Wordpress Photo Challenge: Frame

SUMMARY: A fun bending-reality diversion with Tika and a jump

Blogging friend Change Is Hard likes to do the weekly Friday photo challenges provided by WordPress; She posted  this "frame" photo. I don't use WordPress (I'm in Blogger and like it), but I do enjoy seeing how different people interpret different challenges. Lots of beautiful photos. And sometimes I participate.

Here's mine, from an old photo; Tika always stretched the Possible.

I haven't looked at all of the Frame postings, but browsed some. I particularly like:

• Getting The Most Out of What is Around You In Your Photos  (nice photos and photo tip)
• Forest Garden: "Sunday Dinner" (nature close-up at its finest, but arachnophobes need not go here)
• Herman van Bon Photography:  "In the Eye of the Beholder" (a surprising and lovely image from South Africa)

>>  See what others have contributed for "Frame" <<

Not The Way I Expected Things To Go

SUMMARY: USDAA weekend results, plus The Campaign and Top Ten updates.

Wellllll I knew it would be an--er--interesting weekend when Saturday's first two runs started off with Boost getting two Qs and Tika none.

Tika ended up with only 3 Qs for the whole weekend of 11 Qable classes, although she won both rounds of Steeplechase, won both Gamblers (although only one was  a Q), won Snooker.  Admittedly, the courses were very hard this weekend, with very low Q rates, but we mostly lost Qs in stupid ways (leaving the table early, called on the dogwalk up contact, things like that). She ran nicely in Pairs on Saturday but her partner Eed; she Eed in Sunday Pairs on a stupid handling move--she did exactly what I asked her to right after we finished what I considered to be the hard part of the run. Just a comedy of errors. 

We were back to having our usual Very High Gamblers Opening Points; on Saturday, that got us the win even though we didn't Q (because almost no one did); on Sunday, that also got us the win (only 2 dogs in our class got the gamble, but also she had 3rd highest points of all dogs at the trial).

I am starting to worry about bars, though--she had 3 or 4 down this weekend, which is nothing compared to, say, Boost, but quite a few more than she's been pulling in Performance. Something to watch, I guess.

Boost also ended with 3 Qs, and floored me by finishing in the top 3 in TWO classes: 2nd in Standard on Saturday (OK, there were only 3 Qs in her whole class of 22 dogs, but her time was really nice, too), and 3rd in Gamblers on Sunday (again, only about 5 of 27 Qed, but she still had about the 4th highest opening points of all dogs at the trial--would've been higher if she hadn't run past the last jump and tire before the gamble). Happy Human Mom.

She missed one weave entry, which I hope is not the first step descending back into "i don't know how to weave", but her other weaves--what few we did--were nice.

She left more than one contact early, so I used our last gamblers of the weekend to hold her for a long time on 3 contacts and she did that nicely. (And still had 4th highest opening points, with that and running past obstacles. If only...   well, ok, don't go there.)

Sadly, we had meltdowns (defined as multiple incidents of bars down, refusals, runouts, etc.) in one Pairs, one Jumpers, and Steeplechase. Nicely, one Jumpers was pretty darned smooth in the handling and running, except 2 bars came down.

My goals and results on The Campaign and Top Ten:

• Tika Platinum Tournament:
  Weekend goal: Finish the one non-team Q she needs.
  Results: Accomplished (Steeplechase). Now on to December to finish (I hope) that last team Q.
• Tika Platinum LAA:
  Weekend goal: Earn Qs at [at least] the 60% rate she's been earning them since we moved to performance almost 2 years ago.  That should've been 6 or 7 Qs out of 11 possible.
  Results: Jeez, 3 Qs, a paltry 27%.
• Tika PDCH-Gold:
  Weekend goal: Well, with our 60% expected Q rate, we should've been able to knock off 5 or 6 of these.
  Results: We got two. (Gamblers and Snooker.)
• Boost ADCH:
  Weekend goal: Well, trying not to be greedy and hope for two Jumpers Qs AND a Snooker Super-Q, but one of the three would be nice.
  Results: Zilch. Not surprising, really, but discouraging.
• Boost ADCH-Bronze:
  Weekend goal: Other than needing the ADCH and a slew more Jumpers, she also needs 3 Gamblers.
  Results: Got one of those Gamblers.
• Tika Top Ten Standard [not officially in The Campaign]:
  Weekend goal: Want to get  "a few more"  points to keep us in the top 10. A 1st place either day would've gotten us 5 each; 2nd place 3 each; 3rd place 1 each.
  Result: One pathetic 3rd place, and it wasn't even a Q. But I'll take the 1 point.
• Tika Top Ten Snooker [not officially in The Campaign]:
  Weekend goal: As I had observed earlier, our only chance in Heckaroonies to make it into the Top Ten this year is to win this weekend's one Snooker AND the December Snooker, and even so, that probably won't be enough. So actually I abandoned this as a goal. Our Q rate was so low on Saturday that I just wanted to pick something very easy and flowy and not even care if we placed, just get the Q. Not only was it a low-point run, but we also knocked a bar on one of the obstacles, making our score even lower. 
  Results: Oddly enough, we won anyway, for 5 Top Ten points. This could just be giving me false hope that we could do it again in December, because based on our history this year and the expected competitors, that's still very unlikely. But maybe...
• Tika Top Ten Gamblers [not official etc.]:
  Weekend goal: None; we have plenty of points for this year.
  Results: Well, we won *both* gamblers, for 10 more points--and one of them we didn't even Q. That moves us up from 3rd on the list to a very solid 2nd place. In other words, just bragging points.

