Agility weekend come and gone

SUMMARY: It was the best of times, it was the not best of times.

I did it again. Agreed a couple of months back to drive down to Turlock for 2 and a half days of agility to work the score table, because I love going down there, despite my better judgement telling me that it was a bad idea.   Waffled all the way up to closing on whether to try entering Boost in a couple of things again as long as I was going anyway, but since I'm still not running, decided not to.

I thought it would be a good weekend, anyway, seeing good friends and doing a necessary job, plus they have that big fenced back field in which Chip could run around and meet lots of dogs and I could play lots of frisbee with Boost and Boost could get to run after other Border Collies playing frisbee, her favorite game, and Tika could wander around sniffing at things to her heart's content.

Here's what really happened:

I thought Tika was going to die right on the spot, all weekend.

Boost got only about 3 minutes of BC chasing, although we did get a lot of frisbee together.

Chip did not run at all. And got to meet only a couple of dogs only briefly. And mostly ignored me when I did let him off leash. And hated being in the crate for such a long time.

I sat, and leaned, and adjusted, and stretched, and supported, and made all kinds of awkward positions of my body, and got more and more and more and more sore. And so tired and sore that the preceding post of Chip was the only photo I took at the trial all weekend.

Today, home again, I am very very very sore.

And that is because (a) Sitting is a very very bad thing for me to do, and I know it. I can't even work full time as a result. But surely it would be different at the score table, since I hardly have to do any writing at all, just a quick few marks on each scribe sheet, and I can stand up any time I want. Ha!

(b) I just forget how many things have to be lifted and carried to & from the car, and set up, for an agility weekend. And I forgot how much more lifting and carrying Tika's condition entails--getting her in and out of the car by lifting her or by lifting & setting in place her ramp, then taking it down, then putting it back, then taking it down, then putting it back... etc.

(c) And how much bending is involved in having dogs in crates & like that.

(d) Not realizing that having Tika restricted to a crate in the car all the way down and then all day would really tighten up her entire body so that she had a terrible time trying to stand up and then half the time couldn't stay standing up after she got up. Walking--"just a little walking" around this site was way way way way too much for her. She slumped. She sagged. And I had to work to get her up and keep her moving. She refused to eat much of anything for two and a half days.

Oh, right, she ate people food mostly ok.

The hotel room looked cheap--broken safety latch on door, plaster coming off wall, laminate coming off the table. I paid extra for microwave and fridge and didn't realize until I arrived back at the room at 10pm with my leftover dinner that there was no fridge. And, oh, when I made the res online, they forgot to mention that there's a pet charge. $10 per night per dog. For 3 dogs, 2 nights. Are you effing kidding me? They did agree to charge me only one night's fees, but I'm done with that place. ("We've always charged a pet fee." "Oh, no, you haven't, because I've been staying here more than a dozen years, and I didn't used to pay a pet fee.") Compare and contrast to the Disneyland Hotel two weekends previously. (Oh, did I not get around to posting about that yet? Heh.)

But:

Weather was gorgeous. Mid-70s F (23ish C) in mid-February, can you believe it? Near-record temps for the dates.

Friends were wonderful to be around.

And I had a great show on my way home.

Tika's Mouth

SUMMARY: That odor. That dripping blood.

The symptoms were the same, Thanksgiving morning, as the previous huge lumpy infection/lesion thing that she had a couple of months ago that antibiotics (and losing part of her cheek) made better.

But no matter how hard I looked in her mouth (and, surprise, she was willing to let me), I saw nothing. OK, turns out it's because it's under her tongue. This--if you've never tried it--is an astounding adventure to try to see or get at.  Anyway--on antibiotics again.  (Actually a larger one and a smaller one, and then the original site is a little iffy, also.)

Tika was not thrilled with going to the vets (AKA "This torture on top of forcing me to swallow thousands of pills all the time").

I convinced her to overcome her justified concern and get out of the car. We strolled around the parking lot for 10 minutes, and her agenda consisted entirely of coming back to the parking spot and pointing out that there are doors on MUTT MVR that could conceivably be opened to let her back in.

But mostly she handled things OK and we're now both home, resting from the ordeal.

On a side sad note, the vet said that it's possible that these mouth lesions are as a result of her kidney gradually failing. Which I already knew was happening from the blood test that we did when she had that first infection.

She seems to be racing to find as many problems to survive as she can before she leaves this opportunity for extra Zukes and crosses the so-called Rainbow Bridge.  To prove what an over-achiever she is. Which, OK, Teek, I already knew.

I can commiserate. Aging is not for the hyperactive of heart and mind.  She's so slow now. Back legs weaker. Heart hanging in there against all odds.  Abdomen full of fluid despite aggressive diuretics. Occasional bouts of incontinence. The last two of which I suspect are not unrelated.

