again. I thought maybe she'd broken my hand, but then realized I could move it fine, and in fact had barely even broken the skin in one spot. But it still really hurt. A little bump raised just under the skin, so I thought she'd broken a blood vessel.

They thought I should ice my hand; were afraid that I had broken it anyway and not realized it, but by the time I left a few minutes later, I could use my Monty Python voice to assure them it was only a flesh wound.

But this morning there's almost no pain at all, and just a little lump, right on top of the tendon going to my middle finger. I'm thinking that she must have hit directly on a nerve for it to hurt so much at the time and yet have so little to show for it the next day.

Dang toy-motivated dogs. Well, it IS darker on the field than she's used to, and she probably couldn't see very clearly...and she LOVES her toy reward...

Anyway, class today, we'll see how she does with everything.

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Boost's Weaves

SUMMARY: Much better than at Sunday's Fun Match

It's amazing. We did a ton of weaves in class today, and Boost never popped out early. Not even once. So either I have a problem that's going to show up only in trial situations, or I've already fixed it with 2 or 3 successes finally at the fun match and 3 days of working with 12 poles at home in a not-very-intense way.

Dogs. Huh.

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Today's Briefing

SUMMARY: Upcoming events, rodents, Jake's ghost

Only two weekends to our next actual trial. It's a CPE trial, so I'm hoping that I'll be more relaxed and focused on using it as a training experience with Boost (although CPE doesn't allow training in the ring, there's training and then there's training). On the other hand, I'll also be Big Chief Running Score Table Czar, being the resident expert on CPE scoring, so who knows how relaxed I'll really be. Fortunatly we've got a bunch of people who are good at score table.

Then--I planned my calendar out for this entire year. I was supposed to be doing another CPE trial 2 weeks after that. However, for whatever dumb reason, I missed the fact that the premium was out, and now the trial is full and I can't get in. Have I mentioned before how very much I despise limited trials for exactly that reason? There go my year's plans, down the tubes. If I had been counting on that trial for a specific purpose (as opposed to simply "convenient trial on convenient date", I'd really be floating my begonias. (Whatever THAT means. Sounds distraught, though, doesn't it?)

However, conveniently there's an ASCA trial the same weekend, and closer to home. ASCA agility is now the way NADAC agility was originally. Simple--Standard, Gamblers, Jumpers. And all the usual normal equipment. But I haven't done any of that in so long, that really I can't count it as a weekend for earning legs, because they'll be of pretty much no use to me. But they do allow training in the ring like NADAC did/does. So it's a fun match. A pricey fun match, but a fun match none-the-less.

Tika made it out of Novice to Open and Elite in NADAC, but so few of those were dual-sanctioned with ASCA that in fact according to them she's still in Novice Jumpers and open Gamblers. But apparently I can run her in Elite and they'll just apply any Qs to the levels I'm missing. For me, it wouldn't feel fair towards the other competitors to put her into Novice or Open, so Elite is what I'll do.

Apparently I didn't even bother to register Boost with NADAC or ASCA. So I had to send in her registration to get a number. Get this: It costs only $10 to register a dog. But you have to be a member to register a dog, and the minimum membership fee is $10. So what they're not telling you is that it costs $20 or more to register a dog. It's all in how you phrase it, I guess.

Her, I *will* enter in Novice because that's about where we belong, IMHO!

Even though she seems to be channeling Jake's ghost.

I used to have this old, low-slung, wrap-around-backed chair that was so crappy and ugly that I always had it covered with a throw. I kept it only because the dogs liked it. Jake in particular. One of his big hobbies was digging enthusiastically at the throw cover until he had bunched it up into a useless glob or thrown it off the chair entirely, and then going off on some other urgent chore. I'd put the throw back on. Next time he came by, he'd notice this travesty and do his artistic rendering of a lump of fabric again. This went on several times a day, for years.

When Boost came along and tore the chair into a zillion pieces, I finally got rid of it. Poor Jake, his main hobby out in the trash. I finally got him a nice replacement bed, a soft outer part with a removable inner cushion. In January of this year. Talk about bad timing. Anyway.

The bed has been sitting there. The other dogs have used it on occasion. But over the last couple of weeks, Boost has used it more and more, and Jake's spirit seems to have taken over her brain. (Sounds like a bad horror movie, doesn't it?) I've noticed her on occasion digging and pulling at that center cushion until she gets it out of the bed, and then she goes off on some other mission. So I put it back. Next time I notice, it's out in the middle of the floor again.

It's nice to know that some dog hobbies can be passed along from generation to generation.

I'd like mouse-catching to be one of those things, but apparently catching mice in the house is a lot harder than catching them outside. Outside, you can dig under the compost bin, then push on it until it tips over, then, after spending half an hour eating all the really nummy bits of kitchen waste that were inside the bin, you can actually get at the mice or rats and dispatch them. Not so easy to do with a fridge in the kitchen.

