Do You Want Breakfast?

SUMMARY: Who… wants…BREAKFAST!

Just a short unedited minute and a half video of Zorro when it’s time for breakfast. Once he starts eating, nothing else. Exciting happens. Just a fun quick little watch.

Happy Gotcha Day Toys

SUMMARY: Zorro's 6th anniversary

Six years ago, I drove 4 hours home from the Sierra Foothills with a year-old pup named Luke in the crate next to Chip in his crate.

Five years ago, he became Zorro. And his favorite toys are Jolly and Squeaky Snake. He shares them with you for this anniversary. With his favorite game--pretend to fetch but instead tease Human Mom by showing, from a distance, how rewarding it is to chew on it.

40 years of agility: Two Crufts Videos

SUMMARY: The sport has changed so much.

Video of agility demo at Crufts, 1978.  Take note of the equipment, the speed and athleticism of the dogs (and handlers), how close the handlers are to their dogs, the complexity of the course, the difference in speed between the different dogs.

Video of agility final round at Crufts, 2017.  (the beginning includes a clear graphic video of the dog's path through the course.  After that, I like the run starting at 21:15 as an example)
Compare and contrast: the equipment, the speed and athleticism of the dogs (and handlers), how close the handlers are to their dogs, the complexity of the course, the difference in speed between the different dogs.

And some context for you:

• 1978: Dog agility originated as a fun demo sport at Crufts (or possibly much earlier; see the Wikipedia article).
• 1980: First official agility sport rules definition, by The Kennel Club; first official competition at Crufts that year.
• 1983: First agility-specific organization founded (Agility Club in the UK).
• 1984: First agility-specific organization started in the U.S.
• 1987: First time small dogs could compete at the national level, at Olympia (until then, it was all large/tall dogs).
• 1987: First agility competition in the U.S.
• "In 1988, almost no one had heard of dog agility in the United States, while meanwhile in England it had become an extremely popular sport, drawing hundreds of spectators."
• 1989: with TV exposure, agility started its boom in the U.S.
• 1991: Power Paws Agility (where I've taken most of my training) was founded in San Jose, I believe the only training facility anywhere near the SF Bay Area at that time, so people came to weekly classes from as far as 2 hours away.
• 1992: My agility club, The Bay Team, was founded. I believe at the time there was an dog breed club who held events in Fresno, but that's about it.  BT held their first competition in 1993.
• 1995: I started agility training.
• 1996: January, my first competition, with Remington.
• 2014: late in the year, my last competition, with Boost. (Maybe will be able to do again someday. Who knows.)
• 2018: I still follow agility and occasionally do some backyard training and take classes.

Tricks Dog Zorro

SUMMARY: AKC titles applied for.

Last winter, Zorro and I did Circus Dog classes. Not the intense, full-day classes that you can get in some places, and the tricks were fairly basic--a lot of overlap with what I taught Remington on my own, back in the day.  And Zorro already knew several of them before we got to the class.

He loved the class, loved doing things, the attention, and the treats. He picked things up quickly: In class, we'd work on each trick for about 10-15 minutes, and for almost everything, by the end of that time he'd be doing the trick with little assistance. (Some we really struggled with, though.)  Maybe not spectacularly--for example, he'd hold something on his nose/face for a few seconds, but not a lot longer than that until we practiced a lot more.  We practiced at home on most (those we had the gear for).

At the end of it all, we put together a routine that we performed in front of the rest of the class (required for graduation).  For someone who's spoken in front of sometimes huge crowds in my life, I was by far the more nervous participant of the two of us, and despite having crib notes, left out several things (and left a key component of one of our tricks at home).  (And OMG! What's with my jeans in that video?!)

Still, the instructor verified that Zorro could do at least the minimum number tricks for each of 4 of AKC's Trick Dog titles, so filled out and signed our title application forms for Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, and Performer.

I'm not always a super fan of AKC, and I waffled about this for a long time, but today I registered him with AKC for  his mutt-dog (er, sorry, "Canine Partners") registration number, scanned copies of all the forms, and put them with a check into an envelope to mail on Monday. Then it's just waiting!

Here's the cleaned-up routine that I'm sending in for the Performer title.

Tunnel Chase

SUMMARY: Running dogs.

This time, Chip is chasing Luke. Sometimes it's the other way 'round.  For several days, Luke didn't do the tunnels at all. Then he walked through the straight one (in the background) a few times on his own, then for a few days, during chases, he'd run through it, back around, and through it again, repeat repeat repeat.  I finally saw him walking into and through the curved tunnels a couple of times. Running through these other tunnels is new today as far as I know!

