Agility in the Autumn

SUMMARY: Off to Turlock for USDAA

Well well well, here we are, our last planned agility event until February. Three months! Can I stand it? Especially since Tika should (if all goes well) be well under 20 Qs away from her platinum lifetime after this weekend. And who knows what condition she'll be in 3 months from now.

But--I think it's for the best that I take a longer break, even though there are trials we could attend.

Tika has been having this weird sort of cough/gag thing for months, and recently it seems to be more frequent. Yesterday she was doing it a lot, and then--OMG, off and on all night. I hardly slept. I've never noticed her doing it at night before. Allergies? My renter suggests--acid reflux? Something worse? Something boring? Something contagious? I doubt contagious since it's been going on for so long.  Vet's office said bring her in Monday, so I need to get through 3 more nights and a weekend of agility.

Ack, there she goes again right now.  I shot a little video of her on my little camera, but the sound doesn't come through very well. At least I have something to show the vet.

She's still not completely deaf, but oh, it sometimes breaks my heart how much she misses, or ALMOST hears. The other day, I arrived home, came in through the garage. She was standing at the front door, staring at it, head a-tilt. I walked up the stairs six feet behind her, said her name a couple of times. A couple more head tilts towards the door. I had to walk over to her before she turned her head and realized that I was already in the house. Much happiness.

If I'm going somewhere where the dogs usually like to go (out in the yard, up to the bedroom), now I have to go to wherever she is and let her know that I'm moving, because otherwise she misses that fact and sometimes I hear her trotting around looking for me.

Anyway.

This week, haven't practiced much agility. Also, class was called on account of rain. Back yard is a bit muddy and goopy, not making me want to run around in it.

I did work with both of them on a few tricks last night, which I haven't done in a while. Started shaping a "wave" from the handshake that they both already know. Made a lot of progress actually. It's really pretty quick to teach. I'll bet I could have the whole thing in another one or two 10-minute sessions. Just need to do it.

Forecast is for overnight lows around 34 F (1.1 C) with a chance of showers on Saturday. I decided to splurge again and stay in a hotel Saturday night instead of trying to sleep in MUTT MVR. Nothing fancy, just something pretty close to the trial site. And I dug out the long underwear for the first time this year.

Funny story--When I got up this morning, I heard a weird sound in the upstairs hallway, like some kind of machine running and sucking or blowing air. It seemed to be coming from the renter's rooms and I couldn't figure out what the heck he was doing, as it's way too cold for A/C. Arriving downstairs, I realized--the furnace had just kicked on for the first time in months and was heating my house. 

So I guess winter is finally here, after setting record-high temperatures for the dates just last week.

Guess I'd better go try to get some sleep so I'm ready when the alarm goes off at--sigh--4:00ish.

Bar Knocking, Weaves, and Oldness

SUMMARY: Boost training update, Tika aging update.

In class last night, on the first exercise, which I wasn't sure I could get through, Boost and I did great. Except that she knocked 2 bars.

Our instructor complimented Boost's run and said that she's ready to help me go back to working on bar knocking any time I'm ready. I said, OK.

We started on this a couple of times in the past and then decided that getting Boost to actually do obstacles was the bigger issue. This issue hasn't gone away, but she *does* look really nice in class a lot of the time these days. Did it take her turning 7 to start getting the idea of what's going on?

So the first step is that I need to stop her (in training or class) as soon as she ticks or knocks a bar. This is harder than it sounds--I'm so busy trying to figure out whether I can actually do the body work for a serpentine-to-rear-cross that the fact that she's ticked a bar is invisible to me. Or so busy trying my darnedest to get 3 obstacles ahead so I can do a deceleration for a threadle that the fact that she's knocked a bar is not high on my radar. But I think I was doing better by the end of class.

I also need to count--all the bars that she attempts, and all the bars that she ticks or knocks. That was hard just in class! If we stopped partway through an exercise, and restarted some other part of the way through, repeat 3 or 4 times, jeez, how many bars did we actually attempt?

I have not been doing tons of agility work at home.

About the only things I've been practicing with either dog are table-downs with Tika and weave entries with Boost, who appears to have decided recently that a weave entry, instead of being an entry with the first pole to her left shoulder, is one of:
* Enter between the first two poles, but starting from whtever direction she's coming.
* Enter between the second and third pole, starting from whatever direction she's coming.

It's insane. We've been working on weaves for almost 7 years and she's still not figured out the real rules. Or, at least, she gets it for a while, then somehow decides that that's not what it is after all.

Anyhoo--we've been practicing weave entries.

Homework from class this week is assorted moves-to-rear cross: threadle to rear, serpentine to rear, front to rear. After all these years of agility, I am still not coordinated!

