Dog Agility Goes Mainstream

SUMMARY: We're in the funny papers!

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

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

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A Crisis of Conscience

SUMMARY: I don't know what I'll do next time. Rats.

First Story

Cursed vermin! A plague of rodents invaded my attic sometime last winter and I didn't deal with them right away this time. The vile things could be heard gnawing inside my expensive-to-maintain real estate and it seemed like only a matter of time until they'd gnaw a hole in my roof, or through my electrical wiring, or even into my living quarters or cabinets in my kitchen.

Gross horrible beasts, peeing and defecating profusely everywhere in my attic, tearing up the insulation for nesting, and if you don't think that replacing that is miserably uncomfortable--and expensive--work, then you've never been in a 100-degree attic covered with protective clothing and gear and breathing through a filter mask, hunkering down beneath the low roof, balancing on the beams and trying not to fall through the ceiling into your living room. S**t.

Hate them. Why can't they stay out in the fields where they belong? Tika will hunt them down in my yard between episodes of agility training; the problem is that she tears apart everything that stands in her way--flower beds, hot tubs, you name it. More destruction to blame on the rodents.

They are just bad news. As the Santa Clara County web site says, "these rodents can infect humans directly with diseases such as tularemia, leptospirosis, arenavirus, Hantavirus, ratbite fever, lymphocytic choriomeningitis and salmonellosis (food poisoning). They also may serve as reservoirs for diseases transmitted by ectoparasites, such as tick-borne relapsing fever, Colorado tick fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, plague, murine typhus, rickettsial pox, Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, babesiosis and tularemia." Jeez, you don't want to be breathing their waste or having it come anywhere near you, and heaven forfend they don't have plague-carrying fleas. Remember the Black Death? Rats with fleas. Gah.

Damned things are too smart for their own good, too. Put up traps with bait. Caught nothing. Called rat guy and paid him money to set traps in a professional manner. Set several; caught one. One afternoon I counted 8--eight!--damned rats scrambling to escape when I opened the attic door. And those are only the ones I saw. So they're breeding like--rats--and I hope they don't run at me when I open the door. Gah, yuck, awful, I suppose they could carry rabies, too.

Put in poison bait blocks. Not my favorite method because I worry about the dogs getting poisoned rats, although I've never known any of my dogs to eat dead rodents. Carry them around, yes; eat, no. Still. Anyway, they nibbled at them some and then left the bait alone. The hellspawned creatures learn about traps and become trap shy, and they'll sample bait, wait a while, get sick, and never go near it again. Curse them all!

But finally we thought we were making progress. Saw many fewer rats. Rat guy came back again to close up the hole in the roof they were going through (I suspected as much) and we didn't see any rats at all beforehand, so hopefully they were all already dead or had scrammed when we started mucking around in the attic.

But at least one was still in there, curse it! Gnawing away. Finally got caught in a trap. Had to clean out the mess. Good riddance.

Second Story

I had hamsters when I was a kid. And various friends all my life have had rats as pets. They're very smart, very curious. So warm and delicate, sitting in your hand, their teeny little toenails skittering around. The way they sit up and look at you with cute little faces, bright eyes-- And smart, too. Can learn tricks. You can start seeing different personalities, just like you can with any other pets--cat, dogs, whatever.

And I hate killing things if I see an alternative. I'll carry spiders outside and let them go. Rats--challenging. If I catch them live and turn them loose outside, they'll be back in my house or someone else's house or breeding like crazy to spawn more invaders. Dead is probably better. The thing I always preferred about snap traps is that it's really quick. Usually. So I set out a bunch of traps.

I crawled up into the attic a few weeks back to check the traps, and my perspective made a 90-degree turn: I pulled back a massed-up mess of insulation--and there was a nest of baby rats, still mostly pinkish, barely any fur, just innocent, tiny, living infants, all clambering around on top of each other to get away from the light, nowhere to go, not understanding what was happening to them, probably frightened half to death.

Which meant that somewhere there was a mother taking care of them. Mother dies, babies starve slowly to death. Or ther rats will kill them and/or eat them. OK, rats might be cute, but this isn't so much. Of course, male lions do that to other male's cubs and we still like lions.

But, anyway, all of a sudden they were no longer foul vermin. They were like my pet hamsters, like my friends' pet rats, like my dogs. They were families of smart, soft, cute, active, feeling animals.

I felt like crying. What was I doing? How could I contribute to this? Could I scoop up the nest and do the whole litter in? How, for crying out loud, drown them? Given that that's one of my phobias (possiblity of drowning), how could I do that to another critter? Stomp on them? You've got to be kidding. Wring their little necks? I'm afraid I'd just hurt the hell out of them long before dispatching them.

I still felt like crying. I backed out of the attic and called the rat guy. He said, "Awww, babies, gee, I hate doing that! But that's what I do for a living, I guess I have to deal with it." He came over, but we couldn't find the babies again. They were moved or dead. I didn't ask what he'd have done with them if he had found them.

A week or so later, I went up to check the traps again. Pulled aside another lump of insulation, and there were the babies--still really too small to be leaving their nest, still struggling against the light, but now definitely furry with that soft, downy fur common to all young mammals--puppies, kittens, rats.

Jeez.

I backout out of there again really fast.

The rats just weren't going for the traps. As i understand it, if one gets caught in a trap, the others figure out that traps are bad and just stay away. Traps worked for me in the past, but apparently these were geniuses among rats. Nothing. And still a half dozen or more rats every time I went up there. And gnawing away at my house still.

I finally put up a bunch of rat bait, seeing no other alternative. You don't want to close up the holes in the house until the rats are taken care of, or then you have rats inside looking for other ways out. So we have to make sure there are no rats.

The rats barely touched the bait. I kept checking. And the traps were getting set off but not catching anything. How do they do that? But eventually there were fewer and fewer rats and then I didn't hear any for a couple of days, and so called the rat guy to close up the hole in the roof. It was a bear to do--way down at the base of the roof, very difficult to get to. But I hoped that meant no more rats coming in, so I wouldn't have to kill any more.

And then--the final sea change in my emotions. Because there was apparently at least one rat left, maybe two, because that evening when he woke up and tried to get out, he became frantic. I sat in my kitchen and listened to him overhead, smashing and thrashing and banging and grabbing and gnawing and clawing to get out. I thought he was going to come down through the light fixtures or dig or gnaw right through the drywall ceiling. I'd never heard activity so desperate.

And that's what I heard--the desperate attempts of a living being, shut off from food, shut off from water. Maybe shut off from family. Do rats have a sense of family? I don't know--certainly the young rats huddling together in the nest and the mother caring for them have strong affinity for each other. And how would I feel, trapped, no food, no water, not understanding what had happened, wanting desperately to get out?

I hardly slept that night. I heard him all night long, trying everything everywhere to find a way out. Desperate. Scared. Frantic. Gnawing at anything, even the solid wire mesh sealing the old entryway, I could hear the metal reverberate. And it wasn't the noise so much as the guilt--what have I done? What have I done?

It continued well into the morning, then silent as the day brightened and things warmed up.

Midmorning, I stepped out into the garage for some reason, and a movement caught my eye. I turned and looked. A young rat--not an infant, maybe half grown--hesitated in the walkspace near the back door, sat up, paws tucked in, and looked up at me, nose twitching to catch my scent. Just like the little guy in the photo. "Are you my mother? Are you a friend? I can't get into my home and now I'm here and I'm alone and not sure what I'm doing." Jeez, how can a damned rat break my heart like that?

Then I moved towards him, and he moved briskly, not terrified, matter-of factly, back behind some boxes. I peered back there. I had left a mouse trap set from a mouse infestation, oh, maybe 3 years ago, and there was another young rat, same size, probably a sibling, dead with his head caught in the trap. I could hear the other one hovering nearby. Were they companions in this strange world that they'd been forced into, and one had been caught and the other hanging nearby, not knowing what to do, alone for maybe the first time in his life?

Am I anthropomorphizing?

After dark the noise in the attic started in again; not so desperate, but now determined and with a plan. Gnawing very very hard, very persistently, not in random places and small occasional bits like normal, but solid, determined, constant, very hard, very loud gnawing in one place.

Not only have I trapped a living creature in a sure-death situation, I have forced him into a position where he is destroying my property even more. But really foremost in my mind was a moving story I read years ago, "The House on Cemetery Street" by Cherry Wilder--in the attic, tiny scratchings and scratchings and tappings, trapped, slowly starving to death, running out of water, dying of thirst--

Again, I had trouble sleeping, listening to the persistent, determined, constant gnawing. Knowing that he did have things to eat in the attic: The bait blocks. The bait in the traps. And him knowing, knowing, KNOWING that those things were dangerous.

The next day, I inadvertently left the door to the garage open, and found that Tika had dispatched the other young rat.

The third night, persistent gnawing, still, but with breaks. As of desperate exhaustion. Must rest. Must keep going.

Sometime during the day, found another dead rat on the lawn, obviously had been dog-carried. Tika has been going overtime the last week or so as if the yard is suddenly full of rodents. Probably is, now that they can't get back into my attic.

The fourth night, very light, very weak gnawing. Not much at all. You could tell it was weak, weaker than all the normal gnawings and sounds from an attic full of vibrant mammalian life. Quiet. You could almost not hear it.

The next day, another young rat, even younger, dead on the lawn.

Then, that night, from the attic, nothing. And a day or two later, oh, a not so pleasant smell.

I donned my gear, hauled plastic bags and things up to the attic. Found a recently deceased rat in a trap. He had gotten desperate, needed to eat. Needed something. No matter how dangerous. Afloat in the ocean in a raft, desperate for something to drink. You know that if you drink the seawater, it will kill you. And yet--after a while--it seems like the only alternative.

I started hauling out the damaged insulation. Found another rat under the insulation. Poisoned? Don't know. Gone. Found a nest with two young, fully furred babies, curled up, so tiny, so sweet. Gone.

Don't cry into your filter mask. Harder to breathe.

Pulled out a lot of badly damaged insulation, but not nearly all of it. How many more families are up there, dead? Individuals, dead? Not dying cleanly.

How did I get to be this age, and dealt with invasive vermin several times through the decades, and only now have been so torn up by everything? If only I hadn't SEEN them alive and cute and close up.

Next time, it's live traps and I'm setting them loose in the field. I just don't care whether they come back. I'm still having trouble sleeping, thinking about it. I'm crying right now.

Damned rats.

---

Photo credits:
Evil rat, cute rat

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New Facebook URLs

SUMMARY: It all gets more complicated and easier at the same time.

Now that facebook allows usernames (for use only in your facebook URL), I made my decision and people who are not on facebook can now find me easily at facebook.com/ellen.finch. I think. Let me know if you don't see my profile page come up. But there's an additional web site (fbook.me) that allows a facebook user to create an *additional* one that links to the same facebook page, and so I've used TajMutthall for this one. Huzzah.
www.fbook.me/tajmutthall. Should go to exactly the same profile page.

Let me know if you try 'em and they don't work.

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Buy These Albums Now!

SUMMARY: In which I attempt to pull the musical wool over your eyes.

In my new career as a music promoter, I'd like to introduce you to these two wonderful new bands and their debut albums!


And now, if you'd like to be in the same business, here's how you do it!

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select "random quotations"
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album. (I did this for 2 albums and the same "random" quotes came up. So if you do it for more than one album, too, use the "10 new random quotes" link at the bottom.)

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover. (I was disappointed--for the 2nd album, the 1st and 4th photos had dogs in them, but not the 3rd. Ah, well, and I decided not to cheat.)

But I can make up new rules for new people--if you want to go with the dog theme, then you must use the THIRD PHOTO THAT IS DOG-RELATED, no matter what it is. (Just keep clicking RELOAD button.)

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together. (Doh--This is like the step in the auto repair manual where it says "1. Remove engine.")

5 - Post it! (If you're in Facebook, you can post your new album with these instructions in the "caption" or "comment".)

(View sources for smiley face and girl.)

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Random Things in April

SUMMARY: The mind wanders. The life wanders.

• Last week it was so cold that I ran the space heater under my desk on several days. Yesterday we beat the all-time temp record for this date, which was set over100 years ago. Hey, people, this is supposed to be April! Dogs don't much care--still wnat me to Throw The Toy--except that when they fetch it, they run and drop it in the shade and wait for me to come get it. This weekend--when we're doing agility again finally, mind you--it's supposed to be cool and very rainy. Unsettled weather: Unsettling.
  
• Last summer I bought a brand new purple Jolly Ball for the back yard. (Well, really, for the dogs, but it lives in the back yard.) The dogs love that toy. Shortly thereafter, it vanished. I looked everwhere, even underneath the miles of shrubbery lining my fence. Nada. Finally gave up and bought a new one.
  
  
  Last week I got to work finishing that trimming job I started...uh...a while back. Guess who's been overwintering 6 feet up in the shelter of the shrubbery? Yes! Mr. Jolly Ball!
  
  Reminds me of the time that Mr. Red Jolly Ball vanished from the yard and I gave up and bought a new one. Came autumn, fruit trees dropped their leaves--and there was Mr.RJB nestling in the branches of the apple tree 15 feet up. (Thought I had a post on this but can't find it. Sorry; know you're disappointed.)
  
  Now--*I* would notice if I tossed a JB into a tree or a shrub. Renter claims that he'd notice, too. OK, you guys, fess up: Who's been sneaking into my yard and tossing JBs into mysterious places?
• Huh--this horrible nasty way overgrown privet, once stripped of its branches (my intention was to remove it entirely--maybe there's be more room for another tunnel?), has apparently self-grafted like crazy. He never listened to Mom Privet saying, "If you keep wrapping your branches around each other like that, they'll freeze that way!" Makes me want to stop sticking my elbow in my ear all the time. Fortunately it did not self-graft itself around Mr. JB. The real problem here is that now I think that this is so cool that I don't want to take it out after all. Sigh. The price one pays for one's art.
• Naming dogs: I take forever to come up with dog names. That's why Jake stayed Jake as he was before i got him, and Remington stayed Remington as he was in his pre-TMH life. Keep threatening to name my next dog Spot or Fido or King or Queenie. ...So...how come no one ever names their dog Kingie or Queen? Is this sexist?
• Just lounging around in the yard, watching the Graf Agility Zeppelin float by.
  
• Painted Ladies recently migrated northward through our area in massive quantities.
  


• We're starting agility class again this Thursday, after a 9-week absence for R&R Woo hoo! Dogs will be much happier. We're just starting some practice again in the yard. Boost is still knocking bars. I've been perhaps less than faithful in doing everything that was recommended during our hiatus. But we did have a good time. Mostly.
• Unemployment rate in Silicon Valley popped up to 11.2%. California overall 11%. Fourth highest in the country among all 50 states. Wasn't high tech supposed to be recession-proof? Agility trial entries are down. Is it the economy, stupid? Or the stupid economy?

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Taj MuttHall in Redneck

SUMMARY: Oh, man, this dialectizer is too much fun!

Here's my previous post in redneck. Study up! Git'er done!

(Except apparently there's no redneck for longer words like "appointment" or "technically" or "despondently".)

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Taj MuttHall Houn'dog Diary

Survivin' an' even thrivin' in houn'dog agility.
Friday, March 27, 2009

Wo'ld Good, cuss it all t' tarnation. Facebook Good, cuss it all t' tarnation.

SUMMARY: Tika gits a vet appointment through facebook. Shet mah mouth!

Facebook is interestin'. It gits a lot of flack fo' th' banal thin's thet varmints post. But, fo' the dawgoned-est part, th' varmints ah knows post interestin' thin's. An' ah find out stuff thet ah w'dn't haf known otherwise. Like, a distant friend's Mammy-in-law died, cuss it all t' tarnation. Like, t'other distant friend jest had an operashun. Like, who among mah facebook friends is at th' AKC nashunals this hyar week. Shet mah mouth! Who got a noo houn'dog. Who lost a houn'dog. Who's wawkin' on runnin' corntacks.

Ennyway.

Yestiddy, ah posted this hyar in mah status:

Tika is in so much pain (tbd whut exackly--arthritis?) thet Ellen has scratched both Tika an' Boost (technically still in rehab) fum th' whole 4 days of Haute TRACS. [sags despondently]

ah got plenty of sympathetic comments. One varmint axed when she'd be seein' th' vet. ah replied:

Scheduled vet fo' Monday. Regular vet gone this hyar week, so only one vet in office, already on overbooked, said ah c'd come set an' wait howevah long it took until a few minutes opened up an' ah decided it's not thet much of an emerjuncy. ah hope.

T'other of mah facebook friends jest happens t'have th' same vet thet we does. An' she jest happened t'have an appointment fo' this hyar af'ernoon, as enny fool kin plainly see. An' she jest happened t'decide thet she c'd wait until next week an' offered th' spot t'us. An' ah accepped wif pleasure.

This hyar w'd nevah haf happened wifout facebook. Shet mah mouth!

Tika is feelin' above avahage today; runnin' aroun' like no'mal, jest sometimes fo'gits an' does sumpin fo'ceful o' twisty wif her front parts an' ye'ps. Not completely debilitated like she was Wednesday. Hopefully we kin pinpoint whar th' problem is an' then decide whar t'go fum thar.

ah's flored an' grateful fo' th' gif' of a vet appointment 3 days earlier. It don't cost her ennythin' 'cept time t'set up th' changed appointments, but it feels wonnerful an' it feels like a huge gif'. ah knows how hard it is sometimes t'git appointments at times thet is convenient. All is right wif th' wo'ld, cuss it all t' tarnation.

Labels: houn'dog health an' care, other varmints, Tika so'e, web sites

posted by E'f @ 1:18 PM (View as indivijool page)

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Dogs Take Over the Roofs

SUMMARY: Photos on a theme.

On Flikr: Dogs on Roofs. For those with an obsession about dogs on roofs.

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Who's Watching "Watchmen"?

SUMMARY: Not much of a movie review. With dogs.

We knew that Watchmen was almost 3 hours when we went in, but it didn't feel like it. I've been to shorter movies that seemed much longer. It's not for the squeamish. Blood flings itself everywhere. (Although, in its defense, you mostly see the blood and only very quick takes on the sources of said sanguinity.) There's brutality (reasoned and insane) and sadism and appalling cruelty and erotic scenes and betrayals and god-like beings and Richard Nixon elected to 5 terms in office and like that. To make the story work, I think it had to be like that. Interesting story line, interesting characters, and interesting how all the seemingly unrelated and trivial things tie together at the end, posing an intriguing moral and philosophical dilemma.

But here's the thing: The dogs die.

I hate it when dogs die. No, this was definitely not an adored family dog deliberately pulling at your heartstrings. These were violent dogs who didn't really know what they were doing and paid the price of their owner's evil with their own lives. It's just not right. Among all that carnage, jeez, and the dogs were really on screen for a only few seconds in a couple of places, but the dogs dying really got to me. And what they were involved in was heartbreaking and sickening, too. Sigh.

OK, it was a good film. But if you go see it, be forewarned.

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News and Notes

SUMMARY: stuff..

Yesterday I did just a wee bit of agility with Tika in the yard. You have seldom seen her so excited to be doing agility! Wow was she fast--on the contacts, in the weaves, in her table down. Fast fast fast! Maybe it was good to take a couple of weeks off. Not that I usually practice that much, but we did usually have class every week and I'd do SOMETHING on the equipment with them almost every day. Maybe she will keep it up this weekend. Maybe I'd better put her over some jumps today (still too wet and slippery on the ground yesterday).

