Body Parts Not Getting With The Program

SUMMARY: Ouch ouch ouch. But at least we're still at Disneyland. For another half a day.

So I've been hiking with the sierra club every week for 4 or 6 miles. Briskly. Well, maybe not every week lately. Every other week. And I try to get out with the dogs for a mile or two walk every day. Well, lately, maybe not every day. Maybe 4 or 5 times a week. Or three. And I have agility class every week. Except not a couple of weeks ago because of Instructor Prior Engagements and not this week because I'm not there. And I put probably somewhere between 8 and 10 miles (nearing 20,000 steps) on my pedometer every agility weekend, and I do 20+ weekends of that a year. Except, well, maybe not lately because I'm trying to cut back. Maybe 15 this year? Maybe one every 4 weeks.

But the point is I cover a lot of ground on my very actual feet on a fairly regular basis. Two years ago I came to Disneyland and I had no trouble at all covering miles of ground from park opening to park closing every day, and I can assure you that I wasn't in nearly as good a shape as I am now. In theory.

But this year? Icing my knee every evening. A couple of times. Blisters on my feet. The latter I blame on bringing the wrong darned shoes. They are my bumming around in general shoes, maybe my walking 1 or 2 miles with the dogs shoes. They are not my covering 10 miles a day shoes.

Maybe that's what's doing in my knee, too.

I finally took my tripod into the park tonight and went off on my own to take all those photos I've been wanting to take, and my knee told me repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that it would really prefer to be lounging around in the hotel room snuggled up to a nice cozy ice pack.

So here I am, 10:30 p.m., park doesn't close until midnight (well--the rides anyway--then it stays open "for you shopping convenience for our profit making convenience" for another hour or so. But I am here with a progressively more chilly knee and a whole slew of unshot photos in my head.

Tomorrow we're heading home midday. Dogs and dogsitter will be glad to see me, I'm sure. There will be much rejoicing. Yaayyyyyyy.

And sometime, maybe this century, I'll get to post some photos. And we're already planning our next trip. January 2012. I promise I'll walk 5 miles every day for two months before that. Plus bring the right shoes.

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Sunday Results

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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

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Hiking with Other People's Dogs

SUMMARY: A brisk hike through poison oak without my beasites.

Last night's Sierra Club hike took place at the Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve, which allows dogs. I thought about taking my beasts, but my shoulders are currently a mess (chiropractor says no yardwork, no tug of war, yeah like that's going to happen) and they just don't need more aggravation. Plus all that poison oak--not interested in doing another bath.

So I hiked with dogs vicariously.

Holly was definitely the most beautiful of the bunch. I am SO partial to mixed breeds! Maybe it's because each one is unique, but maybe also because they usually look so much more like Just Plain Dogs to me, not an inbred, warped, oddly shaped or proportioned creature. Maybe also why I like herding breeds--they seem to be the least damaged of the dog breeds. Or maybe I'm just biased.


I also happened to look around me while we were waiting to get going, and noticed that hiking feet look a whole lot different from agility feet. Will have to get a similar agility feet photo sometime soon, to compare and contrast...


Complete 13 photos from this hike, including commentary and more dogs, here.

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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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