Tika, meanwhile, I swear is still getting deafer. Yesterday in the quiet kitchen, she was lying facing away from me, and I had to say her name 3 times, louder each time, before she turned her head to look at me, but in a "did I hear something?" fashion rather than "my name is being called in the kitchen! yay!" which would be normal.

Her energy level does seem lower lately. She still runs after her ball full-tilt, but might chase it only 2 or 3 times before rushing into the shrubberies to continue excavation on her tunnel to China. She doesn't bother getting up off her bed often now when I'm doing something with Boost.

We're planning on hiking several miles this weekend, and none of us have done much hiking or walking lately, just too busy & distracted. Hope things go well for all of us on the trail.

Not Quite As Bad as the Previous Trial

SUMMARY: But I do wish we'd done better.

First: It WAS hot. Not 108; Saturday got up to around 105 (I took a thermometer this time) late afternoon, but there was a breeze/wind all day, which made it almost bearable. Today it was 102 when we finished about 3, but almost no breeze, and humid (at least for us). Very uncomfortable, very draining, tempers a little short I think, and so many people scratched the last couple of runs each day that we had trouble staffing the rings with sufficient workers.

Tika did the best of the 3 of us, especially after I discovered that hosing her down (which she hates) made her frisky. Boost looked pretty wasted to me midday today. I hosed her down before & after her runs, but in the next to last class (Snooker, she did jump-Aframe-knock jump, knock jump, so we left the ring and went back to the shade. Last class, jumpers, she knocked two of the first 6 bars, so we again left the ring.

Tika, on the other hand, ran that Jumpers one of the best (it felt) in a while and grabbed my feet joyously at the end of the run.

Slept in MUTT MVR with all the doors and windows open and it never got below 85; a restless night, sticky and sweaty.

Did have a nice time Saturday evening with pizza at the record-fast Bay Team meeting (we were all melting so much in the 105 heat that we couldn't even get up the energy to move to adjourn the meeting--pretty pathetic!) and another Bay Teamer celebrating her birthday later provided tasty marinated/bbqed portabella mushrooms, chocolate cake, and ice cream.

TIP LEARNED: On hot days, leave your sun lotion in the cooler; feels so much nicer when you spread it on!

Tika's Weekend

The hearing problems are showing up in a lot of ways. A couple of people even commented this weekend on how her attention is on me all through the course; this is not how Tika used to run. But she was a game competitor, doing what she needed to do even in the heat.

Wanted one Standard to complete her Standard Gold, and we got it Saturday, yahoo! One goal done anyway! Sunday's standard was lovely except for one rear cross that she didn't seem to understand and did a full spin right before the jump for a refusal, so no Q.

She qualified in Steeplechase (3rd of 7 dogs and only a little more than 2 seconds slower than the winner) and came in 2nd in round 2--missing first by .82, due to going into the weaves correctly and then coming back out right at me, as if she didn't think she was supposed to be there, so we had to come back around and try again. I'll take the $14, though.

Qualified in Grand Prix and came in tied for 2nd of 7 dogs.

Qed and came in 2nd in both Jumpers, but those were the last classes both days so tons of dogs had scratched, so combined we got only 1 Top Ten point.

The biggest disappointment and frustration is trying to get those last 4 Snooker Qs for the gold PDCH. I'm picking easy peasy courses and it's just stupid things. Saturday, in the closing #2 was a tunnel; I sent her in, and needed to come back past the tunnel to #3; saw her head blast out and she looked directly at my eyes, so I turned and burned--isn't that what you're supposed to do?--and she somehow reversed herself and went back into the tunnel.

Today, we got through 5 in the closing after doing a simple 1-3-1-3-1-3 in the opening, and then suddenly approaching #6 it didn't look right and I couldn't figure out what was wrong and we ended up with a fault (had to have someone remind me after we left the course what I should've done)--so no Q again. Jeeeezzzzz. Still don't know why it suddenly looked wrong. The heat getting to my brain?

The one Gamblers was a serpentine--thought we had it, she did sort of a double-step like she was shifting leads to go out to the next jump, so I moved on forward, and she changed her mind and came with me, so no Q.

Pairs relay, both of us on our team had miserable runs, go figure (we both did well in steeplechase & grand prix, for instance, but can't do 11 dumb obstacles in pairs??).

Summary: 5 Qs of 10 runs; only 1 of the 3 that I really wanted but much better than the 2 Qs out of 9 from the previous trial.

Boost's weekend

Well--her weave poles remained superb. Her start line remains rock solid; I can't even remember the last time she broke her stay. Her contacts were...well, not rock solid and she was stopping with her feet off the side, but she left early only once and I was able to recover quickly from that.

You can see that I'm struggling for positives.

However--running past jumps--SUCH a frustrating weekend for that, even when I feel like I'm doing everything right, and, well, OK, you know.

Really really wanted to get Jumpers and SuperQs towards that elusive ADCH--

Jumpers Saturday had me so frustrated with running past jumps that I left the course; Jumpers Sunday I already mentioned above, she was too messed up by the heat, I think.