Boost wanted to go, too. So I set up a completely straight tunnel so she wouldn't slip (wet wet wet) and set it so that her exit put her in line for the dogwalk, which I figured wouldn't be hard on her backside. This was one happy dog! You can tell because she starts going into a superfrenzy on her toy afterwards. I dunno what I'm going to do with her all weekend! At least at this trial there's a huge fenced field where she can run loose and we can throw a toy or practice obedience or tricks or groundwork or something.

Daylight savings time starts Saturday night! Always interesting on a trial weekend to see who shows up at the wrong time on Sunday. I feed my dogs usually around 10:00 and 6:00. And they know it. They start hanging all over me and mooning around until I feed them. My dogs have NO PROBLEM adjusting to daylight savings time for their meals. But it takes them about 6 months to decide that it's ok to wait an extra hour when standard time rolls back in.

For some mental exercise, I've started teaching the dogs to bring me their bowls for meals. I worked really hard last week for several days just trying to associate the word "bowl" with the object and having them get it from a short distance with nothing else intruding. First time I put them out on the deck and said "bring me your BOWL," tika veered off to the side and brought me her BALL. Doh! OK, back to square one, associating the word DISH with the object. Silly trainer.

The price of everything dog related seems to have shot up. For several years I've paid roughly the same for my 40-lb. bags of kibble--somewhere between $25 and $30 regular price but you could often get it on sale for the low $20s. Last fall, BAM!, shot up to $40 a bag! It does last about 4 weeks, so I'm feeding my dogs on $1.50 a day, which is way less than *I* cost to feed. But still, wow, what a jump, and it feels worse because it was so sudden. Same thing with bully sticks. Could get a dozen at Costco for $12.99 for the longest time. Then, overnight last fall, BAM!, $20. I'm less eager to pay almost $2 each for a chew that lasts about 20 minutes. Although I *do* cut them in half usually; scarfing down a whole one usually gets me dog vomit sometime during the night (like, say, last night for example, when I didn't cut them in half).

That's all for now. This weekend: CPE. Next week: Boost visits the orthopedist.

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The Domestic Agility Mom

SUMMARY: In which we learn why it's a bad idea for dogs to play tug of war on your bed on which your bed linens also reside. We then focus on our household trimming and ironing skills.

Tika loves to heave large fabricky things (OK, how do you turn "fabric" into an adjective anyway?) around. I gave up trying to get her to stop heaving my comforter around, and instead got her her very own huge dog-type throw that she does. Throw, that is. Every morning. Sometimes she and Boost play a little tug of war with it.

As dogs are not known for their fine grasp (so to speak) of fabric qualities, sometimes apparently they still accidentally confuse my flannel duvet cover with the big furry upholstered dog throw, as Taj MuttHall discovered the other morning after exiting the shower.

Taj MuttHall just bought these sheets a few months ago and is not going to throw them out. No. We are going to repair the rends. Which requires an emergency visit to the once-ubiquitous-but-now-nearly-extinct fabric store. We benefit from our vague cultural memory that, in this colossus of a warehouse store, we need to look for "Notions." Sometimes that's a great idea. (ha ha? That's your obscure Ken Kesey reference for the morning.)

Found Notions. Found iron-on fabric. Not nearly the selection TMH remembers from our youth, shopping in the cave'o'fabric near where the deer and the mastodons play. But bits of white in the multicolored package. No idea what TMH will ever do with navy blue, black, and deep burgundy iron on fabric, but that's what one gets.

Then one trims them to size, and rounds the corners per instructions. Kitchen shears won't do this. Fortunately I still have my old fabric shears from when--in our pre-TMH days--we occasionally wanted to shear fabric. Now they're in our desk drawer for emergency shearing of printer paper or the occasional carpet snag resulting from dog teeth operating in the incorrect place.


The other handy tool for using iron-on fabric is an actual iron. Remember irons? Mine is practically new because I've only used it twice since I got it when I first moved out on my own a couple of years ago. Or was it 1977? I lose track of these details¹.



The instructions also say WARNING! Wash fabric before applying patches! But if you wash it, you know that the frayed edges will fray beyond your wildest nightmares (if you have nightmares about fraying fabric). So what are a few dog hairs among iron-on friends? Now you have to line up the edges to prepare for ironage. This is not so easy as one might suppose, with the stretchable fabric having been stretched a bit during its ordeal. Dang stripes--how can all of them line up except one?


Line up the patches right next to each other so that there are no gaps at all. (You had to use several pieces because the fabric wasn't large enough to do in one full sheet. Don't you like it how I know what you are doing and why?) Now, with the iron plenty preheated to Cotton setting, even though you believe that the sheets aren't exactly completely cotton, you're just following directions, you press for 30 seconds, moving the iron back and forth per instructions.

Learning opportunity #1: when you move the iron back and forth, the tightly aligned patches don't apparently stay that way.
Learning opportunity #2: What's that brown, iron-shaped patch of color that just appeared on my sheet? It'll wash out, won't it?
Won't it?

---

¹(I also lose track of whether we're writing in the first person singular about me the person or third person singular, whether we at TMH are actually singular or plural, whether you're addressing your audience directly, or whether one is referring in general to some third-person entity not directly emotionally involved.)

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Favorite Dog Lyrics Part 6

SUMMARY: From KTMH (K-TajMuttHall), only the finest in foolish repurposed dog lyrics.

Who's featured today. [yeah yeah repeat after me: Guess Who's featured next time.]

Lyrics spring up spontaneously whilst laving post-muddy-yard-play dog feets.

Well, who's muddy? (Who's muddy? Who, who, who, who?)
I gotta take a seat (Who's filthy? Who, who, who, who?)
Tell me, who's muddy? (Who's dirty? Who, who, who, who?)
'Cause I gotta wipe your feet (You're muddy! You, you, you, you!)

Original lyrics here.

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Tika/Boost 2016!

SUMMARY: Election propaganda.

Courtest of obamicon.me.

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Ellen Likes

SUMMARY: Who knew?

• Ellen likes the ocean
• Ellen likes to keep kissing in closet
• Ellen Like's To Eat Things Beginning With "P"
• Ellen Likes The Xbox
• Ellen likes Sudoku
• Ellen likes Music
• Ellen likes to sing
• Ellen likes dogs
• Ellen Likes Skits
• Ellen likes Epcot, but digs Universal even more

The real question is: Who knew how many ways there are for people to come up with clever little exercises for you to spend time doing instead of actually posting something useful. (Like. Ahem. Senses of foreboding. Yes. Useful.) THIS little doozy is another pass-around exercise. Rule is, type "(your name) likes to"--e.g., "Ellen likes to"--into google and then post the first 10 things that come up. In case you were thinking I had been replaced by a simulacrum or triffid or like that. Although oddly enough several of these things were not false.

The other real question is: How many of those were references specifically to Ellen Degeneres? Man, it's rough having a famous shared first name. Therefore, I'll try my infamous alias, "ELF likes to":

• Elf likes to skateboard
• Elf Likes My Paladin advice
• elf likes The Unfinished Swan
• Elf likes to eat
• elf likes to tell the cows a fairy tale
• Elf likes to get up at the crack of dawn
• Elf likes to bake
• Elf likes to wait for Santa next to Santa's Milk and Cookies
• Elf likes to smile, smiling's my favorite
• Elf Just Likes to Stir Things Up

And, just to round things out, let's try "Taj MuttHall likes to" (or "Taj likes to", since we're on first-name bases here):

• Taj likes to work with a lot of people and incorporates as much as possible into the experience
• Taj likes Computers he loves is Mac , Taj like chatting with 3t fans , & Taj likes directing things
• taj likes to ride the bikes
• Taj likes Madonna and Pink, and plays guitar
• Taj likes to workout, running, swimming and doing yoga and kickboxing
• Taj likes to keep her distance
• Taj likes surfing the Mentawais islands and his Western Australia surf spots.
• Taj likes when Tim Floyd has ulcers
• Taj likes shopping, Maximo Park, spending time with her. friends and chatting on Facebook
• Taj likes cats

And, since Tika and Boost are hanging on my every typed word here, gaping over my shoulder and wanting to be part of the fun: "Tika likes [to]":

• Tika likes music, but so far she has never liked the music lessons she's had
• Tika likes to do anything Sam does and follows him around and does everything he does
• Tika likes to chase bunnies and birds and investigate all moving things
• Tika likes to make this expression at me
• tika likes to get under the futon and growl
• tika likes nuts
• Tika likes those things, too
• Tika likes to do agility training in Southlands with Fast-Track Agility
• Tika likes snowboards
• Tika likes furbys

• Boost likes to do while I am trimming shrubs [from TMH]
• Boost likes to take a close look and scope out the difficulty rating of an obstacle [from TMH]
• Boost likes to use lots of ram when compling
• Boost likes to leave the GUI functionality job to someone else
• Boost likes to spike to around 18 psi and goes back down fairly quickly
• Boost likes to do things like this way - but never the less its very inconvenient for those of us who just want to use a small portion of Boost
• Boost likes to go off the chart
• Boost likes to stay up
• Boost likes to creep up in fourth gear
• Boost likes to bag up the tyres

OK, I think we've completely ground that into the dust now...

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Sense of Forboding -- Can We Hurry On Into March Please?

SUMMARY: This certain month has some bad juju.

I am not a superstitious person. Really. But still I'm looking at the dates and feeling uncomfortable.

* Feb 8, 2009: Van run into.
* Feb 26, 2007: Jake put to sleep after violent seizures in the night.
* Feb 28, 2008: Van run into.
* Mar 8, 2003: Remington put to sleep after violent seizures in the night.

I'm sure there must have been other bad things in my life at other times, but these are particularly standing out at the moment.

I'm sure I'll be better after I get a little sugar into my system.

Glad I could add a little cheer to your day.

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I'm So Busy Memeing I Can Hardly Think Straight or Ten Or More Things I Learned From My Dog

SUMMARY: Another Facebook tagging fantasy: "Ten things I learned from my dog(s)."

1. To get everyone's immediate attention, roll in something disgusting.
2. Squirrels are the devil.
3. If your ancestry is questionable, claim to be purebred and let them prove otherwise via expensive DNA testing or asking your mom--who'll never give away your secrets and doesn't speak English anyway.
4. Life is like hunting gophers: Dig and dig and dig and dig until you realize you're not going to reach that goal, then go do something else and let other people clean up the mess.
5. Roofrats are the devil.
6. The boss doesn't like to lie in a bed covered with dog hair. Shed everywhere, and the whole thing is yours.
7. If it fits in your mouth, it's edible.
8. The mailman is the devil.
9. Bathing is overrated. (See also #1.)
10. Photographers love it when you show them your butt.
11. "No!" means "yes!"
12. Even though your keen sense of smell reveals what bully sticks are made from, it doesn't really matter because they still taste darned good.
13. Don't mess with Jim Basic's lawn.
14. The devil hates it when you bark like a rabid wombat and throw yourself against the plate-glass picture window, so do it as often as possible to drive him away. Everyone will thank you for it in a loud and excited voice.

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Favorite Dog Lyrics Part 5

SUMMARY: From K-TMH (K-TajMuttHall), only the finest in dog-related music and hijacked lyrics!

Wow, just found this one in K-TMH's email archives, a big hit from November, 1994 when Sheba and Remington were the resident canines! Enjoy as you sing along to this oldie but goldie (and I mean retriever).

49th St. Walk Song

by Sheban and Remfinkle

Hurry up, you move too slow.
We've still got a ways to go
Just walking 'round the neighborhood
Lookin' for shrubs and feelin' hyper.

(Woof-woff-ooff-urf, feelin' hyper.)

Hello, hydrant, what'cha knowin?
Let me sniff, then I'll be goin'.
Ain't ya got no smells for me?
Woof-woff-ooff-urf, feelin' hyper.

I've got twelve bones to put in holes so deep,
I'm rowdy and active, not ready for sleep.
Let the squirrels get down here and play some with me;
Walks, I love you, feelin' hyper.

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25 Things About Me, and 25 More

SUMMARY: Another homework assignment from Facebook.

There's this thing going around on facebook. It's like a virus. You post 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about yourself, then you tag 25 other people to do the same. It can be pretty interesting. But you can't just open up facebook notes to the entire world like I can with TMH, so I don't post there.

Plus, I don't place the tagging onus on others; I like to let people volunteer. So this doesn't have to be in FB anyway.

But what the heck who doesn't like talking about herself? Perhaps it'll reveal something new to herself, some innermost meaning, desire, or strength that she hasn't previously discerned? But to post on Taj MuttHall, it's supposed to be dog related, according to the rules that she makes up as she goes along.

So here, forthwith, are 25 Random Dog Things About Me:

1. Used to like cats more than dogs. Until we got our first dog.
2. I'd rather play with my dogs than groom them. Where'd all this dog hair come from?
3. Six of the eight dogs I've ever cohabited with have been mixed breeds.
4. I've earned the equivalent of 11 agility championships: Jake in NADAC (twice over), CPE, USDAA (championship and performance), and ASCA (although almost all those legs duplicated the NADAC legs); Remington in NADAC; Tika in CPE and Bronze Ch in USDAA (triple ADCH).
5. My Siberian Husky lived to be 17. She had one litter of puppies after we adopted her from the pound at about a year's age.
6. I promoted and chaired the first-ever Bay Team CPE trial. A brief pause now for acceptance of thanks or curses.
7. Herding dogs rock.
8. I created my first web page in 1995, same year I started agility lessons. Taj MuttHall was fated to become!
9. Kibble: Yes. Raw: No.
10. Ideal dog: Not really sure. None of mine have been perfect, but I've loved them all and miss the ones that are gone.
11. Minivans: Bleah. Only because I regularly haul dog butts around (MUTT MVR).
12. Blue merles forever!
13. For 2 years on wikipedia, I spearheaded the dog breed project to expand, edit, and standardize all dog-related articles--of which there were only a couple dozen when I started. I created the first version of the dog agility article. I created or edited virtually every dog-related article during that time. I have 85 dog-related photos there.  Go look. (User:Elf)
14. I competed in 65 agility trials before I ever bought myself a canopy. Sun umbrellas and sheets worked fine. You canopy wimps don't know real roughing-it!
15. I love teaching dogs tricks. Remington won a few small tricks contests. I'd like to spend more time teaching tricks to Tika and Boost but somehow instead spend it honing agility skills. For all that gets me.
16. Wanna see my childhood dog scrapbook?
17. Big yella dogs forever!
18. Agility trials entered: 206. Runs run: 3,052. Qs earned: 1157. NQs for leaving the collar on: 2, both Jake, darn that long hair! Bars knocked between Jake and Remington: About 5. Bars knocked between Tika and Boost: Oh, good lord, why would you ask such a thing?
19. My dogs have all learned to hold biscuits on their noses. Even the Siberian. Boost is still an apprentice. Remington could balance almost anything on his nose. I'm sure he thanked my friend's Nikki-dog regularly for first showing me that trick.
20. I have a clicker in every room of my house, in my car, and in my yard. I rarely use them these days.
21. My dogs sleep on my bed. I love it and I hate it.
22. Number of times Jim Basic has used my dogs' before/after gambling statistics in his seminars as an example of how well his distance training works: Many.
23. I had ugly experiences with AKC trainers with my first dog and I've learned so many more reasons to dislike AKC since then.
24. Spaying and neutering dogs and cats should be encouraged but not required. Cosmetic docking and cropping of dogs' tails and ears should be illegal. 
25. I take all my agility ribbons home and hang them on the wall.

And now, since there are parts of me that aren't attached at the hip to my dogs, here are 25 Random Nondog Things About Me:

1. Found a human body once while backpacking with the Girl Scouts. They didn't have a badge for that.
2. I played flute and took lessons for 12 years. I was almost pretty good. 
3. That enabled me to march in the Cal Band, one of the great experiences of my life.
4. I'd love to take voice lessons.
5. Glen Campbell enthralled me in junior high school. They didn't have a badge for that, either.
6. I was picked on terribly in the 3rd-6th grades by the horrific Nancy S and her "in" cronies. It really hurt.
7. Color of my teen years bedroom furniture: Blue and purple. Colors at my wedding: Blue and purple. Colors on display everywhere in Macy's this season: Blue and purple. W00t!
8. I still buy stamps for my stamp collection and postcards for my postcard collection even though they just go into a big box. They did have a badge for that. (Collecting, not boxing.)
9. I earned the Sign of the Arrow and the Sign of the Star in girl scouts. Pretty high honors. A couple of years later, I quit.
10. Shoe shopping: Gag me with a spoon.
11. In high school speech and debate, I earned the National Forensic League's Double Ruby, the highest pin available at that time, and in my senior year made it to the state finals in Extemporaneous. 
12. Seven No Trump. Doubled. Redoubled. Vulnerable.
13. I'm the oldest of 5 sisters.
14. My geek code is  GCS/CC/M/TW$/O d- s+: a++ C++$>--- UBLHS P+ L>+ E--- W+++$ N o? K? w$>--- !O M++$ V PS++ PE+@ Y PGP t !5 X- !R tv-- b++>+++ DI++++ !D G e++ h-- r x?  Use THAT to find out more about me. This should count for about 40 items right here.
15. As long as I'm at it, I've programmed in SPL, Basic, FORTRAN, Ada, Jovial, Pascal, PL/1, ALGOL, various assemblers, machine code, COBOL, C, Java, Javascript, PERL... and probably some others that I thankfully don't remember. Don't ask me to do it now. But I can currently whack out some rugged HMTL.
16. My 512K Mac is still in my attic.
17. No-bake fondant! Mmmmm!
18. From July 2004 through March 2006 on Wikipedia, only between 200-300 people had ever made more edits than I had. Fortunately, I recovered. 
19. Style guide quantity in my office: at least 25. Quantity read most of the way through: Most.
20. Places lived: 18 different buildings in 9 different cities in 3 states. I've set foot in almost every US state except Alaska.
21. Sold two fiction short stories. Started dog agility. Sudden change in obsession.
22. Abortion should be safe and legal. Gay marriage should be safe and legal. Curse you, Red Baron! Go Bears!
23. Once upon a time, I could recite all of Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant". While playing some of the guitar background.
24. My fastest time for a Mercury-News crossword in the last 2 years is 3 minutes and 47 seconds.
25. Household dragon count: 262 and climbing. Yes, thanks for asking, it does include a dragon-head stapler and a dragon-shaped toilet-seat lid.

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Throw the Book At That Dog

SUMMARY: Compare and contrast: Powell's City of Books vs Taj MuttHall's unincorporated village of books.

One thing I did while in Portland--which is required if you ever go to Portland, you have sign an affidavit before you leave town that you've done it--is go to Powell's City of Books. This is bookstore paradise (you could lose yourself blissfully for hours just browsing) and bookstore hell (why do I always suddenly own 42 more books than I did just a couple of hours ago?). It is amazing beyond amazing words. It is the largest new/used bookstore in the known civilized universe, Jupiter included. It has sucked up an entire city block--and more than one floor of it, too. Without remodeling, either, so you kind of go up and down and around and in and out through holes in what used to be the walls; no redecorating, either, except by the application of bookshelves to everything that vaguely resembles a vertical surface, and all of the space in between.

