Falling... I'm fahhhhhhhhhhlling... I'm fahhhhlling in...

SUMMARY: ...my yard...

Backfill: My comment on a friend's Facebook post this morning, May 5 2020


Friend said (in part):

...Falling in the flower bed and landing on a metal tub overturned with a one-inch rim on the bottom will leave a nice curved impression on one's back while also turning one's back black and red...The hardest part is getting out of bed...after that it's easier but not pain free.


My response:

Oh, ouch.

Pretty sure I didn't fall as much when I was younger as I do now, despite trying to pay close attention and doing my balance exercises... er... most of the time.

 I'll join you having fallen yesterday, tripped over I think a rough piece of concrete, having evaded all the obviously out-of-kilter pieces of concrete. I thought I was going to catch myself as my feet tried to stay under me while I was plunging forward, realized that that path would have me tripping over a 12" garden fence and possible whacking my head against a tree, but when I tried to slow or turn, down I went, and all I could think was, "don't fall on that new knee again!". Landed on side on my hip and elbow.

 Yep, finding a comfortable position last night was challenging and I sure feel it today. Sadly, my bruise has no interesting shape whatsoever, so I feel cheated on that score. (On that sore?) And I cannot possibly post a photo of my bruise on my upper thigh for fear of attracting voyeurs. So, instead, here's a picture of the scene of the crime against my humanity.

 I hope your bruises heal even faster than hoped for.

I avoided the piece of wood that's sticking up. I avoided the offset crack in the concrete. I believe that I somehow caught my foot on the next crack, which is not offset. And then fell at the end of the concrete there.  I should've drawn a chalk line around myself to see where exactly I landed, because I can never exactly remember after I get up, and I think it would be helpful in understanding how I go.  Ah, well, at least you get to see some flowers.

P.S. I can't remember any of the lyrics that go with the "I'm faaaaalllling " repeated that I'm thinking of, and of course so there are a zillion songs with "i'm falling in love with you", so you'll just have to imagine.

Well, Duh.

SUMMARY: Why did I think this was a good idea? Again?

This weekend's trial is a 3-day trial, starting with the 5-class Team event this morning. I did not enter Team--I don't need to take yet another day off work, I certainly don't need any Team Qs with either dog, blah blah. So I *was* going to enter only Saturday and Sunday, and that's how I sent in my entry.

But as a bonus, they also offered Snooker Friday evening. I thought and thought about it, and, well, you know, Tika still needs 3 Snooker Qs to complete her Gold PDCH, and Boost, as always, needs SuperQs. So, I thought, well, really, Monterey's not that far, and I'm planning on commuting anyway, so what if I just drive down Friday evening for the Snooker?

So I signed up at the last possible minute.

Soooooo there I was at 4:00 this afternoon, still having had to miss a couple of hours of billable work, sitting in Friday traffic, thinking, "Monterey is an hour and a frigging half *without* traffic. What was I thinking? What what what what WHAT? Three and a half hours of round trip driving, with one Snooker run for each dog in the middle! WHY did I think this was a good idea?"

And then saying out loud to myself, "Well, SOMEONE better get at least a Q this evening or this whole trip will have been completely wasted." (Along with $23 of gasoline, plus the entry fees, plus the time off work...)

Back in the days when Jake desperately needed Gambles to complete his USDAA championship and Remington needed gambles for his NATCH championship and Standards for his USDAA MAD, I started doing this stupid thing-- this thing like driving to santa barbara for a one-day competition because they offered gamblers or standard. Driving to nevada because they offered gamblers or standard. Like that.

Like it would help.

Because I always ignored the fallacy of this idea, which is, the REASON we need those Qs is because we aren't very good at GETTING them, so if I drive 6 or 8 hours to get to an event, wearing myself out, and then stressing myself into "We'd better get a Q or all this effort would have been wasted," that it would make it MORE LIKELY that we'd get a Q?!?!

So, of course, in Boost's run, we got through a four-red opening with some bobbles but no major mishaps, and 2 to 3 in the opening, and then I called her to go over jump #4, pointed at it and yelled "hup" as I ran pall mall forward, and then because it was right in front of her and very obvious, I turned my head away to check for my next position--and, yes, you guessed it, she ran right past the blessed jump. Not even a Q. Crap!