Maybe it was yesterday's weather--very unsummerlike, overcast and gloomy and windy and looking for all the world as if it wanted to rain (apparently did in san francisco & a few other places around the bay)--but the "mouse" that I have had in my kitchen and bedroom was hyperactive all day yesterday. I could hear him digging and chewing and dashing around in cabinets and behind the fridge and under the stove and dammit there was nothing I could do about it. Even saw him dash across the floor several times. Even the dogs were going nuts. They wanted to go into the living room, next to the kitchen, and were poking around eagerly at the couch as if they had seen and/or smelled the furry little beast right there. Boost even stood or lay in the kitchen for about two hours, ALMOST catching him as he scurried out-from-and-back-under. Driving me nuts.

So I finally took the two traps that had previously been sprung but caught nothing, and reset them and placed them more strategically carefully under the sink. I had barely sat down at my computer when i heard one go off. Bingo! I disposed of him in the trash can, sat down at my desk... and the other one went off. Got another one of the little buggers.

It's heartbreaking at the same time as it's a relief to catch them. I don't want or need their diseases and their pee and poop all over my house. But I do really love little furry wee beasties, and opening the cabinet and seeing the little bright black eyes (deceased) and little sweet furry bodies, oh, it tears me up. But catching them live and turning them loose outside isn't going to help me or whoeve else's house I'd put them near.

So I put THAT one in the trash can, along with the trap (I dont' bother trying to separate ex-mice from the traps--they all go to the dump together), went back into the kitchen... and heard one scamper among the items stored under the sink at the SAME TIME as one was gnawing under the cabinet on teh opposite side of the room. This morning, my housemate reported that one ran into his bedroom and back out again right in front of him. Dammit!

Anyway, bought a ton more traps today. Set them all over the place in clever strategic areas, but there doesn't seem to be quite as much hyperactivity in the heat of this sunny summerish day. Still, sat down at my desk, and heard one under the sink go off. Disposed of that one, set another one. Later--heard it go off again. So that's four down and I could've sworn that when I went up to my bedroom to set traps up there, I heard scurrying.

I've never had a mouse problem like this before, and it's a little intimidating. How many of them are there? One female can have up to 10 litters a year with up to a dozen or more babies per litter. Yikes. I might be doomed. We'll see whether I can get 'em all with billions of traps. I don't really want to use poison bait, which seems to be the more effective but scarier method.

And on that note--I'll be off to Wednesday Night 8:15 class shortly. It'll be a quiet night, as our usual instructor Jim is gone (Nancy's taking his place) and three class members--that I know of--are also out of town, including Ash and Luka, who won ALL THREE tournament events at the northwest regional last week. Jim says that he can't remember any dog ever doing that. So when they're back in town, we'll have a big old celebration. It's just amazing to think about how far he's come since he first joined our class as basically a novice, seems like not that long ago, but I guess at least 2 years now. And here the rest of us are, putzing along...

But it's good for a lot of celebrations. I hope he doesn't get tired of it and decide that it's all too easy. Although rumor has it that he might be thinking about a second dog so he can play with the big dogs--

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Fun Match Gotchas

SUMMARY: I work on things that I didn't completely anticipate working on.

The two fun match rings this morning were set up for Gamblers and Snooker (I didn't stay for the afternoon Standard and Jumpers). I got two runs with each dog in each ring, for a total of 8 runs. That was enough for me and my knee.

Boost spent most of all four of her runs popping out of weave pole #10. Over and over. I said "oops" and restarted the first time or so in each ring, but that wasn't getting me anywhere, as she'd just pop out again at the end. In class not long ago we discussed never putting the dog back in where she popped out, and there was a good reason for that, I'm sure, which I can't at the moment recall. But my theory is that, if she's going to consistently pop out in the same place, starting over doesn't help, whereas making her stop and come back and actually do those last 2 poles will make her brain engage. And as soon as she did the last pole, she got to get her mouth on her toy for a moment, but not a big playtime until she actually did the whole set of 4. So we got maybe 4 or 5 or even 6 big celebrations about weave poles today and almost no practice on anything else.

She didn't get all of her weave entries, either, but I was trying challenging ones, and she got some. Did some contacts and the first Aframe she left as I was saying "Good!" instead of waiting for "Break!" so we redid that, and the next couple were good. Start-line stay remains solid.

Tika--omigoodness--wouldn't stay at the start line the first time, just kept standing up and wandering around sniffing, or actually stood and started forward. We spent more than half of our first run time working on that. Then she flew off the Aframe repeatedly. Legal Aframes (feet in the yellow), but she's SUPPOSED to stop 2-on-2-off, so we did a bunch of Aframes. And there went our first run. On the second run we had to repeat the Aframe only once, then she got them nicely, and I went on to the dogwalk, and she slowwwwed waaayyyyyy dowwwwwnnnn. Sigh. I haven't found the balance between getting her so excited that she'll drive to the end, and yet pays enough attention to the rules that she'll *wait* at the end. Seems to be slow & wait, or fast and not wait. (I'm not the only one in the universe with that problem, I know.)

