The Agony and the Ecstacy

SUMMARY: Another USDAA weekend under the belt.

(Photos by Erika Maurer.)

What a weekend.

Weather was perfect.

Friends were fun.

Both dogs were healthy and happy and eager to be running.

Tika picked up 6 more Qs towards her LAA Platinum (out of 9 Qable runs), pretty good work. Now only 26 to go. Even eked out a Snooker Super-Q somehow, and a first place in the second Snooker (although not a Super-Q). And a 1st place in Steeplechase Round 2 (made easier by the fact that we were the only team who ran in our height class).

Both dogs qualified in Steeplechase Round 1, and both brought home a little cash from Round 2! That never happens! (Together, the amount almost pays for one dog's entry into Steeplechase. But that's not the point.)

Boost did not knock one. Single. Bar. In. Eleven. Runs. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. Very very happy and I don't know what to credit that to. Someone joked, "is she on drugs?", and I said yes, but just antibiotics--oh, and hydroxizine for itching--and suddenly I had this flashback to some other weekend where she didn't knock bars and was on some kind of drug and I wondered whether that affected anything. Wish I could find supporting info for that memory. Will have to figure out how to search for it among all my posts. Jeez, it would be terrible if the only time she ran that well was when she was drugged up somehow.

Boost's contacts were all perfect.

She and I had some amazing runs. Including:

A Jumpers Q!!!! That's 5 and her Jumpers Master title! I thought I'd never see the day!

So, yeah, there were a lot of very, very happy things indeed.

And then, there was the agony.

The Jumpers run that Boost did perfectly on and then, 3 obstacles before the end, I put my front cross in the wrong place and pushed her past a jump. Augh!

The Snooker run that we did the opening perfectly and really fast and then, on the spot where I knew I'd have trouble (threading between two jumps to get to the correct one), I tried pulling her to me and it didn't work; she went off course. (I ran Tika after that and, instead, did sort of a front crossy thing and it worked much better. Sigh.) So another handling error.

And then ending the day Sunday:

• The Standard run that was perfect and gorgeous and fast and driven and we were flying and doing all these complicated things with perfect execution-- except in one spot where she was ahead of me going into the chute, which fed into a jump right in front of her and she ran towards it but then turned back to me to see where I was before going over it--refusal! Right in front of her! And I was running towards it! And saying "Go! Hup!" Why why why why why?
• The Grand Prix run that was A-MAZ-ING through 18 of the 20 obstacles, I was running on air, it felt so astonishingly world-champion-like, to the Aframe, where she was stopped perfectly. Only 2 jumps to the end.  I calmly walked through a front cross so that we could do the last two obstacles in a nice smooth arc, released her--and she was so busy looking at me that she never even looked at the first jump, which actually saved her because the judge didn't call a refusal when she almost backed into it her way towards it. Finally went over it, but then, running straight at the last jump, she got so busy looking at me AGAIN that she kind of peeled around in front of me and pushed backwards past the plane of the jump, and so we DID get a fault, on the last *@&*!* jump! Why why why why why? 
• The Snooker run that we did the opening perfectly and really fast and got through 4 in the closing and all we had to do for #5 was run in a straight line and I did and she was so busy looking at me that, when she realized there was a jump in front of her, she dodged around it! Why why why why WHY? I was there to work it, my line was perfect, my feet were in the right direction, I was running through it, not stopping... Auuuuughhhh!

And those were my last 3 runs of the weekend, so those are the ones that really stick in my head, even now, 4 hours later. I just don't understand. I can't think of anything that I did wrong on those, and I don't understand why those jumps were any different from any of the other more challenging obstacles we'd done all the way through the rest of the courses--those were the *easy* bits in each case!

Of course I have no video to analyze.

Deep quivering sigh.

Oh, my beautiful Boost, it is SO nice when you run fast and well and take obstacles and I can run and be there to work every jump, but why does it suddenly fall apart like that? People watching me said that maybe I was too excited, but actually in both those cases I felt completely calm because those parts were almost gimmees. And I really don't believe that I did anything wrong on any of them, and no one identified anything specific that I did in any of them.

Anyway.

I am trying to bask in all the amazing runs where Boost and I did 95% of each run correctly and fast and accurately and like an actual masters level champion winning team. And the lack of bars down. And the Jumper's title.

But that Thing that I don't understand, that Mysterious Why, will drive me nuts forever.

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.

Weekend Steeplechase and Grand Prix Report

SUMMARY: with videos

Actually I don't have all that much to report.