But just look at how beautiful she still is!  And smart. Good old girl, knowing exactly what car doors look like from the outside.

Of Tika the Old Dog, and Food, and Walks, and Bully Sticks

SUMMARY: A general decline.

It is hard to write about Tika getting older and slower and less healthy. I meant to do so regularly, to track for my own purposes, but somehow don't have the heart for it most of the time.

She hasn't been in a steady decline, but more like descending waves: Some days or weeks almost like the same old Tika; other days or weeks I wonder whether she's going to make it to the next morning. I remember just before Thanksgiving, she was so bad, I was terrified that it would be all over during the holidays. And then she perked up again.

The worst part for both of us is the Cough. Vet had said that it might be pressure from the enlarged heart or just an old, weakened esophagus that doesn't stay open as well as it used to. Sometimes she'll hardly cough for days. Other times, as in the last 3 days, it's almost constant except during the short times when she can manage to fall asleep.

And it's not so much of a cough any more--just a harsh exhale with a rattle in the throat, with every. single. breath.

Some days she's perfectly happy to eat any choice of kibble that I offer. On other days, it's the same story that I think I've mentioned before: Might or might not eat any of the different kinds of kibble. Or might eat it if I give it to her by hand a few pieces at a time. Or, not that, but only if I put a few on the carpet in front of her a few pieces at a time.

Canned food, she usually eats. But no matter what it is, she's eating less and less of it and leaves some or lots uneaten (from the dog who inhaled anything you gave her). I think that eating adds to the discomfort in her throat or whatever's causing the problem. She still looks pretty good--the advantage to a nice fluffy coat--but underneath, she feels like skin and bones.  (I haven't weighed her lately... I should... but have always done so by lifting her and stepping onto the bathrooms scale, and my back is so painful lately that I'm not eager to do it. But I should...)

She usually is happy to lick my plate, however, or eat any doggie snacks/treats or human food that I offer. Haven't tried to make a full meal of that sort of thing yet, but this week I am at the point where I really need to make the effort to cook for her and see whether that helps.

Pleez can haz more charlie bears?

She still wants to play, but the urge doesn't last very long, and she doesn't shake very hard at all when shaking the toy. She can still sometimes pull pretty darned hard with tug-of-war, but sometimes now she doesn't want to.

She pretty much never runs any more for any reason. She'll still sometimes chase a thrown frisbee or toy, a couple of times, but only at half speed, and she no longer makes an attempt to grab it off the ground, which she always excelled at, like a shortstop scooping up a ground ball.

In the last week, I've been out in the park taking her for a walk almost every day, but just for a short, slow walk.

You know, she used to be untiring; could "hike" 10 miles with me, which meant that she ran back and forth and acted as scout the entire time, so probably more like 15 or 20 miles for her, and then still wanted to play when she got home. She used to fly over jumps and through tunnels at a phenomenal speed with great joy. So this is hard for both of us to take. Yet, going for a walk is still her favorite thing in the world, even on days when she doesn't want to eat or play.

But, this week in particular, she doesn't seem to have the energy to walk very far or very fast, and she's coughing a lot, and she's not eating very much.

When she lies down or sleeps, now, she almost never lies on her side like she did her whole life; she just puts her chin down. Vet person at the seminar I did yesterday with Boost said that fluid and pressure can become worse when lying on their side, so that's probably why.

I gave The Merle Girls bully sticks about an hour ago. Tika sniffed at hers and then put her chin back down. It hurts me to see that. But, after about 15 minutes, she picked it up and started gnawing. Set it down for a bit and went out into the yard to cool down, I think (can't believe it hit almost 80F today!). I rescued it from Boost, the little thief, and gave it back to Tika when she returned.

Then Tika took it out to the back lawn--to her exact favorite spot for chewing chews, working on stuffed Kongs, and the like.

Boost will typically follow and lie a couple of feet away, hoping that Tika will give up chewing and leave it, and this evening, same thing. So all of that is normal. But Tika isn't doing much chewing, just lying there with the rawhide between her feet, panting/gasping, poor girlie.

Another agility friend's dog died suddenly today, not even 11 years old. A frequent hiking companion of ours. I cried, not just for him and his humans, but for Tika, too, after the slow walk and her eating only half a can of food, and for myself, feeling the pain of loss in advance.

Then I just now heard an odd noise in the garage and went out to look. Because of some things going on here lately, I have a couple of interesting stacks that aren't usually there of boxes and dog mats and canopies and such, and there was Boost on top of one of the piles, eagerly checking out a couple of the storage shelves that are normally way out of her reach. Her look of alert surprise when I turned on the light and saw her there made me laugh out loud, and she came bounding back into the house.