Then I tried doing some runouts in Snooker--running over a large aread of land, past several obstacles, which often discombobulates her and this is where she often starts turning in front of me to bark or grab my feet. First pass, she went right out of the ring into the rough field outside and wasted a good portion of our run time sniffing some gorse or something; second pass she went out into the next ring and took a couple of obstacles there; third pass she kept turning in front of me and grabbing my feet. For that one, I took her back where we had come from and tried again, but now she knows where we're going and is fine with it, so the problem seems to be not knowing where we're going and I'm not good at conveying "stick with me, pal, trust me, we'll get someplace interesting fast."

I really do need to go up to Power Paws and rent the field on weekends to work on stuff like this. Really. I do. Any day now.

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Little Doggie Thoughts

SUMMARY: Ellen's mind wanders.

Nope, these are not thoughts about little doggies (of which I have none), or thoughts from little doggies (sometimes questionable whether there are any of those, either); they are my little thoughts related to doggies. Since I'm not competing, I have to think about *something*.

• Dogs are useless as mousers in my houser. Was woken yesterday morning by a mouse gnawing under my nightstand, fercryingoutloud. Didn't wake the ALERT GUARD DOGS up, though. In fact, as I tried to position Tika to where she'd be able to see the mouse when I moved the nightstand--and surely she could SMELL the blamed thing, right?--she was more interested in whether she was about to get a treat for doing whatever it was that I was asking her to do. When she finally caught a whiff and looked interested, I moved the nightstand, and the little bugger streaked out the OTHER side and under the bed. While Tika vigorously investigated the now-vacated nightstand, I shoved Boost under the bed--surely she could SMELL the blamed thing, right?--but she made a u-turn UNDER the bed and came back out to help Tika check out the nightstand. Good thing they're good at agility, is all I can say.
• Boost's weaves are getting very nice. Hope they stay that way. Interestingly, she's doing consistently better at the soft entry to the weaves (she says, bandying about this phrase that I just learned from another blogger, meaning coming at it from the right where they don't have a clear pole to wrap around). Coming at it from the left, she's more likely to skip a pole or two. In fact, that's where she'd skip 7 or 8 earlier this year when her poles had deteriorated so much. But usually I can fix it now by putting any slight sort of diverter to remind her to tuck in, and then she's good for a while.
• No class for Boost last week due to the evacuation for Canby; no class for Tika this week because of the 4th and no class for Boost because it was too danged hot Thursday at noon. Hey, what's a little 100-degree weather where a fanatic, driven dog is concerned? Good thing we've got a fun match tomorrow. And a VERY good thing that the weather seems to have gotten its head together: It's 11:30 a.m. and it has barely reached 70. Nice after a week of scorching.

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Taking a Break from Dog Activities

SUMMARY: It's still 3 weeks to our next agility trial. What do I do in the meantime--nondog stuff? Are you kidding?

Wednesday: Because the instructors are heading up to Canby (OR) for USDAA Regionals, there's no class for Boost on Thursday, so I switch off running her and Tika in Tika's wednesday night class. It wasn't so long ago I wouldn't have dared to try it. But Boost's weaves have been MOST excellent lately--I'm very happy about it--and she *IS* only one leg away from being in Masters! Ooops, 2 legs--one standard and I keep forgetting about the pairs. Tika ran very well, too; there's definitely something motivating about jealousy of mom's time in the ring.
	This photo is pretending to be from Wednesday evening, but it's actually from this morning in my back yard. It was a bit of a challenge getting set up to do this, and to convince Tika to go through the tunnel while I waited at the other end with my camera. Turns out that first we had to do some backchaining to teach her to do the tunnel under those specific circumstances, and then many takes before getting a result I liked.
	When I trim things in the yard and toss the clippings aside, Boost likes to catch them for me. Mint is a special favorite.
	Friday: This week's photographing-your-dog topic is action photos. I visited an agility friend's physical therapy session for her little chihuahua mix who's coming back from a broken wrist hopefully in time to get back to competing in another month or so.
Saturday: Monterey Bay Area Research Institute another great organization sponsored by the Packard Institute (of Hewlett and...) had its annual open house. Went down with an agility friend and her spouse. There were dogs *everywhere*. I don't know why on earth anyone would think that their dogs would be interested in exhibits on banthic autonomous underwater vehicles, but they were there, from chows to chihuahuas, Wolfhounds to Whatchamacallits. Neither of us took our dogs, but of course we had to look at all the ones that were there.
	I love the MBARI slide shows of some of the critters that they've been able to observe with their remotely operated vehicles, like this oddity: transparent head, green upward-facing eyes that actually rotate forward, too (what you'd think are eyes on the front of its head are its olfactory organs).
Sunday: Since I don't have to do anything dog-related, I sneak out in the morning for a movie (Oceans 13), and then--spend the rest of the day trying to take some halfway decent dog action shots and sort through them. That's another 320 photos in one afternoon. Who said that digital cameras were a good idea? Gah. On the up side, it's instant feedback about how you're doing, and you can just delete the really awful ones.
	Tika liked the ones where I was throwing the toy. She doesn't merely chase it; she tries to knock it aside and surrounds it from the front to pounce on it. Toys seldom get beyond her.
	This was another many-photoed experiment. Main goal was to try different shutter speeds to see what effect you could get--and whether stopping motion completely was more effective in an action shot than panning along at a slower shutter speed so that the dog is somewhat in focus but the background is very blurred. This is the fast-speed shot (1/1000 of a second). Very clear, everything's in focus, you can see exactly how the dog is moving. I like this shot.
The second part was that I decided I wanted to try to capture Boost in the part of her stride where her feet are bunched beneath her. Can you guess how hard it is to guess that? So I repeatedly put her in a down stay in exactly the same position, put shutter on multiple-shot, make several passes at it; identify where in her path across the lawn her stride is in that position by trial and error, and then once that's figured out, setting myself and my camera to be ready to snap the shutter at that exact location to try to recapture it from the ideal angle and lighting. Yeah, right. Still, I got better at it with practice.
	This is the slower-speed panning version (where I follow the dog with the camera for a longer exposure--1/100 second here). It does indeed look more like the dog is moving. Another good shot but with a different feel to it.