Saturday's Snooker, she got all the way through on what would've been a Super-Q if she hadn't knocked a bar on #7 in the opening--but there was such carnage on that course that, although she got only 37 points (the minimum to qualify), she missed a super-Q by one place anyway, coming in 4th of 19 dogs.

And I mentioned Sunday's Snooker above.

Both Standards--refusals, runouts, bars; steeplechase--running past jumps and a knocked bar; grand prix--I think that was almost nice with just a bar down early; Relay--both of us on our team also has issues.

Summary: 1 Q for the weekend of 10 runs, just another of the huge number of blah Snooker Qs that don't do us any good.

Thinking--

Still thinking about stopping agility. Would really like to finish those last 4 Snookers of Tikas, and would like to have the energy to work on Boost's issues to get those two SuperQs and one more Jumpers, but still not sure that I really have the enthusiasm for it. Boost just loves doing agility so much. The hot trials I'm really not liking. Wellllllll I guess I'll keep on thinking about it.

Bits N Pieces

SUMMARY: Stairs from Heck, Agility training, judging, deaf dogs or not, A Day prep, plus bonus photos.

Today's stairs from heck:

Added the 59 steps that are in a separate flight 2 blocks away. Also did the whole normal plan of 2 miles including 2 ascents of the 129+94 steps flight, for a total today of 505 steps.

Some days my legs get tired first; some days, my lungs. Today I was completely out of breath after the 59 plus 2 blocks plus 129 and had to take a breather before the last 94. The second time around, I did fine the entire way up the 129+94. Odd.

This is starting the 4th week of my goal to do this three times a week. Yay me!

Deaf dogs:

One thing about Deaf Tika is not hearing the pretzel bag crinkle. Today, she heard it from about 15 feet away, because she lifted her head and looked over her shoulder at me, but apparently also didn't hear it clearly enough because she then put her head back down.

Agility training:

The only little bit of training I've been doing with Boost is more to raise the value of taking jumps. So, when playing in the yard, I make her take jumps to chase the toy instead of choosing her own path. One interesting difference between Tika and Boost: If Tika turns suddenly and there's a jump abruptly in front of her, she takes it. Boost goes around it.

Judging:

Well, this is it coming up this weekend: My first-ever judging assignment, and it's a UKI event, of which I've only ever run in one. I have read up on the rules (will have to revisit them again, as there are differences from USDAA and from CPE), have designed my courses and they've been approved, have my hotel reservation-- about as ready as I'm going to be.

I said OK mostly because it's a small, friendly trial in which I can get my judging feet gently wet. And I'm judging only Sunday; another new local judge is doing Saturday. Could be interesting. I'll be judging 10 classes for a total of--73 runs! Like I said, small trial.

Photos--A Day prep:

I've been thinking about all the different photos I *could* take to contribute. Have been preparing for some so I don't have to take a lot of time tomorrow to take them. I emailed the site about the issues I mentioned the other day, and they responded quickly--also said that at the moment they've disabled editing one's profile in preparation for tomorrow's big uploading frenzy, at which point we WILL be able to edit our profile again. Huh. Well, we'll see what happens.

Bonus photos:

The photography club I joined last year has a contest once a month; you can enter in four different categories for a total of 3 photos. I don't enter every month, but here's what I've picked for this month. (I've previously posted versions of these, I believe.)

In "General B" (photography as an art form for the less experienced photographer), two photos; in "Nature" (the natural world, telling a story more important than photo quality, one photo. I don't have great hopes--the photos that people enter are really spectacular.  I spent well over an hour each on each of these photos doing gross and/or subtle edits, and I'm still not entirely satisfied. And one can hardly tell, after comparing to the originals! Oh, well, I really needed another addictive, time-consuming hobby.

"Mystical Pathway"

"After the Rose Is Gone":

"Brown Pelican Fishing"

Deaf Dog Training Day 1

SUMMARY: Some training notes.

First, note that Tika is not completely deaf, and has been with me for 10 years of training, so she's also not a brand-new-to-training dog. She's clicker trained, too, and is quite "operant"--that is, attempts various behaviors on her own when the clicker or even the treats come out, allowing me to easily shape behavior.

Tika's hearing, however, is getting bad. I'm sometimes convinced that she can hear me across a field, and yet--f'rinstance, yesterday she was lying on the landing at the top of the stairs, with her back to my bedroom door, about 2 feet away, awake with her head up. I stuck my head out the door and whispered "Tika!". No response. Said it in a normal voice three or four times. Not even an ear twitch. I then yelled "Tika!" and she visibly perked up--but all her attention was in the same direction she was already looking. So, yeh, real problems with hearing and detecting the direction of noise.