And everything is SO organized and SO neat--all the book spines are pulled neatly even with each other so that you can browse easily while adding to your stack of 42 books. And there's an extrahumanly helpful person at the helpful person booth in every room. PLus they have little tags dangling from all the shelves that tell you their personal opinions about books, or useful facts, or helpful lists of all the books in a series so that you don't go home with Episode 3 missing from the middle.

You can get an online tour to get you in the mood, and you can even take a real tour when you get there, and pick up a map at any Helpful Person Info desk so you don't get too lost. For those who want to remember their day in paradise/hell, you can even buy souvenirs.

Some of us walked over there our last afternoon in town so's we'd be able to sign our Powell's affidavit, and I thought I'd just kinda look around for old times sake, but it turns out that (a) if you don't want to carry your books on the plane, the cashier is all set up to cheerfully mail your books for you anywhere you want them mailed. In a jiffy or even a trice. Even 42 of them. And (b) we got to Powell's around 2:00, a 10-minute stroll from the hotel, and I had to be back by 5:15 to meet my sister-out-law for dinner, and I almost missed the whole thing. A little looking around, my astronomical unit.

Here is what they have in the way of dog books (and we're not even talking favorite fiction like Jim Kjelgaard or Albert Peyson Terhune): not merely one monolithic bookcase, 4 feet wide by 8 feet tall so that I can barely reach the books on the upper shelf. Not two. Not three, but six and a half of those sections.


I'm not sure how long I spent browsing the books. Maybe 5 minutes. Maybe 95. So many books. New and used side by side so you can save money without any extra effort. Sitting on the floor (which was invitingly clean) half the time.


One fun thing was to note that, on every shelf, there were at least 2 or 3 books that I already owned. So perhaps it's not surprising that, after all that woofer-book browsing, I did not buy a single book from that section.

Because I have my own little burgeoning mini-Powell's woofer-book section. Not only does it have several shelves of woofer books, but it has little ceramic plaques with clever dog-related sayings (e.g., "DOG") on them, and a couple of very nice cedar boxes containing the only earthly remains of former Taj MuttHallers Jake and Remington, plus my childhood favorite china statuettes of a German Shepherd and a Collie, plus various awards and mementos--although I don't have any big dog agility trophies like the Power Paws overflowing awards display or other similar talented agility friends, still, it's a collection of randomness that's starting to fill up a shelf all by itself.

So, remember that you can always click on a photo here to see a larger version of it if you want to browse bowser titles yourself. In preparation for your own trip to the world-famous Powell's City of Books.

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Making the World Safe--

SUMMARY: --for dogs and other living things.

I step away from the agility field for just a moment.

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania (1759)

And now, a quote from a man who knows his history: My President Said That.

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Marley and Not Me

SUMMARY: Why I won't watch this dog movie.

It's Christmas, and I'm not really feeling melancholy, but this post turned out that way. Fair warning.

So many wonderful-looking films are coming out today, and quite a few wonderful ones have come out earlier in the year. I love going to the theater to see movies. It's the ambiance, the total immersion in nothing but the film in the darkness of the movie house. It's getting out of my house. It's not having to share my popcorn with the dogs.

I saw Milk--even though I knew the ending--because it reviewed well, it was local history that I lived through, and the topic is so relevant here and now in California waiting and hoping that the state Supreme Court will toss Proposition 8.

I will go see Gran Torino, even though I know it's violent, because Clint Eastwood both acts and directs, he's tremendously talented at both, his violence is always to a purpose, and his films are gripping and leave me thinking.

I will go see Doubt, although it's intense and deals with difficult subjects, because the cast is superb and because it deals with difficult subjects in an apparently interesting way.

I will probably go see Valkyrie, even though the initial ratings aren't good, and even though it's got some violence, because how Hitler got so many people to do so many bad things has always intrigued me, and it would be nice to get a glimpse into the lives or minds of some who didn't let the wool be pulled over their eyes.

I saw Bolt because I love well-done animated family films.

I saw Bolt a second time because it was a well-done animated family film that perfectly captured the personalities of dogs and--duh--I love dogs. Even though the scenes where he's separated from his human were very difficult for me. (Maybe *I'm* the one in my canine family with separation anxiety.)

I did not see Eight Below, even though I had a husky for 16 years and I love dogs and adventure films-- because I had a husky for 16 years and I love dogs. I cannot bear to see dogs in danger; I cannot bear to imagine how confused and disturbed dogs are when humans treat them in ways that dogs can't possibly understand.

And I will not see Marley and Me. Because it's about having a dog in your life, and falling in love with it, and watching it die. I've done that too many times in real life, and now, as part of a larger dog-owning community, I've done it vicariously far too many times, and thank you very much, I have no compulsion at all to relive any of that "for fun."

Love your dogs every day; you never know when there's a tomorrow that they suddenly won't be in despite how good they look today. (Bay Team dogs suddenly gone in 2008: Homer, 2 years old today, gone tomorrow. Tack, 6 today, gone tomorrow. Cammi, 5 today, gone in 3 weeks. Honey, 9 today, gone in 4 weeks. Whoopi, 5 today, gone tomorrow.)

Love your family and friends, too--such a gift when you have them. And such a boon to have when the dogs in your life depart. Hug everyone you love today or as soon as you get a chance.

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Jules Verne Invented the Internet in 1891

SUMMARY: Check it out in my other blog, Word Whirled.

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Dogs Take Over the World

SUMMARY: Do I know this driver?

Coming back from the lakebed yesterday morning, this is whom I followed down the freeway. For a while, I was taking photos of all the dog-related license plates in the agility-trial parking lots (here are 7 pages of them). I could've sworn I'd taken a photo of K9 CR8, but if so, it hasn't made it onto the web site yet. And of course i have no idea to whom most of them belong. So who IS this dog person who followed me (by pretending to be ahead of me) yesterday?

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Chewing

SUMMARY: I've been a little stressed lately and needed a constructive way to channel my gnashing of teeth.

"So, Teek, ol' buddy ol' pal, can you explain this chewing-the-bully-stick thing?"


[[Ummm...can I go now?]] "C'mon pleeeze oh c'mon pleeeeeeeeezzzze???"


[[Maybe if I ignore her, she'll go away.]] "OK, like this? With the stick between my paws? Am I doin' it right? huh? am I? huh huh? Am I?"

[[I'm really not believing this--]] "Gnarrrr arrrrgh rrarr grnarrr..."


Somehow it was less satisfying than I had expected.

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Thankful

SUMMARY: I'm just glad.

Backfill: (Posted Sunday morning.)
My family's all alive and we're all getting along and we love each other. My dogs are healthy and alive. I can afford a house and food. I have a job. I try to remember it's just the basics, just the basics.

Family at the dinner table. Twenty of us--only the niece & nephew in Baton Rouge weren't here.

(Clockwise from bottom left featuring assorted related hair: Brother-in-law Martin's hair, Bro-in-law Doug, Dad's cousin Carol, Dad, Mom, sister Sharon's main squeeze Mark, sister Sharon's hair, sister Linda's hair, Bro-in-law Paul, my cousin's spouse Simon, sister Ann's hair, niece Katie's hair, niece Elizabeth, my ex Jim, his mom, my chair, nephew Alex's hair, sister Susan's hair. Not in photo, me, cousin Dawn, niece Kate, or any of our hair.)

Jamela (cousin's dog) gets some Thanksgiving loving:

Annie (cousin's mom's dog) gets some Thanksgiving loving, but really she was more interested in the food.

The food guest of honor: Mr. Turkey.

Uncle Marty teaches his nieces the finer arts of computer gaming. (Oh, really, they can probably out-geek him any day of the week.)


Mom. Can you believe she turns 80 on Sunday? Her mom didn't look nearly so good on her 80th. No, she doesn't color her hair. I hope I'm so lucky!
But noooo, the hair in front of my ears is already fading...fading... But I'm thankful anyway!

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Erikson v. Columbus

SUMMARY: History ain't what it used to be.

Remember when we were in school (not sayin' when) and we celebrated Columbus Day¹ with fanfare and little construction-paper cut-outs of the Nina, Pinto, and Santa Domingo? Because, after all, Chris discovered the New World?² Well, along about 1964 we apparently realized that someone else had been here a whole 400 years earlier "opening new frontiers"², and Congress officially authorized the President of the U.S. to recognize Leif Erikson Day every Oct 9, which he has faithfully done ever since.

(¹ Remember the cute little rhyme to help you learn your important dates? "In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus sailed the deep blue sea"? See how well you remember now?)

(² Never mind those hundreds of millions of inconvenient half-naked uncivilized aboriginals who'd been hopping around the forest in their mocussinass for the last 20,000 years.)

What, you might ask, does this have to do with agility or dogs? Well, I'm getting there-- see, I've now spent half an hour googling "national (a variety of random things) day" and feeling a warm, cheery glow about all the things that are available for us to celebrate. Sure, you can mark your calendars for National Mutt Day on Dec 2! (Sorry, Boost, I couldn't find a National Border Collie Day.)

But here's the thing: There's no National Dog Agility Day?! I'm hereby proposing creating such a thing. I'll make a web page for it and everything. But I need to pick a date. Anyone have any good suggestions for what date and why?

P.S. Isn't it nice how Boost's hat matches BOTH her eyes? You wish you had it so good!

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Random Things

SUMMARY: Assorted photos and images with no cohesive reason for being in the same post.

Look what I found for lunch at the Denver airport! In the same booth, no less, so there was no way that I could buy one and not buy the other. At least I avoided the fresh-baked waffle cone with ice cream.

Me and my mom and dad. I love them very much. Even if I don't do a good job of showing it all the time. They have always been good parents. Except for some time during the years when I was, oh, 13 to 18, when they were always unreasonable about everything. You know.

It was my niece's fourth birthday party yesterday. Just think, only 9 more years and she'll be 13, too. Ha.


OMG, just what I don't need, another fun tool that allows you to spend endless time tweaking things to make it just the way you want it: Wordle.net. It takes a web site (with some limitations) or any large chunk of text and creates a word cloud image out of it. (More-common words are larger.) Here's the representation of all my August posts (what a strange coincidence that the most common words were things like Tika, Boost, dogs, Steeplechase, agility, and weekend):


And here it is for my last 10 days of posts:


(And you all know that, if you hover your mouse pointer over a picture and get the little pointy finger, you can click to see a bigger version, right?) (Oh, yeah, and this seems to be a good tool for finding some weird spelling and punctuation errors, too. :-) )

Furthermore, since I know that you all want more dog-related photos from Montréal, here's another one. Next to the fireplace is a dog wheel-cage for a spit over a fire; like a hamster in a hamster-wheel, the dog runs, and a series of chains and pulleys turns the spit with the meat as it cooks. Every home should have one.

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My Heart Is Torn Asunder

SUMMARY: Paul Newman has died.

(Photo from dvdtown.com)

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Talk Like a Pirate, Ya Scurvy Dogs

SUMMARY: Just practicing for tomorrow. Long Rem Silver's ghost reminds you to be prepared.

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Self Improvement (Or Is That Elf Improvement?)

SUMMARY: Got to stop talking to myself. Keep telling myself that.

I blame it on the dogs that everything of interest that runs through my mind comes out my mouth. Inquiring dog minds want to know, you know? And maybe it was originally just to notify them that I'm on the move and it didn't necessarily involve tug of war. But why on earth would they or I care if I need to get more ice for my drink? Why do I have to say out loud "More ice for my drink" before standing up and going up to the kitchen?

I am becoming a little old lady who speaks aloud to herself all the time and yet says nothing. What of that? How do I stop now that it's become ingrained?

Here's my solution: I walk around the house and yard murmuring firmly, "Stop talking out loud. Stop it. Stop. Just STOP. You're doing it again, stop it."

Note to self. Stop it right now.

Think I'll go get more ice for my drink.

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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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Earthquake Reporting

SUMMARY: Fun dynamic data. In color! Dogs are useless!

Whenever you feel an earthquake, you can report it at this USGS site. Then you can watch the responses pour in from thousands and thousands of people who feel even weak earthquakes, and very quickly get a picture of how weak and minor it was--and be amazed at how widely people feel them. I love watching the picture grow in the minutes after a quake.

My renter came downstairs at 9:00 and said, "Did you feel it?" I didn't! Drat! Usually if I'm sitting at my computer, I do, but not this time. Online, the quake hadn't even come up on the various web sites yet, but within a couple of minutes, it did: Reported as a 4.1 near Alamo (about 45 minutes from here by freeway). So we filled in his impressions of the quake and hit Submit. At that time, we were among the first 25 responders. Within 15 minutes, there were 2500 responses; 5 minutes later, there were over 3000. It'll probably slack off considerably now.

But think what an amazing tool the Internet is for collecting that kind of info! Just astonishing.

See the map of this quake.

Meanwhile, I got no tips from my dogs (as usual) that anything was going on. But then, there are zillions of little quakes every day (see all from the last week) that they probably feel more than we do and just dismiss out of hand. I know I would if I were a dog.

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Two Legs? Works for Humans--

SUMMARY: Dogs with no front legs.

Sounds like the start of a shaggy-dog story, but I found these 2-legged dogs to be inspiration for both humans and dogs with physical limitations. Makes some of our contact-training and bar-knocking drills seem somehow trivial in comparison.

• Faith the dog
• News story
• Confirmed on Snopes for those like me who are cautious about these stories.
• A chihuahua with similar story

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Number 9... Number 9...

SUMMARY: In which our agility sequence is rudely interrupted.

Apparently we're no longer doing number 9 in agility sequences in our back yard. Too much Beatles? Too much love potion? Who's to say what occurs in Border Collie minds?

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Why Dogs Should Not Be Loose in Your Vehicle

SUMMARY: Save their lives, and maybe yours, too.

If your dogs travel loose in your car when you drive, please read this whole post. Please.

My dogs used to travel loose in my car. They never traveled a lot; occasional jaunts to someone's house or maybe to a nearby park. As I did more and more agility, however, covering thousands of miles a year, I started to wonder: Children up to 60 pounds are required by law to use special restraints in the car (not loose like we were as kids) for their own safety, and adults are required by law to wear seat belts; what was I thinking by endangering my dogs' lives--and mine--when there were such easy fixes?

In case you haven't already thought about it--and please tell me that you have--here are the bare facts of why dogs should be restrained in cars, as taken from BarkBuckleUp.com:

"In an accident, an unrestrained animal is dangerous to the human passengers as well. Even in an accident of only 30 mph, ... 60-pound dog can cause an impact of 2,700 pounds, slamming into a car seat, a windshield, or another passenger. Even if the animal survives, it can impede the progress of rescue workers for whom every moment is precious.

"Unrestrained pets can also distract the driver, and cause an accident. Even pets that are normally well behaved could be frightened by something unusual and dive for the driver's feet or lap. Following a car accident, an unrestrained pet could escape and be hit by another vehicle or cause another collision. A frightened dog may attack strangers who are trying to help."

Another, recent article provides a summary on traveling with dogs:
"Paws on Board" by Teresa Odle. Basically, dogs should be:

* In well-designed harnesses attached to seatbelts or other secure restraints in the vehicle, or
* In crates that are secured to the car (my dogs now ride in crates that are strapped either to D-rings in the car floor or to seat belts).

The article also mentions a new California bill passed by the assembly that "outlaws pets sitting in a driver's lap while driving."

But after the basic facts--well, you can dismiss it and say that you drive safely and you'd never do anything dangerous with your dogs in the car. Instead, let me give you several stories.

Someone Else's Mistake #1

My fears were consolidated when another student at Power Paws died when her car rolled over (she wasn't driving) on the way home from an agility trial. Her husband brought the dogs' crates to show us why having dogs in crates is a good thing: His wife was dead, the crates were mangled, but the dogs were unharmed. Unharmed. Looking at those bent and crushed crates, my heart nearly crumbled imagining what could have happened to the dogs if they had been loose, and at what I was letting my dogs in for without any restraint.

She wasn't the only one to suffer a similar fate. This is about the time that I picked up this "Don't Drive Drowsy" sticker from the "Live to run again" foundation. It's on my driver's-side window, and I try to look at that sticker every time I get into my car.


Also at that time, for my dogs, I started with harnesses that I bought at the SPCA, but changed to sturdier, safer ones after reading my friend Holly's research on dog harnesses (an excellent article if you're thinking about dog "seat belts").

Someone Else's Mistake #2

From my former housemate, now living in L.A. (with her little black dog Casey, whom I wrote about when he lived here), July 22, 2008:

I'll give you the gory details later, if you want them, but I was in a serious car accident Friday night.

For once in my life Casey was not with me. Seriously, Ellen, it is a miracle that I am alive and not even any broken bones. Had Casey been in the car there is no f... way he would have survived.

Please tell me what you know about seat belts for pets. The best kind, what to look for, where to find them, etc. I am buying one immediately.

(The gory details)
We were rear-ended. HARD. So hard it pushed us into the back of an 18-wheeler. The ambulance arrived pretty quickly. By that time some good samaritans saw that we were in a car filling with smoke and unable to get out. Somehow they managed to get the doors open and drag us to safety. We were taken to a local hospital in the ambulance. I had a nasty cut on my right leg. (A good two inches of my shin bone was exposed - it was sickening.) They were afraid that [my friend] Robot had internal bleeding because of the way the seat belt sliced him across his torso, but after tests he was sent home. I was x-rayed and somehow that ER doctor managed to take the mangled mess of meat that was my leg and stitch it back together. Just 32 sutures in an almost perfect "V" on my right shin.



Robot is bruised and sore, but left to go back to Texas this morning. Robot & I both feel incredibly lucky to be alive, much less to be in one piece! My entire body hurts, but nothing is broken. If Casey had been in the car, which he is about 95% of the time, he would not have survived. No way, no how. I am currently shopping for pet seat belts.

I'm sure airbags saved our lives.
I am very happy with my Hyundai. (Well, what used to be my Hyundai)
Always wear a seatbelt.
Make sure your insurance payments are up to date.
Secure your pets in the car if they ride with you.
Live each day as if it is your last, because it damn well could be.

Someone Else's Mistake #3

From my occasional agility-traveling friend (Scully and Sparkle's mom), about her sister, who also does agility, August 15, 2008:

Pam's car was totaled yesterday and she was very, very lucky. She was driving home from work and some guy came up from behind way too fast. He tried to swerve around her, cut in too soon and hit her rear quarter panel. Pam ended up shooting across two lanes of traffic and up an embankment. The car rolled at least twice on the way back down and landed driver's door down. Pam climbed out the passenger door and passers by got the dogs' crates out and moved them to a safe distance. Pam's business partner came and took Pam and the dogs back to the vet hospital while our brother came and dealt with the tow truck people. [About the dogs:] Haiden is fine and Raina has a chipped bone on her hock. She sees a surgeon today but the hope is she can get by with just a splint. She did not reinjure her spine which is excellent news. Pam is sore but seems to have no serious injuries.

Taj MuttHall adds: What if the dogs hadn't been in crates?

Someone Else's Mistake #4

Added: Aug 22, 5:10 p.m. From Scully and Sparkle's mom again:

Years ago Mom was driving her van with a dog crated in the back. Traffic on the freeway came to a dead stop but the driver behind her didn't notice and plowed into her at 60mph. Mom's van was shoved forward into the car ahead of her, the back doors popped open and the crate landed on the freeway. The van was totaled but the dog was fine.

