tap--tap--Is This Thing On?

SUMMARY: I dunno, guess I've been busy with stuff other than agility lately.

Feels somewhat as if I'm working towards easing out of dog agility. I don't have much lately to say that's related to dog agility, and the whole purpose of this blog was to capture my training work, my competition experiences, my failures and successes and dogs dogs dogs. So somehow it feels odd to just ramble on about unrelated things or post photos of random topics.

Random topics around downtown San Jose

And, in case those weren't random enough--

I couldn't actually bear to wait two months between trials, so at the last minute, I entered both dogs in *one* day of a CPE trial out in Turlock. I had two goals:

• Practice just RUNNING with Boost, not stopping, not going back for stuff that we missed or trying to Q.
• Run Tika in a couple of classes at 16" and see how she looks and whether she likes it.

Mixed success on the first count--once, I forgot my goal and as usual stopped when she ran by a jump; on a couple of occasions, she ended up in front of me facing me, so it's hard to keep running full-speed in that case. She actually had a lovely Full House run, high scoring, but she knocked the wrong bar in my plan and I forgot to go back and take a critical obstacle, so tons of points but no Q.

For Full House with Tika, I just picked a course that didn't have tight turns, weaves, or the dogwalk in it, didn't bother counting points, just wanted to run and have a good time. Turns out that we accidentally had just enough points to Q, which was our collective only Q of the entire day-- 1 out of 7 runs. That has got to be my lowest-Qing CPE trial Ev-Er but since that wasn't my goal, I didn't mind so much.

Tika indeed ran nicely--obvious still that she doesn't hear me clearly or trust to get ahead of me where she can't see what I'm doing (turns back to check), but her eyes were bright and she was fast and she grabbed my feet at the end, which is a sure sign of Tika pleasure.

So I've started running her in class a couple of runs a night at 16" after 3 months of no runs.

And I've entered her in one class at day in Veterans 16" at the next USDAA trial.

So funny to have my big girl who used to jump 26" jumping only 16",  but I think it's much better for her than the 20-22" she's been jumping for the last 3 1/2 years, and she has looked like she wanted to participate when I've run Boost, so now she can. She sure looked comfortable and natural doing it.

Photo by Carlene Chandler

Her stamina is low, but then, so is mine--I'm just not getting out much or doing much. Sometimes I'm really tired. The counter to that is that I've got a contract that I'm really enjoying for work, but with one thing and another, it's taking more of my time and attention.  Have done 6-mile hikes in the hills the last 2 weekends, but with so little keeping in shape, they were quite hard for me. And for Tika, too, I think.

Hiking at Almaden Quicksilver

Hounds Tongue (seems appropriate)

 Foundations of the old pump house for the mines

Hiking at Santa Teresa

A peek at San Jose over the edge of the hill--
there were deer, too, but they didn't stick around for 5 dogs.

 Mount Umunhum with Cold War radar tower in the distance

Photo by Lisa Williams

 Coyote Valley section of San Jose, with Santa Teresa Golf Course below us

 California poppies and California gilia

We've walked over to the park to do frisbee on occasion, but less often than we had been for a little while.
Boost waits for us to catch up.

At the park.

Rambling on.  Not sure that I even have solid goals now in agility. I'd really still like to eventually get Boost's two Snooker Super-Qs for her ADCH, but except for occasional spurts of enthusiasm, I mostly have gotten to where I don't feel that I care that much any more. Mostly in the yard we play *around* the agility equipment, although I keep making Boost do jumps to get the toy instead of running around them all the time.


So--on I go, doing whatever it is that I do, and the dogs are bored a lot. Poor suffering dogs.

Bored-est Collie Boost's artistic output using cardboard and pinecones.

Ahhhh, retirement.

Thoughts From Last Weekend and CPE This Weekend

SUMMARY: strengths and flaws and fun.

Some things I noticed from last weekend:

• Both dogs left the start line early once last weekend. I don't remember which course(s). I didn't even write it down afterwards. I don't know why I kept running--well, maybe I do: It has been ages and ages since either left before I released them, and I think (a) I was surprised and already starting to move, and (b) I chalked it up to, as Bartholomew Cubbins said, one of those things that "just happened to happen and was not very likely to happen again."  It's random, I guess. I hope.
• Both dogs had awesome downs on the table. Why last weekend? Who knows. I have been practicing a bit with Tika doing quick downs while running or repeatedly on the table at home--but I've done that before with no apparent help in the actual competition. It's random, I guess.
• Boost had some weave pole issues. It's another thing that she hasn't really missed or popped out of in a while, but I think we had 3 different cases--hit the entry and skipped, popped out early, and ran past them completely. Why now? Who knows? I hope this isn't the start of another "I don't know how to do weave poles" era. It's random, I guess.
• Boost actually handles well at a distance but from the side, not behind. Like, it seems to be no trouble to do a huge distant arc of jumps where I'm twenty feet inside the arc but parallel. More trouble if I'm closer to her and parallel, or if I'm behind her. And I think knocks more bars if I'm ahead of her. I'm not sure what this all means. Not sure whether it's random.
• Tika is less comfortable now with me crossing behind her. Need to try to find ways to stay ahead of her and always in her sight. This is challenging, because she can still move pretty darned fast. Dang, now I have TWO dogs that I have to manage more.
• Boost's contacts were lovely. I think she left only one early. Why now? Who knows; we haven't been practicing these the last couple of weeks. It's random, I guess.

This weekend: CPE locally. Only about 25 minutes from my house. I go because it's close, because it's a fun relaxing weekend for me, and because I want to support any trial that's close to my house. Unfortunately we don't seem to get many entries for this trial. I don't get it--we used to get lots of entries for the CPEs at Twin Creeks, which is only about 30 miles away. Oh, well.

So we might not ever have agility really close to my house again. The challenge of living in a dense suburban/urban area, I guess. Lots of conveniences--like I had several choices of which theater to go to tonight for a 3-movie Batman extravaganza--but nowhere to do huge USDAA trials.

Maybe I'll go practice some agility stuff with the dogs. Randomly.

I Thought It Was A Costume Ball

SUMMARY: Nearly Wordless Thursday--costume contest at our CPE trial last weekend.

Photos are here.

One Can Never Have Too Many Legs

SUMMARY: Off to a CPE weekend.

We're outa here. Two days of Bay Team CPE agility up in Santa Rosa. Going to spend the night with my cousin & her husb and dog, so I can sleep in until 5:15 tomorrow and drive only an hour to the site, instead of 4:15 & 2 hours.

Five runs a day for each dog. There are several possible titles for each Merle Girl. We just wanna have fun, get some Qs, maybe some blue ribbons, hang out with friends. Weather should be amazingly lovely.

See ya'll in a couple of days.

It's Not Just About The Clothing--It's How You Wear It

SUMMARY: To tuck or not to tuck.

Except for some of the guys, please note: No tucked in shirts!

Not tucked in:

Not tucked in:

Not tucked in:

Not tucked in:

Not tucked in (except for one male-type person):

Not tucked in:
Not tucked in (again, the belt-shower is male):

Not tucked in (another guy shamelessly displaying a belt):

Not tucked in (not even the very young lady, so so much for everyone who says "it's to hide our middle-aged spread", I'm thinkin' she's got none of that):

Not tucked in, even the guys:

Not tucked in--hmm, except maybe the lady in the tie-dyed shirt. What's with that? What *is* she thinking? Or is she just a trail-blazer that we shall all soon follow?

Therefore, being the fashion maven that I am, I experimented with not tucking my shirt in last weekend. Three separate people commented on it. (Or maybe they were three together people--people who are In The Know about Taj MuttHall fashion!) See how influential a blog can be? This important issue wasn't even on anyone's agility fashion radar until I brought it up in Taj MuttHall! You read about it here first!

So, what do you think--tucked or not?

Thanks, Thanks, and More Thanks

SUMMARY: So many people who made this trial a success.

I posted this to my club, but want to spread the word a bit more.

And everyone else cooperated with each other. What a great group of people to work with and compete with!

Before I crawl off to sleep for a hundred years, I wanted to thank a whole lot of people who helped to make this weekend a success. I got lots of nice comments from people about how good the trial was, how nice we all are, and how bay team always does great trials.

I know this is long, but I wanted to say it all, so people can appreciate how much goes into making a trial work.

• First and foremost, my co-chair, Mary Marquez, in only her second time co-chairing, who easily did more than half the chairing work before and during the trial AND took on responsibility for judges' travel, judges' hospitality, and vendor management. I'd be a whole lot more tired if it weren't for her and her can-do attitude. 
  
• Also, Secretary Donna Sprouse who reminded us of many things that we'd have otherwise forgotten, did a lot of work that I had expected that we'd have to do without even being asked, AND took on the job of RV chief, and kept her sense of humor through the process of learning how bay team does things vs. NAF/VAST and the oddities of the site. And volunteered to arrange for us to borrow NAF's teeter for the weekend.
  