And then 5 minutes later with Tika, after the fourth red in the opening, I sent her into a straight tunnel--and tripped and fell flat on the ground, tried to get up and stumbled back down. Tika, getting to the other end of the tunnel and not seeing me, discovered that she could see me THROUGH the tunnel so of course came right back through it for an off course and crap!!!!!

So I'm home. Someone please remind me next time I think that something like this is a good idea.

Gah. Well, to bed, then 90 minutes driving back down to monterey in the morning. At least now my canopy and all are set up (except the crates, which I forgot) so I don't have to do THAT tomorrow. Yay, can sleep in an extra 30 minutes.

Sheesh.

Miscellany Again

SUMMARY: Vibrating collar, newspaper fetching, face plants, Border Collies, excellent agility dogs.

My new vibrating collar arrived yesterday; I was so excited! Plugged it in for its 12-hour charge, tried to turn it on this morning, and it doesn't work per the instructions. Half an hour of trying to figure it out, then 20 minutes on the phone with support, and they're going to have to send me a replacement. Sigh. At least I'm getting a new one, but I so wanted to be able to play with it this weekend?

[break]

Y'all probably know that Boost gets the paper from the driveway for me every morning. She loves it; so excited to charge out there, pounce on it (sometimes sliding and a little ripping, but I don't mind), grab it, and come running back in. Sometimes I get the Excited Bark before she goes out.

The other morning, as she was running back up the driveway, a squirrel ran right in front of her and off across the lawn! I saw those ears go up, the tail come up (the "wow, now THIS is REALLY INTERESTING" look) and she veered from her path about a meter or so (in this context, saying "about 2 feet" or "about a yard" both seemed to be ambiguous, hurray for metric), with me thinking, "uh oh", then she veered back in and continued running up the steps to deliver the paper! You go, Border Collie!

Tika was never that kind of dog.

[break]

Speaking of Border Collies--Boost sometimes likes to sleep in her crate in the bedroom. I think when the nights are warmer, she goes there. She hasn't slept in it for a while, but the last two nights, she's gone right in there. Last night, as I climbed into bed, she stuck her head out, stepped out stretching, and I said, "Oh, look, a Border Collie!", trying to be funny, but she completely misunderstood: Went into alarm barking, looking around and at the door in particular. Took a while to convince her that SHE was the border collie I was talking about!

[break]

Last night in class, I did a faceplant. Not doing actual agility, no, of course not. I had just snapped the leash back onto Boost to leave her at the sidelines, turned and stepped away, and somehow a loop of the leash caught my foot and slammed me face forward onto the ground. I've never had this happen before. Usually you *trip* over something--your foot catches and releases as you flail, trying to catch yourself. Nope, it was as if my foot had been suddenly nailed to the ground and the centripetal force slammed me down before I could even get my arms out. Hit my forehead, cheek, nose, glasses, chin, shoulders, hips. A little stunning but on the face of it (ha) almost undoubtedly less painful than landing on my knees or having my arms extended trying to catch myself. I'm quite proud of myself for being able to use centripetal in a sentence.

[break]

Both dogs did great in class last night. Tika and I seemed to be communicating very well. Boost had one little sequence where she knocked 3 bars in a row and we stopped and regrouped. Mostly bars did not come down. And at the end, a tricky run with a couple of back-side-front-cross funny things we didn't get through, and I decided that was enough practicing failures and stopped that quickly. But mostly all really nice, including Boost sending to the weaves 10 feet on the far side of the dogwalk from me.

More false hope for actual Qs in the future.

[break]
No agility again this weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

Assorted Weekend Wrap-Ups from Haute TRACS

SUMMARY: Top Ten, Move Yer Bloomin' Legs, bouncing off judges, tika not sore--

Top Ten points: Although Tika was moving well, we really didn't accrue much in the way of Top Ten points. By the end of Haute TRACS last year, we were well up into the Top Ten ranks in all four classes. This year, we're not going to be even close. So maybe I'll relax about that. Dunno, just not placing nearly as often. Can't pinpoint any particular reason.

Must say I was thrilled that Tika didn't come up sore at all after all those runs through that 3-day weekend, and that's my long-term concern for her.

I, however, was a different matter. On Thursday, I had trouble most of the day getting my legs to move at all--felt like 50-lb weights were tied to my ankles, for no obvious reason. I've experienced this before, though, and I'm concluding that sleep deprivation followed by a 2-hour drive is the reason, because it's almost always on the first morning of a trial. I'm going to have to rethink my current strategy of rising at 4 a.m. to start my away weekends. It's so odd to not feel tired particularly but to not have my legs functioning well.

