Fitness for Agility Addendum

SUMMARY: Forgot to mention--getting there and teeters.

FYI, the Stairs this morning took me 2:54 the first time up and 3:14 the second time up (after walking the 3/4 mile back around to the base), using a stopwatch this time.

Forgot to mention about class last night:

Boost's teeters and dogwalks were lovely. I've been putting out targets in class fairly often again, and she went straight down and nose-touched, sometimes repeatedly, at the end of each. Just like the old days! Whether that translates to doing straight-down nose-touches in competition rather than coming of the side, dunno. But it's nice to have that behavior back.

Getting there: I felt last week that I was doing a good job of hustling to be where I needed to be. This week, over and over, I wasn't. They weren't easy sequences, but I watched so many classmates just seeming to take a couple of steps and be where they needed to be. I think it has more to do with when I actually start moving. They're fond of saying, "It's not how you get there, it's how WHEN you get there," including when you start moving. My timing, after all these years, is still pretty bad. Sometimes on the 2nd or 3rd try I'd actually get to where I needed to be. Could there be do-overs in competition, please?

That's it for now.

Training Notes

SUMMARY: A little work with both dogs and myself.

One of my concessions to entering a squillion more agility trials this year  was that I needed to work on the things that have been problems or are frustrating me.

As yet, I have no written, quantified plan. At this point, after months of not feeling like doing anything at all, it is enough for me to feel like training with the dogs, and to actually do it at least for a few minutes a few times a week.

Hence, I've been:

• Practicing deceleration moves with both dogs (that seems to be the move du jour for some reason), after observing that in some cases neither one seems to notice that I've stopped moving.
• For Tika, down on the table, lots of food rewards.
• For Boost, practicing just running and going going going over jumps (and tunnels) without hesitation or looking back at me, over and over and over.
• For Boost, trying to build as much value in doing jumps as in doing tunnels.  (We seldom get refusals on tunnels; we also play in tunnels a lot at home.) So, for example, sending her over a jump to get her toy rather than only running through tunnels or on the flat.
• For Boost, trying to put more name recognition value on "Hup!" She's pretty good at "weave", "climb" (Aframe and dogwalk), "teeter", and "through" (tunnels), but just "hup" isn't one that I ever practiced very much.
• For both dogs, some "out" work (for gambles).
• For both dogs, "touch" to a nose touch at the end of contact obstacles (Tika with emphasis on the dogwalk, because that's what she's most likely to do oddball things on, and not at all on the teeter; Boost with emphasis on the teeter because that's where she's been coming off the side.)
• For me, just trying to get a better grip on getting to where I need to be. I have been reviewing online videos of other people's timing, watching so carefully the people in class who are really good at that with their really fast dogs--which (after all these years) I'm finally remembering has more to do with how quickly you can leave the dog on the previous obstacle than with rushing to get to the next one. Boost has made this more challenging for me with her propensity for pulling off of obstacles, but some things we've been analyzing in class lately, on really learning where your dog is taking off for, say, a jump, is helping me refocus on this. I'm not really fast, myself, but watching the people who are really good at being there--90% of the time they're calmly almost loping into position.
• For me, running. Just lifting my feet and moving. Trying to do at least a little jogging around the yard or a little jogging and a sprint or two when we go to the park.

I'm alternately worried and not worried about Tika's hearing. I think she is having some hearing difficulties. Oh, no she isn't. Oh, yes, she is.  I keep thinking back to Jake and my earliest introduction to his hearing deterioration was that he seemed to blow me off on course when I was clearly and loudly calling him or giving him clear and loud verbal instructions. Tika is sort of manifesting the same thing. Sometimes.  Like, she always used to send to tunnels fine. Now she's turning back to me more often, as if not certain what I want her to do.  Now she's not "COMEing" (in nonagility situations) where she used to be fairly reliable about that. She seems to startle more if she's napping and I touch her or something louder happens. A few times she has started alarm barking when the renter has made some noise in the house, as if she can't recognize the noise or its provenance.

In class, she alternates between doing even complicated courses with her usual not-super-fast experience ease, and then completely messing up things that I thought were simple for us to do as a team, and that often involve verbal cues.

This is an evolving question. I am working on emphasizing COME and her name value with treats, with the assumption that if she's not losing hearing, it will help, and if she is, it won't hurt.

Boost seems to be doing better with the run-run-run strategy, even though I'm only doing it in small loops in my back yard. At least, better in class. Last couple of classes, no refusals at all. .. oh, except that she still still STILL doesn't get the  serpentine cue.  Should work on this again; so far haven't been.