(Chip already had been doing some running w/Luke and chasing the dog next door and is tiring out, so this isn't the full-blast chase.)

Luke learned the tunnel running during chases from Chip. He also learned the going back and forth inside from Chip.

Chip Goes On A Sleepover

SUMMARY: This is a happy trio.

Chip has gone to spend Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and a couple more days with his Previous Boy and Previous Human Dad. I dropped him off--feeling like a mom whose kid is sleeping away from home for the first time, but I knew that he'd be happy to see the Previous Family--and I was so right!

Here's the happy reunion. They haven't seen each other since March. Brings tears to my eyes. Until Chip has to pee so I stop the video.

Evil Floors Part 27 Or Thereabouts

SUMMARY: Finally got a little video of Boost freaking out about a surface.

This is a new bridge over a culvert at Martial Cottle Park. Ten minutes later, she walked back over it like it was nothing.

Silly but cute girly.

Here's the bridge in question:

Tika's Retirement Run, Part 2

SUMMARY: Video.

Part 1 is here.

She starts out pretty fast. Knocks a bar about halfway through, not sure why (I mean, these *are* only 16" jumps). Then goes off course (before the teal tunnel) when I'm actually turned and calling her and clapping--I wonder whether that was a side effect of all the heart-warming cheering and clapping going on all around us? No matter, a Q wasn't my goal -- I was watching for signs of discomfort or coughing or slipping on the wet grass.

Then she slowed abruptly before the next to the last jump, not sure what that was about--did she think we were at the end? -- so I stopped, so she stopped, and then when she looked OK to me, I popped her over the last jump to make it official.

Notice no excited foot biting at the end, sigh. But she doesn't look particularly *un*happy.

Anyway, it was nice, and  a whole crowd waited to give me hugs and kudos at the exit gate.

Independence Weekend USDAA - Sunday

SUMMARY: Got some Qs.

Tika:

• Q and first place in Jumpers, no problem.
  She's so good to run, just figures out what she needs to do. She's supposed to lie down at the start line, but she just wouldn't do it this time so I let her sit. I thought that meant that she was tired, but she blasted out of there quickly enough that I was behind her all the way and she adjusted for my puny mortal failings.
  
  
• Q and first place in Standard, no problem.
  Watch for the spin at the green tunnel entrance and where she's looking as she descends the Aframe (didn't catch that I rear crossed)--issues having to do with her hearing.
  
  

We were able to park close and crate out of MUTT MVR this weekend,
which was a dogsend, since my back was absolutely not up to lifting or moving ANYthing.
Mr. Alien hung out with us occasionally.

Mr. Alien ... hung... out with us...

Boost:

• Same Jumpers as Tika, problems.
• Same Standard--whoa, really nice run with nothing to complain about! Q and 5th of 38 dogs.
  
  
• Snooker, yeah, well, knocked one of the reds, which took us out of the running for a Super-Q right away, and then too much dinking around and miscommunication to even be able to finish #7. It's a Q, but your basic useless Q of which we now have 24. It was an entertaining Snooker course, though, with three tunnels in a circle forming the #7 obstacle. A real crowd-pleaser, lots of yelling and cheering and groaning for all the competitors.
  
  
  
  
• Grand Prix, well, oh well. Who needs any stinkin' Grand Prix Qs anyway. They're probably sour.

 Boost flying down the dogwalk, and me... uh, not sure exactly WHAT I'm doing there--

Boost now has 141 lifetime Qs, just short of the 150 needed for the Bronze Lifetime Achievement Award. Except--it requires at least 15 Qs in each of the classes, and we have only 6 Jumpers, and the thought that we could ever earn another 9 Jumpers Qs is slowly fading away to nothing. I mean, she's 8 and a half. Sigh. Let alone getting those two elusive Super-Qs to complete her ADCH.

When I'm at a trial, like this last weekend, I feel actually motivated to go work on some of our issues and try to fix them. And then I get home and realize how much time it really takes, and I go back to just hoping the issues will just magically solve themselves. Huh.

That's about all I have to say about that.

Running our leg of the relay and doing really well.

Lookit that nice two-on, two off. She was good on her contacts all weekend.

Kelpie puppy Batman subdues my scary hat!

Long-time agility friend Debbie and her Porsche do a little warm-up massage. Debbie used to sometimes run Remington back when my foot was broken.

Embarrassing, Mr. Alien, to be abducted by giant inflatable aliens!
At least they're wearing  a seatbelt.
(Inflatable aliens appeared in random places all over the trial site on Sunday. No particular explanation from anyone, but it was entertaining and engendered lots of conversation.)