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Of Mice and Women

SUMMARY: Boost finds a mouse but we can't catch it. Plums are pretty much gone and I'm glad. In a barely related story, menopause is now hip.

Three evenings ago, while I was (as usual) at the computer, Boost started her "Alert! Something is weird and out of place!" bark, except this time it was in the kitchen, not the yard, and she was staring at the microwave. I couldn't figure out what it might be. There was nothing out of place--the cover was off the toaster, but it often is; there was a loaf of bread on the counter but it had been there for a week; the lid was off the teakettle but I doubted that she could even see that.

So I went back to work and, a couple of minutes later, the alarm-barker went off again. I walked along the counter, touching stuff, to see whether she seemed particularly interested in anything, but nooo--as soon as I came into the room, she just went into "Hi, mom!" mode instead of helping me figure out what her britches were in a bunch about, which is what she usually does on an alarm-bark.

Back to the computer. Another alarm-bark. This time I picked her up and walked her along next to the counter so that she could see what was there. She seemed intrigued at the idea of being able to see what was there and felt inclined for a real close look, but nothing along the lines of cautious worry that she exhibits for other causes of alarm.

So I put her down, and she's looking at me cheerily, and Tika is buzzing around noisily at all the commotion, and I'm standing there, leaning on the counter, asking The Booster what on earth she's going on about, when of a sudden I think I hear something in the cabinet next to me. Just the tiniest of whispery sounds, and gone again. I managed to get the dogs into down-stays so that their jangling and toenails didn't interfere, and stood there and listened. After a minute, there it was again, a teeny whisper. Mouse in the wall? With all the rodents we've had around lately, it could be. And then came the distinct (but very quiet) sound of tiny toothers chewing cellophane.

I stepped to the front of the cabinet (the one over the microwave, which on the counter) and yanked open the door. Silence. I scanned the shelves. There was a package of spaghetti on the bottom shelf, in cellophane. I reached in and started to move it, and Zam Zoom! A little furry body plunged past me out of the cabinet, across the microwave, onto the counter, across the stove, and down the gap next to the fridge, all in the time I was still trying to form the thought "Eek!" and coming down out of the air.

Now, I am not an eeky person and I am not afraid of rodents. But from a still, silent cabinet, having a creature launch itself at you abruptly is more than startling.

Meanwhile, the dogs are watching me curiously (my body having hidden the cabinet from their view and the rest of the activity up out of their sight). I told Boost she was a good girl and went exploring. Sure enough, mouse droppings under the sink. (There seems to be some unwritten mousey law that, when invading a kitchen, you must deposit droppings beneath the sink.) I cleaned all that out and put mousetraps there and between the fridge and the stove. To no avail, apparently.

Which brings us to plums.

It has been plum season for about the last 3 weeks.I've harvested and eaten as many as I could, gave quite a few away, made two separate batches of plum sorbet (mmmMMM! but it still uses only a handful of plums), and picked up zillions from the ground day after day and tossed their squashed bodies into the compost bins.

This, however, is where I keenly feel Jake's absence. He was a profligate plum eater, and as you might imagine, this worked wonders for loosening up his intestinal fortitude. And he had the most luxurious petticoats on his back legs and long silky hair on his tail, and in plum season I spent a prodigious amount of time hosing him down and letting him out in the middle of night to answer the call of the bowels.

This year, there's no Jake, and the current dogs seem far less enamoured of the purple fruit. Except that in the last few days, Boost seems to have discovered the joys of decaying plummage. So now I've been letting *her* out in the middle of the night.