My goal is to leverage her existing command set and work on converting verbals to visual cues. The point of the new vibrating collar is simply to get her to look at me when it vibrates, and then I will give the verbal/visual command from there.

For regular commands, that means I'm going to do a lot of repetition of basic behaviors, adding the gestures.

For sit, down, and come, I'm using fairly standard dog obedience gestures; DeafDogs.org has animated pictures of these gestures.

They also suggest using American Sign Language (ASL) signs for other common words, because others might use the same signals. So I'm using "thumbs up" with one or both hands for "yes!", which I have previously trained as my verbal equivalent of a click.

Tika's release word is "OK", but I like the ASL gesture for break, which uses two hands--imagine grasping a stick and breaking it so that your hands move up and apart (see video).

So, today, I started by "loading" my thumbs-up the same way I loaded the clicker originally: Show her the thumb, give a treat; repeat about 10 times about 3 times during the day. Then to tie it to the verbal, I repeated another 10 or so times with the "Yes!" as well as the thumb up.

Later in the day, I've done several of each sit, down, and come with the verbal command and gesture, confirmed correct behavior with verbal "Yes!" and gesture of thumb up, and given her a treat. Then I use the verbal "OK" with the break gesture, and of course she releases because that's what "OK!" does.

This is challenging for me, as I've previously avoided gestures for commands because wisdom has it that dogs, being body-language oriented, learn gestures much more quickly than verbals and I wanted to maintain the strength of the verbal commands.  So, for me, it's challenging to remember "Sit" and lift hand simultaneously, say "Yes" and thumb up simultaneously, then quickly give a treat, then "OK!" and the break signal simultaneously. It requires coordination and reprogramming myself, and anyone who's ever watched me try to figure out a handling move in agility knows I'm not that coordinated.

Lastly, I've been following the deafdogs.org suggestion to just vibrate the collar repeatedly and toss a treat to her, several times a day, several times each time, and then at some point after 2 or 3 days of this, I'll do the vibrate and wait to see whether she looks at me before tossing a treat, as in, "Hey, you've been giving me treats for that; where's the treat?" and then we're on our way to what we want, which is her to always look at me when she feels the vibration.

I'm still futzing with how tight to make the collar, and there are so many holes so close together that it'll be challenging to get the same hole every time; will have to put tape or something on the collar to mark it (it's black plastic so can't write on it).

And I've been wondering whether a level 1 vibration is enough or whether it needs to be 2 or 3 to be sure she's really noticing it (it goes up to 15). I tried it with my hand under the collar touching the side of the vibrator, and I felt it just fine, so I'm guessing that she's probably feeling it ok-- the one thing I'd have liked is for the collar to beep or otherwise let me know when it vibrates, but there was no device in the whole list on deafdogs.org that had all the features that one could want, so I'm going on faith that it's actually vibrating when I hit the button. It's supposed to have a range of half a mile. Wonder how to test that? Get a friend out there with me, I guess.

So both Tika and I are learning, and meanwhile I'm trying to also make sure that Tika plays normally while wearing the collar and that I don't neglect Boost while focusing so tightly on my own learning curve and tika's as well.

Silent World

SUMMARY: Tika's deafness--and vision.

I seem to be able to watch Tika's deafness increase week by week, almost day by day. Some developments:

Now sometimes she can't hear me if I say her name and she's in the same room, but usually she can if I say it loudly.

For a while, she's been lying in her bed periodically woofing once (that gets to be really annoying--about about every 3 to 8 seconds, "woof!"). I wonder whether she's hearing ringing in her ears. Or voices! Or she can't distinguish little random background noises from things she used to bark at. (Believe me, when she used to bark at things, there was no quiet single woof thing going on.) Oh, she still sometimes hears louder things and sounds off as usual. It's those inbetween things that are just odd.

No more barking when someone rings the doorbell or knocks on the door. :-( In fact, I used to never even have people get that far, because Tika would start barking before they got there.

No more barking when the mailperson comes every day. That used to be so handy if I had something I needed to mail and hadn't set it out. Not sure how long that's been going on; just one of those things that I became aware isn't happening any more.

This morning, Tika was lying with her back to me about halfway between me and my renter, about 10 feet away from each of us. I got up from my desk and opened the sliding door to the yard; no reaction. I said her name in my normal voice, no reaction. I yelled her name--she jumped up and went to the renter! Oh, my.

Today I ordered a vibrating collar so I can start train her to look for me in response to a vibration. I ordered a type with no shock option because I don't ever want there to be a mistake.

Also I've been wondering about her vision. Often lately when I toss a treat on the floor for her (to protect my fingers), she doesn't seem to see me toss it, and then sometimes can't find it when she does see me toss it.

Trying not to cry about it. She's always been such an active (and reactive) dog, and so good at finding things and letting me know what's going on. And physically she seems fine, still running like crazy in the back yard for her toy.