Awww, Millie practices her school visit skills among a flood of children.

If nothing else, at least Boost continues her awesome skill at winning things in the raffle. A certificate for a day's entry on Saturday, and a bag of Cod Skin Treats on Sunday.

Hmm, something fishy about these cod skin treats.

*Photos of us running by Laurie Cowhig and Lisa Pomerance, thanks, agility friends!

Veterans Honor Runs Link

SUMMARY: My partial videos of most of the old dogs' runs from yesterday, including 2 snippets from Tika's run.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEB8134AAB0512984&feature=edit_ok

Sunday USDAA Report

SUMMARY: Tika is slow but collects more Qs and $5; Boost, well, not terrible, but no Qs.

Another nice day with good friends and lots of laughter at Manzanita Park, even though the "fog" was so heavy in the morning that it was really a drizzle.

It's 7:00 a.m. and I'm parked here at the trial site wondering whether it's going to stop.

I managed to not get too depressed over Boost's runs and Tika's flagging agility ability. I did realize, though, how draining it is to put all the effort I put into Boost's runs trying to do the right thing and still not Q, even when I'm feeling pretty good and trying to just enjoy the moment.

Doesn't she look good on paper, though? (Thanks Lisa P for the photos.)

I decided that I'm spending so much on entry fees and not Qing that I really need to just bite the bullet, pay for more pro videos of all of Boost's runs, and try to sit with our instructor to go over them. So again this weekend I paid for all of Boost's and some of Tika's. (Thanks 4-Legged Flix.)

Then I watched all the videos when I got home. And I thought, gee, most of that doesn't look half bad. Really, you can't Q with this dog? I also thought, gee, when I'm out on the field I'm running as fast as I can and I can barely breathe when I'm done (hands go up on my hips at the end of one run--that's not pique, that's me gasping for breath) but on the videos I look like I'm loping and running in quite a stilted manner.

I've put all 16 of them up on YouTube (10 Boost, 6 Tika) for your viewing pleasure, if you want to see a lot of runs that look pretty darned good until you realize that this dog has Qed only 3% of the well-over 100 Masters Jumpers that she's entered.

Like, here's her Saturday Jumpers where she ran past only one jump. Maybe I didn't call enough or use enough body language--video cuts me off right at the crucial moment. And rather than trying to fix it, since we already NQed, I just went ahead and sent her into the next tunnel. But otherwise looks good, dunnit? (Well, except for after the 3rd jump where I forgot where we were going for a minute.)


And today's Jumpers, which wasn't perfect (some bobbles other than the 2 knocked bars) although we successfully did manage *3*, count them, three! rear crosses-- but mostly looks pretty ok, dunnit?


But, really, in this Steeplechase Round 1--did I REALLY do anything so terribly wrong on the jump after the first Aframe or, again, on the next to the last jump to make her not take them? This is no baby dog; she's old enough to know better (but I know that she doesn't). (You might have to watch it on Youtube since it's so small here.)


Meanwhile, my subjective feeling that Tika is much slower in the weaves and in ground speed seems pretty objective in this Steeplechase Final Round video from today,  where you can see that she's really forcing it in the weaves, adding extra steps before jumps, and never really fully extending even when she's running fairly fast.


Not to mention in today's P3 Standard--which she Qed but just barely because it took her so long to go down on the table on top of other slownesses.


To see whether I was misremembering, I went back and looked at a couple of her videos from 5 years ago. Sure, we weren't perfect, but at least her default behavior is to go over jumps when they're right in front of her. And they were 26",  not a mere 22"! AND she always got her weave entries.
 
Earning her ADCH with a Snooker Super-Q,  February 2007:


Taking 1st place in Masters 26" Standard, April 2007:


ANYWAY again--

Today, Tika took 3rd in Steeplechase Round 2 (mostly because 2 other dogs Eed), earning 5 whole dollars, even though she knocked the first bar. I thought the bar was because I didn't warm her up properly, but I did warm her up before Grand Prix and she knocked the first bar there, too, so we just quickly left the ring.

Her Standard was OK, but (as shown in the video above) the table down was long long long and I'm not thrilled with my current solution of just repeating "Down" vehemently until she does, but as long as it works and she's Qing, I'll just keep doing that (and practicing fast/rewarded Downs outside the ring).  At her age, she's getting to where Human Mom says "Tika can do whatever she wants." Her Jumpers was nice enough to take 2nd place  of 9 dogs (largely again courtesy of several faster dogs E-ing) , but there were places on course where *I* noticed that she really hesitated--it's hardly visible in the video, but on the course I was hyper-aware of it. And that was it for her today--2 Qs out of 3 Qable runs, so 5 of 8 for the weekend, and I'll take that Qing percentage.