SW Regional Steeplechase Round 1

I think the toughest spot was getting the dog into the right (right) side of the tunnel, but if you launched the dog to the jump after the Aframe and then turned and ran straight (as I did), you'd be aiming the dog straight at the correct side of the tunnel. It was a smooth and doable course--about half the dogs made it to Round 2.

Tika did fine, placing 5th of 16. But then, so did most everyone else in her 22" Performance group: 10 advanced to the second round.

However, in watching videos, I notice that she seems to hesitate or slow in several places in such a way that makes me think "she's not getting the right information from me fast enough." I've thought for quite a while that she's slowed down to accommodate me rather than me learning to handle her speed (and I fear that Boost may be getting to the same place, dang). This video shows it in several places. (And again we won't mention standing up at the start line to sniff for treats--)



Boost's run--well--some nice bits, except when I had to yank on every invisible rope in the universe to get her to come in over the 3rd jump in the pinwheel--a known issue, when she's blasting full speed ahead and I ask her to come back in to me (e.g., with serpentines, too), she keeps runnning in a big loop rather than trying to come in over the jump that's between us. And immediately thereafter runs past the 4th jump in the pinwheel. Yeh, could be she's not getting the info she needs either. Plus two knocked bars, the second on a rear cross after which she pulled in to me instead of going over the next jump that was, yes, right in front of her.



For comparison, here's our classmate Kicks! winning that class (22" chamionship). 30 of the 60 22" dogs moved up.

Grand Prix Final

I tried to push myself and Tika as hard as I could. Funny, watching the video, I look like I'm just loping along, but I *felt* like I was running all out. I clapped my hands a whole lot more than I think I usually do. Also funny, Tika's weaves look fast in the video, but the difference between hers and Boost's is amazing--with Boost, I have to run full speed to get to the other end before she does, but with Tika, I just jog gently.

We ended up 3rd, but the Malinois and Border Collie who beat us were 5 (!) and 4 seconds faster than we were. Still, we easily qualified for the Nationals Semifinals--but, no, we're not going to Kentucky.

(Will add map when available.)

Whoa, What Happened Here?

SUMMARY: Did Boost's Good Twin finally make an appearance?

In class last night, Boost and I did three runs and three weave-pole follow-the-leader challenges. She was perfect! I was, well,ok, almost perfect. There was one challenge where I suddenly remembered that I was doing it wrong as she was going over a jump and she knocked it as I jumped in her way, but I won't count that against her.

Otherwise, no bars down, no refusal, no runouts, not even any hesitations. Sure, some wide turns when I wasn't quite where I needed to be, but, jeez, clean run after run after run never happens!

Except with Tika! Whose third run last night disintegrated into a complete disaster and I finally just left the field with her. (But I cut her and me a lot of slack because she does so well normally.) (And also, oh, yeah, she found a bag full of another dog's dinner and ate it about 10 or 15 minutes before that, so maybe she was just a little, er, oversated.)

Not only that, but *I* felt good. Knees good, hips good, legs good, didn't get tired or winded. And that's refreshing for a change.

So maybe not practicing is a good thing??

I hope this all keeps up through this weekend! Hope hope hope.

Itchy Itchy Itchy But Agility Progress

SUMMARY: Boost scratching and does well in class.

Last night was our weekly agility class. Boost did pretty good (except for bars bars bars). No refusals or runouts except for the usual, *normal* kinds of handling issues that one might have. We even got a compliment from the instructor on how much Boost seems to have improved.

Here's the thing: We didn't go to class last week. My agility practice for the last three weeks has added up to approximately the following:

• A few weave pole exercises.

So, go figure.

We (and others) got called out on how sloppy our contacts have become--a known issue with Boost, who has for some time been stopping on the dogwalk with her feet off the side where I am (if I'm behind her) rather than straight forward, and has sometimes progressed to just coming off the side entirely. Something else to work on, besides maybe going back to bar-knocking drills.

Neither of which, frankly, I still have any particular urge to do.

Meanwhile, Boost has been scratching like crazy. This happened last year briefly, but this year has made a ferocious return appearance. Tried benadryl for a couple of weeks, no luck. Like, as in, scratching for 10 minutes straight in the middle of the night.

Saw the vet Wednesday morning and talked about the different levels of treatment, and his preference is to try things with the least side effects first, which I agree with.  He said the doggy dermatologist reports that this hay fever season is extremely high, so dogs with any kind of sensitivity or slight irritant are more likely to dive right into the deep end of reaction.