My girls.

A Good Night At Class

SUMMARY: Boost and Human Mom do well; Tika--well--

It's been two weeks since our last class; the Power Paws instructors were all off at Power Paws camp last week. We didn't do camp this year, so we were on our own for practicing.

We haven't done much in the last couple of weeks. I did set up a straight tunnel in the middle of the yard (usually they're in U shapes around the sides of the yard to give the dogs somewhere to run and keep running back into the yard). This is because, at our last trial, Boost (a) didn't seem to understand about sending to the far end of a tunnel where the opening wasn't facing her, and (b) tends to come out of tunnels and chutes and then turn back to me instead of taking the following jump.

So I set up jumps past either end of the tunnel and practiced a little bit of both of those scenarios.

Did just some random jumps and things with Tika to try to be sure that she stays in shape.

Practiced a few dogwalks and teeters. A few table downs.

Wednesday night and yesterday morning it rained a bit around here. Not a huge amount, but enough to get the ground and the grass wet, and enough so that, when class time rolled around in the evening, when the temperature hit the dew point, everything turned wet wet wet--jump bars, grass, dogs, everything.

Typically in class I alternate runs between Tika and Boost, so they're both getting half a class worth of runs. Two weeks ago, Tika ran well in her first two chances, and then on the third one, she seemed slow and uninterested, so I put her away and ran Boost instead for the rest of the evening.

Last night, Tika ran beautifully in her first run, although it seemed to me that her rear end slewed out from beneath her on many turns. Still, she was bright-eyed, happy, and eager. A break for her while I ran Boost once, then the next time I got Tika out, all she wanted to do was sniff the ground around the start line. I tried to jolly her into paying attention and running, tried restarting her, clapping hands, offering treats. Sniff sniff sniff.

Well, sniffing can be a huge displacement behavior--"I'm stressed and don't want to do this." With Tika, it's sometimes hard to know, as she is SUCH a food hound, and a damp ground probably has even more interesting smells. But when I finally grabbed her collar and almost pushed her over the first jump, she ran with me, but not particularly fast or drivingly. Not droopy or sore looking, just--not all there. So she was done for the night.

She certainly had no issues like that at our last trial. Maybe class isn't exciting enough for her, or the runs are too close together, or,  I think, maybe all that slewing around in the first run made her uncomfortable or nervous, or I dunno--just another sign that she's not going to be doing agility forever.

Boost, meanwhile, ran great! She had two bars down for the evening, and for once I was alert enough to catch her each time before she got to the next obstacle to give her a time out. Everything else was wonderful. Even better, *I* felt great last night--knee didn't bother me at all, I felt like I was hauling butt around the field, getting in what felt like aggressive crosses and such. This doesn't always happen, so it felt good all around. A couple of classmates even commented on it.

If only that all holds up for another week--our last USDAA, and last trial period, for the year next weekend.

THIS weekend, I'm off to a two-day seminar featuring THE Bob Bailey and Dr. Sophia Yin, who is another expert on dog behavior. A sampling of topics:

• "Dog training: Craft or Technology--is there a diffence?"
• "The difference measurement makes: Lessons from the treat and train project"
•  "Your mind's saying one thing, but your body's saying another: The subtle differences in technique that make one handler exceptional and another so-so"

Looking forward to it, even if it is two days of lecture!

Agility: The Sport of Manic Depression

SUMMARY: In which Steeplechases are won, obscenities are spoken, miracles happen, more miracles are so close to happening that when they don't it's a like a sucker punch to the gut while simultaneously being thrilled, and a bunch of Q ribbons come home.

Short list:

• Tika Qed in 3 out of 4 classes; the knocked bar in Standard wasn't her fault as I chickedn out of a front cross at the last minute and did something really weird that messed her up. She also won Steeplechase Round 2.
• Boost Qed in 2 out of 4 classes, including a long-awaited Jumpers, our 4th!

Longer list:

First run of the day, Steeplechase Round 2:

• Tika ran it adequately and cleanly, and we won, bringing home a whole $17, which still doesn't quite pay for entering it in the first place. We credit the win to not having to compete against any of the faster dogs-- 3 out of 7 in Round 1 went off course, one scratched; and in round 2 the winner of round 1 (who was a blazing 10 seconds faster than us) also scratched and the only other dog left knocked a bar. At 40.61 and 41.32 seconds, these were the slowest 2 clean steeplechase rounds that Tika has ever run.
• Boost ran past a jump, then another jump, then near the end with "never give up" running through my head, ran past the same jump 3 times without taking it as I tried mightily to get her over it, and I walked her off the ring, put her away, and then had a cursing fit about taking #*@& bars in front of you. (I tried to have that zen attitude and really I almost never swear, but after a while this just gets to me.) Also she self-released from the Aframe and turned to face me, so I had to down her just to get past her; did that despite our home practice last night. My kind friends sat me at the score table and made me get busy.