Boost did NOT want to go over one crucial jump in the Gamblers opening so we missed a possible near-high-in trial opening from wasted time. And she almost got the gamble--did the hard part, IMHO, but then came in to me and wouldn't move away again for 2 simple jumps in a row, sighhhh.

In Standard, she made absolutely sure that she Eed on Refusals--3 refusals equals an E and we got at least 4: Ran past a jump that maybe I didn't indicate well enough but it was pretty much in front of her; missed her weave entry (turning to the left--the direction that has always been her biggest challenge but it was her only miss all weekend), spun before a tunnel, and ran past the table. So I just found my easiest way out to the finish line and didn't bother with the last third of the course that included the dogwalk. Four refusals and a huge between-jump spin in only 2/3 of a course.

Jumpers (as shown above), not terrible but not a Q. Grand Prix, not terrible but not a Q.

SO, Tika gets older and slower, I apparently can't run, Boost keeps making the same mistakes over and over. A sad tale made happier only because I and my dogs are fairly healthy and because there are so many good people at agility trials who make my day in so many ways. Seems to me that everyone was in a good mood today (unlike that Sunday 2 weeks ago on the 2nd day of 105 temperatures... ).

So maybe I'll keep doing agility for a little while longer.

Boost's Mom at AKC Nationals

SUMMARY: Tala is looking good.

At 11 and a half, Tala is around Tika's age.

Dang bar.



Looks like she was around 30th-40th out of 230 dogs in the rounds where she ran clean, and 53rd after 3 rounds even with the bar down. Pretty good for an old girl competing against a zillion top-notch youngsters.

And I might as well mention some siblings.

Boost's full sister (but 4 years younger), Tcam, also competing in the 20" class of 230 dogs, finished 5th in Round 1! (I'll have to find out what their faults were in the other two classes.)

Boost's littermate Derby, competing in the 24" class of about 90 dogs, finished 2nd in Round 2 and 1st in Round 3! Don't know what the fault was in Round 1. Placed 3rd in the challenger round, which wasn't quite enough to get them into the finals.

C-ATCH 48 Hours, C-ATE 2 Weeks

SUMMARY: My Little Agility Champion! And My Good Ol' Agility Multichampion!

Boost was freaked out by the whole post-C-ATCH run process. Normal process: get leash, tug on leash, go pick up riot tug that we left outside the ring, tug on that back to the crate, get some treats and loving, get collar back on, go into crate.

Instead, it was tug on leash, someone else comes into the ring and hands Human Mom stuff to distract her, leash goes back on the ground, mom sends dog around some obstacles without even a sit-stay, then leash tug, then riot tug, then take those away and go sit in the driveway while strange people make funny noises at you.

She was a little uncertain about it all.

Tika's hearing, plus some good runs from both Merle Girls
Tika and I had a rough weekend. As I noted in Saturday's post, there was far too much ambient noise for whatever state her hearing is currently in, and if she's having vision issues, too (still not entirely clear about that, no pun intended), then the darkness in the ring and the light around the outside probably didn't help.  You can see how hesitant she is about things in these videos--I'm not the greatest handler, but hesitation and uncertainty have never been her traits before-- she's taking more strides between obstacles, looking at me a lot-- Watching her gait in the videos, it looks kind of old and stilted, but on the ground with her, it just felt hesitant to me.

Tika, Saturday Standard:


Her Sunday Jumpers course was pretty nice, parts felt like good old Tika, but still Chaps' time was more than a second faster, and given that we probably beat them more than half the time until recently, I can tell that she's slowing down.


In Tika's Full House on Saturday, that point-accrual game where, historically, we've aimed to be (and usually were) the highest scoring dog at the whole trial--but here, Tika hesitates and then runs past the Aframe, checking in with me constantly--and we run out of time long before I expected that we would.



In comparison, here's Boost's Full House, in which we collected way more points than anyone else, even though my handling after the tire wasn't the best:


Boost also had a really nice gamblers run on Saturday; kept all her bars up, had some really nice turns (and some wide ones that were my fault) and our timing on heading to the gamble was impeccable. The only thing that went wrong was that she didn't stick the Aframe in the gamble, so I was wayyy out of position when she came over the next to the last jump.