So she got a shot of dexamethasone for short-term relief to try to break the cycle of scratching, a prescription for hydroxyzine, and a spray bottle of GentaSpray (gentamicin sulfate with betamethasone valerate).

Well, that worked great--for about a day and a half (probably the Dex), and then Boost scratched off and on, sometimes with insane intensity, most of the night last night. I'll give the treatments another day--erk, well, hmm, another day would put me on the weekend, wouldn't it. Hm.

Meanwhile, I have this to say: Zzzzz.

Weekend Hopes and Fears

SUMMARY: Thoughts before signing off for 3 days of USDAA agility.

I haven't been working Tika very much. I hope she's got the stamina for 16 or 17 runs.

On the other hand, after we came home from class last night, and the dogs lay around for a little while, Boost got up limping. Yikes. I stopped her, rubbed her a bit, and she walked away normally. Maybe her leg just fell asleep. One can hope that's all it is.

I actually remembered to charge up the Dremel and trim the dogs' toenails today. Yay me.

Car is packed, camera batteries are charged, oh dang I always forget the clothes until the last minute. Better go do that--

Still don't really know how this danged new videocamera works for downloading so I can erase everything. Maybe I better figure that out right now. I'm supposed to be in bed in the next half hour and still have to shower, too. Ah, well, maybe shower in the morning, instead.

This weekend:
Two each Standard, Gamblers, Snooker, and Jumpers. One Pairs Relay.
Tournaments: Grand Prix. Steeplechase (and Steeplechase Round 2 if we qualify). DAM Team, so five more runs: Team Standard, Gamblers, Snooker, Jumpers, and Relay.

I'm crew chiefing this weekend insead of score tabling. Exhausted me last time I did that. I hope *I* have the stamina for 32-34 runs and keeping the ring staffed! Three days ago, my knee for no apparent reason was so sore that I could barely walk on it. Iced it repeatedly. Kept me up most of the night in pain. Finally slept--when I woke with the new day, it felt fine. At least, as fine as now-a-days normal. Hips haven't been too bad. Keeping fingers crossed (and assuming that won't make my fingers sore).

I've actually been working on Boost's go-on--working on getting her looking ahead at all times and moving forward without always looking at me first. Hoping to fix some of the refusals and runouts. Seems to be working, but boy, she's still whacking those bars down. Trying to be patient.

There is only one title possible this weekend: Boost's Bronze Standard Champion (15 Masters Qs) IF she Qs in both Standards. I don't hold high hopes for that. So I guess I can relax and enjoy the show. From right in the middle of it.

Hope you all have a lovely holiday weekend.

Gamblin' Boost

SUMMARY: Q in Team, good and almost great in Gamblers, and... that's it.

Boost's story this weekend included many chapters of knocked bars, popping out at the end of the weaves, and checking back with me constantly instead of taking jumps. Oh, yeah, and several runouts. Drat. Back to square two on all counts. How many times do I have to fix her weave poles, fer crying out loud? But she was fast and happy and her start line stay and contacts were spot on.

Saturday's classes consisted entirely of the three-dog DAM Team event. (All 3 dogs do 4 individual events, then combine for a relay, and the combined scores determine whether you earn a Team Q.) Recently, USDAA started allowing your performance in the individual events to count towards Qs for your Lifetime Achievement awards, but you have to be within (are you tired of this formula yet?) 15% of the average scores of the top 3 dogs in your height/class.

In Team Standard, Boost knocked 2 bars and popped the weaves, which I had to fix. Not fatal in Team; it's off courses in Team that kill you. Both her teammates did better than Boost and also ran without off courses, which is a pretty good grouping for Team.

In Team Gamblers, Boost had a pretty good opening--would've been better without 2 knocked bars and me forgetting which side of the teeter I wanted to be on to pick up another 5 points, oh, well, and then we were in perfect position for the gamble. We picked up a 20-point gamble (there were 10, 20, and 30 point choices), which was pretty good as not many dogs at all got the 20 or 30 pointers and quite a few didn't even manage the 10. We ended up placing 4th in 22" out 40 dogs, and her teammates were close behind her at 7th and 12th, so after Standard & Gamblers our team was in 4th place out of 25 teams.

Team Snooker knocked us back a bit, we thought--all three of us scored in the 30-to-40 range (with 4 reds available meaning that in theory 59 points were possible), but a late rush of dogs not wanting to do well in Snooker left us down a bit overall but not by much. (Boost spent the opening doing runouts and "what, THIS obstacle?" dances and in the closing got whistle for running past a jump.)

