Downsizing: Agility Equipment

SUMMARY: A-frame and Chute are free to good homes, maybe triple jump, maybe more, hard decisions 
(scroll down to "What am I not planning on taking with me when I move?")

Ooops, thought I posted this on Friday (the 16th). Guess I'm posting it now, and just backdating it.)

When I bought my current home, nearly 2 decades ago, my Agility Gung-ho-ness expressed itself dramatically by taking my money. And I don't mean classes or competitions or travel (although those were also true). I mean: Equipment! Full set! Here in my yard! To train fabulous world-class agility champions!

... we didn't get to world-class because I'm honestly too lazy to be that dedicated to training and improving our skills.  But it did help in achieving speed, accuracy, and championships of various sorts and quantities for Remington, Jake, Tika, and Boost.

What I had before moving here

• A teeter, gift of my then-husband less than a year before we split up.  It's not that he wasn't usually a kind and thoughtful guy, because he was. But--life happens. (1998, $400)

• A tunnel, a short 10-foot yellow one for which my agility instructor arranged group pricing, for her students and other agility folks. (1996, $100)

• Cheap weave poles, as in, I bought white stick-in-the-ground fence posts and tried using them (the little tabs all the way up them, however, were not an ideal surface).

• Cheap weave poles #2, as in, I bought a long metal strip from Home Depot and drilled holes in it and used very long bolts over which I dropped PVC piping of the correct size for agility. BUT turns out that that solid-seeming metal strip became astonishingly flexible when dogs raced through the poles.

• Cheap PVC jumps that I made using PVC for the bases and uprights, drilled holes through them, put a longish bolt through the holes, forming places on which to balance the crossbars.  This didn't work well for several reasons (e.g., in one direction, if the dog crashed the bar, the whole jump came down).

• Tire jump, made with an actual motorcycle tire and heavy-duty huge PVC frame and base.

What I splurged on in 2001/2002

• Table: Wood top with PVC base--to change heights, had to change out the PVC legs, which wasn't speedy, but it was lightweight. (2001, $100)
• Weaves: purple powder-coat w/adjustable offsets (screw in pole supports), 20" spacing, 2 folding 6-foot sections for easy transport (2001, $197)
• A-Frame:  From Duncan at Action K-9, one of the earlier makers of high-quality sturdy competition equipment. (2002, $865)
• Broad jump: 5-pc metal and wood, (2 short, 2 medium, one tall), flat tops --all of which made this obsolete for at least USDAA and CPE several years later, if it wasn't already that way because I think it was designed for AKC purposes. (2002, $174)
• Dogwalk: See Aframe. (2002, $752)
• Jumps!: Finally. Four official metal-frame with screw-on metal jump cups (2002, $170 total)
• Teeter base, adjustable height, heavy-duty metal base: Also Action K-9 (2002, $2.75)
• Tunnel: 20' heavy-duty double-walled teal & gray with 4" pitch--totally competition level. (2002, $360)
• Chute (aka closed tunnel): Competition quality plastic barrel with metal stand, 8' blue/purple/white sexy chute fabric! (2002, $251)
• Triple jump, whooo, big time! Purple powder-coated metal, 2 pieces (2002, $127.50)
• PVC for jump bars -- as needed, bought fancy tape and shelf paper to decorate them all with, ditto for the weaves. (Ongoing--minor costs)

Over time, added more jumps, more tunnels; retired jumps and tunnels as they rusted or wore out in the sun, replaced the table top once. The screw threads in my weaves rusted away, so that was useless, so replaced once with someone's no-longer-using 20" spaced official weaves, also eventually had issues, so replaced with someone's no-longer-using 22" spaced official weaves (of course at that time, USDAA had moved to 24" spaced weaves, so really they were no longer official). Resurfaced the teeter. A friend borrowed and resurfaced some of the Aframe.

What am I not planning on taking with me when I move?

• Aframe: Just too heavy for me these days. I haven't used it in several years, plus there is an important bit of damage that I can't fix myself. AND it's the old style textured surface, where now everyone uses rubberized. And it needs one critical bit of work.

• Chute: No one will want this, probably: All agility organizations canned them a couple of years back. Such a crowd pleaser (and I loved watching it), but they added too much time on the course (adjusting the fabric before each dog), and posed a risk to dogs who got tangled which BTW I also thought was unfair because that often added time to the dog's run and, really, there's only so much you can control with a fast dog through a floppy piece of fabric.  I ended up never using it except with each new/young dog or as a refresher once a year or so. So it's in excellent condition.

• Triple Jump: Sigh. Lovely purple thang. I think no organizations do this any more, either.

• Dogwalk: Erk. At the moment, I *am* planning on taking it, but it needs some rehab and repainting and it's the sort of equipment that (because of its weight) I'd likely just set up in one place and leave it there, which reduces a bit its usefulness for anything beyond the contacts themselves (complex sequencing with the walk in the same place always is a little predictable for the dogs...)  Still pondering. (And ditto on the rubberizing like the A-frame.)  