Second run, Grand Prix:

• Tika ran it adequately but not quickly; I forgot where I was going once and put in an extra front cross and then had to pull her off the wrong jump, then she turned back to me before the very last jump because now I was behind. She Qed but only 5th of 8 dogs. A full 12 seconds behind the winning dog and by far the slowest yards per second (33.4) of any of her Grand Prix Qs ever, most of which have been over 4 yps.
• Boost: Well, we really need GP Qs for possible future titles, but I also really wanted to fix our contact issues. So I vowed that, if she self-released off any contact, I'd take her out of the ring. Lo, she did every one perfectly! She also ran past 2 jumps, missed her weave entry, and went off course (last one all my fault), but I was able to count it as a success because of the contacts.

Third run, Standard:

• Tika ran it adequately but not quickly; aforementioned bar on my bobbled front cross. That course ate up dogs: only 7 of 55 Masters dogs Qed and only 7 of 28 performance dogs. Tika came in 4th on the strength of having "only" 5 faults, but still 10 full seconds behind the winning dog.
• Boost: Got the Aframe and Dogwalk contacts nicely, ran past a couple of jumps, then came off the side of the teeter completely without even trying to go all the way to the end, so I picked her up and carried her calmly off the field. Too bad, so sad, don't get to keep playing.

 Fourth run, Jumpers:

• Tika ran it adequately but not quickly. Didn't check the results so not sure how the times or placements ended up. (Will fill in when the results are posted online.)
• Boost: I could see she was going to refuse a jump I was trying to rear cross, so I gave up and ran straight past it, and fortunately she decided to take it after all. That left us in the proverbial left field needing to go back in the opposite direction, so I had to make her "down" to realign myself and then we continued, but since I was now behind where I needed to be, she turned the wrong way after another jump, but we held it together and, OMG, a miracle happened and we were at the end with ALL the bars up and NO FAULTS! Our 4th-ever Jumpers Q! Not pretty, but I'll take it! Happiness reigned!

Fifth run, Snooker:

• Tika: At this point in her career, I'm just looking for Qs, so I picked a pretty easy, flowing, 5-5-5 opening and she executed it and the rest of it, yes, adequately but not super-fast. So a Q and actually a 3rd place out of 7.
• Boost: I've been begging the dog gods for snookers where we could get high points without involving jumps and where the last obstacle also doesn't contain a jump, and this one had weave poles as #7. It required that we go between and around obstacles at several stages, but mostly felt like it would flow  nicely. Not many people even tried for three 7s in the opening, but I thought it would be our kind of course and was a better option than either 6 (which had a jump) or 5 (which had a jump). Also required that she keep her bars up and make 4 perfect sets of weaves from odd angles.  My estimate said that we had a lot of time and could afford some bobbles, but much to my surprise, like a well-oiled machine she did the first 1, came ALL the way across the field to where I'd led out, made the weaves perfectly, did the 2nd 1, did the weaves perfectly again, threadled between two obstacles to the 3rd 1 and threadled back to th get the 3rd weaves perfectly, avoided the off-course potential going into the closing and both she and I were in exactly the right places and we went through 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and all that was left was the weaves, and they were right in front of her and my heart soared because this time I knew we had the Super-Q!  ... And she entered at pole #2.  AuuuuuughhhhH! This hurts so much more than just crapping out early. So it was  a Q but way below a Super-Q. Wahhhh! I suppose it was too much to ask to get both a Jumpers Q and a Super-Q on the same weekend, but we were SOOO CLOSE! I so wanted to take back that one moment and, I dunno, work the entry a little harder, give her an "easy" command, I dunno I dunno I dunno. Sigh again.
  
  But she really did run beautifully all the way through the rest of it and it was hard to be truly annoyed. Wish we could click like that more often.

In short, in one day with Boost I went from uncontrollable frustration, to calm acceptance of the issues and managing the failures on course, to exhilaration after the Jumpers Q, to more exhilaration being 2 seconds worth of weaves from a Super-Q to that aforementioned sucker-punch to the gut feeling, then back to joy at how well she had done the course overall.

And Tika--well, when I got the frisbee out, no sign of tiredness or slowness or disinterest. So there must be something about the agility itself that she's not liking or that's bothering her. An unfinished story.

SMART USDAA Day 1

SUMMARY: Tika reliable and slow, Boost fast and, well...

Here's the deal.

We had 6 runs each dog today.