Last night, it was twice, and the second time, I couldn't get back to sleep. Lying there comfortably, thinking about nothing in particular, but wide awake. (With the occasional hot flash to keep me entertained kicking off the sheets and pulling them back up again.) I finally got up and went downstairs to settle at my favorite putting-my-brain-to-sleep station at the kitchen table. Made myself a nice hot chocolate and started a crossword puzzle. The dogs, of course, had gone back upstairs to bed and by all accounts were quite comfy there.

Then, out of my peripheral vision, I detected motion. Glanced to one side just fast enough to see a mouse vanish under the fridge. I cursed silently and went back to my crossword. A few minutes later, the dang thing skittered from the fridge to under the stove. A few minutes later, it skittered from there back along the wall.

OK, this was NOT relaxing. And why wasn't the dang thing kindly throwing himself upon the mercy of the mousetraps? And what could I do about it in the meantime? I debated getting the dogs and trying to chase the mouse out from under something, but who knows where he'd be by the time I came downstairs, and even if I could convince the dogs to take part and I could flush him out, I figured that my renter/housemate might not appreciate my efforts at 3 in the morning. So, unrelaxed, I returned to bed.

I did, eventually, fall asleep, along about dawn. The dogs let me sleep til 9, which is very late for me (but there's the warped benefit of letting them out in the middle of the night--they were prepared to hold anything further until much later in the day). At which point I got up, enjoyed a liesurely breakfast while reading the paper, and was amused to see (just a few days after posting my Cold Flashes blog) an article saying that it's now apparently the cool factor to be in menopause and suffering from hot flashes. And how, even 5 years ago, no one ever talked about them in public (well, I know that's not strictly true), but now women yak about them to anyone and turn them into social clubs, so that nonmenopausal women feel left out in the cold (so to speak). And, perish the thought, hot flashing women even BLOG PUBLICLY about these previously very personal issues! The nerve!

But, if those left-out-feeling women are looking for something else to do with their time while us in the In crowd are putting on our fleece sweater, taking it off, putting it on, taking it off, they're welcome to come by and clean up old rotting plums from my garden and herd the mice out of my kitchen so I can have a good night's sleep.

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Once More With Feeling

(Read more about heterochromia and see a more detailed view of her right eye: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterochromia.)

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Another Photo Experiment

SUMMARY: Boost photo

I was trying to get Boost to look intently into the distance. What I did was: Put her in a Sit. Get Tika a little excited, then put Tika in a Down about 20 feet to my left. Boost loves watching Tika to see what she's up to. Then, just before snapping the shutter, I tossed my keys in the air so they landed on the ground near Tika. Worked pretty good, but now I have to figure out how to get her gaze aimed a little more upwards. So many things, so little time...

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Merle Girls

SUMMARY: Photo for today

I signed up for a 4-week online class "photographing your dog with an SLR camera." (It's not too late to join! I think tomorrow's probably the last day, though. Not really cheap but what the heck less than an agility trial and I'm not doing agility for a month and a half.) I thought I knew something about taking photos, but I'm having a heck of a time getting the effects that I want. Still, here's today's best attempt with both dogs, for your viewing pleasure.

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BBQ Party in an Agility Yard

SUMMARY: Party here Sunday without any agility. Well--mostly.

Yes, in her excitement over life and rodents, Tika dug a big hole in my lawn right while I was trying to groom everything for a BBQ on Sunday. I was beginning to wonder whether I'd have a yard left! It didn't seem to be connected to a gopher, and it was in fact in a big bare spot already, and I managed to rake and scrape most of the dirt out of the surrounding lawn and back into the hole, so I doubt that anyone noticed the hole.

The BBQ was nice. Mostly nondog people, although one friend whose young corgi just made her debut (at a trial I didn't attend) came and we chatted briefly about young dogs, and another friend who lost her German Shepherd a couple of years back has been on the edge of getting a new dog, so there were some doggie discussions there. And I have a couple of friends who have had dogs in the past, so most people had dog experienes to share.

A boy named Remington attended (I had to show him my Remington's NATCH plaque). I think he's in the 8-to-10-year-old range, and Boost wasn't sure about him at first, but her love of playing overcame most of her worries, and she did a few tunnels for him and then played fetch off and on all afternoon. But she still wanted to play after everyone went home! Dang border collies.

Then, when he asked questions about how to get the dogs to do the agility equipment, I had to show him a few things and also get The Booster revved up a bit to show him how it looks when done by an expert. Of course, being a kid, he was thereafter perfectly spot on in doing it himself (mostly tunnels, which she loves), although Boost slowed way down and was a little stressed out about it. She was much happier eventually just playing fetch.

He tried to get Tika to play, too, but she is considerably more food-motivated than toy-motivated, and as there was a sea of people milling around with snacks in their hands, she was too busy monitoring for crumb drop to want to go chase moving things. Although by early evening, when most folks were gone and no one was eating any more, she did put on quite the ferocious display of squirrel chasing, verbal abuse thereof, and throwing herself against the fence trying to knock them off.