The Race!
Sunday's Colors was a really fast little course, so I placed bets (verbal only) with my fellow score-tabler on how fast my dogs would do it. Because what's an agility dawithout some gambling? We had seen a couple of fast runs in the 14-15 second range, and one really fast one at 13.28. So I bet 10.5 seconds for Boost and 13.56 for Tika.

Here's Tika's--I got her as riled up as I could figure out how before the run, basically ran off the line with her, tried to get her as excited as possible during the run and to be right in front of her most of the run to keep her confidence up; she ended with 14.61, so my guess was off by a second, and that made her merely the 7th fastest dog of the 60 who ran that course. Naturally, three of those dogs were in her exact class of 7 dogs, sheesh.



Here's Boost's run--she didn't need any revving up, never does at this age. She's still taking extra strides and hesitating to look at me at the beginning, then again at the very end, when she's ahead of me, taking an extra step and starting to turn her head and ears towards me at each jump, but I'm just close enough to keep her from actually pulling off a jump. Still, those slowed us down enough that her actual time was 12.72, so I was TWO seconds off for her--and, dang, she knocked a bar. But that was THE fastest time of all 60 dogs.


Next fastest was our friend & arch-nemesis Chaps. He doesn't always look that fast, but his time was 12.79, so we barely beat him. They're so efficient and he's just a big dog with a long stride. Hard to compare directly, though, because in Colors you pick your course and they did the other option-- also, the camera people seemed to have had it in for Chaps. I tried to get their Jumpers run for comparison, but the video was cut off halfway through. So I got the colors run instead--and now I see that *that's* cut off halfway through, too. Weird.


The worst of it...

But, sadly, Boost and I had all the same kinds of troubles that we usually have. In Sunday's Standard, she didn't bother with the 2nd jump in a lead-out pivot, although I guarantee she's lined up to look right at it. Next, I needed her to take the jump after the Aframe, waited until she was looking at it to release her, and she came right in to me instead, forcing me to do a rear cross that I didn't want to do and sure enough she refuses the jump when I try it. Then she turns instantly out of the tunnel looking for me instead of for the next obstacle, resulting in some spinning before the following jump, then although she's got quite a lot of room to get into the weaves, she skips the entry (I think the only time this weekend, but still...), then at the last jump, although I'm running pretty hard (sure doesn't look like it, but as I said, I'm not a great athlete) right at it, and she just stops and turns to look at me and spins past it. SIgh.

My new dog and I have a lot of work to do.



And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Still and all, it is like a weight has been lifted from my heart, to get both dogs through their major CPE titles, and so close together. Happiness is a C-ATCH puppy, and here we are right after that C-ATCH run. (Thanks, Chaps' Human Mom, for photos again.)

Weekend's End

SUMMARY: The aftermath.

Am still so glad that I'm just done with Boost's C-ATCH and Tika's C-ATE. Now I can concentrate on other things. Like USDAA, like making progress on my new dog Boost's issues, which are just as rampant in CPE as they are in USDAA, just not penalized as much.

This weekend was quite freeing in a couple of ways:

First, none of the runs except Boost's Saturday Colors felt like they counted for anything--in a good way. I'm not going to try for 230 more Qs for Boost to get her C-ATE or another 230 for Tika's C-ATE-2, and there's really nothing in between. So all of our runs were strictly for fun--and ribbons and glory if we could get them. That really did make them all seem much more fun.

Second, really acknowledging that Tika's hearing problems are responsible for a lot of what's going on on the courses made me feel that I could just concede everything that went wrong to Tika's aging, not to any training or handling issues, and enjoy her just for still being here and having all those years of experience.

I'm sure that this won't all carry over to USDAA, but I do want to keep on doing USDAA and see how well and how far we can go.

Meanwhile, here's Boost's C-ATCH Colors run. You'd think it would be easy to Q on a course with a mere 9 or 10 obstacles. But it has taken us a while. Bars finally stayed up!


And our victory lap. Woohoo! Boost was a little freaked out by the whole abnormal way her time in the ring ended, but she does love running, especially when tunnels are involved.


Other videos are still uploading to YouTube, so maybe more tomorrow.

I had a whole lot of other things that I was going to say, but at the moment I'm thinking strictly in terms of how quickly I think I could fall asleep if I put my head down on my pillow. With visions of Boost's C-ATCH pole and Tika's C-ATE pole dancing in my head.

Foggy Night at the Agility Field

SUMMARY: Just some photos and notes.

I was going to post about Boost's training work, but instead, well, I became enchanted with the fog.

According to the newspaper's weather report, last Saturday South San Jose got .70 inches of rain and .25 more on Monday. My rain gauge says different.