• Karey Krauter, at always, was the endless font of knowledge, experience, and money (via the bay team checking & charge accounts) who was indispensable in helping us make sure the right things happened, worked full time at the trial, drove to turlock before the trial to pick up a teeter for us, drove to san jose during the trial to pick up two tunnels for us, and probably a whole lot more that I'm not thinking of.
  
• Katrina Parkinson, as always, was a tireless worker, took on score table work as well as her usual half-equipment-manager, set-up and tear-down management, substitute course builder, Ubercart stocker beforehand, and I don't know what all, as well as volunteering her valuable skills as a Registered Vet Tech with no recompense.
  
• Paulette Czech let me talk her into being Volunteer Coordinator when all she really wanted to do was crew chief, which we turned into a new job of not only scheduling workers in advance, but also serving as mentor, assistant, advice-giver, and errand runner for our actual crew chiefs and for me and Mary as well, and she worked her legs off, kept a great attitude, and was much appreciated by all of us.
  
• Our crew chiefs Lloya French, Loni Cummings, Milli Conover, and Carol Bowers, our wonderful crew chiefs, who kept the rings staffed (a challenging job indeed with SO many groups to run and such small groups, too), filled in themselves where needed, offered advice when we needed to make scheduling decisions, and never said a cross word about anything. How about those white boards filling up so nicely on Sunday! (photos: Loni, Lloyda, Carol, and Milli--I wish I'd gotten better photos)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Our score table czars Diane Blackman and Katrina Parkinson kept the scribe sheets filled out and flowing to the computer through 7 different classes, 5 different levels, 6 different heights, and 3 different programs, AND trained new people on how to do it at the same time, without their brains or tempers ever exploding. (Diane photo here; Katrina above)
  
• Gwen Jones did a fabulous job as our grounds chief; I think she had a grin on her face every time I saw her. Before and during the trial, at every request from us, she went right to work to get it done, handled all the trash and restroom issues herself, and even made an extra trip midday to get more, er, restroom supplies when we ran low.
  
• Her significant other, Dustin Kerwin, served as chief course builder in one ring and apprentice equipment chief before and during the trial--the two of them are made for each other, as he also looked like he was the happiest man on earth even when working his buns off to get our rings built, equipment moved, and all the rest of it.
  
  
• Terri Prince, our other chief course builder, came in from New York at 2:30 in the morning Saturday morning and yet was still up and at 'em and working her own buns off to get course changes done quickly and cheerfully, and both she and Dustin helped in each other's rings to make things go even faster.
  
• Joni Grace let us talk her into being the food and worker hospitality person for her first time ever (I believe); she plunged right in, enlisted her son's/grandson's boy scout Troop 41 to do breakfasts and lunches as a fundraiser and to earn merit badges, made sure there were treats at the score tables, answered our endless questions about what was happening and what we thought we should do, and always kept a cheery demeanor.
  
• Mardee Jang ran an amazing raffle on a shoestring budget and, as always, made the raffle area look like a high-end tropical resort, a truly fun place to hang out, and she and husband Raymond set the whole thing up, managed it, made sure workers got their tickets in, AND also worked THEIR buns off doing other jobs all weekend, again without ever blinking an eyelid at the workload. Plus they let us borrow their tunnels at no charge.
  
• Paulette Czech and Lisa Maynard also were talked into splitting the Awards job, one day each, and as first timers, they plunged into it all, made sure the awards were counted before and after, and seemed to enjoy the process. (Lisa in pink)
  
• Nancy Ketrick decided she wanted to learn to do the CPE secretary computer software and spent most of the weekend at the computers helping Donna get things done.
  
• Maggie Guthrie, as PASA's representative, came out on friday and made extra trips to give us access to the dogwalk and teeter that we rented, and also brought the good news that PASA had decided not to charge us rent after all--thanks to you and PASA, what great friends!
  

And almost all of these people were also running dogs! What I remember most all weekend is how many smiles and grins I saw from all these people, over and over.

We had a nice turnout on full-time workers, too; these people gave up entire days of their weekend to work without running a dog and helped us to make the trial run beautifully efficiently--I don't have the full list and I apologize for not knowing all the names--so I'll have to list them all tomorrow when I get the list of names. Linda Knowles came down for half a day and worked so she could schmooze with other agility people and declined to take even a small certificate for it.

And THANK YOU to All the other club members and competitors who filled in the white board with their names and so set poles, ran leashes, ran scribe sheets, helped build courses, ran errands for me when I looked around and grabbed someone passing by, and all the rest.

I hope I haven't forgotten anyone--you were all superb this weekend!

Thank you all again for a great weekend.