Agility Titles

SUMMARY: Regrouping for Boost.

(Repost with corrected numbers.)

Do I compete in agility to have fun with my dogs? Yes. Do I compete because it's a good physical and mental workout for me and for them? Yes. Do I compete because I like being outdoors and hanging out with many good friends? Yes. Because I love seeing dogs and handlers working together like clockwork and demonstrating the best that they can offer? Yes.

But I also do it for ribbons and titles. Just sayin'.

Somewhere up there in the fog is the Power Paws agility field.
Plus some mountains and similar large objects.

Now that Tika is out of the picture and will never get her Platinum Lifetime, drat it all, my current next best bet for ribbons or titles is Boost, but we have not done that well as a team most of the time.

Now that I have my energy and enthusiasm back for training a bit, we'll see what happens. Because, for me, competing and repeatedly failing to Q is not fun. Handle it better with a young dog with whom I see progress. But not an 8 1/2 year old dog when we should both know better.

So, again this morning I rented the agility field--getting up there by 8 a.m., groan! --to practice having Boost run on ahead of me. We'll see how that goes in our one day of competition tomorrow.

Looking back down through the fog towards where I took the first photo.
Last Saturday at 8 a.m., it was scorching. I'm not complainin' about the fog!

Anyway, just a quick regroup on titles that Boost and I *could* earn in the Championship program if our Q rate vastly improves:

Title Category	Current level	Next Level	Have Qs	More Qs needed
Masters Standard	SAM-Bronze	Silver	21	4
Masters Relay	RM-Gold	Platinum	39	11
Masters Gamblers	GM-Bronze	Silver	16	9
Masters Jumpers	JM	Champion	7	3
Masters Snooker	-	Champion, Bronze, and Silver	26, incl. 2 SuperQs	1 SuperQ
ADCH (championship)	-	ADCH	Everything but...	1 SuperQ
ADCH	-	Bronze (triple ADCH)	Everything but...	1 SuperQ and 8 Jumpers Qs
Tournament	Silver	Gold	31	4 (any mix of Steeplechase, Grand Prix, and DAM Team)

There are hills beyond those trees? Really?

So, the point is, if I want to satisfy my own cravings, I must concentrate and keep up the energy and enthusiasm and hope that my aging body lets me keep going. Boost is quite willing to keep at it.

See y'all on the other side of tomorrow.

The sun hides in the fog, but wait--
I see a tiny round speck that is the sun, perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel?

Can Hardly Wait For September

SUMMARY: Here's where I might be going...

Just a little hint.

I want to be there NOW!

Semiretirement

SUMMARY: Time to scale Tika back. Dunno about Boost.

This was another weekend where Tika didn't look like she was having a lot of fun in agility. After the previous competition where she was back to grabbing my feet at the end of her runs, this weekend she did it only twice, and only half-heartedly (token grab and release). She wasn't fast. She didn't want to play before the runs and I couldn't jolly her into it. She stretched out fine, so no obvious signs of soreness.

And, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, her ears came up and her eyes sparkled and she ran full-tilt after the frisbee on saturday morning, saturday evening, sunday morning, sunday midday, and sunday at the end of the trial on the lawn where the rings had been.

I'd already decided after that last DAM team tournament that we're not doing team any more (with one exception to team with our long-time teammate Brenn who's also briefly coming out of team retirement), because the last couple of teams she's not been getting the individual Qs, and I don't really want to have to do 5 runs with her to get one team Q. And we don't need team Qs for *any* reason except Lifetime Achievement Awards (LAA)--and even that is iffy whether we'll finish the 58 more that we need for Platinum. It might be doable, but I guess I'm going to do it more gradually.

And, in fact, way more gradually. Since I don't know whether it's some soreness that doesn't show up in general stretching and play, or been-there-done-thatness, or thyroid, or what, I'm going to gradually do fewer classes with her and see how that goes.