Last Story

I don't remember the details. (Maybe someone out there knows? This is how I remember it.) Two people traveling from an agility trial in southern California rolled the vehicle in the wild mountains across the Grapevine. Their unrestrained dogs got loose. They were lucky that none ran out onto the freeway, but one vanished and was never found.

Please don't leave your dogs loose in the vehicle.

Update: Aug 26, 2008, 3 p.m.: Also visit Johann the Dog's Car Safety For Dogs! page.

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My Photos In Ebook

SUMMARY: Dog-breed book available online

Once upon a time, I wanted to create my own book, or maybe web site, about dog breeds. I had actually started it, but then I discovered Wikipedia and devoted 2 years to that project, expanding what was at that time an extremely sparse collection of articles about dog breeds. I also photographed various breeds (and mixes) at agility trials and uploaded the photos to Wikipedia.

You can view my photos on Wikipedia here.

Read Wikipedia's article on dog agility, which I originally largely wrote (but which has been expanded & edited over time). I think it's a pretty darned good article. Lots of things are missing from the separate history article and separate "agility worldwide" article, though. Help if you can! Anyone can edit.

Check out WP's list of dog breeds; you can go to each article from there. I can't claim to be the primary author on any of them any more, as they've changed so much. Sometimes individual pet owners add text that doesn't apply to the breed as a whole (my favorite: "Shelties generally do not like to fetch"). I used to spend a lot of time cleaning that up, but now I blog instead. (grin) Help if you can! Anyone can edit.

The big problem is that the info is across so many different pages. If you want to search for some breed or feature within only the dog articles, you can't. Wouldn't it be nice to have an electronic book that you could search?

Alex Harris (not someone I know--found me on Wikipedia) has created an ebook of dog breeds, Dogs of the World, for $9.95. He created his own text from several sources. His primary source for photos was Wikipedia, and he used several of mine (with permission). Here's a partial sample page with one of my photos; this is Honey, who just died suddenly last month of hemangiosarcoma, the same thing that killed my Remington.



It's a work of love, privately published, so it won't have the polish of breed books found at the book store. But it is electronic, so you can have it on your computer. And it has my photos in it (and you can search my name once you've got it open). I receive no payment for purchases of this book. I'm just happy to pass the info along. And, since this is an agility blog, here's the first of two pages about the Border Collie, as a sample (not my photo).

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Favorite Dog Lyrics Part 4

SUMMARY: From K-TMH (K-TajMuttHall), only the finest in dog-related music and hijacked lyrics!

Just something that (probably unfortunately) came out of my mouth while we were out for a lovely walk this sunny morning.

The Wonderful Wagger of Dog

We're here to pet the wagger,
The wonderful waggerly dog!
And here he wags, the waggerly Wag
A cheerfully waggerly dog
If ever oh ever a Wag there was
The waggerly dog's a Wag because
Because because because because because
Because of his waggerly tails and paws.
We're here to pet the wagger,
The wonderful waggerly dog.

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I Hate Computers

SUMMARY: Why can't everything just be perfect AND easy so I can spend time practicing running contacts and going over obstacles that are in front of you?

Tika: "Mom--why are you pulling your hair out?" Note empty high-tech boxes. With Boost-chewed box corners ("take that you computer things").

I am trying to upgrade my computer and software a little bit. I can't upgrade it a lot because I can't afford it.

I want it to be FAST and EASY so that I can get back outside and work on agility activities in the sun with the furry beasts. But--this is computers--

For many months I've wanted to run Blurb's BookSmart because it sounds perfect for making books of your own photos. And now, ta-da!, it supposedly automatically slurps your blog from Blogger or your photos from SmugMug. This would be tres cool if it also sucks down all the text that I've typed for my smugmug photos! Because there's no way to get all that text into a book except by copying and pasting it from every photo individually. For thousands of photos.

But to run it, I need OSX 10.4.9 at least, plus Java 1.5, which needs OSX 10.4.something at least, and I am still on 10.3.something. Plus 10.4.something plus booksmart suggest that I have at least 6-zillion gigahoots dual processors, and mine are only 400-something megawhootz. Plus I'm out of space on my system disk, so no more room to put system upgrades OR more applications that won't run without the upgrades.

Plus my 15-year-old laser printer died, what's with that?

So here I went:

What	Process	Results
New laserjet printer	Two and a half hours of unstringing and restringing cables. The old printer setup was a little complicated.	Works pretty OK. Much faster than the old one and does double-sided much more easily. Except when it won't. Then it just prints pages of fuzzy gray lines. No way to tell what its mood is until you actually print. So I have lots of one-sided things printed on the backs of sheets covered with fuzzy gray lines.
New humongous external disk drive	External because I hate opening the computer and working inside. I haven't yet blown up anything when I've done so, but there's always a first time. And those warnings! DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING IN ANY WAY WITH ANY OBJECT OR THE WORLD WILL END ELECTRICALLY sorts, which scare me immensely. Anyway, plugged in Firewire cable and installed driver.	Works. Some farkling around to divide it into partitions, it seemed like a good idea at the time, and I'll probably regret it later.
Move system software to new drive	Downloaded a nifty tool that makes a bootable copy of your existing system drive. Except that it kept dying with some unintelligible error. Their site had online help forums, where others reported similar messages, but apparently the meaning can be divined only by the initiated. Fortunately, one of the initiated responded and all I had to do was to reinstall some things that had been working just fine to the naked amateur eye but apparently the nifty tool didn't like its attitude.	The copy finally worked but, not surprisingly, it took a very long time to copy 30 GB. So my old system is now working on my new drive. Because it's external, it's slower than it would be if I were to go out and buy ANOTHER disk drive of megahungus gigawhoo size and install it inside the box after taking out the old one and again using the System Software Copier to copy it all back... the cost and the time and the logistics just give me nausea. So it stays on an external drive for the nonce.
Upgrade processors	Rather than buying a whole expensive new computer, my company is just upgrading processors in all our office machines of roughly the same vintage, and they hope to get another 3 years out of them. So I buy a new superhuge dual-processor, at 1/5 the price. But first I have to upgrade the something firmware whoozie driver whatsit software. At least twice, maybe 3 times, because I've got all these versions of the operating system on different disks (including the old System 9). Oh, and there was the part where it wouldn't reboot under system 9 and I had to go find some sort of CD that it would boot under so I could try again, and it takes FOREVER to boot from a CD. But, OK, everything's happy now. Then I have to open the computer (ewwww... scary...), remove the old heat sink and old processor, and I'm shaking in my virtual shoes the whole time for fear I'll TOUCH SOMETHING WITH A BURST OF STATIC ELECTRICITY AND FRY EVERYTHING. But aside from losing a screw and taking a while to figure out how to get those clips off (they have detailed descriptions and photos and I'm still slow to get it), then "simply align the single connector" must have taken me 5 minutes at least, and then the box wouldn't relatch...	But it's in! And the system powers up! And it runs! And, wow, the computer really DOES run faster! Except now, sometimes, when the computer goes to sleep, there's this shrieking rising high-pitched sound like a jet engine revving or a solenoid about to explode (there aren't any solenoids in modern computers...are there?...). But if I hit a key really quickly, the noise stops. Maybe it's one of the fans on the new dual processor. Maybe it's something else that's coincidentally failing. Do I really want to go through taking the new one out and shipping it back and reinstalling the old one? No. So cross fingers and hope it's just a settling-in fluke.
Upgrade to System 10.4	(Which of course you can't just download--apple doesn't have it any more since they're now selling 10.5. So I have to go far afield to get a copy.) I put it into a different partition Just In Case, and it takes a couple of hours to go through all the hoops. Well, of course, that means that it doesn't understand ANY of my settings or application preferences from system 10.3.x. I checked with one of my gurus, and she said, "Why'd you do that? Just install it over 10.3." So I did. But updates are funny--many are serial, so after a very long system install, then I check for updates,and it installs those, then I chck for updates again, and there are more, and it installs those, and I check again, etc. etc. until now finally I'm up to system 10.4.11 and now finally the java updates start to install, and those seem to be sequential...	6 hours after I started installing 10.4, I'm now fully running on 10.4. There goes another day. It actually seems to be working fine so far (except that every application I run says "you're running this for the first time; OK?").
BookSmart install	NOW I can download and run BookSmart--except--their web site is down. It's down for most of the day. Have they gone out of business? I dunno! Can't find anything about it on the web anywhere. Finally I try once more, and the site comes up, and I download BookSmart.	Seems to run. So, OK, let's just play with it. First, you can use only preset page layouts. It has lots, but you can't design your own. I've tried laying out 3 pages of photos and already I don't like what I can't get. What if I have 5 photos and want to lay them out as if I have 6 but put text in the 6th box? Can't do it. Gahhhhh.... OK, it's a new product and still in beta. Be patient. Next I carefully resize the photos for the page layout. But then decide that I want a different layout. So I switch layouts. And it shoots all the photos back to their original sizes and I have to resize them all again. Same thing if I switch the position of two photos--have to resize them both again. This is not quite the easy-to-use thing I was imagining. But let's see whether it at least does what I wanted it to do.
Slurp SmugMug albums	With just a few button clicks, it brings down all the photos from my chosen gallery. Slick.	Well, guess what--it doesn't seem to slurp the text! I look all through their help and online materials, and I can't find anything. Why did I think that it would? I can't find that info on SmugMug, either, so maybe it was just wishful thinking. Since it doesn't do that, I can just use the photos that are right here on my computer. But I want the text! That's frustrating. There's a Windows utility (which I can run an emulator for on my system) that will slurp the photos WITH the captions EMBEDDED in the photos. Still have to open each one to see the text, but at least I'd have it. But does booksmart take any info out of the embedded photo info? Apparently not, not that I can find. Well, crud!
slurp my blog	Just a few button clicks again. I'm surprised that there's no way to specify which part of the blog you want to get, can't even specify certain labels or anything, near as I can tell. It's really going to slurp 1250 entries and hundreds of photos and put them all into one book??	No, of course it isn't, it keeps barfing after loading about 25 entries, saying that the blog is unavailable, try again later. Well, it's not unavailable, dagnabbit, it's right there and I can view everything. I post a help request on their site but have to wait one BUSINESS day. So there goes the weekend and any likelihood of creating a real book.
Blog labels	Instead, let's put more labels on my older blog posts (have been doing it only for a year or so, so 5 years worth of posts have no labels). I did a few topics a couple of weeks ago, using the Search box to find all relevant posts.	But now--what?!--the search finds only posts from the last few months! It's not finding ANYTHING older! It's not finding the posts that it found two weeks ago! I spend an hour on their site trying to find relevant info. It claims to be a beta search and it seems to be broken, but there's nothing posted about it anywhere, and searching their massive billions of forum posts doesn't bring up anything useful. Used to be when you reported a bug, the bug went right to their support folks...although I do remember having to search for the right page, like they didn't really want you to find it. Now their "report a bug" goes straight to a public forum with 85,000 posts in it and if you're lucky maybe a Blogger person will come by and answer the question. So I posted the question yesterday and have yet to get a useful answer.
Photoshop elements upgrade	Meanwhile, Photoshop Elements 6 has become available, and I bought it at a discount. I use this all the time, so it makes sense to buy it. It installs OK (except that it says "insert CD and follow the instructions on the screen", but there are no instructions, there's just the CD, so I have to find the right folder with the right thing to run...). But man, I think it took as long to install as the whole new operating system! MAN, it took a long time.	Then I start it up. And it takes up my whole blinking monitor screen. Welcome to the new software--there's no resize handle in the lower right. There are no min/max buttons in the upper menu bar. I just want a little tiny photoshop window so that I can view other things at the same time. I look everywhere, all the menus, all the icons. I try Help. I try the User Guide. I try their web site. Another hour down the tube and I've done nothing except trying to resize my window. I finally find a support place on their site where I can post a question, so I do. Now I have to wait for "1 to 2 business days"(?) for a response. It's probably something stupid that I just overlooked. But I hate this, HATE it...I've got over 20 years of experience on a wide variety of window-based applications, and I CANNOT FIGURE IT OUT!

Gah! I just want to scream.

Instead, guess I'll take the dogs for a walk and get my shoulders ripped out some more. It'll take my mind off the fact that I HATE COMPUTERS.

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Time Goes On

SUMMARY: Double sad news outside my dog world.

Best Man (left) and groom, 1981. Weren't we all so much different then!

Twenty-seven years ago, I got married. That lasted barely into the new millennium, but friendships from those years continued. I've stayed in touch with the mother of our Best Man. I always felt that they were a close and loving family (two siblings? Three?) and they always made me feel part of their family.

We'd drifted apart from the Best Man, who had descended into alcohol and drugs, had spent time more than once in jail on DUI convictions, owed everyone way too much money. Not part of our world. Never knew what demons drove him so far from the paths taken by the rest of his family, from whom he had become estranged.

Two weeks ago, the mother let me know that her husband had died very suddenly. They weren't that old, I don't think. Of course my perspective on what "very old" is has changed considerably through the years... 110 is "very old" now. Maybe in their 70s?

The bigger shock was to get another note today that our Best Man had just been found dead in a motel room, cause unknown. It is such a stereotypically sad and lonely death for someone who had gone in his direction. I wonder whether he knew that his father had just died, and if so, whether that was too much for him?

He was such a funny, energetic guy in the old days. Lots of dreams that never came to fruition, but he was fun to talk to and hang around with.

And image the Mother--what a month. And she's selling the house and has to find a home for the husband's basset/dachshund. Her whole life turned topsy turvy. I can barely imagine.

I am sad about all of them.

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Who Are You and Why Are You Paying All That Money?

SUMMARY: Who we are and how much money we're paying. (Duh!)

I can thank my Dad again (nonagility parents who've been pretty faithfully slogging through my blog) for today's topic; he responded to my Statistics post:

Okay - Interesting.
* Are there statistics on the handlers?
* How many have serious problems with their lower limbs, from the hips down?
* What are their ages?
* How much would they have to spend, just on entry fees (forget travel and motels, restaurants, etc.) just to get all of the required wins to be a lifetime champion?
* How does the organization get all of those handlers to fork over that much money?

It sounds as though you really, Really, REALLY enjoy the whole thing. Keep it up.

I do enjoy it, or I guess I wouldn't keep at it even on the discouraging days.

Our club has no stats like that on the handlers. We need the dogs' ages because they can't enter until they reach a certain minimum age, but there are no restrictions on handlers' ages. We've seen some VERY young handlers move dogs around the course better than I can. Brats.

Clean Run (the agility magazine) did a demographics survey in 2003 and published a summary of the results in their January 2004 issue: "90%...are female and between 31 and 60 years of age. 40% are between 41 and 50. 80% chance that you live by yourself or with only one other person. 48% chance that you have been competing for more than 4 years. 36% attend 12 or more trials a year." [Wait--their phrasing is unclear... last one might be 52%.]

I've often wondered about the lower limbs thing; if you just sit and watch some of the classes at a USDAA trial, particularly at the Masters level, you'll see an amazing number of knee supports. There are also--somewhere out there in the world--an estimated 50-80 people doing agility from a wheelchair or similar device. Seems like half the people I talk to have had knee surgery of some kind. But is that from agility or is that because of the age demographic or maybe just because the people who do agility have always tended to be very active in sports and maybe it's a lifetime of pounding on the knees? Interesting question.

How much would one have to spend...? Yeah, like I really want to know that answer. When that topic comes up, our universal response is "don't go there." I think we'd all just about turn inside out if we added up everything we've spent doing agility. I have a fairly good idea of how much I spend in a year, because I have a household budget in my computer, but I try not to add up all the pieces (e.g., gas costs go into my "vehicle" budget, stuff like that). Entry fees are a big chunk of it, but I don't know that it's more than 50%. There's all the equipment and/or the lessons or field rentals and traveling to class every week (or twice a week...or three times a week...) and extra seminars and training treats and, well, like that.

I've periodically threatened to add up everything I've spent on agility, but then my heart quavers and I go back to burying my head in the chute (hey, does that work as an analog to "sand"? Maybe?).

It's a lot.

It's not a low-income sport.

We fork over the money because we like doing it. We gripe about it when the sanctioning organization raises its fees, or insists on higher fees for no apparent reason. (For example, why does our club have to charge $20 to enter the Grand Prix when it's exactly the same as a Standard course which we charge only $12 to enter? Because USDAA says so, that's why. Bay Team tried to lower it once--because really, we make quite a bit of money on our regional, at least-- and they said, Uh-uh, you have to charge the higher rate.) There are occasional mostly joking comments about "Ken [the president/owner] has kids to send to college," but in the case of Tournament fees, I don't get it, because USDAA doesn't profit from the excess fees, the club does. I dunno how much Ken really makes in a year from this. I've never seen what kind of house he lives in or what kind of car he drives or where his kids go to college. It's not a public corporation, so the books aren't open.

So how do they convince us to pay it? Well, some people pay to enter bridge tournaments every Tuesday night. Some people pay to go to movies every weekend (wait--I do that, too!). Some people pay to learn how to jump with their horse and compete (like my sister and nieces). Some people pay to play golf. I dunno, it's just something that I do that costs money. Bummer on that score.

But I'm still here, having survived since my first view of agility, up at Power Paws in early Spring 1995, when I went up one evening to see what it was all about, and took in the bright lights, and the beautiful, brightly colored equipment in a rainbow of patterns across the lush green grass, and dogs doing the most amazing things--and off-leash, too! and running full out, too! and everyone having a good time, too!-- that I doubted I could ever get my dog to do but, oh!, wanted so badly to try!

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Charity Vote

SUMMARY: From Wishy the Writer, an online vote.

Wishy says:

I heard about a charity in Iowa that matches agility dogs with disabled kids and they are up for a huge grant if they receive the most online votes this week. Thought I'd pass the info on. I have no connection with this charity. Just thought it sounded good. Read more here. Pass it on...

(FYI, you need to supply your email address to vote. I read the site's privacy policy and the contest rules, and it's not clear whether the email address used to confirm that you're placing only one vote is used ONLY for that and not for "Terlato or authorized Terlato partners and resellers". I've sent email asking for clarification; will edit this post if I get a response. Also note that the online vote counts for only 15% of the final decision; 85% is decided by a panel of judges. -Taj MuttHall)

Update July 23; email from Terlato Wines in response to my query: We are truly glad you alerted us to this matter, as we too agree consumers should be able to proactively opt-out of any solicitations. The full name and e-mail must be entered only to ensure people are not voting twice in one day, and the system was actually not set up to store these entries in any database. As a result, we did not offer an opt-out, and we are revising the Web site to clarify.

We are also reviewing our Privacy Policy to determine appropriate changes based on your concerns.

Thank you,

Megan Ward
Assistant Marketing Manager
Terlato Wines International
847.604.5784

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No Dogs, But Houses, Flowers, and Ships

SUMMARY: What I did today in Alameda and Oakland.

Photos from today with some narrative.

Update: July 13, 10 a.m.: That trip was courtesy of Wikipedia in an interesting way. Back when I was spending infinite hours editing wikipedia, I signed up on one of the pages that said I'd be willing to take photos of things in California. Back in March, someone (who is not in California and so didn't know location relativity) left a request for me to take a picture of the Alameda Spite House for the spite house article.