In any event, everything around here is now saturated, and top that off with unseasonably warm weather this week. 

As a result, on the drive up to class last night, for the last mile I encountered clouds of fog drifting across and alongside the road, surrounding me in an odd, shifting tunnel of gray. When I alit from MUTT MVR, I admired the softly glowing agility field:

Kinetic the Papillon ponders her first agility lesson and carefully checks out all the dogs. Kinetic hikes with us regularly, many long miles without having to be carried even once.

The Merle Girls would like there to be some kind of action, here.

Our instructor shows us how it's done. At least, we think that's Ace and his handler out in the fog.

Boost's full sister (but not littermate) TCam also shows us how it's done, as the fog tries to take the field.

They can both really hustle!

And here, for your enjoyment, is the current #1 Mixed Breed AKC (I never dreamed I'd ever be saying that phrase!) agility dog, Roo. Is she good-looking or WHAT?

"Can haz photo?" ---or--- "Use the Force, Luka!"

But one of the best parts of the evening was The Owl's Song: From a Great Horned Owl, high in a dark tree, and I ran my video--you can admire the drifting fog, but then just listen--the perfect sound for a night like this:

On the way home, the fog had thickened enough that I drove that first mile--which I've driven hundreds of times at 40 MPH--at around 20, and at times on that curvy foggy road, 20 was a bit much as the road vanished and it wasn't entirely obvious whether it was vanishing into the fog or over the side of the mountain. Glad the fog cleared away as I descended the hill.

Weekend Snooker Report

SUMMARY: With videos.

Team Snooker:
This was a 3 or 4 reds class; I couldn't come up with anything I liked with 4 reds that was comfortable enough for Team, so I opted for 3 (with 6-7-7 in the opening):

• Tika: When I sent her to one red and then turned and ran, she turned also before taking the red and I had to get her turned back around to take it. As a result, we ran out of time partway through #7 in the closing, which dropped us from winning to 4th of 13 dogs.
• Boost did an OK opening, but then, in a weird flashback to last weekend where #4 in the closing was also two jumps and the first one was also basically parallel to our path, I did not succeed in pushing her out over the jump for a refusal, so whistled off. 

Sunday Masters/P3 Snooker:
This one had only 3 reds--thank goodness, I'm just tired of always having to decide whether a 4th red will help me or hurt me on top of the basic strategy. I had a 7-7-7 (double tunnels) opening plan for 51 pts and a 7-7-5 (5 was Aframe) opening plan for 49 pts. I figured that the first was completely doable for a fast dog but probably not for Tika any more, so didn't want to try it unless I had to (meaning other dogs had done it successfully).

• By the time Tika ran, most of the dogs in her class had already run and only one--a very fast Catahoula--had gotten the 51, and the next highest was 46. I wanted Top Ten points, but decided that 2nd place (for 5 top tens) would be plenty good enough and stuck with the 7-7-5. We made it with only a couple of seconds to spare, so I'm glad I didn't get greedy. (We won't mention where she stood up from her down-stay to go searching for treats. At least she didn't take off after me.) And look at that nice right-angle rear cross approach to the weaves! She's such a good girl.
  
  
• By the time Boost ran, there were already 9 dogs with 51 points, and only 12 super-Qs available, so I went for the 7-7-7 plan. I was glad to get all the way through it with her--unfortunately, we ran out of time as we started our final #7. That's because we had trouble getting to and from the farthest red (the 3rd one we did), plus she turned the wrong way after #2, slowed to look at me for a while before #4, turned in front of me before going to the weaves at #6 and all those little things added up to the time we needed to complete the course. So 44 points for a Q but no Super-Q. Frustratingly, no one else got 51 and a 49 (my 7-7-5 plan) would've been a superQ. So close!
  
  

Monday Masters/P3 Snooker:
3 or 4 reds again. I decided on a 6-7-7-2 plan for the opening.

• Boost: A couple of wide turns, a knocked red that I recovered from but not gracefully, she didn't catch a rear cross and turned the wrong way--again, we got through to #7 and ran out of time about pole #7 of 12, sigh. In this case, Super-Qs were 52 points, so even if we'd completed the weaves, without our 4th red and that extra 2 points, we'd have not Super-Qed. But so close...but just a 43-point Q. But check out those great, difficult sends to the weave poles then executed at a distance! Happy weave pole mom!
  
   
• Tika: Well, after that first red where I pulled boost between the next red and the Aframe to the teeter? I pulled Tika the same way but hadn't stepped far enough towards the Aframe, so instead of the teeter, she did the red. Whistle. Crap.