Having a party here is rough, in two ways. (1) It takes a while to move enough agility equipment out of the way that you can actually see all the nice flowers and lawn and get a feeling of spaciousness. (2) I *like* it like that and don't want to put it back to an agility yard afterwards! It looks so nice and pleasant out there without tunnels and jumps and weaves and tables every 10 feet and across the patio.

Anyway, the BBQ was nice, friends were pleasant, food was good (if I do say so myself)--my homemade banana bread is one of my favorites, and my homegrown/homemade blackberry sorbet was the bees knees! And there is even some left over for snacks this week! Although as usual the deviled eggs and potato chips seemed to go the fastest.

And so busy, I forgot to take any photos, even though I left my camera out!

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Team Jumpers Videos

SUMMARY: Bette, Boost, and Tika videos

Here's videos of Boost's sister dog (Bette), then me running Boost, then Tika, in Team Jumpers (about 2.6 MB).

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Silver Dog Part 1 and Those Dang Obstacles

SUMMARY: In which Tika completes her Tournament Master Silver title and Boost still isn't convinced that taking obstacles is the best course.

This weekend we had one each of the five regular classes, plus Grand Prix and Steeplechase, and on Sunday the five events of the Dog Agility Masters team tournament.

Net for the weekend: Tika 3 Qs out of 7 chances and a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th; Boost 1 out of 8 with a 1st.

Tika regular classes

In regular classes, Tika did very well in Gamblers but I messed up big-time in the opening TWICE (so much for being more awake friday evening) and we didn't finish our weave poles before the whistle blew, dropping us from 3rd place to 6th. But it was still a Q. And once again she did well in Jumpers. Thought we'd do better--the first 8 dogs in our height class failed to run clean, and then Tika did it, but apparently we set the pace because ended up only 3rd of 18 dogs.

Standard started with 3 obstacles in a row with the dog running straight into bright lights (9:00 at night) with a huge shadow made of the Aframe and the dark tunnel next to it. More dogs than usual knocked the first bar or ran past the tunnel entrance; Tika managed both. Still, so many dogs messed up so much that we ended at 4th of th dogs who stayed late enough to finish the class. I believe only one of the 10 dog Qed in our height.

In Snooker they actually had a dogwalk at #5 and Tika got called for the up contact in the closing; and in Relay I overcrossed on a front cross and pushed her right into the wrong obstacle. But she was fast and happy ALL weekend despite hot (I'm guessing around 90), somewhat humid weather.

Tika GP & Steeplechase

I felt less and less competent as the weekend went on; Tika running beautifully and me doing stupid things. I called her in very bad places on the Steeplechase for two knocked bars AND making her land in the middle of the spread jump, and finally at the end, I planned an aggressive front cross to keep her off a wrong obstacle, but decided halfway there that I wasn't going to make it and stopped and she just sailed over the wrong obstacle while I yelled futilely.

Tika Team

We were teammates with Brenn and Savanna, both Border Collies, and since Tika's listed as Aussie, we used the team name Borderin' on K-Aus (thanks, Gwen!). And that's the way I ran...

Tika managed 2nd in Team Snooker of 21 dogs and 3rd in Team Gamblers. However, in the Standard on a place where I knew there was an off-course possibility, I yelled "Come!" and when she wasn't coming, I yelled "Come!" louder and she still went off course. I know better than that! Especially after telling my teammates during the walk-through to use their dogs' names!

So then, in the Jumpers course, where I knew there was an off-course possibility, I yelled "Come" really loudly and then when she didn't, I yelled "Come!" even louder and she still went off course.

Just stupid stupid stupid. And we don't do off-courses all that often, really.

Still, Brenn was consistently very good (won Team Standard) and Savanna had only one E and otherwise did well, so we managed to squeak by with a team Q for Tika's Tournament Silver title, which is her first category to reach Silver. The rest are a lonnnng way away.

Boost Standard Classes

The Advanced courses were all very hard. At least one of the five had no qualifiers at all. Boost got her only Q of the weekend and a first place with the bare minimum 37 points in Snooker and she was one of only a couple of dogs of any height who finished the Snooker. We had offcourses; can't do lateral lead-outs again (dang! something else that was fixed and is now broken again); and she still isn't getting the idea of doing obstacles in front of her.

In gamblers, we bobbled both back-to-back contacts that I tried (something else to go back & practice again) so didn't end up with that many opening points, and I thought we were going to get the gamble--jump to weaves to jump--when she made her weave entry perfectly and started blasting through them, but at about pole #8 she realized that I was 20 feet away and exited straight towards me to see what I was up to. Dang. Something ELSE to practice. It's hard to get 20 feet away in my yard, but we certainly do 10 often.

BUT--ta-da--by the end of the weekend, she was doing most of her weaves perfectly the first time. So there's something to feel good about. (Didn't start that way--in Standard, we tried 4 times and never did get them. But after that it gradually improved.)