Well, gee, I'd never heard of such a thing, and the article intrigued me, so of course I had to set up a trip to go up there, and Jack London Square was just around the corner, and when we got to the spite house, we discovered on driving through the neighborhood that it was filled with wonderful homes, so we wandered a bit, and the neighbors saw us oohing and aahing and taking photos and we must have talked with half a dozen people as we went. And the weather was just about perfect (if it weren't for all the smokey haze in the air). We had lunch on the spur of the moment driving past a place called Demitra's in Alameda that looked good; I had a gyro and my friend had an avacado/turkey sandwich and they were both delicious. I knew that there were historic boats at JLS but didn't know details until I got there.

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The Sad Thing About Dogs

SUMMARY: They're not here long enough.

I am melancholic.

For many years, in particular for agility, it has seemed to me that about 6 years apart in age is a good spacing for Taj MuttHall dogs. In reality, that means that one leaves me on average every six years. This is hard. The worst thing about being involved in dog agility is that now I know so very many more dogs, and so much better, than I ever did before in my "normal" life. Now it's not just my dogs tearing pieces out of my heart when they leave. And so much more frequently than every six years.

My dogs:

• Jake - Nov 1, 1991-Feb 26, 2007
• Remington - July 1, 1993-March 8, 2003
• Sheba - 1980-May 1997
• Amber - Nov 1, 1978-July 1992
• Sam, the family dog - 1967(?)- 1980(?)

Other dogs:

• Bay Team agility dogs in memoriam
• And the blog dogs I've been getting to know...

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Washcloth Lust

SUMMARY: It's catnip for dogs. Dognip.

Maybe I need to do my laundry more often? None of Amber, Sheba, Remington, or Jake ever did this. Maybe I really *am* rotting away as I get older.

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What a Waste

SUMMARY: Recycling and doggie droppings.

Back in high school in the early 1970s (there, I admit it), I wrote a couple of speeches about ecology and the environment, and then I got all hot under the collar about Things We Can Do At Home To Save The Earth. This was back when recycling was something you did to get back on a bicycle. Or else weird counterculture stuff. I believe that I was the instigator for my parents to start recycling bottles and cans. This was back when you had to buy your own containers for recycling, if you wanted it separate from garbage, and then you had to go find someplace that would take your recyclables and transport them there, and sort them yourself into the appropriate bins, after crushing all the cans to save space, of course.

I think I let my parents do most of the actual work. Although when I moved out on my own I did all that stuff.

Also, just to be a good person, I have always picked up my dogs's messes in public. I used to get complimented because I'd walk around picking up after my dogs. Now people swear at me because my dogs poop in public. Weird world. Anyway. In your own yard (if it's not a giant ranch in, say, Marfa), you need to pick it up or else reencounter it in many unexpected and not necessarily pleasant ways.

Eventually, when I grew up a little bit, like in 1995 or so, I went through the program to become a Master Composter because I learned that soil is SO much happier with organic matter added, and besides it makes so much more sense to process your own yard waste. (Ask me someday for why. I'm a Master Composter. I have a very long list of reasons.)

Then there was the doggie droppings thing. When I walked out in public, we used to carry a trowel and a small paper bag. Then I'd scoop the poop into the bag and then throw out the bag. When I started doing Dog Activities with Dog People, I realized that plastic bags were way more convenient in so many ways: Moisture doesn't leak through them. Before use, they crush easily into a pocket. You can do the grab and lift and don't need a trowel. You can buy them on a very condensed roll and attach them to your leash.

When I had a Really Big Yard, during the winter, when it rained, we'd mostly leave the doggie deposits where they lay, as they'd fade into the soil under their own power. But the rest of the time, we used to gather it all into a large grocery bag and toss it in the trash.

So, Taj MuttHall Mom, What's Your Main Point?

And so, here's my main point. With my Concern For The Environment and finally being a Master Composter, I decided that I needed to find some way to deal with all of the solid waste produced by my canids.

So I bought a Doggie Dooley digester, which is basically a big plastic box with a lid that you bury in the ground, like a mini doggie-doo septic tank, and you periodically throw in your dog waste and some Doggie Dooley Digester Enzymes. It's supposed to just vanish in a trice and sink into the soil in an unobtrusive way.

Well, I tried for probably 3 years to get that thing to work. I added more liquid. Less liquid. More enzymes. A lot more enzymes. Fewer enzymes. I kept a big pole by the (very-rapidly-completely-filled) Dooley and stirred it and aerated it. A really fun thing to do on weekends. But I never, never got it to work. There were notes about clay soil not being perfect, but since our clay soil drained very well, I thought it wouldn't be an issue. But noooo--- I gave up finally.

I have corresponded with people in other parts of the country who have had good success with the thing. But not here.

So here are some other possibilities:

* Put in a plastic bag and into the trash. Actually, at least one agility site near here REQUIRES that the dog poo must be in plastic bags before it goes into their trash. But--all those plastic bags!

* Put into a paper bag and into the trash. However, some municipalities now apparently ban pet waste in the garbage entirely (hmm, trying to find a reference for that and can't. I believe it was Pacific Northwest somewhere). Plus, really, stuff that goes into the landfill gets buried so quickly and thoroughly that a lot of it just doesn't break down, or won't for centuries. I don't think paper or plastic really matters.

* Compost it. Ugh. Doggie poo (and that of most omnivorous/carnivorous animals) can or usually does contain all kinds of ugly pathogens that normal backyard composting won't kill and you don't want in contact with you, your vegetables, or your children. Not a good solution.

* Same applies, maybe, to leaving it lying around the yard to break down on its own, if you have a large-enough yard. But in this case, it would be far enough from where you're usually in direct contact with it that it wouldn't matter so much. But how many of us have yards that big?

* Flush it down the toilet. Gak, carrying that through the house?

* Put it into the sewer in some other manner, like build a sewer connection in your back yard. Expensive, although maybe cost effective for larger kennels. But now there's some indication that many of those pet pathogens are not destroyed in the water treatment process and are finding their way into the waters of the world. (Limited references available; mostly applies to cat waste.)


So what's an ecoconscious dog owner to do? I dunno. My current strategy is plastic bags into trash, both for public poos (small convenient-sized bags) and for backyard cleanup (one large bag weekly).

But someone just pointed out this gadget. Looks like an interesting idea, if it really works. And if you have $400 left over after doing dog agility. Anyone out there have any experience with this thang?

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Hiking Schmiking

SUMMARY: But what about agility?

I've been mentioning hiking a lot lately because it's different from our usual agility-focused life. One of my goals with hiking is to get in better physical condition and weight to be able to move around the agility course with the greatest of ease, to match the speed and agility of the Taj MuttHall beasts. Wish I had the option of taking them hiking with me in more places. They'd love it. But they're also a handful, so maybe it's best if they stay home and rest up for more agility (an important training strategy).

So, meanwhile, back home, what are they up to? Our next agility trial is July 4 weekend, and it's another DAM Team event, so we've got plenty of work to do, to collectively get into perfect shape to Go! Fight! Win! So let's check in on their agility-training regimen!

Boost is storing up her energy for those sudden bursts of Border Collie speed required on the field when the wrong obstacle is in sight.


Tika practices focusing her vision on key elements, such as when doing a difficult serpentine and one must be able to instantaneously judge the distance to a random scrap of food left in the grass.


But enough of this Zen sort of visualizing! What we need is actual practice in the yard with actual agility equipment! And Tika, being super-efficient, prepares for those Jumpers runs by practicing jumping and tunnels simultaneously.


Like a white-water rafter attempting Class 5 rapids, Boost likes to take a close look and scope out the difficulty rating of an obstacle before actually attempting it.


Then it's time to gather our strength in the shade, in case an emergency game of fetch springs up right in front of us.


Enough of this strenuous training regimen; we are now ready for a nap to rest up for dinner.


Good thing Tika is just danged cute.

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A Little Bit of Everything

SUMMARY: Busy busy busy.

OK, 1500 photos is too many. I knew that. Really I did. But it's taking forever and my brain is frying from choosing which of the many mediocre photos of Havasu Falls "The Most Photographed Waterfall in the World" are worth saving or even posting. And like that.


I am very tired. I am either still very tired or again very tired. On the trip I never had trouble falling asleep or staying asleep except one night in the canyon when my knee throbbing and jabbing in pain woke me up and kept me awake for a while both from the pain and the worry about being 8 miles from my van with a 20-lb. pack and a disgruntled knee. But eventually I went back to sleep and so did my knee. Which otherwise mostly behaved. But I was so tired that the morning we were supposed to leave the lodge at 4:30 a.m. I apparently slept through 4 alarms of two alarm clocks and my Hiking Friend had to wake me up. Today, I am tired like that, without a good excuse.

Last night I did the Wednesday evening hike with the Sierra Club group and this time instead of snapping photos, I was determined to keep up with everyone and just keep moving moving moving. I did OK. I stopped only when the leaders stopped at trail junctions or the like. But those folks can really haul! Even concentrating on just moving moving moving, a good portion of that crew would gradually pull way far ahead of me. I sweated a lot, although it was a bit chilly and I don't usually sweat much, I'm that kind of dry person.


We hiked Monte Bello Open Space Preserve to Black Mountain again--a few hundred feet elevation change over 4-5 miles. The air was pretty clear for the South Bay Area.

Nice views from the top of the mountain, where we all had time to share snacks that we brought. I took a bag of dried apricots and they seemed pretty popular. There were 18 of us on this hike, or maybe 17 if you don't count the interesting guy who never really hung out with the group but instead jogged back and forth and up and down around us the whole time, never really coming closer than about 50 feet. I was challenged just walking briskly.


Then we hiked out just as fast and made it out around sunset.

So maybe I am tired from that. Last night I was so tired that I dreamed about being so tired that I went to sleep on saturday and didn't wake up until Wednesday. Then I woke up and it was Thursday. Except I went to sleep on Wednesday. But it was 8:30 in the morning, which is late for me.

And maybe it was from the really brisk sweaty hike or maybe it was from dealing with a brand new laser printer setup and a brand new disk drive setup and a start-up disk that's too full to be functional and stuff like that. I'm not quite dead in the water but almost. I hate that.

So I woke up, tired, after dreaming about being tired, and I'm tired.

The dogs are bored with me doing photos and upgrading my computer equipment. I'm trying to get them ready for this weekend, which is a 2.5-day USDAA trial, by running them around the yard like crazy dogs, like into a tunnel on one side of the yard, over a jump in themiddle of the yard, into the tunnel on the far side of the yard, over the jump, etc. I figure that if my dogs can run really really fast through tunnels then I don't have to practice fast contacts (or actually reliable contacts), or not knocking bars, or distance handling for gamblers, or challenging weave pole entries or exits, or running past obstacles for snooker. Yes, really really fast tunnels will fix everything.

But I am too tired to think about any of that other stuff. I will hate myself this weekend when I drive out to the central valley and sleep in my van and end up not getting any Qs because I didn't practice anything that I needed to practice and why on earth did I enter DAM Team with both dogs again?

But at least this year the temperature should be only in the 70s or maybe 80s in Turlock; a couple of years ago at this trial it was 100 or so.

And then Saturday morning I pulled both dogs from Gamblers because it's first thing in the morning and my First Nephew is graduating starting at 8 a.m. from Stanislaus State, which is only about 8 minutes from the agility site, so I'm going to try to see him graduate and get back in time for Pairs Relay.

Then that evening maybe I'll try to join his family for celebrating. Why am I tired already thinking about it? At least I mostly unpacked everything from the Havasu/Grand Canyon trip, but I still have to pack for this weekend.

And my blackberries are ripening like crazy now; I could spend half an hour a day picking the ripe ones which is physically tiring, but they taste soooooo good for breakfast.

And really I'd like to have my annual blackberry ice cream (or sorbet) party in my back yard, which would have to be the weekend after this, and no time to finish planting all those flowers I bought, let alone actually planning and inviting anyone.


I am really tired, did I mention that? Naptime.

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Take Me Out to the Ball Game

SUMMARY: Friday night at San Jose Giants

No dogs involved. I suggested that they ought to at least have a frisbee dog at halftime, but they all tried to convince me that baseball games don't *have* halftimes, but I was wise to them. Half of 9 is 4.5, right? Am I right?

Photos here.

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Favorite Dog Lyrics Part 3

SUMMARY: From K-TMH (K-TajMuttHall), only the finest in dog-related music and hijacked lyrics!

There Is Nothin' Like A Dog:

There is nothin' like a dog,
Nothin' in the world.
There is nothin' you can blog
That is anything like a dog!

Don't Fence Me In:
"Oh, give me air, lots of air, on the freeway that I love, don't fence me in;
Let me ride with the wide open window that I love, don't fence me in!"
- by the Andrews Setters

I Left My Mark--
"I left my mark in San Francisco,
High on a hill, I raised my leg..."
- by Bony Bennett

Bonus--Famous quotations: When Samuel Morse saw that his terrier had dug up his vegetable garden: "What hath dog wrought?"

Previous related posts

• There is Nothing like A Frame
• Favorite Dog Lyrics

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Fiction Break

SUMMARY: Read a friend's Hugo-nominated short story. Free.

My Word Whirled post about: The Cambist and Lord Iron.

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Haute TRACS Is Almost Done

SUMMARY: Some success. Some failure. Some high-tech fun. Some nifty colors.

Here's a brief wrap-up, in which we determine whether it's possible for me to actually be brief after 3 days of agility. (It's hot. Hot hot hot almost like summer. 90ish degrees. I am glad to be home, not doing more agility. A friend said it was weird that I would do three days and not all 4. This from someone who thinks that 4 days of agility in a row is a Good Thing. They are all still there, being normal and very hot and tired. I am home and clean and coolish and well-rested and typing in my blog and, apparently, weird. Who wins?)

It was largely a weekend of stupid handler tricks. Note to self: Need new brain. Details later maybe.

I thought I'd maybe get a chance to cruise around and take lots of photos, especially to help Team Small Dog's discussion of what makes cool agility fashion, but nooo, I was busy either being behind on my score table work or running my dogs or being exhausted.

I did, however, take the opportunity to photograph what really stylish agility handlers have: all agility gear in their favorite colors. Which is guess what for me.


Thursday was All Team, All Day, All Rings. Five runs each dog. Combine your scores with your 2 partners' and then if you're within 25% of the average of the top 3 teams--or within the top 50%, whichever is larger (see, USDAA wants to compete with CPE on the complexity of scoring, since they don't want ANYONE to be better than them at anything)--well, then you Qualify For Nationals. Five runs for one Q. Maybe.

OK, I have to be brief. OK. I can do this. Tika qualified. Boost didn't, capped by a memorable Jumpers run with about 4 bars down and half a dozen refusals, although the judge claimed it was only 30 faults.

But wait! All is not lost! I won two, count-them-2, things in the worker's raffle on Thursday! Vanna, would you sniff at what we won?



Thanks, Vanna! Yes, a free entry for another trial plus a big box of Guard-The-House Goodies! And a purple tug toy that I forgot to put into the picture!

Friday I started the day by earning 15 faults with Tika in Masters Standard, 15 faults with Boost in Masters Standard, 15 faults with Tika in Grand Prix, and messing up so badly in Grand Prix with Boost that halfway through I finally asked the judge "which way is out?" and he pointed and we went. Fortunately Tom Kula was laughing inside, not steaming with irritation. At least I hope so because he seems like that kind of guy.

Then Tika got a Jumpers Q, which is kind of a miracle because (A) it's Jumpers and (B) we'd not run well so far, and Boost kept it to a mere 10 faults.

Friday afternoon, Tika ran a nice pairs relay course but her partner had problems with the weaves and knocked a bar, so no Q; Boost's partner had a nice pairs relay course but Boost managed to earn 15 faults (this being my number for the weekend, I guess) in little figure 8 with only about 8 obstacles, so no Q.

And I mishandled both through the Snooker course, resulting in a Q (but not Super) for Tika and none for Boost.

In the evening, I had a lovely potluck with some friends and also briefly engaged in a conversation with two of the judges, Tom Kula and Karen Gloor, about how USDAA really should move the Nationals around to other places in the country, and I'm tired of going (but I HAVE to because it's LOCAL, you know) and the people in Arizona are tired of doing all that work (while at the same time enjoying having it there--I am paraphrasing all of this), and how People Think That USDAA Nationals Should Be About USDAA Not A Hundred Other Agility Sports (which I am fairly confident that most of the U.S. bloggers in my list (to the right) have had something to say about although I cannot now find any of those specific posts--perhaps you'll tell me where yours are and I can link to them here).

Saturday continued with non-Qing Standard for both, but I got a boost with Boost's first-ever Masters Gamblers Q (woohoo!), although Tika was over time on the gamble due to (once again) stupid handler tricks.

Steeplechase was depressing--with Boost, I forgot which loop I was on and did the second loop first, although she was clean to that point (although wasted time on a missed weave entry). And Tika knocked the next-to-the-last bar on a badly done rear cross (I was trying to push a bit more speed there). She'd have qualified (as usual) without that dang bar--but, jeeper creeper, her time was only .05 seconds under! That was almost 8 seconds slower than the fastest dog! Still, I'd have loved to get that Q, no matter how squeaky it was.

In Masters Snooker, I mishandled both dogs dramatically again, resulting in a Barely Q for Tika and a Barely Not Q for Boost. Sighhhhhhh--

But things picked up with our final run of the weekend, Jumpers, where Tika again ran clean and Boost ALMOST ran clean.

With Tika's two Jumpers Qs for the weekend, that finished her ADCH-Bronze (like a triple ADCH). I am all, like, happy happy joy joy and Tika is all, like, where's the food?

And Boost's Jumpersrun--no refusals, no spins, no runouts, and only one knocked bar, --was SUCH a joy to finally run a nice fast smooth run with her! She had a couple of hesitations that might have knocked a couple of seconds off our time, but even so her time was more than 3 seconds faster than Tika and barely 2 seconds under the fastest time, and there were some super dogs running this weekend. I am all, like, wow, bouncing around with delight and Boost is all, like, wow, Mom has energy to play way crazy tug of war after the run, not just before it!

So Tika came home with 5 Qs out of 11 possible and her ADCH-Bronze; Boost with 1 Q out of 11 possible which is one leg closer to her MAD.

And furthermore, I got to take my first ride on a Segway! Which one of my high-tech friends (Apache's dad) was tootling around on all weekend. And which was really VERY cool and I would love to ride some more! And which I asked a complete stranger to take a photo of me on it, and I said, "let's move over here so I have just grass behind me, not cars," and he moved, too, so that the cars were still behind me. I would not make a very good even-more-amateur-photographer-than-me instructor.


In other high-tech news, we demonstrate that even major canopy tears can be repaired--at least temporarily--with stylish matching duct tape, as indicated by my stylish popular agility noncompeting slip-on shoe. I don't even know what they call these. But hundreds of people wear them. Horse people too I think. Maybe even normal people, because Big 5 has sales on them all the time and there are about 270 different brands that are all basically exactly the same, just some fit and some don't.


But wait! There's more, to distract us from sad disintegrating canopy covers! We won AGAIN in Saturday's raffle!

Yes, it's another free entry, plus a Costco Samoyed-in-a-bag! No, just kidding, ha ha, I already have one dog with too much undercoat. Really it's a throw for the dogs themselves to sleep on, and we'll try it on our bed and see whether they like that better than they like curling up and shedding directly on my pillow.