Team Jumpers we were all a bit worried about; very fast dogs with a couple of really wide-open stretches of just plain running plus tough call-offs. Boost knocked 2 bars and popped out at the end of the weaves (sound familiar?) but we did not off-course. Both our teammates Eed with off courses, so even our crappy run turned out to be the saving run for us.

And in the 3-dog relay, Boost knocked only one bar and, just for variation, headed into the weave poles but turned back at the last moment to see what I was up to, earning a refusal, but her teammates ran very nicely and again none of us off-coursed, which is also excellent for Team Relay. We ended up Qing fairly solidly, placing 7th of 25 teams after combining the scores for all 5 classes. Thanks, Lucy and Beadle!

Sunday, in Grand Prix, I apparently moved too soon and pulled Boost past a serpentine jump for a runout, then getting her back over it, she knocked the bar and then another one (2 jumps again). She did do the weaves OK, but the preceding obstacle was the chute and she somersaulted out of that--never seen her do that before--so it wasn't a pretty approach to the weaves.

In Steeplechase, we had two sets of weaves. She knocked--yes--2 bars, did the first set of weaves beautifully, ran past 2 jumps that we had to go back for, and then the last set of weaves she popped out at the end again and I didn't catch it before going on, so we Eliminated there, too.

Master Snooker wasn't awful--we placed 8th of 32 dogs, but it still wasn't a Q (one point short) and that's for two reasons: (1) She knocked a bar on a 7-pointer in the opening, so we didn't get those 7 points, and then she spent half the course checking back in with me instead of just &#*@(% going over the jump in front of her! Wasted SO much time. So by the time we got to #7 in the closing-- a 4-part combo--by the time she knocked a bar in the middle of it (2 bars again), our time's-over buzzer sounded. But so many people crapped out so early in this snooker, as I said, it was still a pretty good run given this particular course.

Master Gamblers. Sighhhhhh. Do you ever see a gambler's opening where the high-point course is so obvious to you that you think it's most everyone's going to do the same thing and the really really fast & good dogs are going to get in even more obstacles than you, and then you watch almost everyone do something different from yours and come in much lower than your plan--which should be 48 if you do it absolutely perfectly, although I really expected 47? Like people were getting in the 32-42 range mostly.

Well. So. It was our kind of course. And we did it perfectly right up to the obstacle before the gamble. That was a jump that would've been our 48th point. I actually expected the whistle (to start the gamble) to blow before we got to it, and I shot her over it and the whistle still hadn't blown, so I changed direction abruptly trying to figure out what other obstacles I could take, blown away that we still had time left over, and she knocked the bar.

And we were racing *away* from the gamble when the whistle finally blew. Turned and headed back, but we approached awkwardly to the first jump, and she did a bunch of "this jump?" kinds of things without actually looking straight at it, so the judge didn't call a refusal, and she sailed over it without knocking it.

The gamble included three jumps and a set of weaves, and the way we'd been going, I didn't expect her to actually do it, or to do it with faults. But she went fromthe jump to the weaves, did the weaves perfectly, did the next jump perfectly, and then danced around in front of me instead of going to the last jump, and when I finally got her turned around, the whistle blew as she was in the air for the last jump. All that wasted time-- just about a second over time. So no Q.

BUT out of 70 Masters dogs, one dog got 48 in the opening and one other got 47 in the opening. So I certainly can't complain about our execution on that part of the course!

The weather provided off and on rain showers all day Saturday and into Sunday morning, but not awful downpours. The weather was cold but not anywhere near freezing.

Tika got to come out of her crate to practice tricks instead of doing agility, but probably not nearly as much as I should've done with her. No sign of sore toe, but Saturday mid-morning she came out of her crate hunched over and not wanting to do tug-of-war like she does when her neck gets sore. And I'd been blaming doing agility for aggravating the neck. Apparently not. She remained off the rest of the day, but Sunday was absolutely fine again.

It occurred to me that Remington exhibited the same kind of seemingly-out-of-nowhere hunching over and then the next day fine several times before we discovered that he had that hemangiosarcoma tumor on his heart. It's a little scary, actually, how much it reminded me of that. Now I have to decided whether I want to pay the huge bucks for a screening ultrasound to find out whether there's anything there. I'm particularly sensitive since we've had so many dogs in our club die of hemangiosarcoma in the last year or two.

Hate to end the post on that worried note-- But we are all home safely, dogs are already dozing off (even though they got all that great crate rest at the trial and on the drive home), so I will sign off and head to my own comfy bed now, too.