USDAA SMART Day 2

SUMMARY: Another day of wonders.

Tika was back to her normal self, Qing in all four Qable classes, plus 2nd in Steeplechase Round 2.

Otherwise continued her not-quite-1st-place runs:

• 2nd in Steeplechase, even though she ran pretty fast first thing in the morning, to a really nice run by Kidd
• 2nd in Gamblers by several points to Chaps.
• Oh, wait, we did win Grand Prix! For the 4th time this year, after never doing so pre-2011.
• 2nd in Jumpers by less than a second to Kash.
• Then, last run of the day, slowed way down in Standard and took 3rd, wayyy behind Chaps and just a smidge behind Mike.

Here's Tika's money run in Steeplechase (although you can't see the tunnel in one corner where the dog has to take the opposite side from the one they're running straight at):


As for her Top Ten points, picked up 0 for snooker, 3 in Gamblers, 4 in standard, and 6 in Jumpers.

Boost amazed me again by mostly keeping up her bars, finished 2nd (!!!!!!) in Steeplechase Round 2 with a really nice run on a really fast course--here for your viewing pleasure (from a different angle from Tika's run, but you STILL can't see that tunnel):


And she actually earned a Jumpers Q! Third masters jumpers Q ever!  Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah, and other crowd-going-wild noises. Furthermore, it was 3rd place in 22"! Our run wasn't exactly "clean"--a bit sort of smudged around the edges and I thought we came off the field with a couple of refusals, but noooooo, plus also only 5 out of the 30 dogs in her class ran clean,  so there we go, now only 2 Jumpers and 2 Super-Qs away from the ADCH.

Yet another video, how about that? (The whistle you hear on the first messy spot is in the other ring...oh, and now you can see a tunnel that the dog has to take the opposite side.)


Standard was an "almost"--she crashed a double after I made a very awkward front cross and might have been flailing my arms, legs, and other body parts. Gamblers opening was nice but I mishandled the entry to a [sigh] very doable gamble. And in grand prix, two runouts on jumps, then she came off the teeter from the side when I rear crossed, for the 3rd time this weekend, so I told her uh-uh, took her off the field, and put her away. 

Time to get the teeter-totter out in the yard again.

But mostly I was very happy with many parts of all of her runs. But here's this little nagging thing: Keeping the bars up--doing courses--steeplechases and jumpers--compliments in class last week and a ton of perfect runs in class this week--I have admitted not practicing anything or working on anything--so WHY?

I find it hard to believe that, at six and a half, she's abruptly matured or figured things out.

I did make the sudden connection today that this has all been since she started the prednisone for her itching. Could there be something going on there? Don't know what.

Funny, What One Remembers (Or Not)

SUMMARY: Big Qs in (my) history.

I guess some things DO get to be old hat after a while. Especially as agility has been around longer and longer, and there are more and more trials where people can earn Qs, and as I earn more and more titles at higher levels with more dogs.

I can remember so clearly when Jake earned his MAD, landing on the table at the end of the gamble (who uses tables for gambles any more in USDAA? gone!). I floated for days. People I barely knew rushed over to give me hugs. A MAD was a huge deal back then--for me, because it was my first, and for everyone, because they still weren't all that common.

I remember most of the NADAC Standard run on which he earned his NATCH. I remember thinking that he'd been slow and wasn't sure whether he'd actually made time, so didn't even know whether to celebrate. And I remember that the people at the score table told me to go away and not bother them and shielded the score sheets with their bodies so I couldn't even look over their shoulders, and wouldn't even tell me what the Standard Course Time was so I could compare the run on my video. That's when I decided never to go back to that club's trials. That was up near Placerville, in a beautiful little park whose name I no longer recall. [video appears below, after some delay to think about it, apparently--from 2001. Starts out looking funky but it will display a course map and then our run:]

I also remember clearly the exact gamble on which he earned his ADCH. A gamble that I had been chasing up and down the state, driving hundreds of miles in a weekend to try to get, and I finally got it on a course I didn't walk, right here at one of our own trials on the soccer practice lawn at Cal State Hayward (before it became Cal State University, East Bay).

I remember where I finished Remington's NATCH--also a gamble--up in Eureka at a pleasant site, the only time I went to that trial, desperate for

I remember Tika's first-ever USDAA run, which was a Novice Jumpers run (back when there were Novice and Starters, depending on whether you'd ever titled with a dog before). I halfway remember the whole course. I remember that she was super-fast and knocked a single bar. Since that was back when only Standard was titling in Novice/Starters, Jumpers was time plus faults--and she *still* came in 2nd with the 5-fault bar penalty! That was in the covered arena at the horse park in City of Industry in southern California.