However, despite all the raffle-winning excitement, the dogs are ready for me to get the danged van loaded and head for home. I did not put them in the van. They loaded themselves and gave me impatient looks while I rearranged stylish blue and purple agility gear for informative and educational photography.


And now, as this blog sinks slowly and not so briefly into the west, we leave you with one last gratuitous cute photo from this very moment:

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How Credit Card Companies Mess With You

SUMMARY: Griping.

I almost never use my Sears charge card. I prefer to keep everything on one credit card so things don't get lost--take note. But when I bought a new dryer last month, I got a big discount if I used my Sears card. So I did.

The last couple of months have been nuts on my work project. I've been stacking my junk mail in a pile to deal with later. After paying my bills Tuesday, I realized that I have a lot more money left at the end of the month than I had expected, and last night I (fortunately) realized why: I hadn't seen my Sears bill. Yup, you guessed it, in with the junk mail, and it's due Monday the 7th. OK, it's Thursday the 3rd. I've got 4 days to get it there. It's just over the border, in Nevada, so that should be easy, right?

Post Office says that first-class mail *should* get there in 3 days. Yeah, right, we know how that goes. I really don't want it to be late--at 23.15% (!Yikes! How is that kind of rate legal? I mean really!), I'd have to pay $14.49 in finance charges.

So, OK, I'll phone in a payment, maybe using my other credit card. But--No! They charge $14.95 for this service!

So, OK, they allow you to sign up online to pay. So I go through the process, click the "pay now" button, and they say, whoa, Nelly, you've never paid using this account before, so you have to wait 6 days for us to approve this account.

So, OK, I'll drive to the Sears store, which is 5 minutes away, and pay there. But--No! I quote, "There may be a delay of up to 5 days in crediting a payment made in-store." Now that's what I call friendly service.

So, OK, how about overnight mail or something? The back of the bill says "...send payment by courier or express mail to..." AND *that* address is in Ohio! Glad I noticed that tiny gray fine print or I might have sent it to the REGULAR address! That could have really hosed me! Who's going to notice that, really, if all they're paying attention to is the due date? So the PO says I can pay $6.40 for Priority Mail and it will arrive in "2 days" (but no guarantee(!)), or $16.25 to send it Express Mail and it'll get there by noon on Saturday.

OK, so what if I want to send it Priority Mail but not express mail? Do I send it to the regular address or to the express mail address? What if I pick the wrong address--do I get dinged for being late anyway because then there may be a 5-day delay in them figuring out which butt their head is stuck up? (No insult intended.)

So, in other words, if I haven't paid the bill by 5 days BEFORE THE DUE DATE, I am going to pay SOMEONE something like $15 for the privilege of paying ON TIME.

Screw it, it's going into the regular mail.

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From My Writing Life

SUMMARY: My fellow Clarionites do well.

One of my fellow Clarion West 1998 classmates (jeez--has it been 10 years?! This July!) announced this week that she has just sold 2 novels. Another just announced that he is on the Hugo ballot for Best Novelette. And that's just this week! I'm thrilled to be associated with this small group of talented people. Someday I'll get back to writing. Really I will. Any day now. Between the dogs and the photography and...

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There Is Nothing Like A Frame

SUMMARY: Today's song lyrics

Update March 19: See end of post!
Sometimes I wander around the house singing to myself and to my dogs. This is what came out this morning (from the famous musical, South Pacific Dog Agility):

Apparently not doing 2-on/2-off today. Photo by Sarah Hitzeman

Teddy the Beagle demonstrates the viewing potential of an elevated structure.

We miss contacts on our teeter,
We miss contacts on our 'walk,
We got weavepoles that are iffy,
We got bars that we can knock,
We got rules that can confuse us
In the tricky Snooker game.
What is the worst?
The darn A Frame!

We get runouts and refusals,
We get broken start-line stays,
We get lost on Jumpers courses
That are set up like a maze,
We get caught in chutes and tires,
Visit judges for a spell.
What is the worst?
You know darn well!

There is nothin' you can fly off so wide from...
There is nothin' else you can't really hide from...

There is nothin' like A Frame,
Nothin' in the ring,
There is nothin' you can blame
That is anything like A Frame!

[verses omitted to get to the grand finale--]

There are no flyoffs like A Frame,
And no creeping like A Frame.
You can perch on A Frame
And look around from A Frame,
Run around an A Frame,
Bail right off an A Frame.
There ain't a thing that's wrong with any obstacle
That can't be worse when you have to pull
To a big wide, steep-sided, slatted, faultable Frame!

NOTE: If anyone can successfully fill in the missing dadadas with an appropriate line, I'll add it here with credit! Update March 19: Thanks, Wishy the Writer, for this suggestion: We get caught in chutes and tires, Visit judges for a spell. (Read lyrics to original "There is Nothing Like a Dame." Oh, cool, YouTube has the scene with the song from the movie, so you can see and hear the original, too! Don't they look like a bunch of handlers walking a course? Sure they do!)

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Tie Dye Rules the Nose

SUMMARY: Now I can clear my sinuses in style.

I'm one of those people who always carries a hankie, because my nose always runs. (Sometimes faster than I do with my dogs. But not faster than my dogs. Usually.)

Anyway, I'm also one of those people who hates white. I mean, it just gets dirty. Well, OK, everything just gets dirty with dogs, but with white, you can tell that it's dirty about 30 seconds after you get it out of the drawer, especially (but not exclusively) with dogs in the household. So, for me, no white hankies (or sheets, or towels, or undergarments, or shirts, pants, shoes, tablecloths, walls, or nuthin'--I mean, NO WHITE! The only reason I own bleach--and sometimes I don't, for years on end--is because sometimes I have to kill something).

Hankies are a problem, because for some reason everyone assumes that the fabric upon which you exhale your sinusoidal byproducts (good word, must use more often) should be white. No one asked me, or I could have demonstrated why white's a bad idea. Anyhoo--I've had a huge stack of lightly flowered white hankies for years--they were gifts, and although I'm not particularly a pastel-flower type of person, either, they were much much better than all-white. However, now they're all wearing out, and I need replacements. I can't even find little pastel-flowered ones in mass quantity.

I tried tie-dyed men's hankies in the past but they are wayyyyy huge. That seems to be the only size that the ubiquitous tie-dyers at all the Art and Wine shows sell--perhaps they think that (a) only men blow their noses? (b) only men would dare to use nonwhite hankies? Well, I just don't blow my nose THAT much, plus I have little dainty ladylike pockets in my jeans. (No one asked me about that, either.)

Fortunately (and this is where dogs come in), through dog agility, I met the fabulous Wendy who does fabulous tie dye for many folks in the agility community, and when I sent her a package of brand-new white dainty ladylike hankies, this is what I just got back in the mail. Every one is like a little artwork all on its own! I particularly like the one in the lower right; makes me feel like I'm on the Millennium Falcon, blasting my sinuses into hyperspace.

Blowing my nose will never have been so much fun!

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Updates and Bits

SUMMARY: CPE coming up; pricey dent; knee fine; distance work (Gamblers); lost youth

I'm swamped lately; hence, not a lot of personal posts. Just some notes for today:

CPE Coming Up

It's CPE this weekend, one of only 4 CPE trials I'm planning on doing this year.

Boost needs one Colors leg to complete her Level 3 title. Then, to finish Level 4, it's 7 Standard, 4 Colors, 4 Wildcard, 3 Jackpot, and 3 Snooker. It could concievably happen this year with 100% Qs and/or trials doubling up on a couple of games. Or--in other words--ain't going to happen. Then, AFTER that, it's 40 legs in everything to her C-ATCH. If I keep concentrating on USDAA and cutting back on total weekends, she might never get there.

Which is how I'm starting to think of Tika's CATE. We're fully capable as a team of finishing it, especially with her recent Q rates of 90-100% in CPEs. But we still need 2650 points, which is well over 100 Qs. Let's see, 10 Qs/weekend at 100%, 4 weekends a year--I'm still thinkin' we could get it by the end of 2010 or 2011, by which time she'll be 10, if still competing. Sigh.

To fulfill our minimum requirements in each of the classes, she still needs 1 Standard, 7 Colors, 6 Wildcard, 1 Snooker, 9(!) Jumpers, 3 Jackpot, and 3 Full House. We always always Q in Full House, and frankly I love this game for the challenge to have the highest score of all competitors at the trial, but I don't always enter because I'd rather get the harder legs first. Like Jumpers, where you have to keep all the bars up! Knock on wood with Tika for this weekend; I've not been doing bar-knocking drills, she's no longer in class (except a couple of runs in Boost's class), and my jumps have been set lower because we're practicing handling in tight quarters. Living on the edge--

It'll be a very small trial--only about 240 runs a day, of which we're 10. I'm also the chief course builder this time out, and my dogs are the only 24" dogs. So they should both be getting a lot of first places. I'll be so proud.

It Costs HOW Much?

The estimate to fix that little ding in my door is over $1700! Plus rental car if I need it! Glad someone else is paying for it.

Knee

Is holding up just fine.

Gambler Practice

I've yet to get a Masters gamble with Boost, so I've been practicing more "Out"s and actual gambles in my yard. We'll see whether it pays off. Two CPE trials coming up but not another USDAA until April.

Lost Youth

And that youth is Kevin Gast, a Bay Teamer whom I knew only slightly, but he is--was--younger than I am. I complain about the pains of growing older, but I'll try to remember that there's something in that joke that says growing older beats the alternative. Don't take your friends for granted. Sigh.

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Spring and Easter

SUMMARY: Yard's in bloom; bunny, dogs, and camera are active

Spring is more here daily. The plum tree is in full bloom; seems like any day now when plums will, true to their names, again be plummeting to the ground for the dogs to consume.

Meanwhile, they're consumed with interest about what the Easter Bun will bring them, and they're excited to be part of this unusually early Easter in their short little lives. I'm sure you all know that Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. That means that the earliest it could ever be would be March 22, and the latest, April 25. There's an email making the rounds about this; I provide an updated facts list here.

This year is the earliest Easter that any of us will ever see--pending time travel or an immortality treatment. Only the most elderly have ever seen it this early (at least 95 years old). And none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier:

1) The next time Easter will be this early (March 23) will be in 2160. The last time it was this early was 1913.

2) The next time it will be a day earlier, March 22, will be in 2285. The last time it was on March 22 was 1818.

3) But you may have seen, or might still see, the latest possible easter (April 25); last occurred in 1943 and will next occur in 2048.

My dogs are fascinated by facts such as these, as long as they are accompanied by peanutbutter-filled easter eggs.

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My Dogs' Names In Wikipedia

SUMMARY: Fun and games with the World Wide Web.

OK, don't know why I never thought of this before--being confirmed and documented as a Wikipediholic--but I just didn't. It's just fun to see all the things that come up when I plug in their names:

• Boost
• Tika
• Jake
• Remington
• Sheba
• Amber
• Sam

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Alternative Construction Materials

SUMMARY: How about dog agility USING snow?

• See Tails by the Lake Doggie Agility Course
• Same event, more details, under Spring events.

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Are Border Collies Really All That Smart?

SUMMARY: Funny video (thanks, Cedarfield, for pointing it out.)

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Another Fun URL

SUMMARY: One more; made me laugh.

Dreams of a Future Agility Champion

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Assorted Fun URLs

SUMMARY: People send me these things; I have to get rid of them SOMEHOW or they'll end up in a huge pile on my disk drive!

• Mating call Ringtones: You can play the coyote sample on your computer and see whether it makes your dogs as crazy as it made mine.
• How a dog sees an agility course (animated), gives some idea of what dogs see in front of them (although not so much peripheral)...if you can stand the addictive/brain mangling soundtrack.
• Agility dog's-eye view: Camera strapped to dog's head. Looks remarkably similar to the animated version.
• Animal Planet's Mutt-Maker Game: Select from a few breeds and assemble silly-looking mixes with equally silly-sounding breed names. Watch how the generated breed name changes as you change portions of the dog! A guaranteed pointless time-waster! But cute.
• The Daily Coyote: Beautiful photography of a woman raising a coyote pup.
• Off to the Iditarod! Former Bay Teamer who used to run in agility with one of the original Jakes (an Aussie), is competing in the Iditarod this year. (According the the list available from the interactive map on the official web site, Liz is currently in 64th out of 96 teams. Pretty good for a rookie!)
• Johann the Dog's Agility Squidoo Lens: I don't know what a Squidoo or a lens is, and I do know that Johann is a for-profit (but real agility dog) dog, but Johann's mom does a good job of sorting through things agility and finding cool stuff. Includes videos of other species doing agility.

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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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A Busy Weekend

SUMMARY: Good thing I had a weekend off from dog agility so I could relax and catch up around the house. Not.

But I had fun.

Saturday Morning: Hiking

Got up to the alarm at 7 a.m. (This is a free weekend, right? No alarm? Argh. Remember: I'm doing this because I WANT to.) Left the house at 8:00 with Friend #1 for an hour's drive up into the hills to Henry Coe State Park, where we hiked leisurely for about 3 hours and took photos. Home about 1:30.

	A trail sign partway along our route; more trails visible just beyond. "Flat Frog" trail? Not a pretty image...
	Cool fungus, with the "pitcher" on the left maybe 8 inches tall, at the base of a tree. No clue what it is yet.

Saturday Afternoon: Kooza

Brief hello to dogs, quick shower, change clothes, and dashed off to meet Friend #2 (from agility) and her spouse for Cirque de Soleil's Kooza at 4:00. An amazing show of humor, skill, daredeviltry, and contortion (my favorites: the juggler and the contortionists). Afterwards, dinner at Elephant Bar, which I'd never heard of, but had good meals at reasonable prices and an interesting ambiance.

	For a temporary structure, the Cirque tents are HUGE! And their stripes stand out in the urban landscape. Friend and her spouse turn back to see what's keeping me.
	Elephant Bar: There's a life-sized African elephant emerging from the wall above the diners, and various pachydermous artifacts everywhere.

Sunday Morning: Practice

Home by maybe 9:30, and it's right to bed because I have to get up Sunday morning at 7:00 to the alarm (this IS a weekend off, right?) to bake brownies for the SMART agility club practice/meeting/potluck. Friend #3 meets up with me at 9:00 a.m. with her two dogs, and the six of us drive an hour down to Hollister for a couple of hours of practice, a lovely potluck, and a reasonably short meeting, then more practice, then home.

	Workin' Paws is in the back yard of these people's home. They've got TWO competition-sized fields! (Wouldn't that be grand? Twenty feet from your back door?) Here's field 1 with Friend #3 in the background. Look at the wide-open spaces!
	Here's field 2 complete with Team Small Dog leaving the practice field. What a lovely mountainous view to wake up to every day!
	Here I am, posing. The slightly-less-posed shot was blurry. Technology! Pah!
	This guy came in 2nd in a poker tournament and decided to spend his winnings on something that would help him to remember his victory and make him very happy: Meet Tex[as Hold'em]. Now there's a man with his priorities straight!

Sunday evening:Party

Then an hour's drive home, play with all the dogs in yard a bit (Hey! I'm already getting pretty tired! How come they want to play again? Dang herding dog endurance!), quick shower and change and head over to my parent's house for a family birthday celebration.

	Parents went to town decorating for the birthday party. We even got personalized Welcome letters.
	Eight of us have birthdays within a 2-month period, so they baked two cakes and put our initials on them. (I'm "ELF".)
	Plus we got Mardi Gras beads. In my fave colors.
	AND I got a cool new baseball cap from my sister that combines Disney with dogs (why do people think I like dogs?). I love how Pluto looks as if he's got a really clever, sneaky trick up his sleeve. Reminds me of a truth about dog agility--youth and enthusiasm will always be beaten by age and treachery. Or something like that.

Sunday Late Evening: Photos and Blog

Then...sighhhhhh...two hours transferring photos to the computer, doing a quick search and edit for a few that I can use on my blog (deal with the rest later. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows.) then upload them for the blog and type in some notes...

Sorry, K.A., it'll be yet another day at least for the rest of Rachel's seminar!

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Weekend Photos

SUMMARY: So many nice things to look at.

I hardly had my camera out at all this weekend (too busy, too much rain), but driving home Saturday early evening was too lovely to pass up.

	Driving due west on 132 into the sunset. In the middle of nowhere. "Vernalis"?? Really nowhere--it doesn't even currently have a Wikipedia article! Now that's a real nowhere, man! Rain puddles line the pavement, reflecting the sky's fading blue.
	It wasn't a drop-dead gorgeous sunset, rather, low-key dramatic. And very welcome, after two weeks of rain, to notice that the sky above these clouds was clear.
	Along the California Coastal Ranges, those hovering clouds are really the omnipresent coastal fog bank trying to pour over the crest into the Central Valley. ... And, of course, there's...
	...Mr Chia head, Day 14! Which does have a Wikipedia article.

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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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Today in California

SUMMARY: Tidbits and updates of a random nature.

By late yesterday afternoon, the clouds had largely cleared away in my area, treating me to a hopeful sunset marked only by one stubborn phalanx of clouds hovering in the west.



To the east, I finally caught a glimpse of Mt. Hamilton, which has been rumored to be ensnowed for the last couple of weeks, as the sky faded through pale pink, to purple, to night.



But it was short-lived; although not rainy today in my part of the bay area, I haven't seen a molecule of sunlight all day. And it has dropped once again to temperatures reminding us that it's a straight shot down the pacific coast from Alaska to California; was still hovering around 39 when I popped Tika into the car this morning and not much warmer now. It smells like impending snow to me, but that just might be my nostrils freezing.

Even the joggers--usually clad in running shorts in the least clement weather--were out in gloves and hats today. I wasn't even sure that Californians even OWNED gloves and hats. I know for sure that no one outside of the rural counties possesses anything like galoshes or rubbers (for shoes, come on now).

In any case, what I'm trying to say is that I'm NOT going to sleep in the back of my van this weekend in this weather, even with two layers of down and a couple of 45-pound furred heat engines. Guess I need to call the hotel(s). There goes another $100.

On my drive, I passed a truck for the Pet Butler--"picking up where your dog left off"--I'd say "only in California" but apparently not.

Filled up the tank in my Toyota Sienna today at $3.09/gallon--not bad; the cheapest it's been since mid-October, when it surged suddenly from the $2.90 range well up into the $3-plus stratosphere. Good thing I get 23 mpg. Wish I got better. Good thing I telecommute. (Definition: "Blog all day and then work at night, cursing about not having worked during the day.")

Last month's PG&E bill was miserable, too--$350! And I use compact fluorescents; the furnace is on a set-back thermostat and isn't even on most of the day or night and is set for 66 from 6:30-10 in the morning and 6:30-10 at night. So I bumped it down to 65 and changed the 10:00s to 9:45s. AND I turned off my hot tub. We're talking real hardship, here; I mean, this IS California.

But then I also bought this little beauty that I've had my eye on for a while--only $18 plus postage on ebay, new. Have already started plugging things into it to see how many kwh they suck out of the grid. I'm hoping that I'll learn something new by doing this and can save myself even more.

Or else maybe it'll get warm again.

Meanwhile, of course, we'll have to satisfy our longing for summer with:

Mr. Chia Head!



His hair is light-starved, so I set him with his back to the window this morning, ergo on Day 7 he now sports that back-swept Isadora Duncan look, except without the bulging eyes and protruding tongue--oh, well, without the tongue, anyway.