Boost GP and Steeplechase

Grand Prix was actually pretty darned good, but we had an off-course on a very tight, tough turn to a tunnel/dogwalk discrimination. But it was probably our smoothest full run of the weekend.

In Steeplechase, we had about 3 refusals before jumps before we even got to the weaves and she ran past them, then skipped some poles. So the 2nd time through the weaves, when she entered & did them perfectly, I made a big Hurrah fuss and exited fast & happy straight out over the nearest jumps.

Boost Team

Boost entered with sister Bette and Australian Kelpie Maiya (which is the Klingon wod for "friend") as "Two Sisters on a Star Trek." All fast, young dogs.

Boost Eed on both std & jumpers and were near the bottom in snooker and gamblers due to the not-taking-obst's problem. Bette did GREAT, though! Still, between Boost & Maiya, we managed to place next to last, only because I believe the last-place team gave up and went home before the last couple of runs. Sigh.

BUT in that jumpers--she was beautiful except that on a fast front cross where I took my eyes off her she went past a jump and I didn't realize it. It was really a lovely jumpers run anyway and I felt very good about it. No refusals or bobbles anywhere except that. Have it on tape and will try to upload here eventually.

And her portion of the Team Relay was spot on, while our partners both went off course, so felt much better about Boost after her last 2 runs.

Bette, though--wow! Out of 33 dogs in our height class, Bette placed 8th, 12th, 6th, and 4th in the individual DAM events! For a 2-year-old baby dog with a handler miserable on Saturday about how bad a time she's having in competition with Bette, it was very impressive. And they all looked beautiful, too. I suggested to her that she was ready to move on to a team with more consistent dogs and handlers and that I wouldn't be bothered by it; I love seeing her success. Of course I love the idea of teaming with a sister dog, but oh well, I'll just have to keep practicing.

Didn't leave Turlock until nearly 8 p.m. For some reason they had only one judge who could judge the Team events, so the other judge just sat there all day Sunday. I thought she was going to be judging some of it, but apparently not. So each class had to wait for the other ring to finish before the judge was available, and it made for a lonnnng day.

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Dog Parks and Sensitive Border Collies

SUMMARY: In which we go to the dog park, twice, and Boost is overwhelmed.

I took the dogs to the dog park this weekend. Boost has never been to a dog park. I don't remember whether Tika ever has, either, but she's less skittish than The Booster.

The park I went to has a very large, interestingly shaped space with trees and rocks and different textures and levels and things. And it has a separate big dog and little dog area. The thing that was funny was that all the little dogs' owners brought them into the big dog area. I think maybe that's where all the fun stuff happens!

When we got there first thing in the morning, there were 4 labs (one a puppy), a couple of medium-sized mixed breeds, and a black brindle frenchie! Boost was very intimidated by all the other dogs, but she has a good friend, Elliot the black brindle Frenchie, who's the same age she is, and they've been playing together since they were a few months old. So guess who she picked out of the crowd and kept trying to get to play with her! Yup, the Elliot look-alike! He didn't mind her, but also didn't seem particularly interested, either. She did get him to follow her around a little bit, but then he just plonked right down on the ground, panting, and wouldn't move. Poor Booster.

After a while, and after some of the other dogs left, she played a little bit with the 4-month-old Lab puppy, and then when she tired THAT one out, she got one of the mixes to chase her like crazy twice around the park, which tired THAT one out, then we went for a 2-mile walk on one of those paved urban bicycle/jogging/walking paths that threads along the stream bed. It's a pretty popular one, and it was a nice day--overcast and cool, perfect for brisk activity. By the end of our 2 miles (1 out, 1 back), Boost was getting stressy about all the people jogging or cycling past, which I was thinking meant that she was finally a bit tired.

We went back to the dog park to get a drink; lots more dogs there this time, at least a dozen, and she was a little freaked. Ran to the nearest bench with a person on it, jumped up on the bench, and sat down and snuggled up against the person and then watched the dogs mill around her with some hesitant curiosity. But when I insisted that she get off the bench, she kept tucking tail and running and hiding under or behind one of the benches.

So we walked down around the corner to the far end, where there were just a couple of Jack Russell Terriers playing with their owners who were sitting on a bench. We hung out there a little bit and finally when one of the JRTs was alone, Boost got up the courage to approach, then they both did the play bow thing and started playing briefly. But that got the other dogs' attention, and the other JRT and a medium-small mixed breed came running over, and that did in her brain completely. Not only did she dive under the bench, but she showed her teeth and started snapping every time one of the dogs put its nose down near her.

I shouldn't have gone back when she was already tired and stressed about the walk, I guess. But I also think I should be doing more of that, gradually over time, if I could figure out a time of day when there wouldn't be many dogs there. I just hate driving 20 minutes each way for a 10-minute dog park session, you know?

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The Booster

SUMMARY: Weaves, Jumping, and Weight.