Of course--like this last Thursday night--it's all about the bars. At least one bar in every run, but she was fast, kept going even when I did rear crosses, got her weave entries and stayed in, got her contacts, and did nose touches.

So, yeah, need bar-knocking drills again, too, I suppose. I haven't been adding them in because right now the Take Obstacles In Front Of You seems much more critical.  And I have mixed feelings about stopping dogs and taking them off the course for knocking bars. The experts seem to differ on whether that's effective or causes more problems. When I do drills, I've decided that I much prefer rewarding for not knocking them and not punishing for knocking. I'm not consistent in this.

That's it for now; another note to myself that I'm actually working on things again. Not sure where that little dribble of renewed enthusiasm for training is coming from, but i'm glad it's here.

Surprises Good and Bad

SUMMARY: USDAA weekend summary.

It's been 38 tries over more than 3 years since Boost last earned a Grand Prix Q. (I thought it had been only 2 years, worse than I thought.) Today, it wasn't pretty, but we got our 4th-ever GP Q. (At Boost's age, Tika already had 22--however, 18 of them were with 5 faults, back when they allowed it. Under the same rules, Boost would now have an total of 12 GP Qs.) So--that was a pleasant surprise.

Boost's Jumpers run was lovely, but had one bar down on a klutzy handling move. So close!

Boost's Standard run was, well, not lovely, but mostly very nice, and we missed a Q ONLY because she came off the side of the teeter again! Something *always* has to be broken that used to be fixed!

Boost was doing fine in Snooker until 6 in the closing where, once again, she had to keep going over jumps in front of her because I wasn't as fast as she was, and she turned back for a refusal. I really need to find the motivation to work on this.

Boost's cracked toenail didn't seem to bother her at all, all day, all 5 runs plus frisbee. That was nice.

Tika and I had TWO off courses today in 5 runs--compared to our average of about once every 23 runs the rest of this year.

Tika and I finally got all the way through a snooker course--but here's the thing: in the 16" performance class (remember, these are big dogs, like border collies etc.) out of 20 dogs, one had 49 points and one had 47 and everyone else was quite a bit lower, so I figured that our plan for 47 points would get us a placement and some top ten points. Well... dang 22" performance class, there were 7 entered, but 3 scratched (last run of the weekend, I guess), and of the remaining, the scores were 49, 47, 47, 47! And because I mishandled a couple of places, Tika had very wide turns, which knocked us into 3rd place for 0 top ten points. Sheesh.

She did well in Jumpers, placing 2nd to a former national steeplechase finalist dog who's just moved to performance.

And she did the hard part of the gamble but I anticipated a different turn than she actually made, and the result was a backjump, so no Q, and earlier handing bobbles kept our opening points low, too.

But she ran very well, pretty fast, very happily, no signs of soreness or slowing in tunnels or anything. So that was nice.

Overall: Tika 2 Qs out of 5, more Jumpers Top Ten points that we don't really need.

Boost one Q out of 5. Got all her weaves, even stayed in when I veered way off in one direction during snooker. Good start lines. Good contacts except for that one dang teeter. Good lateral lead-out pivots. And only one bar down, I think. It's still just a problem with looking for obstacles to take rather than always looking at me.

And the weather was, once again, perfect. So lucky in October! Ground was a bit goopy in places, but thank goodness the rain chose to stop on Thursday and leave us with a gorgeous, sunny, blue-sky, not-too-warm Sunday. That was very nice.

Dagnabbit

SUMMARY: Teeters and toenails

I'm not usually very good about trimming my dogs' toenails. As I've mentioned before, Tika's hardly ever need it, and neither did Jake's or Remington's, or even Amber's or Sheba's, for that matter. So the fact that Boost's grow so long so quickly (it seems) is a problem for me.

I *did* think to actually trim them (Dremelling) before our last trial 2 weeks ago. AND I remembered to trim them again last week. AND I remembered to check them again this morning, and by golly, Boost's looked long enough to dig the Mariana Trench in my back yard. How is that even possible? I trimmed the first few, but then she fought me ferociously when I tried to do her--uh--pointer finger on her right front foot. I couldn't figure it out for a while, except that she'd let me do the others, but absolutely not that one. Finally discovered that she had cracked it on the underside, maybe 2/3 of the way towards the tip, into the quick.

This explains why, for the last few days, I keep thinking she's limping, but then when I watch closely, she's fine.

I gave up on Mister Dremel and managed to get one snip using the old standby doggie nail clippers, which she yelped at but at least I took off a little of the length.