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Noah Would Feel Right At Home in Local Microclimates

SUMMARY: Rain, rain, go away, little doggies want to play.[1]

I'm not the only one underwhelmed by the pleasures of constant, dreary, steady rain. Yesterday's headline in the San Jose Mercury News was "When Will It Ever End?" (Subtitled "TOO WET TO GO OUT, TOO COLD TO PLAY BALL: RAIN THROUGH MONDAY, AND THAT'S NOT ALL", showing how much this country consists of Seussophiles[2].)

Gloomy

Sure, it stopped long enough for us to be lucky in our travel and agility yesterday, but within 20 minutes after we'd started driving home, we were encountering drizzle, and by the time we were home, I was dropping my traveling companion off in that same boring steady annoyingly wet but unexceptional in volume dang rain. Today's weather forecast in the Merc (click image for larger version):



Rain rain rain RAIN!

Keep in mind that San Jose averages only about 15 inches of rain a year, and we've gotten about 5 of that in the last couple of weeks. I'm not saying that this is a disaster area (although, now that the ground is fully saturated--finally!--the danger of landslides and floods begins to rise precipitously, so to speak). It's really about the Climatalogical Water Torture, a psychologically deadly device designed to reduce our psyches to blubbering gelatinous blobs.

Scholarly

However, amidst all this, students, we can take an interesting lesson in microclimates[3] in the San Francisco Bay Area. People in most of the US don't live among such amazing variances in such close proximity. The preceding map covers an area of about 120 miles, north to south. The map shows the rainfall from 4 p.m. Friday through 4 p.m. Saturday for each measured location. Samples:

• South San Jose (near where I live): 0.39 inches.
• Downtown San Jose (10 miles north in the same valley): 0.50 inches
• Los Gatos (forming a 10-mile triangle with two preceding): 0.89
• Boulder Creek (about 10 miles from Los Gatos, in the Santa Cruz mountains): 3.04
• Gilroy (about 20 miles south of South San Jose in the same valley): 0.0

It has been snowing in the mountains all around us most of the time (drive time to top--maybe an hour because of curvy roads), but we're just getting rain.

So, we can be gloomy, we can be scholarly, or--

Best Choice

We can check on Mr. Chia Head!

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Successes and Challenges

SUMMARY: Post-game analysis from this weekend.

Tika

• Jumps taken: 52. Bars down: 0. Note: Big success!
• Aframes taken: 3. Performance: didn't wait on any, nearly flew off one. Note: Need to fix somehow.
• Dogwalks taken: 2. Performance: One slow, got a foot in but didn't stop; one fast & running but apparently didn't get a foot in (not flyoff though). Note: Fast is very good. Need consistency.
• Weaves taken: 1. Performance: Reliable as always but seemed slow. Note: No action at this time.
• Tables done: 1. Performance: Very slow. Note: Monitor in future.
• Gambles attempted: 1. Performance: Like a champ on a challenging gamble.Note: Success; she worked to help me out on this one.

Boost

• Jumps taken: 53. Bars down: 4. Refusals: 3? Note: Back to bar-knocking drills. Keep jumping her at 24"+ in class. Find ways to work on challenging jumps.
• Aframes taken: 3. Performance: Nice, but left early once. Note: Corrected early one (down stay); Success on fast front cross after aframe and she stuck it.
• Dogwalks taken: 2. Performance: Fast and solid Note: Success!
• Weaves taken: 1. Performance: Just lovely Note: Success!
• Tables done: 1. Performance: Fast and STAYED DOWN! Note: Success, although I stayed close and never took my eyes off her. Continue to monitor and try to proof in exciting situations.
• Serpentines attempted: 2?. Performance: Good. Note: Big success!
• Gambles attempted: 1. Performance: Did serp beautifully; came out of tunnel at me with no hint of "out".Note: Success on serps; really need to work on redirects out of a tunnel.

Handler

• Runs: 10. Performance: Misjudged same pull-through wrap for both dogs. Note: Practice wrap/pull-throughs.
• Attitude: Upbeat. Performance: Didn't stress out about ANY run, not even Snooker or the gamble that many people were missing even though it was a title I wanted. Note: Success! How did I achieve that inner calmness? Continue to monitor.

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Another Rainy Day

SUMMARY: Mr. C Head sprouts! On gray and windy Day 3, as promised!

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Odd Dog-Related Things

SUMMARY: Rainbows and Chia Heads

The last several days have been just plain straight water-come-down-from-sky. Unusual for San Jose, where we often get the Camelot effect ("the rain may never all till after sundown; by 8 the morning fog must disappear"), or a big downpour and then clearing. It hasn't been downpouring; it's mostly been more than drizzling; a good pace for absorbing water into the ground, which is a Good Thing, but bad for doggie brains.

I now know why they called them bored-er collies. Someone has been getting into EVERYTHING and being quite a nuisance. But the yard is just too wet and muddy (and cold!, also unusual for rainy times) to go out into, and who wants to walk in this weather?

Instead--I'm growing a chia head! Yes, have always wanted to try one but never wanted to shell out the money for it. I stole this at our agility club's annual gift exchange; apparently everyone thought I was being nice to the guy I stole it from because who would REALLY want a chia head? Who knew that doing dog agility would lead directly into this fulfilling personal experience?

Three days to germination, it said; here we are at day 2. I can hardly wait!





So, meanwhile, what are we to do while waiting? Today I had a doctor's appointment, so I loaded the furballs into the van and, after the appointment, we went for a walk (yes, in the drizzly rainy stuff) all around the Kaiser campus. And just as we were returning to the parking lot, I looked up and saw this stunning reminder that life will not always be gray and dreary:



It was one of the most brilliant rainbows I've seen. I raced to the car, shoved in the sopping beasties, grabbed my cheapie camera (always carry one, always!), and raced backed to a good vantage point. Then I realized, hey, it's a DOUBLE!


Somehow managed to not take quite the right angles to be able to merge two snapshots into a smooth arc, but the whole thing looked something like this. It was already fading from my first glimpse of it, but note that the colors are reversed on the outer arc. (Click on the panorama to see a larger version.)

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Something Stupid

SUMMARY: Aaaaaand one more post for today.

Something I did on MySpace for fun. (argh, hope this link works, I canNOT figure out myspace bblogging...

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OK OK I'll get a new broom

SUMMARY: It's been, oh, I dunno, 20 years; I guess it could be retired.

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Scaredy Dog and Vansetter

SUMMARY: Boost in a pet store and Ellen in her minivan.

Pet stores terrify The Booster. I don't entirely know why. Some of it is the intense smells--she has the same reaction to vendors at dog shows who sell rawhides, pig ears, and such. All my previous five dogs have considered a trip into the pet store to be a special treat akin to Doggie Candyland or maybe Doggy Disneyland--so much to sniff! Scraps of treats on the floor! Squeaky toys of all varieties!

But Boost is, and always has been, overwhelmed by the stimulus. Funny dog.

In another story, I am going to attempt to relive the lost road-trip extravagance of my youth in celebrating this New Year. Coincidentally, all my stops will be among doggie people. However, dogs are staying home.

There's a party in Petaluma this evening, just under 2 hours' drive from here, north past San Francisco. The friend is a dog owner and sometime activist: Worked hard to get the first dog park installed in the Petaluma area. She also now lives virtually next door to the Fairgrounds where my club has started holding a trial once a year, and I didn't realize it until I just looked up the driving directions.

I'll spend the night there, probably on the floor (although I'm taking my own bedding and mattress because I can no longer sleep comfortably on just soft carpeting). Then I'll rouse in the bright morning of a whole new year and drive 40 minutes east, across the top of the Bay, to Vallejo, to meet a long-time agility friend and her two cattle dogs for breakfast.

Then I'll bip 2 miles southeast to another dog-owning, professional-chef friend & family's place for an 11 a.m. hair-of-the-dog soupfest and puzzle relaxaparty--briefly, because then I have to return the hour-and-a-half home, whip up my zucchini/italian squash/tomatoes dish, and head up into the east foothills for my agility instructors' 3:00 New Year's Day open house.

My sister pointed out that, if I were doing this sort of thing across the country or continents, I'd be a jetsetter; however, since I'm doing it on a smaller scale in my Toyota Sienna, I'm a vansetter.

I like it.

Hope you all have a wonderful, peaceful, relaxing New Year celebration.

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Happy Boxing Day

SUMMARY: Another lovely holiday season.

Family and Friends

My sister and her spousal unit are hosting another Boxing Day open house--really just another excuse to eat to excess. I'm lucky enough to have a family and friends nearby with whom I enjoy spending the holidays. But I do have to leave the dogs at home most of the time.

Yesterday was gifting and feasting with my extended family (let's see--at its height, we had 21 people there simultaneously for about half an hour; people drifted in and out). Dinner at another friend's. Tonight at my sister's with a mob of people. Tomorrow night with some old friends from high school. Friday night some friends from San Diego are dropping by and so I've invited others of their friends to join us. Saturday and Sunday I have off. Monday is a New Year's Eve party in Petaluma (a 2-hour drive but I haven't seen these folks in a while).

Tuesday I finally have the option of taking the dogs when Power Paws has its potluck open house for students. Haven't decided whether I'll take them; we could do a little agility play but then they'd have to stay in the car while I eat (a recurring theme this time of year) and socialize.

Gifts

When I was younger (mostly as a minor), I enjoyed making Christmas gifts. In recent decades, I haven't felt that I had the skill(or time) to make things that people would actually appreciate, as I no longer have the cachet of being a cute kid from whom love provided ample excuse for misaligned, cheaply constructed, or amateurish efforts at gifts.

This year, though, inspiration struck. My parents are challenging to shop for--they have more than they need, they keep saying, and usually get themselves what they do need or want. Then I saw an ad for these cool signpost thingies-- and decided that I could do it better, for considerably less financial output, and have a whole lot more fun than by ordering. I created signposts for all the places that my Dad has lived and some other important places--fictional and otherwise--from his life. I had a great time researching and creating, and I think they turned out very nicely. (Not pictured--one for the Lake District (because of Swallows and Amazons) and 3 blank ones that I'll let him choose what to put.)

Dogs

The dogs got gourmet treats for Christmas--a neighbor baked them some home-made biscuits and my cousin brought them bags of Salmon treats all the way from her trip to Alaska. I just got chocolate. Dang! [grin]

Maybe I'll take the dogs for a hike today to make up for neglecting them yesterday and for eating all that chocolate--

Wishing you all the best of the season.

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Merry Christmas from Taj MuttHall

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Disneyland and Dogs

SUMMARY: Dogs at Disneland

I don't ever remember seeing dogs at Disneyland before (except for Pluto and Goofy, of course). This week there seemed to be a tremendous number (OK, maybe 5 or 6) assistance-dogs-in-training whom we encountered at various places in the park. Maybe it was a special a-d-i-t weekend at the park.

Also met one dog in the security line before the park (yes, they check your bags now for bombs or maybe Food Brought In From Outside) who was on its way to the Dland kennel for the day. A Cocker Spaniel--a very very obese Cocker Spaniel. It's not just the human population of the U.S. that seems to need weight control--is it my imagination or are there more obese dogs now than ever before? You could've used this guy's back as an end table, it was so broad.

And speaking of Pluto--Friday night, I saw Pluto saunter out from backstage onto Main Street, and the first thing he did--surprising and amusing me--was to dash over to the nearest lamppost and start sniffing around the base. Typical dog. He did not, however, make any attempt to raise his leg, which was a relief.

Dog with keys in Pirates. This was my experiment with 1600 ISO setting. Even with the widest aperture, it was still a half-second exposure in a moving boat and although I tried 3 times, they all came out blurry.

Of course there's the dog in the Pirates of the Caribbean who holds the keys to the pirates' jail cells, and the ghost dog from Nightmare Before Christmas in the seasonally decorated Haunted Mansion. Nana, the Saint Bernard, in the Peter Pan ride. Hmm, thought I noticed dogs elsewhere, but don't recall any more offhand.

So, you see, I didn't have a weekend without dogs after all!

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Here's To Overabundance

SUMMARY: We had so much food today--don't know what they'll do with all the leftovers.

We were 14 for the family Thanksgiving celebration. And food for about 28.

Appetizers were laid out when we arrived. Pickles, two or three types of olives, several types of crackers, several types of cheese. Really good garlicky hummus with carrot sticks, which I've never had with hummus before and they worked really nicely. Mints. A few types of nuts, prepared in various ways. Other stuff that I don't remember.

Spread across the table for the actual dinner, we had huge bowls of so many things--We had a turkey and a honey-baked ham. Stuffing (cooked separately from the bird AND in it), some with bacon and onions, some without. Mashed potatos and scalloped potatoes. Three types of cranberry sauce. Corn, peas, and a greenbean casserole. Candied yams. Rutabagas fixed like squash or applesauce--very tasty, who'd have ever thought of it? "Rutabaga" always sounded like some kind of joke to me. Two types of jello salad. Rolls. I'm thinking that there must have been more, but it has slipped my mind at the moment, since I have candied yams coming out my ears and crowding my brain cells.

For dessert, five types of pie: pumpkin, apple, berry, cherry, and Reese's chocolate peanut butter. With ice cream and/or whipped cream. Pfeffernüsse.

Have I left anything out? There was a lot simply LEFT. I couldn't really bring any home, although normally I'd have been delighted to, as I'm going to be off at agility for the next 3 days. It was all very tasty and although I had only little tiny bits of not quite everything (and of only soupçons (turned out to be our word for the day) of 2 types of pie), I feel as if I don't need to eat for the next week. Ready to hibernate. But, no, gotta go to bed & get up at 4 a.m. to head to Elk Grove. At least I won't need to have breakfast. (Maybe. Except now my stomach is stretched out past maximum and might want MORE to feel full. ArgggghhhH!)

All very delicious and beautifully prepared and served in wonderful company. Give thanks for the opportunity to eat what we want to eat and to be with the people we love, and then for getting up in the morning and doing dog agility. Happy Tday, everyone.

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Old Newspaper Article

SUMMARY: Ellen, Jake, and Remington make the front page

I was just updating the Bay Team's "members in the news" page and was reminded of the time that I made the front page of the Campbell Times (Campbell, CA, population around 39,000, suburb of San Jose)--back in 1999. Interestingly, the article is still available online. (Be sure to click "More".)

For some odd reason the photos make me look quite a bit younger than I do now--

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Loma Prieta Quake--More

SUMMARY: I said there'd be more, and photos, too, so here ya go.

At 5:00 that day, business was winding down on a bright October afternoon. I was in my company's glass-walled demo room with two other people, finishing a demo of our computers for a client from Texas. Suddenly, the floor started moving, then heaving. I looked around--glass walls everywhere. You're not supposed to stand near glass. Only one small table. Only one solid wall, lined by computers. I slipped between the computers and the wall. Being demo computers, they were on wheels, so I braced myself against the wall as the computers rolled out and back, out and back, trying to smash my in my "safe" location.

"What is it? What's happening?" said the client from Texas, crouched in the middle of the floor to keep from being knocked off her feet. "It's an earthquake," we said, and, being good Californians, waited for it to pass. It went on much longer than we had expected, but still not REALLY that long, and we came out from our assorted hiding places laughing a bit.

In our sunny room, we didn't realize that the power had gone out. The room also held up marvelously well, apparently; as we brushed ourselves off, stampedes of people plummeted down the stairs from the upper floor in barely contained disorder, stunned looks on their faces. That's when we realized that something truly out of the ordinary had occurred.

Security and management hustled everyone out to the parking lot, where we stood around helplessly--all of our wallets, purses, car keys remained in our offices in the building. Eventually, as the aftershocks came less often and reduced in intensity, management chaperoned us back into the building six at a time to hurriedly grab only our most important items and then return to our cars.

I've posted photos and other memorabilia, with commentary, on this SmugMug gallery.

This USGS map shows the intensity of shaking that people felt. The star is the epicenter. I was working and living above the star, below the "N" in "San Jose". (Click on the image here to go the the USGS site for an interactive map and access to other maps for other quakes.)

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8:04 P.M. Eighteen Years Ago Today

SUMMARY: And where were YOU?

The Loma Prieta earthquake struck. Can you believe that there will now be people old enough to vote who weren't born when it hit? When I have a little time--not today--I'll post some memorabilia from that little episode in Bay Area history.

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NO Beagle Puppies Need Rescuing

SUMMARY: Ignore those emails

I've received a dozen or more emails in the last couple of days like this:

Alza Corporation, a Johnson & Johnson Company is closing their Mountain View facility. The animal test facility has 40, 16 month old beagle puppies that DESPERATELY need good loving homes. These dogs were NEVER tested. If you know of anyone, a rescue or are interested in helping give these puppies homes, please contact Rick Bible at ... The facility manager will have to put them to sleep if no homes are found by OCTOBER 15TH!!!

I've also received email saying that the humane society of santa clara county has dealt with them; that they have all gone to beagle rescue; and that they have all been adopted out. The most reliable info I can find is a press release on Alza's web site that basically says this is a bunch of nonsense.

I mention this here because it's apparently also being posted all over the country.

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Agility Cows

SUMMARY: Too much time on one's...

Way bay a long time ago in the dark ages, I found this fun cow site. (You really have to take a look at it to appreciate this. Or maybe you won't appreciate this anyway, but at least I tried.**)

After serious study, I determined that an entire class of ASCII cows were missing, and created these, which have since been slowly decaying until I just discovered them in a "do something with this" file behind a cobweb in one corner of my email system:

                         (__)
       /---------------/_(oo)
   *--(                (_ \/
       \_______________\ \\_
                          \-|
   Running thru cow agility tunnel


      *
  ||   \|   || (_|)   ||
  ||   |\___||_(oo)   ||
  ||   ||___||__\/|   ||  
__||___|//__||__\\|___||___

   Weave poles in cow agility

    ----------------
 *  |       |      |
  \ |     *****    |
   \|__ **_(__)**  |
  /-|  **  (oo) ** |
 // |__**__ \/| ** |
  //|   ** \\ \\*  |
 // |     **\\*\\  |
    |        -  -  |
    -              -

   Cow agility tire jump

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**(He has since put a Flash front end on it for fun, and you click on various things to get to various other fun, strange, interesting, or useless stuff; go here.)

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Baying at the Moon

SUMMARY: Why I dragged myself out of bed from 2 a.m. until 4 a.m. this morning

	Mr. Moon in all his fullness.
	Oh, no, a giant sky monster is taking a bite from ripe old Mr. Moon!
	What it looks like exposed for the part that's now in Earth's shadow.
	When I started doing long exposures like this, where part of the moon was still fully lit by Mr. Sun, I got this odd light-echo effect. I have no idea what causes it. Some artifact of the way the camera processes images or of the long lens? Anyone out there know?
	About halfway through, 9 minutes after the previous photos. Once the shadow starts moving in, it moves pretty quickly.
	Same time, exposed for the shadowed side.
	About 3/4 of the way into the penumbra, another 9 minutes later.
	Same time, exposed for Mr. Shadow. (Yes, I use respectful address for all large celestial bodies and their bodily functions.)
	Almost there, and now the shadowed part is glowing sanguine to the naked eye. Before this, the reflected sun has overwhelmed the slight glow of the darker parts, so that we've seen only a diminishing white orb with our own eyes. Only longer exposures on the camera have revealed the dark parts.
	Totality. It'll stay pretty much like this for the next hour or so. The challenge is that the moon is all so dark, now, that I have to take even longer exposures, and I don't have a clock drive for my camera, so it's just going to be blurry. This is about 6 seconds and looks fairly close to what humans could actually see.
	To give you an idea--I wanted this exposure's lightness, but at 20 seconds the blur was too much. Mr. Moon really travels! You can see how far everything traveled in 20 seconds by the star tracks in the upper left.