And... really... how much agility training will I ever want or be able to do in the future?  It is just a FUN thing, though!

What I AM planning on taking

• Jumps that are in reasonably good condition. This is maybe only half a dozen...

• Tunnels that are in reasonably good condition.  This might be only one or two... [frowny face]

• Table (... oh, and the tabletop needs cleaning and repainting)

• Teeter with both bases

• Tire jump--TBD?   Dunno--that motorcycle tire is heavy and needs to be retaped and is definitely not competition legal, and the big-old-PVC frame is broken in 2 places (works Oooookayyyyy just in the yard for basic use) that would require sawing and buying more pieces and measuring fit and gluing...  ugh. But the PVC is lighter than metal frames...   
  
  ... oh, also much cheaper, so I could build myself another one for not much other than time and effort. But how much would a real one cost me? Checking online--from inexpensive PVC-framed (but looks better made than mine) or used ones (quality TBD) to top-quality competition: $150 to $625 [really, J&J?!?!? REALLY?! -- I mean, Clean Run has one for $350-$525...]

• OK, tire jump NOT TBD, just talked myself out of taking it.

• Weaves. Even if they are only 22" span.

• Broad jump. I guess. It's not standard by far any more... but it's what I have and would probably work for basic training.

• PVC jump bumps for training (look up Susan Salo jump bumps).

• Tunnel bags - I have only 2 good pairs right now, and they fold flat once the sand/gravel is removed. ;-)

• Misc small other random stuff

Gallery of equipment fame and shame

Dogwalk when only a few years old. Glory days.

Dogwalk is about 30' long. 

Dogwalk needs... um... TLC?

A-frame in its younger age.

A-frame in my back yard. (Go straight across to the right from the green arrow.)
Takes up a lot of visual space and all in one large chunk. 

Aframe now. Mostly usable condition.

But this is a problem (bent pipe).

My teeter gets a lot of unauthorized use.

Why teeter needed resurfacing 10 years back. Replaced with fiberglass.
Currently, the metal parts are rusting and some of those surfaces are peeling away.
But I think it'll be OK.

Old tire parts I dragged out from behind the compost bins. Needs work.
But OK for occasional gentle use at the moment.

When expensive metal jump bases rust away... out they go.

Same model chute as mine. Beautiful colors! Mine has no duct tape.

When tunnels (purple) and tunnel bags (teal) are new and beautiful.

When Good Tunnels Go Bad...
and should really have been disposed of much earlier.

This is what USDAA broad jumps should look like.
Mine are flat across the top and form an upside down arc
instead of an ascending format.

My current weaves (except I've removed all the colored tape).
Weaves also take up a lot of space: 12 poles with 22" between.
(And modern poles have 24" between. So, yep, 22 feet long.)

Previous weaves. The pegs had screw bases so they could be put in line as usual
or you could move them out onto the tab to one side or the other for training.
Those little screw bases' threads rusted away, sometimes the entire screw base.

Tika demonstrates an unauthorized use of weave poles. 
Rules prohibit dogs from lying on their sides and
pulling themselves along the weaves by hooking paws over the poles. 
Such a rebel.

Zorro Has A Lot Going On

SUMMARY: He is keeping Human Mom busy.

Backfill: From Facebook June 25; posted here July 2

We’ve been working on weave poles – – first time in a very long time that I’ve felt like actually doing agility training in my yard. We haven’t been working on the dogwalk, but that’s OK, because Zorro takes it all by himself.

The hunting business is hopping.  Yesterday he caught a ground squirrel, last night or this morning, two small rats. (And the next day there'll be a gopher or squirrel, and the next day another squirrel.)

We’ve been going for a walk once or twice every day, which is the first time in a long time that I’ve felt like making that effort.

There’s always the shower to lick out after Human Mom squeegees it.

This morning, Human Mom did her best to play the game he and Chip would play: bitey face and then tuck tail and chase each other frantically back-and-forth in the upstairs hall and bedroom;
Zorro got fully into it, and mom used her hand as the bitey face, rolled around on the bed with him doing it, and then back-and-forth excitedly up and down the hallway.


And lots and lots of massaging of the neck and back and legs, and just snuggling.

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.

Dogwalk speed

SUMMARY: Timer built into the dogwalk.

Where I train now has beeper/timers built into the dogwalk, and the Aframe is coming soon. So you can use the beeper to indicate when the dog hits the yellow zone (e.g., if you're doing running contacts), or attach the timer clock, which times from their first hit on the up contact to their first hit on the down contact.

Boost's time Tuesday night was 1.32 seconds, 2nd fastest that I saw (another Border Collie did 1.23). And I've been thinking that she slows down for the descent. Pretty darned cool.

I didn't notice Tika's time.