Thing is, if I try to clip any more, I'll be hitting the very tip of her quick, looks like from here.

In class last night, too, never noticed a limp except, same as it's been, "was that a limp? oh, hmm, no, she looks fine now", and she was fine... Except for coming off the side of the *!@&@*%# teeter. Really, she used to have a BEAUTIFUL teeter that people would say, "I want my dog's teeter to be like Boost's!" Apparently I've completely ruined that somehow. Dang relaxed criteria. I did drag the teeter out into the yard after the last trial, and then Things got in the way--it was my last week at my current client, so more hours than usual trying to clean things up; got very sick Friday and so didn't have it in me to do much of anything on Saturday either, gone Sunday. Rained several days this week.

Anyway, point is, I was thinking now that the sun is out again, I'd do a ton of teeters with her today and tomorrow in preparation for Sunday's trial. (We're staying home Saturday so I can attend a friend's father's memorial service.)

But with a damaged toenail, nope, don't want to be doing anything at all with her today and tomorrow, and am mulling over calling the vet in the morning and seeing whether he'd trim another eighth of an inch off the end into the quick, or what... worried about running her on sunday either way, but I know that if I take her and do nothing with her, she'll be stir crazy by the end of the day.

Not to mention for the next 2 days! She's already antsy because I didn't do the usual walkies and playtime before dinner this evening.

Decisions, decisions...

Meanwhile, Tika *walked* through the tunnels last night in class, even the straight ones. OK, it had been raining earlier in the day and everything was wet. This just tells me again that Tika's getting older and more cautious, whether it's her bones or her eyes or what. Not sure she's going to be competing for another year. Makes me sad. But she seemed to be jumping well.

Expecting good weather for this weekend, for a change I'm not working any key position at the trial, and the trial is on the smaller side again, about 80 dogs in Masters/P3, so Sunday should be fun and fairly relaxing. I hope.

So that's our lives at the moment.

Can I Just Go To Bed Now?

SUMMARY: A weekend of mixed successes.

This always has been, and always will be, the only thing I love about waking to the cursedly early alarm and leaving the house while it's still dark:

It can be pretty nice at the agility field, too:

Saturday was hot but not scorching, although it started the day with lightning flashing in the distance and little rain stormlets drifting across the valley, sprinkling us once or twice.

Sunday was perfect agility weather--mostly overcast, shirtsleeve weather but comfortable for the dogs.

Saturday was handler melt-down and Boost melt-down day

Boost started the day in Pairs Relay by bailing off the teeter just past the tipping point (a continued behavior from the last trial or two). We Qed anyway. Tika and her partner Qed also.

Boost's Standard was lovely through the first 12 obstacles, but the 13th was the teeter and she came off the middle again. I told her to "down" a couple of times, and although only her front end ever went down, I decided to continue. And then at the end--a lovely, perfectly aligned and flowing set of 3 jumps, and she approached the last one, then turned back towards me, and hence had to run past it because she was too close to jump it. Argh!

Tika's Standard was clean although not too fast in weaves or dogwalk; 2nd place and a Q, completing her Perf. Standard Silver (25 Qs) and her Perf. Silver ADCH! Yeah! As it turns out, this might have been the only highlight of the weekend.

In Gamblers, Boost had 2nd highest opening points of all dogs, was in perfect position for the closing, which was a send over a jump to the weaves, and she went into the weaves perfectly and then came back out toward me. Arghhhh!

Because I saw SO many very good dogs also pop out of the weaves, I changed my course for Tika to practice distance weaves in the opening, which she did perfectly, and did them again perfectly in the gamble, for a Q. The problem was that all of our dang high-quality 22" performance friends & competitors are so good that they got the high points in the opening AND got the gamble, so we were only 4th of 7 dogs. No top ten points or even glory points (the glory of having high a great score) there.

Snooker has become my nemesis this year with both dogs. Saturday's I thought was very doable, but, yes, it included a teeter in the sequence I wanted to do multiple times. The first time, Boost popped off before the bottom (although the judge gave us the points). The second time, she came right off the middle again, so I picked her up and carried her off, then put her into her crate without even putting her collar back on. ARRRRGHHHHH!!! Why after 6 years of lovely teeters are hers broken?!?

With Tika's run, I was at the score table trying to finish calculating the SuperQs for the previous height group and suddenly realized that we were up next. In Snooker, if you miss your turn, you're out. My normal routine with the dogs is this:
Open crate.
Release dog and put slip leash around her neck as she comes out.
Move hands from slip leash collar directly to regular collar and remove it.
Give dog toy, do a little jogging and tug of war.
With Tika, massage/rub/stretch legs, neck, shoulders, and back.