And she was beside herself with joy when a couple of my friends came to visit yesterday.

I'm still entering her in agility trials a couple of months out, waiting to see how all that goes.

Oh, mannnn...I'm now rattling treats in the treat jar two feet above her head, and not a reaction at all. (Boost, in the other room, jumped up and is now staring at me.)

Oh, Tika...

OK, she heard the clicker above her head, leaped to her feet! Big jackpot mostly because I was so glad to see that.

The End of a Four--no, Three-Day Weekend

SUMMARY: Some items accomplished, some not.

I have so much to say that it's hard to know where to start. But I want to be concise, too. Been thinking about it for 24 hours now, and my list gets longer, not shorter. I guess I just need to plunge in and blather on. It's just going to be long. Skim and read as the mood strikes you, or just look at the happy photos.

We had some successes and some--well, failures--of one sort or another.

Weather and Camping Out

The weather wasn't bad at all; mostly pretty good agility weather, actually. Every day started with frost on the grass but warmed fairly quickly. Thursday afternoon warmed up enough that, if you were running a dog and in the sun, you wanted to take off your fleece, but the chilly wind made you put it back on quickly as soon as you stopped moving or went into the shade. After we were done for the day, the beautiful puffy white clouds turned into dark ominous clouds and, despite the no-rain forecast, we had maybe half an hour of off-and-on light showers, which made for this:

I was pretty wiped and a little queasy after the usual 4-a.m. rousing and drive out, 6 runs with each dog, and so on. Went out to dinner with friends, which was fun and tasty, but by the time the meal was over, I was drooping so badly that I decided I couldn't face 45 minutes of setting up MUTT MVR for sleeping, so investigated the Best Western where a bunch of others were staying.

They had only some rooms available by 9:30 p.m.: Suites starting at $125 a night and smoking rooms at $85. Plus taxes and $15 pet fee. Since I wanted only to sleep, shower, and leave, the suite seemed stupid. I waffled over the smoking room, though--I've had some pretty bad nights in smoky rooms. The more I waffled, the more she lowered the price, till I paid $70/night plus taxes and the pet fee. So $100 I hadn't budgeted for, but better than the original quote.

The room wasn't too horrible--I've spent  nights in nonsmoking rooms that I thought were as bad. It was spacious, had a comfortable king-sized bed, and all the faucets and lights worked.

Felt much better Friday morning. Still frost in the morning, but warmed up more than Thursday. I set up MUTT MVR and slept VERY soundly Friday night after a spontaneous potluck with generous friends, to which I had nothing to contribute since I'd planned on going out to eat.

Saturday started with frost again, but warmed up even more to shirtsleeve weather by midday. By dinnertime, though, when we had pizza brought in for our Bay Team quarterly meeting at 6:00, the chill crept in again. So--hold that point in the calendar--

Tika

Tika seemed pretty happy and healthy most of the time. She did her "hug" stretch before almost every run, where she puts her front feet up on my chest and stretches everything out. If she's hurtin', she won't do that. The last couple of runs on Saturday, she didn't do it right away or fully at first, and I thought, hmmm... but then she did it fully.

We definitely connected better than under the arena at Santa Rosa, but still had enough miscues and oddities that made me more and more aware that I can't expect her to do what she's always done.  I can point to most of them as a hearing and/or vision issue (I'm still not positive one way or the other about the latter). It's frustrating to assume that she'll just do the things she's always done and then she doesn't.

Like Saturday's gamble, which I thought was a complete gimmee for her, and she sent out beautifully but then on the turn to the Aframe, while I yelled "climb! climb!", she just kept coming towards me, not very fast, looking at me uncertainly. It made me sad, and then she didn't grab my shoes afterwards, either, so she wasn't feeling her cheery best. That's just one example.

Sure, we were never perfect in USDAA, but had held a pretty constant 65% Q average for a few years, and that average is just dropping. She Qed 4 out of 6 on Thursday, 3 out of 6 on Friday, and 2 out of 6 on Saturday, so we weren't getting any better with experience. So--hold that point in the calendar--

Tika Performance Team

What also made me sad was that she had four very nice runs in the DAM individual events. I was pleased with all of them, and yet she earned a Q in only one. Part of the problem was that there were only 6 dogs in her height class, so we combined with the 16" dogs. Between Chaps in our height and Epic and Heath in 16" (and a couple of other really awesome younger performance 16" dogs as well), between them usually having not only among the highest scores in Performance but in Championship, too, Tika's very good scores didn't Q. (Individual Qs are based on being within 15% of the average of the top 3.) What was really frustrating was that her scores *would* have been Qing in any of the Championship classes!

So I could pass it off as bad luck that there were only 6 in our class rather than 7 or that all the best Performance dogs happened to be there that weekend, but still, she's not usually had problems Qing in Team individual events before. And, in 5 of the last 11 team events, we have had to combine Tika's height with the 16", so there's every expectation that this experience could happen again.