I wonder how fast Boost's sister Gina's fabulous running dogwalk is? Didn't film any of Gina at the Regionals, but it sure looked good.

Agility Photo Album

SUMMARY: Photos from last weekend, and the thoughts that go with them.

A friend loves dogs (doesn't have one of her own at the moment), loves to take photos of them, and will go out of her way on occasion to take zillions of photos of dogs at agility trials and then upload them to my photo site so all my agility friends can get copies for no fee. How cool is that? Probably annoys the pro photographers who can take gorgeous photos and spend hours sorting and color correcting them and then charge $19 for a 4x6 print (!), but very many of hers are lovely, too.

Tika's start line stay: I started with a "sit" and used that for several years. Maybe one out of 7 or 8 times she took off early, maybe one out of 3 or 4 she stood up and took steps foward. Maybe a third of the time she lay down instead. I decided to just move her back a bit and start out with a down. She seems to "stay" a bit better that way. Still not perfect, but better.

Could anyone ever think that Tika isn't having a great time running out there on course? I love how bright her eyes get, how alert her ears.

You'd think from this that Tika has a super-fast dogwalk. Well--she does, in class, but in competition, she slows to a lope (?) on the down ramp, then to a walk, then LEAPS off the end and I just hope she's in the yellow zone when she does so.

People talk about tunnels being dog missile launchers. Never doubt it for a minute!

Tika runs onto the teeter, waits just before the yellow zone for it to get past the horizontal point, then runs off the end just as it hits the ground. It's not super-fast, but pretty fast. That's not how I trained it, but that's how it ended up working. I haven't used two-on/two-off or any other kind of hold for her on the teeter for years, and she never gets called for flyoffs. I can leave her there and run far afield, because she's developed her method and it's very consistent and I can rely on her completing it properly while I get into position for the next bit.

Boost is one of those toy-focused beasties who will tug on almost anything almost forever. Our competition ritual has her on the Purple Riot Tug until the dog before us runs, then I set that aside and we switch to tugging on the leashie. That excites her even more, having learned the ritual. When I tell her that's all for the leashie, she releases it and starts scoping out the field--she knows we're going into the ring and she gets to RUN RUN RUN! Just before that, I'm scoping out the field to be sure I remember the course.

Boost has an excellent start-line stay in a sit. Once in a while she can't bear it and takes off early, but not nearly as often as Tika did or still does. But I may have worked harder at it with Boost--in class and at home, I still try to remember at least once a session, maybe more, to reward her by returning to her and playing at the start line, or by tossing the toy behind her and releasing her to go get it there. But it's also true that, in all things, Boost's impulse control is much stronger than Tika's. (Note that I'm wearing my semifinalist polo from the Grand Prix national championships in 2000 or 2001, a memory with Jake.)

Boost does NOT slow down on the dogwalk until the very end. The only reason I'm even with her here at the beginning of the down ramp is because I was able to get a huge lead-out ahead of her.

Boost's teeter varies from darned fast to astonishing. The latter is when she runs to the end full tilt so it smashes to the ground and her front feet hit the ground right about the same time it does. She tends to be a little more cautious as time goes on, though; that kind of performance must be pretty jarring although it is also tremendously exciting to watch. I've had people tell me that they want a dog who does teeters like Boost does. That's usually after one of those spectacular teeter displays. But I CANNOT leave her while I run off to do something else; she may well fly off to catch up to me. We have worked on this. Sometimes life is just too exciting to want to come to a stop, however briefly.

Smaller dogs might be able to run or bounce through the weaves, but bigger dogs really do weave their bodies through there. Every organization in the agility universe that I know of has gone to 24"-spaced weaves (instead of the 20"/21" that USDAA still uses), and you can see why it's better to give the dogs' bodies more space, so they're not wrapped quite so tightly. I'll bet USDAA will go to 24" soon despite everything--the only possible reason any more to stick with the narrower spacing is sheer stubbornness. Oh--and just had a discussion on another blog that NADAC doesn't stake their weaves because they want to prove that the dog is actually weaving, not pushing the poles aside. I have many things to say about the safety issue of that, but you can see clearly that, with these staked poles, this large, fast dog definitely cannot push the poles aside.

(Preceding photos by Sarah Hitzeman.)

At the end of every run, Tika burns off the last of her adrenaline by letting out a growl-bark and dive-bombing my foot; she grabs the shoe and tugs and shakes furiously, growling intensely until I manage to gimp out of the ring and detach the dogmouth. I've told the story before of how she had never done it before until the middle of competition during her first year, and it took forever to extinguish it during the run. I tried for a while to redirect that energy to a toy or leash, but since the only place it happens is real trials, that's the only place I can work on it, and I've just given up. As long as we're past the finish line, we seem to be legal.

(Preceding photo by Richard Todd; very low-rez, partial photo screen capture. Will have to buy this photo, I guess, even at $19, because it's such an iconic Tika thing and it's really a nice photo of it.)