Tika Qed in everything except gamblers, and that's because she was slow enough that she wasn't even close to where I thought she'd be, and so I wasn't prepared, and managed to push her *past* the first gamble jump, which disqualified us, but when I brought her back around, she did the whole gamble perfectly.

My overwhelming feeling is of slowness. She's still Qing with plenty of room, but plod plod plod--compared to her former self and of course compared to Boost. F'rinstance, her yards per second today in standard was about 3.4, which is among the half dozen slowest YPS she's ever gotten on standard courses--all of which have been in the last 6 months. So, yeh, slow.

She even placed:

• 3rd of 9 in  Standard (but, as I noted, slow, so a lot of that was other people with faults)
• 4h of 7 in Gamblers (and got few enough points that, even if she had Qed, she'd still have been only 4th
• 3rd of 9 in Snooker--I picked a lower-point course for ease and comfort
• 4th of 8 in Jumpers--a full 6.5 seconds slower than the winning dog who ran it in 22.02
• 2nd of 5 in Steeplechase--2 of the 5 E'ed
• 2nd of 9 with partner Chaps in pairs relay--and if she hadn't seemed so uncertain in 2 or 3 places, we'd have made up the half second we were behind 1st.

So, yeah, I'm happy and sad at the same time. I'm not quite jollying her through the course, but she doesn't seem drivey at all. Doesn't seem sore or unwilling, but also grabbed my feet only at the end of the first run of the day and no others, so she's not her normal excited self.

I worked on managing her more, to avoid recent hearing-related communication issues, but we still had some iffy spots anyway.

Boost, on the other hand,  NQed in everything except Steeplechase, and even that wasn't lovely-- Backstory: Second run of the day was Gamblers, and I was pretty sure we weren't going to get the gamble, so I went for points points points in the opening for Glory. And indeed, we had the highest opening points of all 40 22" dogs and the 2nd highest out of all 96 dogs at the trial. And we were in a good position for the gamble, but we failed it in 2 different ways. Anyway, after the 1st contact, she realized that I was releasing quickly and so started self-releasing and instead of nipping it in the bud, I let it go so that I could get my Glory. (Which, incidentally, no one else pays attention to because we didn't Q.)

As a result, the rest of the day she continued to self-release, so in Steeplechase she was ahead of me going over the aframe and didn't even slow down, just came off and turned back to face me, so I had to put her into a down to get myself past her to finish the course. Other than that it was pretty nice--kept up her bars, got her weaves fine, etc.

Boost E'ed on refusals and runouts in 2 of the classes today, sigh. 

It was a beautiful day to be out in the open air at Prunedale doing agility. A little warm in the sun midday, which might have contributed to Tika slowing down. Heat never used to affect her, but now I notice that it does. Don't know what that's going to be like as we get into summer!

We came home this evening and I put Boost over some contacts and tried to get her to release early, to no avail. Maybe that'll be  a reminder.

Oh--and practiced some fast table downs with Tika; hmmm, come to think of it, it has also been only the last few months when she hasnt' wanted to go down on the table in Standard, so that sure could be the main thing affecting our yards per second, and today was no exception.

Also, for years I've been putting Tika into a down-stay at the start line, because the Sit-Stay was too tempting for her to stand up and take off early. Lately, she's been not wanting to go down at the start line, either, although I've insisted. Twice today I gave up and let her sit. Sure enough, she was already up and creeping forward at the end of my lead-out, but she hadn't actually taken off yet.

Funny. Odd. Different. Strange. All takes adjustment.

I guess I'll go back tomorrow and give it all another go.

And In Conclusion

SUMMARY: Weekend's attempt at attitude realignment.

Well, I tried, I really did.

For the most part, I succeeded at keeping the perspective that I enumerated on Friday before leaving.

I fought with the discouraged feelings and often won, but by the last class of the day, when Tika ran past yet another tunnel in Jumpers and Boost got called on a runout where it wasn't anything she did but the runout line was just annoyingly tight, I just lost it again. (I saw several people actually stop their dogs after the preceding jump before continuing to that one in an attempt to not miss the runout line.)  I ran Boost off the course at that point--she had done her obstacles well and I didn't want to ruin it after that with my frustration.

So, on the down side with Tika: She Qed only 4 of 10 classes and placed in nothing (except round 1 of Steeplechase, where she was 2nd, but that just seeds us for round 2). As last year's #1 Jumpers dog and #2 gamblers dog, we failed in both of the Jumpers and both of the Gamblers this weekend. Tika is doing odd things again; running by tunnel openings that are right in front of her is so Boost, but it is not and never was so Tika, and if it's a vision thing, I'm not yet tuned into when that's a problem, and if it's a handling thing, i don't know why that's changed. Her Standard on Saturday was slow in general and very slow on the contacts and really really determinedly not going down on the table slow--we Qed but were only a second or so under course time, which is also so not Tika. She isn't wanting to play tug before runs so much. She's not grabbing my feet after every run, which until VERY recently was a standard thing that she did from excitement and energy. She knocked several bars this weekend, so this seems to be getting worse.