I remember where I finished Tika's ADCh, on a Snooker course at Nunes Agility Field in Turlock, watching Rachel Sanders and her dog once again do our course but much much faster, and thinking that once again we'd be one out of the SuperQs as we had been so often. But then, woo-hoo, turns out everyone else didn't do so well, so we came in (2nd to rachel) but picked up that final Super-Q. (Ah, ha, see the course map and read about it in this blog post ... videos below:)

But the things I DON'T remember these days are telling: Although I thought that Tika took forever to get her first Jumpers Q (ha! maybe 18 nonQs?), I have no recollection at all of where or when it finally came. I have no idea when or where I finished her ADCH-Silver, although I do know it was a Standard Q that she needed. I have no idea where or when or even what class it was when she finished her ADCH all over again in Performance--perhaps because it was coming so easily to us by then. F'rinstance, when she moved to performance, she started getting SuperQs in snooker more often than not. She stopped knocking bars pretty much and started Quing in almost everything all the time (sometimes seemed that way, anyway).

I don't even remember anything about the time, place, or circumstances of her more advanced titles, the bronze performance ADCh, the bronze lifetime, the silver lifetime, dang, not even the gold lifetime although that was only earlier this year! It's all just whipping by, pleasing me, but not with the emotional intensity needed to burn it into my memory banks.

I remember where Boost first earned a Masters Jumpers Q, after more than 40 attempts--at Dixon May Fairgrounds. It completed her MAD, but I was more excited about the simple fact of getting a Jumpers Q. I bought a cake the next day for everyone to share. But i don't remember WHEN it was or anything about the course itself.

Will I remember the course, time, and place of Boost's first-ever Super-Q this last weekend? It was so amazing to me to have finished that course clean, and then for it to be a Super-Q, too. At the moment, it's seared into my brain, but will it be in another year? Or two? or three? I think it might be--the emotional impact was huge. Of course only time will tell.

Meanwhile--thanks, susan P, for this gift of a photo (honoring our Super-Q) from the trial photographer Bamfoto (so typical, one ear inside out and the other flying!):

Fast Happy Dogs

SUMMARY: Some videos from the USDAA trial.

Certain people were encouraging me to post videos of my weave pole training. Well, I took some, and it's pretty bad. Maybe I'll still post it. But meanwhile I decided to try to upload the 3 measly vids I managed to remember to do out of 32 runs last weekend, and since I do this so seldom, that was 2 hours of time (between waiting for upload from my camera & then upload to youtube, and all the figuring out what I needed to do, picking the part of the video to include,and so on--no captions, no music, dunno how you all have time for that sort of nicety!).

Boost Masters Snooker Saturday

This is just the opening--four reds (numbered obstacles are #4 jump, #6 Aframe twice, and #7 weaves), followed by #3 in the closing because my brain was so focused on getting past the offcourse jump before the tunnel that I forgot to do the correct #2 right after the weaves. You'll hear the video person comment on that.

Of course, BEFORE that, she veers off a jump that's RIGHT IN FRONT of her, then pulls off an Aframe that's RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. But she does make her weave entry nicely, and keeps her bars up.

Then you'll see how fast she can bounce-run backwards in front of me. And then go find her leashie on the chair.

Tika Masters (p3) Snooker Saturday

I did one fewer reds with Tika in the opening, so it's just the #6 Aframe twice, #7 weaves, and I *remember* to do the #2 jump with her. However, after the #3 tunnel, I attempt a deep serpentine after the #4 jump and I'm very late, kind of in her way, and she knocks the bar. Stuff like this is why we were #4 in the country last year and this year don't even show up in the Top 25 list. Doh.

You can tell that she's happy and feeling good because she grabs my feet at the end. Funny girl.

Boost Masters Standard Saturday

In which we miss the danged perfectly obvious weave entry, thereby negating an otherwise lovely run. She even gets a sharp rear cross right at the end, which normally would be a refusal.

Of course, she also leaves the teeter without waiting for a release, so I have to "down" her so that I can get a couple of steps ahead so she doesn't bounce-run backwards in front of me and get a refusal or runout on the next obstacle. Otherwise, her contacts were nice.

Funnnneeeee

SUMMARY: Best kind of dog torture.

If you haven't already seen this video 20 times in the last 10 hours, here it is again. (A little ad box pops up at the bottom; click the x in its upper right to close it.)