Friday I was about normally tired but functional.

I already talked about how I deteriorated through Saturday. Man, I fall out of shape so quickly when I'm not doing a lot of regular walking and hiking!

That fall on Saturday was not my only fall for the weekend. During the DAM team Time Gamble, Tika took an obstacle that I hadn't wanted her to take, and in a bit of a panicked effort to save the day, I ran a pretty erratic spur-of-the-moment path and ended up bouncing off the judge, who had finally decided ("finally" after a split second or two of erraticness on my part, said she decided to just hold still and not try to figure out where I was going). As I tried to continue around her, my toe caught in something and I fell straight forward, slightly hitting my knees but taking the brunt on the base of my hands, which felt a little rug-burned on the dry soil. And I don't get up the ground all that quickly any more, either.

The good news is that, despite that, Tika and I saved our run and got our bonus points. Down side was more bruises. I don't think I fall all that often, maybe once or twice a year, so twice in one weekend was pretty radical.

Now that it's Monday evening, I'm thinking that there's no lasting damage from either fall, Tika's still in good shape, and Boost is BORED BORED BORED, so everything seems back to normal.

Saturday at Haute TRACS

SUMMARY: 5 *more* runs for each dog, 4 Qs for Tika, and 2 for Boost.

What does Haute TRACS mean?

Haute Dawgs Agility Group is one dog club; TRACS (Two Rivers Agility Club of Sacramento) is another. They used to have April agility trials on separate, adjacent weekends. Back in 2005, they said, this is silly, we're in the same area (often at the same site) two weekends in a row, why don't we save ourselves a trip home and a teardown/set-up and just combine them? So they've been doing a 4-day event (one club does thurs/fri, the other does sat/sun) ever since.

But it's too much to manage, really, for many reasons, and this will be the last year. Then they're going back to separate weekends. Which is fine by me--four days of agility is wayyyy too much.

Saturday morning

The Gamble was almost a gimmee. I haven't looked at the Q percentage, but I'd guess 80%. And both dogs got it and Qed. I thought I had a decent opening, but muffed it completely with Tika (what an array of errors, and most handler-created), so once again we didn't even place, and I held Boost on all 5 contacts that we did to ensure that she's getting rewarded for sticking them, rather than trying to blast through and get more points.

The Standard I really liked the flow of for my dogs--thanks again, Pat Corl. Others thought it was gnarly (in a complicated way), but it was SUCH a doable Boost course, and both dogs ran it beautifully. Unfortunately, Tika didn't bother with the dogwalk down contact, and Boost knocked a bar, so no Qs. (To show you how gnarly it was, Tika still placed 3rd of 9 dogs without Qing.)

Saturday afternoon

Boost's Jumpers course was another mess--20 faults (I think 2 bars and 2 refusals), although somehow we avoided an off-course Elimination.

Tika's Jumpers didn't feel fast to me, and I wondered whether she was slowing down (I certainly was) but it was smooth--and to my surprise, 7 out of 11 dogs in her group Eliminated. We ended in 1st with a Q. So some nice Top Ten points there.

Snooker

It was a twisty turny course with tons of pull-throughs and run-pasts required, front crosses or rear crosses every direction, multiple-part obstacles, and overlapping numbers (so part of 6 was also part of 5, part of 6 was also part of 7, and so on. I think most people spent most of the walk-through just trying to figure out the closing course, let alone figure out an opening strategy.

The course focused on complex handling rather than speed. Oh, sure--you had to be *very* fast to get all three sevens in the opening, and only a very few dogs managed it with only a second or so to spare. I think most people simply conceded the 51-point high possible score and went for some opening combo other than three sevens. I picked two sevens and a four because it flowed nicely. I was sure it wasn't going to be a super-Q plan with a 4 instead of a 5 or 6, but it proved to be a very good super-Q plan--

--except with Boost it was another dang Super-Q heartbreaker. In general, it was a Boost course because it required paying close attention to the handler, which she does to a fault. Mostly it helped us on this one, although she did the "this jump"? dance on TWO reds in the opening and also in the opening blew past the weave entry--no excuse for it, it was a very easy entry--and we had to go back for it. She did every complex handling thing I asked her to do AND kept her bars up, but we missed completing the course by about 2 seconds--so avoiding any ONE of those three bobbles would've given us a super-Q. Even with 43 22" dogs entered, dogs were Super-Qing with 44 points, and we ended with 41 instead of 48. Crap!