Chaps had his usual consistently high scores, so as a team we were doing really well.

The club split team into 2 days, which makes me nuts, especially when it's such an important Q (our Platinum Tournament), so I had to sleep on the stress of hoping that we'd finally get that last Team Q needed for that title, after December's disaster, and the next team not until July.

After the first class on Thursday, Chaps and Tika were in 3rd place out of 18 teams. After next class, we moved into 1st place and stayed there after the 3rd and 4th classes, too--but, going into the relay on Friday afternoon, we were a mere 5 points (or 5 seconds) out of about 700 beyond both the 2nd and 3rd place teams--so close out of all those points! We couldn't slack off at all if we wanted to hold our 1st place.

But to me, at that moment, THE most important thing was not Eing so that we would Q. At that point, we probably would've still Qed if either of us had Eed in the relay, but not certain about that--it's a huge penalty in the relay.

One of the two teams had a refusal on the weaves and had to redo, so that moved took them out of contention for the top two spots. Chaps had a clean first half. I wanted to lead out rather than run off the line with Tika to avoid any possible off course or faults, so I walked calmly and quietly to position before releasing Tika. She had a really nice run, but that calm leadout cost us--with our final total score of 896.61 points for the 5 runs, we were 1.5 points (seconds) exactly *behind* the other team. So--

2nd place out of 18 Performance team, which I'm quite pleased about, considering how good & fast the other teams were.

And, most importantly, Tika's Performance platinum tournament! Thank goodness that's out of the way! More fun than that--that was also Chap's Performance gold tournament title! What a combo!

And a relief that last December's disaster was just a fluke due to Tika's hearing in the Santa Rosa arena.

No more team? Less agility?

Still, I'm thinking that if she can't Q in the individual events, there's no reason for me to be running her in team any more. Except that I promised our old partner Brenn to do July team for old time's sake, since Brenn's arthritis seems to have eased a bit.

We had our moments--she placed 2nd in Round 1 Steeplechase even though it had 2 sets of weaves and she looked so slow!, and placed 2nd in the final round also, which ALSO had 2 sets of weaves, but she misread a rear cross (or I was too far behind--I'd been worried about that spot before we ran) and we missed 1st place by 0.5 seconds. But that's because one of the very fast younger dogs scratched, another popped out of the weaves, and Chaps scratched, so just by not Eing we'd have been guaranteed at least 3rd.

She Qed easily in both regular Jumpers rounds, although only placing 4th of 7 and 2nd of 5.

And she won Thursday's Standard and Friday's Gamblers.

But our failures when we didn't Q seemed much larger and much more different than what we'd failed on in the past. Much puzzlement on my part on how to manage this deafened dog and much puzzlement on her part as to why I'm not telling her what she needs to know.

So I'm thinking that we're closer than I thought to not doing much agility.

Boost

On the up side:

• Weaves: We did 20 sets in 18 runs, including Friday's gamble, two in Thursday's Snooker, two sets in Steeplechase, several situations where I wanted to move far away laterally, several challenging entrances, and so on, and she nailed almost every entry and stayed in almost all. Exceptions: Coming out of a chute to a right turn to the weaves, I called her hard and overcalled her; tried a challenging serp in Team Relay and she cut behind me; and then, jeez, the easiest ones: back to back weaves in a gamblers *opening*, where I did NOT cut away and was right with her, she popped out twice in a row(!) but then got them both the next 2 tries. Those great, fast, accurate weaves made me very happy.
• She did all her contacts beautifully! No coming off the side, no leaving early! Yowza!
• Table in standard: Thursday's and Friday's were fast downs and she stayed down; Saturday's was a fast down, one elbow came up briefly but went back down when I reminded her. That's excellent, also.
• Serpentines: I dared two or three since we've been practicing them, and she actually came in! Must keep working on it, though, as they weren't completely smooth.
• Team: Wow, she did not E or crap out on any one of her five team events, which has got to be a first for her! She even earned a Q in the gamblers, and she hardly ever Qs in team events. Furthermore, none of her teammates (Jersey and Rift) Eed or crapped out in anything, either, and much to our delight and amazement, we finished 4th of 20 teams! That's the highest I've ever placed in Championship team (although Tika has placed in the top 3 several times in Performance team). Yowza.
  

Not so good:

• Bars. It wasn't a bar-knocking frenzy, but they came down at a fairly regular rate. I might count later, but I'd guess at least 10 bars out of 18 runs.
• Refusals and runouts. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. Lots.