Bay Team's May USDAA is this coming weekend, so here's how I've adjusted our entries as of last night, and why:

• Standard: 2 runs, doing those. She needs 3 more in my quest for her PDCH-Gold. When she gets those, I might stop doing standard, since the escalating battle for her to go down on the table could make it very hard for us to get Qs and obviously she just doesn't want to, for whatever odd reason, after 10 years of doing tables. The awesome Hobbes Michalski also went into greater and greater table refusal mode as he got older, and this weekend the awesome Heath LeClair's human dad said that he's considering ceasing Standards with him since he also no longer wants to go down on the table. As someone who no longer wants to sit down on the floor because it's so hard to get up, I might understand.
• Gamblers: 2 runs, canceled both. She used to be my Jedi Gambler girl--Gamblers was the first thing she reached Perf Gold in-- but between my miscues and her hearing, since she got that 35th Q, we've gotten only 1 out of the following 8 (12% Q rate). (Took her 58 tries for those 35, so 60% Q rate.)
• Jumpers: 2 runs, doing those. She always liked jumpers--no pesky weaves or contacts; yesterday's jumpers is one of the only two classes where she grabbed my foot this weekend; she still Qs pretty regularly.
• Snooker: 1 run, doing that. She needs 5 more in my quest for her PDCH-Gold. They don't have to be super-Qs, and I'm trying to pick easy, flowing courses now where I used to always pick fun, challenging ones because my excitement would get her excited, too.
• Pairs: Canceled that. Actually worked out well because our dog partner Chaps is feeling a little wonky and his human mom already scratched him from everything except pairs for this weekend, so we talked and we're now both scratching pairs. I feel less comfortable doing pairs now because I'm now feeling like Tika and I are an unreliable pairs partner, after several years of feeling pretty reliable.
• Steeplechase: Doing that. Well, she's not fast, but so far she's mostly still Qing and mostly still bringing home a small pittance of $. Or everyone else could crap out or scratch, like this weekend, and we win by default. [grin]
• Grand Prix: Canceled that. Her Q rate is actually pretty high still in GP, but I just don't want to run that many runs right now. Probably if/when I stop doing Standard with her, I'll put her back into GP. So glad they did away with the table in GP (about 10 years ago).

Boost: Dunno. After my angst after Sunday's steeplechase round 2, I asked why I keep doing this to myself. And the answer was: HER excitement, bright eyes, and speed--and the thrill of the half courses in which everything clicks and she's flying around the course and I'm living at the edge being her guiding teammate.  Curses on the other halves of those courses where it all goes to pieces.

I've been so close to shutting down her number of runs, too, but then her amazing gambler's opening on Saturday, her jumpers Q on Sunday, her oh-so-nearly-perfect snooker on sunday, things like that-- those random rewards that keep telling me, hey we CAN do this sport and someday she WILL get that 5th jumpers leg and two more super-Qs!

Jumpers Qs came for us in April 2010, November 2010, August 2011, and April 2012. An average of one every 8 months. So it could even happen this year. [sighs again]

Well, we'll see how this coming weekend goes and gradually shape our strategy.

USDAA, CPE, Precious Weekends, and Precious Dogs

SUMMARY: Big decision #1. What to do?

Here's what I'm thinkin'.

Tika is doing pretty good for a going-on-11 dog. She still tugs full out, still runs full out after the toy or frisbee. But I'm seeing signs that signal "old dog" in so many subtle ways. First, there's the mixed speed in competition--still not entirely positive whether it's soreness, eyes, hearing, or what. Then, around the house, there are little things: She doesn't always immediately stand up when I do any more. She doesn't always get up out of her bed when there's food offered unless she's sure it's worth her while (and this from a dog whose #1 priority will always be food). She's been reluctant to come upstairs for bed at night--not sure whether that's soreness, tired of having Boost scratching off and on all night (me, too), or really is more comfortable on her bed downstairs for some reason. She sometimes does the wrong "trick" when I give her a command, but if I say it louder, she gets it right. Maybe just confusion or lack of practice, maybe hearing. Dunno.

Just things like that.

So I'm pondering what to chase in terms of titles.

My working theory is that she'll continue to be happy and healthy doing agility for another year, and that then, that's probably it for us. I mean, I could get lucky and she'd keep on going--but here are the statistics from our September trial:

Age	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Total
# of dogs	9	35	31	56	42	41 (Boost)	39	35	27	14 (Tika)	5	3	2	1	340

The odds aren't good that she'll be going a lot longer. Even another year with her in agility would be precious.