Tika nailed it, but by now my legs, hip, and knee were all giving me great grief. Muscles were weak and not responding well, I was tripping over my own feet, knee was giving way under me on some steps. I was late on several crosses, wasting time. Still, we completed it with only a couple of seconds to spare. We were two seconds slower than another dog with our same points, so we were a Super-Q and 2nd place.

But I was wiped out. With the next Steeplechase still to run.

Steeplechase and an experiment with alternative handlers

We had a break while the course was built, but one hip (NOT the one that has been paining me for months) and a blister had me limping during the walkthrough and the muscle fatigue was obvious. I could barely conceive of running a dog at all, let alone two dogs on what was a really wide-open course with aggressive front crosses required.

I briefly pondered scratching both dogs, but I had to stay anyway for (a) the Bay Team meeting and (b) a potlock dinner with friends, and besides, durnit, I paid $20 each to enter that class!

I asked our sometimes-pairs-partner, Killy's Human Dad, whether he'd run Boost (since Killy has had many of the same "this jump?" issues), with the observation that I had no idea whether she'd run with someone else. He took her off to try to play with her and get her to work with him, but she wanted her Human Mommie, dang babydog. I could see her in a sit-stay at the practice jump on the far side of the steeplechase field, and when he finally convinced her to move, she moved straight across the course towards me. Fortunately, no other dog was running at the time.

Maybe she'd have been better if I'd gone with them. Don't know. MUST have my dogs learn to work with other people. Anyway, we gave up on that idea.

So.

Boost ran first. I did a lead-out pivot after a broad jump to a tunnel, which she handled very nicely, but then I needed to do an immediate second front cross after that between the tunnel and the weaves, and my legs didn't work, and my heel caught on the grass or my other foot or I don't know, and down I went onto my hip (the one that was already making me limp). I got slowly to my feet, discovered that I wasn't fatally damaged, and picked up the run where I left off. I missed a front cross that I really needed, she came to a complete stop at a jump on a rear cross (Jeez, wouldn't you think it would be easier to just TAKE it when you're moving full speed?), and as I had expected, ran past the last jump. Swung her around in two attempts to take it and finally did--

So we had no *recorded* errors, but a run time of twice the winning dog's time.

I must say, though, that she did two BEAUTIFUL sets of weaves, including one where I basically sent her ahead of me and peeled off to try to prevent the last-jump problem (she was still faster than I could be), and she stuck her Aframe on a rear cross where she couldn't see where I was going. AND kept her bars up AND stuck her start line.

Tika's run was not smooth. Poor dog crashed into me TWICE when I couldn't get the front crosses in that I needed. I felt so bad for her. I just couldn't physically do it, I was so tired. She amazed me after the first crash, because it pushed her past the right side of the weave entry, and she basically made a u-turn in about 18 inches of space and still made the entry! Such a good girl! We completed the course successfully only a few seconds behind the winning dog for a Q, so we could've competed the following day in Round 2 for money.

But, yeah, I was beat, no way I was sticking around. Besides, MUTT MVR was already packed up. Maybe with a rest overnight I could've run OK at 7:30 in the morning, and she usually does well in Round 2, BUT.

I was very glad to be home in my own bed.

Summary

Tika: 13 Qs towards her LAA-Gold out of 17 chances, two firsts, four 2nds, four 3rds. Qs in DAM and 3 individual DAM classes, Grand Prix, two Steeplechase, two gamblers, pairs relay, one Standard, one Jumpers, Super-Q in Snooker. (So didn't Q in Snooker, Standard, Jumpers, DAM snooker.)

Boost: 3 Qs (including DAM) out of 17. Mostly solid contacts, mostly solid start-line stays, never popped out of her weaves. And an UNbelievably good table-down where I backed up about 30 feet away from her during the count and she never lifted even a single elbow. W00t! Qs in DAM, gamblers, snooker.

Me: I have not been doing miles of hiking and walking that I had done the previous couple of years. Really paid for it this weekend in on-my-feet endurance. Plus I worked as Crew Chief instead of Score Table, so was on my feet virtually all day Thursday & Friday, except for very quick breaks. Must. Get. Moving. Again.