What we really needed:

• Jumpers: Thursday--knocked the 2nd bar, came in past a jump after a tunnel (I might have called too hard but she just skimmed the edge of it so it would've almost been easier to take it); didn't go forward to a jump that I really needed her to, so Eed on refusals. Friday (team jumpers), two refusals that were mostly my fault--I checked out on a front cross and tried a rear which is her nemesis and she just stopped, then another when I briefly forgot the course. (But she kept up all her bars.) Saturday: I think one bar down, one refusal that I fixed, and another on a rear cross where she just kept looking at me until she was right in front of the jump and stopped. I made her just jump it and then walked off.
• Snooker: Thursday (team): not too bad, got through 7-7-7-3 in the opening and through 5 in the closing but I missed a front cross again and when I tried to rear she ran past the next jump. Friday: Ran past the first red when I tried a lead-out pivot, so bobbling to get back to it. Couldn't have asked for a smoother course on which to do three 7s except that she chose *this* time to go completely straight instead of curving slightly to follow me (and for a change I was way ahead of her, so no excuse!) and went off course right away. Saturday: A twisty ugly course that the smoothest thing I could find with hopes of a superQ involved 10 front crosses. She ran past a couple of jumps anyway that I had to go back and get--mangled our way through the opening four reds and obstacles, but when we had to go around one jump she started paying more attention to me than to the obstacles and we futzed out on several stupid attempts at the next two jumps.

Health

My knee was holding up OK, but feeling worse gradually. I iced it only once--seemed like there was never time when it was convenient to spend 15 minutes doing it. My own speed and agility in the ring is DEFINITELY helped by making sure that I can jog and sprint before I get the dog out to compete, but it was taking more and more steps of each for me to loosen up as the weekend went on. And I still get winded when there's a lot of running.

 By the time I walked the last regular class on Saturday--Jumpers--my legs were so tired that I walked it only a couple of times and then peeled off so I'd have enough energy left to actually run it. Walking the Steeplechase finals (for Tika) after that, I really didn't even want to be walking, I was that tired.  Now hold that point in time...

Friday evening, vet Cindi massaged Tika and Boost--she's worked on them before, so knows them a bit--because I was still concerned about the limps I'd seen the last couple of weeks from Boost, and although tika seemed OK, she's just older and arthritic.  Another $130 that I hadn't budgeted for, didn't know she was going to be there but was glad to be able to use her servies.

Sure enough, she identified Boost's right hip socket as being sore. NOthing that she'd recommend not running Boost, but enough to keep an eye on and maybe do less of everything that we usually do for a while to rest it. And Tika's left side was pretty tight and resisting; her toes were quite stiff but loosened up with the massage (and she showed me how to work on them).

Then by midday Saturday I was detecting a very slight limp on some occasions with Boost, so it was coming and going almost imperceptibly. For that last Jumpers run, Tika started out very slowly on the first four obstacles,  and I thought she was done, but she picked up. I warmed her up a lot more for her final Steeplechase and she looked ok, but oh, she's SOOOO stiff in the weaves these days!

And we arrive at Saturday evening

Everything just added up to this point in time, late afternoon Saturday--overly tired physically, a little discouraged, wondering whether my dogs had reached their saturation point, regretting having entered Sunday also.

Sure, there was another Jumpers and another Snooker, which was the whole reason I entered Sunday, but our performances had been so crapped in all three tries at each so far, there was no reason to think that Sunday would suddenly be THE jumpers and THE snooker we'd been waiting for.

So, late that afternoon, I decided that we were done. It was a great relief once I made the decision, and it gave me the energy to spend 90 minutes packing everything up after the Bay Team meeting, although I wasn't glad to finish packing and then driving the 2 hours home after dark.

Startled my renter, coming in just before 11 p.m.--can't remember when the last time was that I came home early from a trial, but I think it's been years and years. Pottied the dogs and went straight to bed. Didn't regret at all not being there today. Oh, well--except that one other friend who's been trying forever to get a Super-Q got it today. So, well, MAYBE that WOULD have been THE Snooker... But probably not.

Being at home and in my own bed is a nice feeling, and the stress, thrills, spills, and chills of competition are a nice thing to get a break from. Remind me if I ever try to sign up for 4 days of agility again that I've been down this path several times and should know better.

Training Notes

SUMMARY: Because I do want to improve things.

I don't have anything like a formal list of what to work on or formal tracking sheet showing how much I've done. I'm doing only about 5 minutes a day with each dog--but that's a whole lot more than I had been doing for months.