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Agility Rituals

SUMMARY: Patterns that we fall into.

I believe that some patterns in agility are good. These are rituals that let the dog know what to expect and give the handler something to be aware of and to focus on before and after a run. Some of mine have come about deliberately; some not. Here's what I do with my dogs before and after our runs.

For both dogs, I like to arrive at the ring about 3 or 4 dogs ahead of time (or 3 or 4 minutes). I want my dogs' attention on me when we're preparing to run, and I want to keep them excited, and I myself cannot keep up that level of attention and enthusiasm for much longer than that.

For both dogs, before taking them from their crates, I make sure that our Riot Tug (actually a soft version rather than the original) is nearby and that our competition slip-lead is in my hand.

Boost Before

Boost must sit when I put my hand on the zipper of her softcrate, and wait until I release her. Originally I thought I'd always put her leash on before letting her out of the crate, but between my back and my knees, I've mostly given up on that. Instead, I release her to come out and jump up into my chair where I can more comfortably reach her. I put on her lead and take off her collar.

Then I release her from the chair and present her with her Riot Tug, and we play tug all the way to the ring. I don't have to do much except hold on. While waiting to run, I'll try to keep her engaged with the toy, in particular after a couple of recent trials where she started getting spooky for no apparent reason if we just hung out. Just standing there and holding the toy won't work for that long. We practice sits and downs with a release. If there's a place where I can plop my backside, or if my knee is happy enough for me to kneel, I'll just play little games at ground level, where she's mostly lying down to just put paws and her mouth on the toy. We intersperse more tug.

One dog before we run, we play tug over to the vicinity of the ring exit, where I drop the riot tug. Then she gets to play tug with the leash back to the ring entrance. She walks next to me into the ring, where I stop ten feet back from the first jump and tell her to sit. When the timer says "Go," I step away from her with my opposite foot (a trick from obedience) and lead out to where I need to be.

Boost After

At the end of the run, she knows that she gets to play tug and is starting to look for her Leashie or Riot Tug, although I haven't taught that specifically, so she doesn't know (for example) to look for the leash hanging up. We'll play leash tug until we close to the Riot Tug, then I say "Wheeeerrrees yoourrrrr RIOT TUG?!" and she drops the leash, looks for the tug, and pounces on it.

We play tug back to our set-up, where I let go of the tug and she runs to and jumps into my chair. I have her do some nose touches, lefts, rights for treats, exchange her lead for her collar (I don't like my dogs being without visible ID for any length of time), and, if I have time, do a little snuggling, some light play, maybe a little walking around to cool her down before she goes back into her crate.

Tika Before

When I put my hand on Tika's crate zipper, she hits it hard with her foot. I tell her to cut it out and stop zipping each time she hits it. This was NOT my plan, but it has gradually decreased from digging frantically at the front of the crate every time I put my hand near it. She never quite completely broke through the soft crate material, but parts are very thin. (This has proven to be a hard habit to extinguish in the soft crate, as I have no way of rewarding her without opening the door. A soft crate with an opening top would help.)

When I get the door unzipped, she streeeetches with front feet out through the door, takes a step out, and streeeeetches her back legs. She's now partway out of the crate because I haven't maintained criteria of not putting the head out until released. Oh, well. I slip the lead around her neck and release her from the crate with my hand in her collar. I remove the collar, and she shakes herself thoroughly. It's amazing how predictable her own rituals are.

I verbally rev up excitement about the Riot Tug before presenting it to her and immediately go into interactive playing until she's holding tightly and growling. Otherwise, she disengages and goes about sniffing for scraps of food or treats in the grass. I run and play with her, doing whatever I need to to get her to regrab the tug, because she often lets go, until we're ringside and I release her from the toy. By then, we're both warmed up.

Then I do let her sniff around on a short lead. Who could imagine how many thousands of little tidbits of food are in the grass near the start line! I never knew until I got Tika. For all I know, she could be eating grubs or rotting grass. Any tasty little morsel like that.

About two minutes/2 dogs before our run, I work on getting her attention off the lawn and onto me. Just not with great excitement yet, because I can't maintain it. But I keep her head up out of the grass, scritch under her chin, massage her back, that sort of thing.

About a minute/1 dog before our run, I again get her engaged in the Riot Tug, and tug to the ring exit and, for her, drop it as close to the ring rope exit as I dare. Then I jog her to the ring entrance and get her to "give me a hug", which has evolved into her gently putting her front paws on my chest and really streeeetching out. She walks next to me into the ring, but, perhaps from stress or excitement, she's back to sniffing the grass as soon as we start to walk in, and I often find myself tugging on the lead or even putting my hand in it to hustle her along.

I put her in a Down as far back from the first obstacle as I can. (I need to see about determining an ideal non-bar-knocking distance for her like we just did for Boost and see whether it helps.) I struggled with getting her to stay in a Sit for years; her preference would be to stand up and start slowly moving forward, or to lie down. It finally dawned on me that it's perfectly OK for her to lie down, since she still blasts off with enthusiasm when released, and she's more likely to stay there. In fact, her start-line stay has become remarkably more reliable since I started Downing her right off the bat.

Again, I step away with the foot opposite her. I can lead out a long way with her, but I had better be prepared for her to take off as soon as I turn around. Usually she's good and waits, but that is not guaranteed, and I have decided that I can live with her waiting for me to turn around. If she takes off before that, I take her out of the ring.

Tika After

At the end of the run, she is so revved that she dives in at my feet with a great show of growling and yapping, grabbing at my shoes. My goal is to get my hands under her neck and hustle her out of the ring, running as fast as I can while hunched over with my hands around her, until I get to the leash or Riot Tug (whichever is closer) and can shove it in her mouth in place of my feet. Then we play tug briefly.

Then she's released the energy and is ready for treats. We trot back to our set-up (if I have the energy), where she gets treats for doing lefts, rights, high fives, and so on. More treats after the collar goes on. She has learned that she gets treats when I send her into her crate, so when I stop dispensing treats, she dives into her crate and looks hopefully at me. She might come back out and try it several times, as I don't give her the treats unless *I* tell her to go in.

If I can convince her to stay out of the crate, again, I'll do a little massage and petting, just some hanging out and cooling down. Then I tell her to go into her crate, toss some treats in, and go on my way.

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Nothing To Do With Dogs

SUMMARY: Another link that someone else sent me that's just quick and fun.

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.
The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised
The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

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A Fetching Story

SUMMARY: Dogs who provide a return on investment.

Is one never satisfied? Remington, a brilliant trick dog, wasn’t keen on “fetch.” I loved teaching him but ached for a fetcher. Then came Jake who, in his first hour with us, found each of the hundred balls abandoned by Rem. And—for the next 10 years—he dropped them at my feet, over and over. I wished for a dog less fanatical. Now there’s Tika, who chases but doesn’t pick up. And Boost, who picks up but requires a personal invitation to bring it. Oh, for Jake again! The fetch is always greener on the other side of the grass--

Ministory written in response to a challenge to write a story in exactly 99 words.

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Simpsagility

SUMMARY: Convert yourself to a Simpson; I did, and you can, too!

Here I am (and Tika and Boost) converted to Simpsons in our very own Simpson kitchen. Compare and contrast with an actual photo (not the one I used for the Simpsonizer).





You, too, can simpsonize yourself from a photo. Warning: Over the weekend, I tried forever and waited forever and had all kinds of problems with the interface. This morning, it took me only a few minutes. Not sure whether that's because (a) this morning was a better time, (b) they upgraded their servers because it's been so popular, or (c) I used Safari instead of Netscape. (Don't be surprised if there's no real magic involved...I did a lot of customization using their tools after their initial scan to really make it look more like me. I don't know how much the photo really had to do with it!)

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Readers and Albuquerque Residents

SUMMARY: Daniel Abraham's next book is out in September.

I make a plug for it here, with links to info on an Albuquerque signing.

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Hairy Petter Returns

SUMMARY: 2005 holiday letter revisited.

For those who missed it, and in honor of the release of the final Harry Potter book, here's the original cover of the U.S. version of one of the Potter books and as it appeared for my 2005 holiday letter. Click here to download the PDF version containing the complete text of the Hairy Petter novel.

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Jigsaw/Agility Fans

SUMMARY: Another time waster

Now, I don't want you all getting bored while I'm away all weekend, so here's something for you to do (if your computer will let you--click the thing to mix and solve):



If that doesn't work, try going here.

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Photo Caption Contest

SUMMARY: Name that photo!

This photo is from my Cheesburgers in Paradise series. It's crying out for a clever caption but I didn't have one at the time I posted it. One of my classmates decided that it's a contest. I have no prize to offer--we'll do something for our in-class winner--but I thought you-all might like to participate anyway, just for the glory of it. Just add a comment to this blog with your suggested caption.

Some suggested so far (and, lest you take offense--many of these are in-class in-jokes in which the photoees participate):

1. Jen and Lisa play musical cups. (JB)

2. Jen to Lisa: "Have you seen my cup anywhere?"
Lisa to Jen: "Nope. I haven't seen it at all." (JB)

3. The Powerpaws agility program: learn all the skills you need to excel in agility. (AD)

4. Jen "It's late...."
Lisa "Did Jim say shut the gate when we leave?" (AD)

5. Jim "[pick up the] Cones !!!"
Jen "I never was very good at picking up cones"
Lisa " Me neither" (AD)

6. (addition to #5):
Jen:"Being a bar slut suits me much better".
Lisa: "Me too". (JB)

7. Did he say Sit or Down on the table? (BN)

8. My group's back! (RL (nonclass))

9. (thought balloon over Jenn's head) "Confidence breeds conference... no... competence breeds confluence... no..."
(thought balloon over Lisa's head) "I wonder where I left my beer?" (EF)

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Favorite Dog Lyrics

SUMMARY: Songs I like to sing to my dogs.

Through the years, I've found myself singing to my dogs, and although they seem unimpressed, I'm surprised at how many top-ten hits are actually dog related. Some snippits:

• "Smellin' Something Good" by Shake-a Khan
  (smell it, smell it, smell it)...smell it like ya love it-- - Original lyrics
• "Dogs Just Want To Play Tug" by Cyndi Leaper
  Even better than eating a bug, ohh, dogs just wanna play tu-ug, yes, dogs just want to play tug - Original lyrics
• "Dirty Dogs" by AKC/DC
  Dirty dogs and I've done their feet-- (For when wiping off muddy-footed canines) - Original lyrics

Surely you know some others?

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Superheroes--

SUMMARY: I always thought I was the batman type--

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 55% Hulk 55% Spider-Man 50% Supergirl 47% Green Lantern 45% The Flash 40% Robin 39% Wonder Woman 37% Batman 35% Iron Man 35% Catwoman 30%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

But more to the point, my favorite kinds of superheroes: What Breed of Dog Are You?

Test 1: long questions but not many of them:

What Common Breed of Dog Are You?

Labrador
Take this quiz!


Quizilla |Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

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Test 2: Many short questions and I had to refresh the pages often to get them to redraw correctly:

Border Collie You scored 80% Loyal and 66% Independant!

You are most like these breeds: Border Collie: Originated in Scotland/England border areas, this breed is intelligent, determined and brave, this dog forms a close bond with its family and is also eager to work. If not given work to do, the Border Collie will become badly behaved. It needs ample exercise, and its origin as a sheepdog and cattle-herder means that it is only happy when given specific tasks on a regular basis. They can't sit still and they want you to be right out there doing their task with them. They are the leaders and motivators of the dog world. Alaskan Malamute: Originated in Alaska, USA, this breed is friendly, affectionate, and loyal, but can have a mind of its own. The malamute is built to work well within a team, and its friendliness makes it unsuitable for a watchdog, but brave enough to pull 110% of the load. Once set in a direction these dogs will continue in that track until someone with a firm hand and kind heart sets them onto a new destination. They are loving, but a workhorse that grows restless with too little to do.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 99% on Loyalty You scored higher than 99% on Independence

Link: The What Breed Of Dog Are You Test written by JubileeHannah on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

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Test 3: Funky questions, answers, and spelling (on the test site, what appear to be black lines here actually show my percentage match to each of the indicated breeds, but for some reason Blogger's formatting cancels that out. Maybe I'll come back & try to figure it out later so that you can see I'm about 66% "dachound", 60% "mix breed", 40% lab, 30% "jackrussle", and 15% GermanShepherd--I'm massively entertained that the last one is spelled correctly and the others not, because "Sheperd" or "shepard" is by far the most commonly misspelled breed name even among fanciers):

What Breed Of Dog Are You?! Your Result: dachound You are a dauchound.You are very loyal and friendly.You make friends very easy and are pretty popular.You may be small but that does not bother you at all.You always whant to be outside but tend to be a little lazy sometimes.
Mix breed
Lab
jackrussle
GermanShepherd
What Breed Of Dog Are You?!

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Just Some Photos

SUMMARY: Have camera, will shoot.

Jake returns from a fetch with his Tug'N'Treat. This is two days in a row he asked to play. But this morning we went for a walk first, which was ALWAYS how we did it all the years I've had him until the knee really acted up last year, so the walks dribbled away. So now, all is right with the world and it's fitting a proper to Fetch.

Usually, however, Tika has abandoned her own toy for the joy of proving that she can always get to Jake's toy before he does (then either scooping it up and carrying it 5 to 10 feet then dropping, or simply barking twice, "Beat you!"). In this case, Jake almost always returns with an escort tender as seen here. Boost would never get away with any of this with Jake.

Boost's idea of playing fetch while Jake and/or Tika go after their toys: Doing an outrun full speed across the yard to be ahead of them as I start to throw the toy, then racing back to me to watch them fixedly in the likely chance that either of them will move rapidly again. I'm realizing that this is probably why she never wanted to go around front of the goats in her herding test--she was expecting them to take off full speed after a tennis ball.

Meanwhile--It's a pencil eraser! It's a shoe polisher! These nifty slip-on shoes that have become so popular are wonderful for me. I can pull them on and off in an instant to, say, wash off mud, they're comfortable, I can do moderate agility in the yard or yard work in them. I knew that my first pair, these ash-gray ones, had become gradually more soiled and discolored ("ash gray," she says? Hmmm--), but I didn't realize how much so until I just bought a second pair (not shown). Then I went looking for ways to clean suede shoes. Found this on ehow.com, used a large pencil eraser (the pointed kind that you push on the end) for about 15 minutes on one of these--what a difference!

Here's a funny lemon from my tree next to a regular (but smallish) one like all the others on my tree. Have been told it's a worm of some kind. There's actually a type of citrus that does this all the time but even more so, the Buddha's hand citron. What's really funny, though, is how my camera interpreted the bright yellow against my greenish teal dogwalk. Bright blue?!

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It All Ties Together

When I was just a little tyke (yes, I, too, once attended junior high), I decided that I wanted a job working with dogs. There was a spread on Stelling Road in Cupertino that I occasionally rode my bike past with a little sign saying something like "Phydelma and Lyle Gillette--Borzois, Salukis, Whippets, Beagles". (Yeah, sure, Beagles go right along with tall sighthounds!) There was probably a kennel name, but I don't remember it. The folks' names stuck in my mind, however, because they struck me as being amazingly unusual, and also so clever for having a couple with "Y"s in the middle of their first names. How often does that happen? Really!

So one day in 1969 or thereabouts, with my parents' permission, I rode my bike that huuuuuuge lonnnnng way down to Stelling, up the long driveway, and knocked at the door to ask for a job. They invited me inside while they thought about it. There were dogs and dog hair everywhere. Their couches and chairs had dog-print blankets on them, also covered with dog hair. I remember thinking that I wasn't going to do that when I grew up and had a lot of dogs of my own.

Phydelma and Lyle Gillette, undated photo from this site.

My parents report that the couple, to my recollection grayhaired at the time-- but then, at the time, everyone over 30 was pretty grayhaired to me-- were somewhat taken aback at what to do with this youngster about whom they knew nothing. My whole resume consisted of "We have a dog, too." They called my parents to check up on me and, when they were satisfied that I wasn't a dognapper or worse, they put me to work with really really simple chores.

First, they had bred a 9-year-old Borzoi named Zonn and they weren't sure whether the breeding had taken, but apparently her hips were starting to have troubles and she needed a nice long walk every day. So I walked her a few blocks down Stelling and back again.

They also had a litter of Saluki puppies. They were pretty big already, and I'm guessing that they must have been at least 3 months old, but what did I know at the time about puppies or anything about dogs, really, except that when quizzed I could name all the dogs in the AKC working group, the sporting group, the nonsporting group, and a good portion of the terriers (but who really cared--all terriers look alike anyway). They put me to "work" playing a bit with the puppies and maybe grooming them. I used a comb that I found but they put a quick stop to that and said that brushing was a much better thing to do. I don't remember why any more; I still prefer combing my dogs in most cases, even if it's with an undercoat rake. Maybe I just have the wrong types of dog coats.

Anyway, after they decided that Zonn wasn't going to have puppies, they gave me $5 (which I hadn't expected--I had said that I was volunteering) and said Thanks A Lot Kid, Now Scram (except much nicer than that). I was disappointed about not having a job any more, but at the same time, that lonnnnnnng ride down to Stelling was getting pretty tiring.

Highway 85 now runs through what had been their property. I never saw them or talked to them again.

So we pop forward to today, when I'm trying to find (for Wikipedia) a list of sight hounds that the AFSA (American Sighthound Field Association) allows to compete in lure coursing. And, poom, I bump into the name Lyle Gillette.

So it turns out that he wasn't merely some guy in a dog-hair filled house down on Stelling in a house doomed to be paved over for another 6-lane freeway. No, he was the "father of the sport of lure coursing in America" and the Lyle Gillette Memorial Trophy is awarded in the Gillette Stakes lure coursing event every year, even now. "The Gillette Stake is a premier event held annually at the International Invitational. This competition is to showcase form and function in our finest sighthounds and to honor the father of the sport of lure coursing in America, Lyle Gillette."

So I started doing a search, and he also apparently wrote some definitive articles about Borzois and lure coursing and so on in the 1980s. The Colorado Lure Coursing page says that "Lure Coursing is a performance event developed in the early 70's by Lyle Gillette and other California sighthound fanciers who hunted jackrabbits in the open field, which risked the harm caused by barbed wire fencing." The Borzoi Club of America says "The individual who really believed in lure coursing and took the effort to get the sport going was Lyle Gillette, who in 1971 went around the country demonstrating the sport to groups of Borzoi owners interested in coursing their dogs."

Phydelma ("Phyl"?) was also a writer; published a book in 1977, Life with Borzoi, that's apparently still in print.

Amazing what a small world this is--

UPDATED LINKS: March 11, 2008:
History of Rancho Gabriel (their Kennel)

Sample of Borzoi Action Gazette, magazine founded by Phyl Gillette

Brief note about their presence in Oregon in the '70s

Mention of Phydelma's death and trophy in their honor

Brief mention of Gillettes as inspiration

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