On the down side with Boost, she Qed only 2 of 10 and once again got no Jumpers and no Snooker Super-Qs. That's just almost too painful for me to bear at times.

On the down side with the handler (that would be me), I made mistake after mistake after mistake. Not forgetting-the-course kinds of mistakes, but so often just moving a little too soon or a little too late, the kinds of things that (at least for me) are really hard to fix, or I'd have fixed them before in my 16 years of agility.

I was so discouraged as the weekend went on that I stopped taking notes (and people around here know of me as a prodigious and detailed note-taker) and never collected my very few ribbons. That's two trials in a row. Sigh.

So now I try to remind myself of the weekend's ups.

With Tika, mostly she ran happily and fairly fast. I am glad that a dog who will be 11 in 3 weeks is doing this well. Of the 205 dogs entered this weekend, only 17 were at least 10 years old and only 11 were at least 11 years old, so she's held up pretty darned well. She continues to amaze me with how well she responds to  all kinds of handling situations--rear crosses, really really awfully late front crosses, distance work, sharp angles, whatever.

With Boost, oh my, we had SO many nice sequences. Like:

• Saturday's Jumpers, the first 13 obstacles were spot on perfect, and the last 6 also (in the middle is where I moved just a fraction of a second too soon and pulled her off a tunnel entrance for a refusal). 
• Her Round 1 Steeplechase was gorgeous (except where she missed the weave entry, but it was quick and I was right there and we qualified for round 2, only the 4th time that she's ever done so). 
• Her Round 2 Steeplechase wasn't entirely perfect but very close to it, and she ended in 5th place to bring $ home, only the 2nd time ever that she's done so).
• Her Standard on Sunday was spot on perfect. I held her on all her contacts, as I'm not going for Top Ten points and have no reason to blow them off, so she didn't place, but she missed placing by only a second or so out of all those 22" dogs. Someone commented about her table, "She was almost lying down before she even hit the table." And she stayed down (unlike Saturday, where the butt went up and wouldn't go down again). It was really gorgeous. I might have to buy that video.
• Runouts and refusals were extremely rare, or caused by a blatant handler issue (or in today's dang jumpers, the dang tight runout line). So I guess the running in circles in the back yard is helping.
• She didn't knock nearly as many bars as usual. No bars in yesterday's jumpers, no bars in the half of today's jumpers that we ran. No bars in snooker, only one bar in today's gamblers opening and none in yesterday gamblers.  No bars in steeplechase round 1. Since I stopped taking notes, I don't remember for sure, but for whatever reason the bars  stayed up more than usual.
• Her weaves were wonderful: Other than the one miss in Steeplechase round 1,  she made all her entrances, she did them really fast, and she stayed in even when I moved away quite a distance laterally.
• I think she left a couple of contacts marginally early, but mostly she hit the ends correctly and stayed there even when I ran ahead to get into some useful position.

And the people, as always, are so wonderful. Everyone has their times of feeling discouraged or upset about something, but that's human nature. For the most part, people are helpful, cheerful, engaged, funny, forgiving, encouraging, and on your side all the way.

And then there's this, among all the pouring rain going on outside most of the weekend, with a sudden beam of sunlight touching the far sky and the folks walking a course inside the arena, who a moment before had all been in the rain-cloud darkness:

On Speed

SUMMARY: heat, age, toenails, prednisone...

I knew that Boost's toenails had gotten long again, before last weekend, and I meant to trim them. Carried the Dremel tool with me all weekend, but nooo.

Finally got around to it today.

So, tell me, how do Tika's toenails stay fairly well worn down all the time, but Boost's front center toenails were, please forgive me, at least half an inch beyond the quick?! It took a while to hone them all down.

Maybe that's why she was running a bit more circumspectly this last weekend--toenails uncomfortable?

Or was it the prednisone?

Or is she just getting better from running in agility circles around the yard rather than focusing on specific drills?

Tika was pretty danged fast the first two runs Saturday, then slowed down a bit, then sped up for the 6th run of the day. Fairly fast first thing Sunday, too, and had slowed significantly by the last run of the weekend.

The differences that I noticed seemed also to correspond to how cool and foggy it was: The cooler & foggier, the faster she got. So maybe it's not vision or arthritis, but simply that, as an older dog, she no longer has the tolerance for heat, even minor heat, that she once had. Given how much she flagged on the last hike we did, I'm realizing that I just might not have a fast dog when the cloud cover clears away. So strange to be saying this, as Tika was always On On On and the weather be danged.