In the last week, I've worked on:

• One-jump serps.  Interesting that, when I had moved the dogs far enough away from the jump that they were alongside the teeter, they both did u-turns from a sit-stay to the teeter instead of coming to the jump for the serp. I didn't videotape it, so not sure what the deal was there.
• Lateral lead-outs (boost only).
• Just running over jumps (and into tunnels because that's the only way to keep up the speed in this small yard), especially with Boost to just keep her going. And for  me, both behind and ahead and practicing saying "go" or "hup"  or "through" while the dog is NOT directly over a jump.
• When playing (tossing a toy) for Boost, making her go over jumps first to try to increase the value of going over jumps.
• Bar-knocking drills with Boost, with tossed treats and with toy.
• Table-down drills mostly with Tika, mostly with food but some toys.
• Weave entries from 90-degree angle and steeper.
• Just with Boost, weave entries when I'm way ahead of her. How come she continues to be able to do them just fine here but not in competition? Grumble.
• Practicing standing up straight while I'm running (not bending at all), really concentrating on using my arm and body position to indicate obstacles, especially with Tika, who is sometimes having trouble with that now even here in my smaller yard. 
• Warming myself up by jogging and running until I can run full out without my knee complaining. It really becomes so stiff so quickly these days; I can't rely on it loosening up in the first few running steps any more.

Just a week away from a mongo four-day USDAA trial. I'd like to feel confident that I'm not throwing away my time and money for four whole days in a row.

Once again we're going to try to get Tika's final Team Q to complete her Performance Platinum Tournament. In retrospect, our disaster in December was at that covered Santa Rosa arena where I finally realized this month that there's so much ambient noise that she couldn't hear me, even though her hearing wasn't as bad then as it is now. This time it's outdoors, and I'm hoping that she'll be able to hear me better.

And--like a broken record--I'd really really like to get some Jumpers Qs and SuperQs with Boost. Just sayin'.  So. Another week in which to practice.

I should really make a list and check things off as I work on them.

I should.

Yet Another CPE Saturday

SUMMARY: In which Tika is definitely deaf and Boost tackles Colors--yet again--to try to complete her championship.

I never before realized how much ambient noise there is in the arena here at Santa Rosa, not until I realized that my merely 11-year-old dog is losing her hearing. At home, she's --almost suddenly--no longer hearing me when I arrive home, and only sometimes when I come up the wooden stairs. Our January trial here was where I melted down a bit, in part because I couldn't understand why Tika was ignoring me.

Well, today, she was so uncertain in so many places in her runs, and when she was feeling certain, she was fast and completely oblivious to anything I was yelling (and clapping my hands, too). So I'm thinking that I'm just not going to try trialing with her up here any more; just too crazy-making for both of us. I came this weekend, however, knowing that her hearing is greatly compromised, so I treated every run as simply a chance to go out and try to have fun (no titles to chase, no expectations), and so we had a good day despite Qing only 3 of 5 runs.

Boost started the day by winning Gamblers (Jackpot)--a traditional one--with 62 points, one of the highest at the entire trial. Kept all her bars up did all her weaves beautifully, no refusals or runouts. In Full House, she had the highest points at the entire trial, but I threw away four of them in a fit of annoyance when she ran past a jump on the way to stop the clock and I turned around and made three additional attempts until she actually took the bloody jump. But she kept all her bars up, did nice weaves, no runouts or refusals until that last one, etc. Feeling pretty good.

In Snooker, though, it was a bit of a meltdown--did a very long leadout beautifully to start with a 1-7, but then knocked hte next 1 and although we fumbled and recovered, she then knocked the next numbered bar, and was bouncing around frantically, so I just ran her to the table to end the bar-knocking and brain overload.

In Wildcard, she also knocked a bar.

Not looking good as we approached our Colors run, since knocked bars have been what has held us back in Colors all along, and what kept us from getting her Championship the last two weekends. For some odd reason, the judges obstinately keep designing Colors courses with jumps in them, so I picked the one that looked like I could most easily be in the right place at the right time and hoped for the best.

After three other dogs who've collectively earned--oh, lordie, a dozen championships in different organizations at different levels, I didn't think that a CPE Championship would be that big a deal to make me nervous, but I was, once again, running with my heart pounding in my throat as I did a long lead-out past two jumps, released her, and hoped for the best. We had one really wide 180-degree turn where I didn't signal tightly (partly because I didn't want to risk her knocking the first jump in the turn), but she kept her bars up, went really fast, made her weave entry beautifully and stayed in--and then I was at the finish line with all the bars left up and a new Agility Champion! W00t!

And thank dogs that's over!

She also won her group in Colors and had, I think, the 3rd fastest time of all the dogs who ran it--under 12 seconds for 9 obstacles (I didn't note the yardage yet so not sure of her yards per second, but I'll bet it was high). But when we did our victory lap, I sent her over jumps in a straight line and through a couple of tunnels, and she really demonstrated her Hi C-Era Interstellar Propulsion capability--wowed the cheering audience with her amazing speed.

If only we could do straight lines with easily visible tunnels all the time!

So tomorrow is more just complete fun for both dogs, just do the classes we signed up for, no worries about titles or Qs, just try to do the best I can with the girls I've got--with my still-fresh C-ATE for Tika and my brand-new C-ATCH for Boost. Yowza.

(I'll try to post photos and video tomorrow evening or Monday.)