Boost's Speed and some Gambling Strategies

SUMMARY: Boost is very fast. Very. But does it ever show?

Hint #1 that she's very fast: Weaves. Jim B suggested in class last week that I should arrange a 60-weave-pole challenge at a future trial to see whether she could break the record. That was unsolicited, and a nice thing to say! Now that her weaves seem to be fixed again. I tried to find Official Scoring Info for the 60 Weave Pole Challenge, but it doesn't seem to be on the Clean Run site any more. Anyone know who's handling that event and tracking of results these days?

Hint #2 that she's very fast: Gamblers. When we can get our act together. I try to pick courses that we can do without bobbles so that we're not rehearsing garbage. It's not always easy to do, and sometimes is a lower-point course than ideal. But when we get it--we get the "how the * did you get xx points?!" from handlers of other very fast dogs. We were SO close last weekend, but no cigar.




In the walkthrough, I had picked out about 3 course plans that I liked, with some variant openings on each, and hadn't entirely decided which to do. Plans with the dogwalk were right out for Tika, because her dogwalk is so unreliable. Plans with the teeter were iffy for Boost--although her teeter is really fast, there was no good approach to it for us at our current performance level.

I was watching the scores come through before I ran. A talented friend with 2 fast dogs ran early and scored 60 and 61 points, more than any other dogs to that point. I hadn't added up the points from my plans; I usually don't, just try to maximize the number of higher-point obstacles and assume that it'll result in a bunch of points. But I commented to her that I wanted to know what her plan was, so she told me. It mapped almost perfectly to one of my options--mine had one more obstacle at the beginning--and I decided that if she was getting to the right place with her dogs with one fewer obstacle, I was probably overreaching.

Boost and I were not perfect on course. First, she ran under the tire going from the Aframe to the chute--that cost us 3 points. Then, after the chute, I had trouble getting her onto the dogwalk and ended up having to spin her around me to line her up again. Must have wasted at least 2 seconds. At the other end of the dogwalk, our "perfect" ability to say "left tunnel!" and have her blast right in there failed, as instead she came off the dogwalk towards me, and so we had to bobble a bit to get her into the #7 end of the tunnel--another second or two wasted.

Everything else was lovely, but the whistle blew before she exited the #12 tunnel (I thought that she was out when the whistle blew, but we didn't get our 3 points for it so apparently not). So our total points for the run was 60 (including the gamble). If she hadn't run under the tire, and if we hadn't had silly bobbles at both ends of the dogwalk, she'd have had at least 66. Which would've been 5 more points than anyone else at the trial. Now, OK, Luka and Beadle and Heath and Cap weren't there, but damnit I still think we'd have been in there.

At the start of gamble, we were in perfect position and she did 1-4 perfectly, but came in to me before #5 and it took several lonnnng heart-stopping seconds to get her to finally go out. BUT because we were in good position and because she's so fast, we achieved it with about 3 seconds to spare.

Hint #3 that we have a whole truckload of work to do: Snooker. Getting Qs in Snooker should be easy. Especially ones like this weekend's, where getting three 7s was basically a speed course, not so much a handling course. In Tika's height, 6 of 9 dogs got 51 points, for example.

Two trials ago, Boost and I had so many bobbles--runouts, refusals, knocked bars--on what I thought was a fairly straight-forward course that we got only about 7 points before we finally had to leave the course. Someone looking only at the accumulator sheet said, "How is it possible for someone to be out there for 45 seconds and get only 7 points?" I laughed and explained.

This week: Deja vu.



First, I led out so that the dog saw nuthin' but tunnel when looking over the first jump (I made sure that the teeter was out of sight behind the wing, for example). I released and started running straight at the tunnel. Dog is supposed to come with you, right? Especially a dog who ran around jumps on lead outs something like 5 times this weekend trying to get to where you were? But noooo--she veered right and ran across the teeter, so I had to regroup, work her around to get her lined up to do the teeter instead of the #7 in the opening.

Then, trying to get her over the 2nd red (to the right of the teeter), we went into the "this jump? this jump? this jump?" refusal dance. Got it, got into the 7a tunnel, hit the first weave pole and then skipped, so had to spin her around and retry--reentered in the wrong place. Spun her around and retried and finally got it. On the 3rd red, I front-crossed after the weaves so that it would be an easy handling thing with her on my left to do the #1 and back to the weave, but nooo-- "this jump? this jump? this jump?" and then she crashed into the bar trying to do it sideways at the last minute.