So, anyway, the mysteries of my dogs' changing speed and successes keeps me guessing, but I am once again mostly looking forward to this weekend, and a large part of that is Boost having done so much better than usual last weekend. Hope it lasts.

Final Word on Tika's Eyes and Body

SUMMARY: She's getting older. Sigh.

My regular vet also found nothing out of the ordinary with Tika--for older dogs, that is. She has a slight heart murmur, typical of older dogs and probably wouldn't cause problems. (Another vet a couple of months ago mentioned the murmur but I forgot all about it until yesterday.) Her hips have some arthritis, which is completely normal but might not explain the things I noticed.

(Of course, arthritis/weakness/pain in her hips could cause some of the same issues--caution in curved tunnels, on dogwalk... but you'd think jumping would be equally affected. Dunno.)

He said he agrees that the nuclear sclerosis could very well get the results I'm seeing. Combining both vets' descriptions: Dogs tend to be far-sighted to begin with, so never see things up close as well as we do. This hardening of the lens makes them even more far-sighted. In other words, close-up things are probably a bit blurry to begin with, and get blurrier as the lenses harden. From the opth's generic text: "[In extreme age, it] can become so dense that it makes it difficult to judge distances, or the patient might want more light to navigate."

So a weave pole right in front of them or the inside of a dark tunnel or the narrow width of a dogwalk might be harder for them to comfortably view. But jumping, out in broad daylight--jumps are far enough away as they approach them rapidly that a dog who's already very familiar with jumping might have no problem at all. At the moment, she seems fine in everyday low-light situations, but I'm really wondering about those dark tunnels. She still blasts through my lighter-colored tunnels at home.

And, oh, BTW, it makes her eyes look someone blue and cloudy, similar to what one might see in glaucoma or cataracts, which is why (when I started thinking about it) Tika's eyes looked cloudy to me. But it's not nearly as bad as those other things.

This is all good news compared to what it might have been, but maybe bad news for agility. Certainly bad news for my silly human fantasies of blue ribbons or continued top ten work.

My comments about her being so much slower than normal last weekend? For example, her clean Grand Prix was the 6th slowest, at 4.05 yps, out of 65 for which I have data for her. Of the 14 slowest runs, the others either have runouts (ran past an obstacle and had to go back for it) or say "holding on contacts." From there on up, they range from 4.20 to 5.1 yps (with a sprinkling of recent ones in the upper ranges and a sprinkling of younger runs in the lower ranges). So, yeah, she has been slowing down gradually, but that was a big drop last weekend.

Tika also has a melanocytoma in her right iris. It's a benign pigmented growth--basically like a mole, the opth. said. It's not impinging on her vision at this time and doesn't pose a danger. Just something else to keep an eye on (so to speak) if it starts getting larger.

Tika Eyes and Photos

SUMMARY: No major vision issues.

We visited a veterinary ophthalmologist today. No glaucoma, no cataracts (dogaracts?). She's got nuclear sclerosis (thickening of the lens), which affects middle-aged people as well as middle-aged dogs. Apparently it's worse in some dogs than in others. It makes people more farsighted (hence need for reading glasses) and in theory affects dogs the same way.

It could explain some of Tika's behavior in agility, said the doc, but it wasn't an obvious or definitive cause. He did note that agility people notice things like this much sooner than people with just pet dogs, because you'd never notice the subtleties in everyday life. Here's a decent article on the subject--this quote is telling: "Difficulty determining distances and range as the dog ages".

Still, we have an appointment tomorrow with our regular vet for a general checkup as well.

Meanwhile, here I am last weekend experimenting with, gasp, my shirt not tucked in--does it make me look like a champion handler?

And still more photos from Bamfoto:

Weather Was Lovely Today

SUMMARY: USDAA trial Saturday.

Score table was chaotic. Don't know why it felt so much more that way. I had a new person on the score table--I'm loving this getting more people interested in scoring & volunteering for it--and she's working out really well and I love her attitude, but there are so many little bits and pieces for each class that you just don't know until someone explains it, and I was running two dogs and, well, I dunno, we were behind most of the day and so I never got a chance to write down my results.

Scribbled some notes on course maps and glanced at some of the results, but that's it.

So here's what I know:

Human Mom having trouble really running; legs seem so heavy. But knee and hips are feeling pretty good, thank goodness! As usual, vowing to get back to doing a little more running other than just at trials and in class, and as usual I think I'll probably end up not doing it. We'll see--

Tika was slow again, like 2 weeks ago. In so many ways. Tiptoeing through the Tunnels--I'd be standing there waiting for her to come out. Weaves pokey and kind of awkward-looking. Wouldn't go down on the table in standard for the longest time, and then slowly. In steeplechase Round 2, STOPPED halfway down the Aframe and just stood there. Never never never has she done that. And, just, I was waiting for her so often. She definitely had fast bits, but it's not the Tika I'm familiar with.