I've been concentrating--CONCENTRATING, I tell you!--on weave entries and staying in the weaves. She's been doing great for the last week and a half at home. That one session in class on the 10th (where the instructor made the whole set of weaves vanish except for 3 poles and then she finally figured out that they had vanished and then on the next try made the entry) seems to have taken her back to Weaving Brain Land, and she's doing some fabulous work. Then--we had NO weaving opportunities in class this week!

However--we proved in class that we can't do rear crosses worth beans, we can't do serpentines worth beans, we can't do pinwheels worth beans--although I blame the last on the fact that the 1-2 of the pinwheel put her facing right into the weaves, and since we've been practicing those so much...

So I'm supposed to be setting up jumping sequences here at home. But that pretty much means moving everything out of the way, and that's a real chore, so I haven't. But tomorrow, I promise.

Meanwhile, The Booster got her annual checkup this week. The vet, all of his own accord, suggested that she could take 2-4 pounds off. The vet! You KNOW she's too heavy when the vet suggests it. (Although he did comment that her rear legs are packed with awesome muscles (or words to that effect).) I think there are enough of us doing agility now to have trained him into what we think an agility dog in peak form needs to feel like. In the old days, I think she'd have been so slim compared so most of the pet dogs he usually sees that he might never have said a thing.

Remember I had asked a couple of people to check her a couple of months ago because I felt that she had an extra layer of flesh where there shouldn't be any, and they agreed? I've cut her meal portions back a couple of times--more each time--since then. It doesn't seem to be making any difference. Dang. With Tika, if I cut back a quarter cup, I see the difference very quickly. I'm pondering what else to do...

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Tika's Backside and Home Alone

SUMMARY: Tika's anal gland still infected.

After a week of oral antibiotics and antibiotic ointment, 3 days later Tika again began licking the affected area overmuch. Yum! Isn't that your first reaction when--um--certain parts itch? Think I'll lick that! Back to the vet. One gland is still infected.

She's such a drama queen at the vet's. Best treatment is to flush the gland, but last time we were in they tried that without a sedative and really couldn't get much done. So now she's at the vet for a half-day visit for a sedative and a second attempt at squeezing a catheter into a pinhole opening and flushing it thoroughly. (I wonder why she hates being at the vet so much?) Vet is doubtful that DQ will hold still enough for it to be done successfully even with a sedative.

Meanwhile, I'm going out for a few hours today, which means that Boost will be home alone I believe for the first time ever in her entire 27 months of life. Fortunately she's a pretty mellow dog, so should be fine. I'll really have no way of knowing what she's doing while I'm gone--barking like the neighbor's dog does all day? (And sometimes all night.) Or just snoozing off a good weave-pole and tunnel session and breakfast? I'm guessing the latter.

Update: 10:15 AM: Vet just called. "She's so strong and she wiggles so much" that they weren't able to do much in the way of flushing. And it was looking worse than he had hoped and there's a bit of a blood clot in there, too. They want to do a very quick, very light general anaesthesia to put her out for a few minutes to do the job right, otherwise he feels that we could be fighting this for months. Argh.

I gave them the go-ahead, although general anaesthesia always scares me. I'm supposed to be sneaking out to a movie with a friend to relax, and now i'm going to be worrying about this in the background the whole time.

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Videos from the Weekend

SUMMARY: Qualifying runs from both Boost and Tika. They're not necessarily our best runs, but they're all that I remembered to have someone tape, out of 18 runs.

Tika's Sunday Jumpers

On this one, I had to run as fast as I could because of the straight tunnels and the distance covered. Watching myself, I look flat-footed the whole way. I need remedial lessons in how to run fast, obviously. In the far corner, you'll see me signaling Tika to turn away from me by raising my off arm. I don't do this. I have never been trained to do this. This is not in my repertoire. I'm not exactly sure where that comes from. The "right!" should do it. Then, as we come in for the closing, where I start yelling "left" and "go go go!" is because I was trying to get myself past the next-to-last jump to serpentine it before she arrived, and I didn't make it--that's because I waited (as usual) way too long on the preceding serp "to be sure she made it" instead of trusting her training and hauling butt a second or two earlier. That missed serp is where she turns in to me a bit and hesitates.

Boost's Sunday Standard

Demonstrating a lovely start-line stay. Video's zoomed out too much most of the time for this small screen, so you really can't see her start to rise while in a down on the table, or run past the weaves (except that she has to come back to me to make a second approach, which she makes nicely). After she leaves the teeter before I give the "break" command, I make her lie down, and then I do the next two down contacts deliberately slowly and controlled.

On this video, you'll hear a lot of voice that sounds like it could be me, but it's not. The only things you'll actually hear from me are "break" from the start line, "Boost boost" and "Come!" on a couple of hard pulls, and then a "woohoo" when she completes the weaves. All the other stuff is going on in the ring behind the videographer.

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Poo Dog, Poor Dog, Pooped Mom, and Weekend

SUMMARY: Boost's habit of rolling in smelly stuff; Tika's anal glands; my hip & knee; more USDAA coming right up.

Poo Dog

Boost's only major flaw is her propensity for rolling in what so