Because I was in a hurry and we were up next, here's what I did: Open crate, release dog, put slip leash around her neck, and I was doing so, notice that there's a collar on the ground in front of her crate, and my rushed mind said, "oh, I must not have put it back on her after her last run," run directly into the ring and start running.

Stupid. It was Boost's collar, of course. So we got whistled off almost immediately for having a collar on.

In Jumpers with Boost, first thing I did was put her over the wrong jump after the 3rd obstacle. After that, the runouts, refusals, and bars down didn't really matter.

Tika knocked the 2nd bar in her Jumpers run, so no Q, although ended up still in 2nd place for one tiny Top Ten point.

In Steeplechase, Boost popped out of her first set of weaves, I said "oops" or something, stopped her, and made her fix them. When she popped out of the 2nd set of weaves, I picked her up and carried her off. Tika Ran nicely and won the first round--although there were only 4 dogs in her group, and one of them scratched, and one of them E-ed, so only 2 of us went on to round 2.

For the day: Tika Qed 4 of 6, Boost 1 of 6. Tika Top Ten pts: 3 top for Standard, 1 for an n-Qing jumpers. Funny, that!

Good thing Boost is cute.

By the middle of the day Saturday, I realized that I felt way more tired than usual and couldn't face moving everything around in MUTTMVR to sleep there, let alone putting it all back the next day. So I splurged and got a room at the Travellodge up the street. I've stayed there before and liked it, although usually shared a room. Was delighted to pay only $50 including tax and everything.

Instead of all that hard work, I had a nice long shower and relaxed and played with the dogs.

After meeting friends for dinner--three of us had chamionship level titles to celebrate--I went back to the hotel, crawled into bed, and slept very well, a bit over 9 hours straight, until the alarm went off.

Sunday was more handling disasters, Tika melt-down, and Boost getting SO CLOSE--

Tika was the only dog in her group in Steeplechase--the other dog scratched. So we could've done anything on course except eliminate (go off course) and win and bring home the money. She knocked the 2nd jump, but it didn't matter, and the rest of it was nice, so we came home flush with a whole $9.

In Jumpers, Boost ran PERFECTLY dagnabbit because halfway through I had a moment where I couldn't remember the next jump and so she got a refusal while I thought about it. CRAP CRAP CRAP! Tika knocked the first bar [hmmm, lots of Tika bar-knocking this weekend, wonder what's up?], so no Q, but again placed 3rd for one tiny top ten point.

In Standard, in Boost's group, only 3 out of 20 dogs ran clean, and, wow, Boost was not only one of them, but the fastest of those three. Wow, a Q *and* a win!!! Tika also ran clean, but in an increasingly common occurrence, expressed her opinion that down on the table was stupid, and the big delay dropped us to 3rd instead of 1st (only a second separated the top 3 dogs), again for one top ten pt.

In Gamblers, Boost's opening was spectacular, sharing highest points in the whole trial with only one other dog, and we were in perfect position for the gamble and did the 1st three obstacles and all she had to do was... sigh... send slightly to the last jump. 3 times I tried, and 3 times she went toward it and then turned back to me. ARRRGHHHH!

Tika was a good girl but not quite fast enough to finish the obstacle in the opening that would've won it--she also got the gamble like a champ after I nearly bobbled it, so Q and 2nd place for 1 top ten pt.

Grand Prix: Boost missed her weave entry but otherwise had a gorgeous run on a course that ate up & spit out dogs every which way, and Tika slowed wayyyyyyyy down on the dogwalk and then popped the contact anyway, so no Q there, either. Although, funny, she won! (Shows how much the course was destroying dogs.)

And then, sighhhhhhh, Snooker. Boost was spot-on perfect and all she had to do was run down a beautiful straight line of 3 jumps at the end, and, yes, you guessed it, although while I ran I was praying silently to anyone who'd listen, I was too slow for her and she turned back before the last jump. One more chance at a super-Q lost, although she still ended up placing 5th of 21, SOOO close even with that error because dogs again were dropping like flies. And with Tika, I forgot to put in a front cross where I meant to put one, shoving her directly into an off-course obstacle. Sighhhhhhhhhh.

For the day, Tika Qed 2 out of 6, and Boost also 2 out of 6. Tika top ten points: one for a non-Qing Jumpers, one for standard, one for gamblers.

For the weekend, two beautiful dogs, one exhausted handler--I drooped all day today despite the nice weather, and now that I've dumped my successes and failures here, I'm going to bed EARLY.