Worried about all the things it could be. Something's sore? Muscles tightened up (she got a good massage from Pawssage at the end of the day and LOVED it)? I'm also wondering, vision or hearing issues? (With Jake, I started having weird results on course that I was able to finally attribute to one or the other or both.) And trying not to be scared that it's something else more evil.

She runs full out when I throw a toy, so if it's painful, it's not in a way that affects that.

She has been more reluctant to jump up into her crate in MUTT MVR for a while. I attributed that to work that was done on it a year or so ago and they did something on the bumper so it was slippery, and she slipped a couple of times jumping up to it, but it hasn't been like that in a while. Has not always jumped up immediately onto the bed at night.

Anyway, I need to look into maybe a ramp for the van and setting up "steps" onto the bed (like I did for Jake--took him a few times to figure out that he was supposed to use them instead of jumping on & off, and after that he just always did so without further prompting from me).

Tika Qed in Standard, but the slooooowwww table down dropped us (I think) to at least 3rd place.

She Qed in Snooker but the slow tunnels killed us--I did 3 of the same C-shaped one and she was very slow all 3 times and we were one jump away from finishing when the whistle blew, so dropped to 3rd instead of 1st. I really wanted those top ten points to try to at least show up on the Top 25 list, but it was not to be.

Slow in Gamblers--so again, on the UP side of the teeter when the first whistle blew so didn't get the points, which dropped us from 1st to I dunno, lower; she did, as usual, get the gamble like an old pro.

Her Jumpers wasn't all that fast, and maybe I was thinking more about that than about the course when I sent her into the wrong end of the tunnel. Judge had to explain why he blew the whistle.

Steeplechase she was clean and Qed in Round 1, but was far behind the 1st-place dog; in Round 2, placed 3rd mostly because a couple of the higher-ranked dogs scratched and one E-ed. Wow, another $8!

And Boost--missing weave pole entries like they're poison, plus bars, refusals, and runouts. I'm not seeing any improvements there.

We had 6 sets of weaves today and she ran past the entry on 5 of them. And I was making sure she had a good line! It's like she's back at square one again, like she just doesn't understand that she has to go IN THE FIRST POLE.

So much for intense weave pole practice at home. I'd been working with 6 poles because I didn't want to overdo the stress, but I've always thought that she has more problems entering 12 than 6, so maybe it's time for a week or 2 of intense 12-pole practice. Sighhhhhhh.

Gamblers: Missed weave entry in opening, so didn't get all the points I'd planned so can't even brag about high opneing points; in closing didn't send out.

Jumpers: I was late on a front cross between 3 and 4 and she went off course, followed by a couple of knocked bars, refusals, and runouts in the next half dozen obstacles, so I left the course.

Standard: Missed weave entry. In a sequence where I couldn't keep up with her, she turned back to me instead of TAKING THE JUMP IN FRONT OF HER. Some bobbles. At the end, I abandoned the real course with the goal of having a nice jump-jump CORRECT finish, but she ran past the jump instead, ARGH!

Snooker: I was not having a good handler day; forgot to walk Snooker, invented a course from the sidelines, and Boost started out nicely but I got whistled off because a jump that I thought was a "red jump" wasn't; it was just a jump that happened to be red, doh, I could kick myself.

Steeplechase: In Round 1, Ran past weave entry, turned back to me instead of taking a jump in front of her, but miraculously we Qed. Then I forgot that she Qed (she barely squeaked in) because it hadn't been a lovely run, so I walked Round 2 for Tika but not for Boost and didn't really have a good idea how to handle it with her. Well, didn't matter, she missed the dang weave entries again. One was my fault but not the other one. Plus, yeah, NOT TAKING THE JUMP IN FRONT OF HER.

Anyway, it was a fine day weatherwise, a bit breezy but not unbearably so, sunny after the morning fog burned off. Good people all around me. But not my most favorite day agility-wise with either dog.

Again trying to convince myself that I should just not enter boost in any more USDAA trials if I'm not going to work harder to fix things, but then I think, "what will I do with her all day if I'm running Tika?", and then after the last couple of weekends with this slowness, I'm thinking, "Maybe I shouldn't be running Tika," and then I'm heading towards the depressing thought that that would be the end of my agility career.

So, on that cheery note--dogs came home, had dinner, CRASHED. OUT. BIG. TIME. Neither one has moved as much as a whisker in the last hour. And I'm ready to do the same and then try again tomorrow to have a better day.