I've updated the tracking page for The Campaign  and for Tika's Top Ten.

The Weekend

Note about photos: All scanned in, and I apparently did a crappy job of it. Will have to redo eventually. Not tonight. Sorry. They're blurry & not all that great-looking.

One: It was danged hot.

Tika ran very fast despite the heat, but it slowed her a bit eventually. She never did stop panting.

Probably in the high 90s each day, and progressively more humid each of the three days. Ah, agility in the Central Valley in July! I suspect the humidity might have had a lot to do with the neighbors flood-irrigating their huge, huge fields. The owner of the agility site says that that also has a lot to do with the clouds of mosquitos that we encountered at certain times of the day or night.

So we're busily emptying our flowerpot drip pans, and meanwhile there are gigantic fields of stagnant water all over the central valley--

But I digress from the heat. Even I, who usually perspires not a drop, had thouroughly soaked through my jeans and polo shirt by midday Monday.

Two: Toenails Too Long

Tika allows me to do her nails, but she always looks away or hides her head. I don't know why--noise? Smell? Can't bear to see whether Mom'll hit the quick?

Everyone got his or her toenails dremeled this weekend. Jake's toenails are mostly black, so I can't tell where the quick is, really. Boost's are white/clear and I've been trimming them fairly often and she's still fairly young so they haven't become overly long. Yet. Tika's are also clear and I can see the quick and it's much further down the toenails than one would ideally like. If only I had the get-up-and-go to just touch them with the Dremel every couple of days, I might chase the nails back to a reasonable length.

Three: The old guy

Jake, who's cool no matter the circumstances.

Jake ran in only 5 classes this weekend—three Jumpers, one Snooker, and one Jackpot (Gamblers). He was very smooth in all of them, but did not get the Gamble. Qed in four of five, what a good guy. Placed from first to third out of about 4 dogs, all considerably younger than himself. And he seemed pretty happy, although I've seen him run faster...for example, last night in class! Maybe it was the heat.

Four: The baby dog

Boost at five months.

Everyone tells me how cute Boost is. Of course I think so, and maybe they're just under the spell of puppydom, but it's nice to hear. She got to play with one of her sisters for a while, although Beck (your basic black & white BC) wanted to lie in the shade more than she wanted to run around like a crazy dog. It barely got Booster panting, although she did do quite a bit of running. I tried to remember to put her into a crate rather than the x-pen whenever I took one of the dogs out for an event or took both for a walk, but I forgot a couple of times, and one of those times she apparently climbed out of the pen, was caught by a neighbor, and plunked back into the pen. She didn't try again in the few opportunities she received.

Five: Tika's Championship Chase

Tika weaving, with both eyes open in the photo for once.

Tika Qed only 8 out of 15 this weekend, but there were some that were plenty my fault and not at all hers--

• I ran the wrong course in Snooker
• I forgot where I was going in one Jumpers and one Standard
• She had *two* chances at two different gambles in one Jackpot and missed both--thereby proving that I'm not training & practicing gamble-type operations nearly enough with her, as they were both fairly straight-forward (although only 3 dogs out of about 50 got either gamble--and those got BOTH gambles. So either you can gamble or you can't.)

However, she was running really nicely. Stayed at the start line, lying down only once. Left a couple of contacts early at the first opportunity on Saturday and I made her lie down after each (earning an elimination for training in the ring--there went another Q), and then she was good for the rest of the weekend. Hardly grabbed at my feet at all at the end of the run, although once she leaped in the air and grabbed my shirt, which could be a bad thing. Did her dangedest to do everything I asked her to, and very quickly. What a lovely girl!

Still, back to knocking bars again. Knocked a bar in probably half of the 15 runs. Better than sometimes, but not as good as the previous CPE weekend, with NONE down. So--back to practicing jumping drills regularly. Sighhhh--

We DID get another Jackpot that only a few dogs got. AND we got two Jumpers and two Colors legs (out of 3 and 2, respectively), towards our C-ATCH. So we could still finish at the Bay Team trial on the 23/24 if we get both Jumpers and both Colors. A long shot, but it could happen...