So then I had to line her up for the 2-3, but now her brain is over the top and she's bouncing every which way. I am standing completely still and telling her in a calm voice "here" (which means line up on my right side) and patting my right leg. I'm not sure how long it took before she actually lined up and stopped bouncing bouncing bouncing. I made sure that she was looking straight across the #2 to the #3 (not looking at me) and I had a straight line to run to get to #4a.

I told her "through!" and she blasted across #2 and into the tunnel like greased lightning while I hauled my butt from a complete standstill--and she came back out the same end of the tunnel! I was ready to strangle her.

So there we were, looking at the accumulator sheet, with about 46 seconds used and only 9 points to our name.

Sigh.

If only we could harness that speed for the good of all mankind instead of using our powers for evil!

Good News and Bad News

SUMMARY: DAM Team changes; Boost changes.

The bad news is that Brenn decided to scratch from team. I'm almost surprised at how disappointed I was. Originally the team was Brenn and Skeeter's team and they took Tika on board, so I always kind of thought of it as their team. And Brenn's a great dog (oh, and I like her handler/mom, too) and it's just sad that we can't run with her. The good news is that she's probably OK and hasn't scratched from everything yet.

The other good news is that there seem to be at least a couple of options for replacement 3rds, so unless something goes awry again between now and Saturday, we're good to compete.

On the training side: Boost did great in class tonight! Hardly any bars knocked, no runouts or refusals--man, we even had one jumpers pretty-much complete course run where, if we were competing, we'd have Qed, and done so without any "saves" like our Standard Q last weekend. Just a danged lovely run. Do you know how long it has been since I've had a run like that with her? And she just kept it up! So all this concerted effort over the last 5 days has paid off. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it holds for the weekend.

The bad news on that front is--nothing! She did great! Even on her weave poles during some tough weave pole drills.

Whoo! I'm ready!

Boost Jumpers Disaster

SUMMARY: Video.

Two bars down plus an entire jump, missed obstacles everywhere, refusals and runouts. You names it, we gots it! Plus I feel like I'm running like a wild thing out there, but in the video I look like I'm just lumbering around the course. My knee was bothering me a bit, and you can see me favoring it slightly, although I wasn't even thinking about it at the time. (Oh, and yesterday I said that the judge asked us to leave the course, but in reviewing the video, I think she was just starting to tell the workers which jumps to take off the field, since we were the last to run and obviously didn't need her complete attention any more.)

How Danged Refusals Killed Our Snooker Run

SUMMARY: Boost won't go over jumps that are right in frigging front of her.

This is an ongoing problem. There are certain situations on course where she's so busy looking at me that she won't take a jump that's right in front of her. Rear crosses are sometimes the cause, but not always. Drives me nuts. Instructor says her mother was the same way. A friend was shooting photos this weekend and got a lovely sequence that shows her looking back at me constantly instead of looking at the course.

Coming through the #2 tire--we're good, she's fast and ahead of me, which is where you want the dog before a cross-behind. (Although I see in the photo that she caught the tire coming through.)

Uh-oh, already halfway to the blue jump she's looking back at me instead of looking at where she's going.

She's still looking at me instead of looking for an obstacle. Can you believe that she actually finally took that jump without knocking the bar?

As she's taking the jump, she's STILL looking at me and not picking up that I want to go to the left. I think I must have taken the extra steps past the jump to keep her from backjumping it after this point.

And now I'm on the wrong side of jump #3, she's facing me, and we have nowhere to go. She's jumping around in front of me, looking at me, instead of thinking about obstacles.

On this snooker run, we had a lovely lovely opening with me being able to send her a bit over jumps and back through a straight tunnel. She was so good, and kept her bars up, and didn't run around the first jump when I led out quite a ways. Then we rounded the very wide 180 from the tunnel exit to the tire, and that's when the trouble began.

I wanted to send her ahead of me over the blue jump (#3) so that I could rear cross and pull her back over #4. But she'd glance at the jump, then look back at me, so she was running kind of half sideways at the jump, repeatedly. And I'm holding my arm up and saying HUP! and running at the right side of the jump. Instructor said I have to keep going, don't try to cut across behind her until she's committed to the jump. Which, in this case, wasn't until after I was PAST the jump, so now she's between me and #4 and I have no way of getting her there because she's still facing me instead of looking around for obstacles.

When she finally turns, she turns to her left and the wrong end of the tunnel is the first thing she sees, and in she goes, for an offcourse.

And it was SUCH a nice opening, too!