So: Do I cram in as much as I possibly can in one year? Remember that I've discovered that my nonagility weekends are also precious; I've been much happier at 14 weekends a year than I was getting to be at 20-some-odd weekends a year. I'd probably be happier with even less.

CPE choice

A C-ATE (CPE agility something extraspecial, or whatever), which is wayyyyyyyy beyond a championship, requires roughly 250 Qs at the Championship level--that means clean runs, unlike Tika's C-ATCH championship, which required only 20ish Qs (at that time), most of which didn't have to be clean. This makes it like a USDAA LAA silver in number of Qs. However, it's also THE highest title you can get in CPE.

Tika currently has 178 Qs, so needs maybe another 70ish-- Actually it's a bit more involved than that--it requires 5000 points and she currently has 3855, so 1145 to go. There are 7 different classes, worth between 15 and 25 points for each Q. Soooo if we could do all 25-point classes, she'd need only another 46 Qs. Of course they won't all be 25-pointers. So, say, 50-60 Qs to finish.

We've been doing only one or two CPEs a year since I cut back on agility. But Tika's Q rate in CPE is generally pretty high, 80-90%. So *if* we could go to all CPEs that offered 5 classes a day (10/weekend), that would be "only" about 5-7 weekends... hmmmm... but I'm thinkin' that most clubs only offer 8 classes a weekend. That bumps it up to 8-10 more weekends.

Either way, that's a LOT of weekends to add to my dozen USDAAs/year. I don't really want to go back up to 20+ weekends of agility in a year.

However, add to that: It would be nice to earn a championship with Boost, and I think we could do the CPE one in about the same amount of time that Tika could get her CATE. For her C-ATCH, she needs:
1 jumpers
2 jackpot
3 each wildcard and snooker
6 colors
8 standard (and most clubs offer at least 2/weekend)

It's doable. The Colors Qs are the ones that are killing me at the moment. But, still, yes, doable.

I just have to decide I want to do a bunch more expensive CPEs (because I don't get free entries at any of them except bay team's). Now that I've actually punched in the numbers, hmmm, maybe I'll go for it. Of course I'm also trying to get Qs in USDAA for Tika's platinum LAA.

USDAA choice

As I discussed in A Woman, A Plan, A Dog, I figure that in a year with 13 weekends of USDAA, Dogs Willing, we could finish her Platinum LAA. That's THE highest title you can get in USDAA.

I'd like to do that, too.

But 13 weekends of USDAA and 10 weekends of CPE in a year, whoa!, that's as bad as my worst year ever--er, I mean, as many weekends as my busiest agility year ever.

It is true that I could work on the CPE title later; she doesn't have to be as fast, and jumps only 20" rather than 22" in USDAA. Hmmm, and maybe (have to double-check the rules) I could move her to Specialist, which actually jumps 16", and keep going, so concentrate on USDAA first and then go back to CPE. But that pulls me out of my tentative plan to just do agility for another year.

Also, that's a lot to expect from a dog's longevity and health. Plus, really would be nice to have a CH for Boost.

Pondering

So--thinking--

A Woman, A Plan, A Dog--god an alp an amowa!

SUMMARY: I'm not so good at clever palindromes; am I better with plans?

So here's what I started thinking about last week:

Tika has (to be exact) 402 Qs in USDAA Masters/Perf 3. She needs 500 for her Lifetime Platinum, the highest one can go. She's averaged just under 4 per day of competition this last year. So she needs 26 days of competition.

By this time next year, if I keep up at my same pace and Tika and I both stay healthy, we'll have done about 13 weekends of trials, 2 days each on average--so, voila, a year from now, dog willing, Tika will be at Platinum LAA.

Tika will also be 11 and a half.

If Boost can't get 2 snooker super-Qs and 2 jumpers Qs by then for her ADCH, really, there'd be no more point in competing with her in USDAA.

Here is the plan that's forming--a year from now, take a break from agility for a year, or two, or three. Spend all the money and weekends and vacation time that I'm now spending on agility doing some of the vacations and traveling that I used to do and that I want to do.

The plan is still forming. And, so far, it relies on an assumption of continued Tika health and enthusiasm. And on an assumption that I won't continue losing my head and doing stupid things like leaving her collar on.

More, as I mull it over.