Agility weekend come and gone

SUMMARY: It was the best of times, it was the not best of times.

I did it again. Agreed a couple of months back to drive down to Turlock for 2 and a half days of agility to work the score table, because I love going down there, despite my better judgement telling me that it was a bad idea.   Waffled all the way up to closing on whether to try entering Boost in a couple of things again as long as I was going anyway, but since I'm still not running, decided not to.

I thought it would be a good weekend, anyway, seeing good friends and doing a necessary job, plus they have that big fenced back field in which Chip could run around and meet lots of dogs and I could play lots of frisbee with Boost and Boost could get to run after other Border Collies playing frisbee, her favorite game, and Tika could wander around sniffing at things to her heart's content.

Here's what really happened:

I thought Tika was going to die right on the spot, all weekend.

Boost got only about 3 minutes of BC chasing, although we did get a lot of frisbee together.

Chip did not run at all. And got to meet only a couple of dogs only briefly. And mostly ignored me when I did let him off leash. And hated being in the crate for such a long time.

I sat, and leaned, and adjusted, and stretched, and supported, and made all kinds of awkward positions of my body, and got more and more and more and more sore. And so tired and sore that the preceding post of Chip was the only photo I took at the trial all weekend.

Today, home again, I am very very very sore.

And that is because (a) Sitting is a very very bad thing for me to do, and I know it. I can't even work full time as a result. But surely it would be different at the score table, since I hardly have to do any writing at all, just a quick few marks on each scribe sheet, and I can stand up any time I want. Ha!

(b) I just forget how many things have to be lifted and carried to & from the car, and set up, for an agility weekend. And I forgot how much more lifting and carrying Tika's condition entails--getting her in and out of the car by lifting her or by lifting & setting in place her ramp, then taking it down, then putting it back, then taking it down, then putting it back... etc.

(c) And how much bending is involved in having dogs in crates & like that.

(d) Not realizing that having Tika restricted to a crate in the car all the way down and then all day would really tighten up her entire body so that she had a terrible time trying to stand up and then half the time couldn't stay standing up after she got up. Walking--"just a little walking" around this site was way way way way too much for her. She slumped. She sagged. And I had to work to get her up and keep her moving. She refused to eat much of anything for two and a half days.

Oh, right, she ate people food mostly ok.

The hotel room looked cheap--broken safety latch on door, plaster coming off wall, laminate coming off the table. I paid extra for microwave and fridge and didn't realize until I arrived back at the room at 10pm with my leftover dinner that there was no fridge. And, oh, when I made the res online, they forgot to mention that there's a pet charge. $10 per night per dog. For 3 dogs, 2 nights. Are you effing kidding me? They did agree to charge me only one night's fees, but I'm done with that place. ("We've always charged a pet fee." "Oh, no, you haven't, because I've been staying here more than a dozen years, and I didn't used to pay a pet fee.") Compare and contrast to the Disneyland Hotel two weekends previously. (Oh, did I not get around to posting about that yet? Heh.)

But:

Weather was gorgeous. Mid-70s F (23ish C) in mid-February, can you believe it? Near-record temps for the dates.

Friends were wonderful to be around.

And I had a great show on my way home.

Chip Day 8 & 9 - Agility Weekend

SUMMARY: I learned more things about him.

Trying to be very quick...

• In the motel Saturday night, Chip settled right down when the other dogs did and slept soundly. (They all had their run of the room and the 2nd bed in the room, which he & Boost opted to sleep on--I cover the beds with my own sheets to protect the hotel bedding from hair & dirt.)
• I think that all the stimulation tired him out, even though he didn't get a lot of physical exercise.
• Tried him on a long line, loose, for a while, but although he'd run after Boost when she chased the frisbee, he'd then also decide to go walkabout, ignoring me completely. Not unexpected, but I'd hoped he'd stick around so that I didn't have to follow him across the field to bring him back. Definitely recall work needed.
• He was willing to play tug with me several times even with all the excitement going on.
• When I had him out on leash, I did many many reps of saying "Chip!" and rewarding when he looked up at me. He got a lot of hot dog bits. He seemed to be responding better over the 2 days, although still easily distracted by lots of things.
• Tried to do some groundwork/circle work, where I just walk or jog in small circles and have him follow me. He wasn't particularly interested, and once again, when I pulled forward on his leash to bring him with me, he just dug in and wouldn't budge. Need to figure out what exactly the situation is when that comes up, because mostly he's pliable on leash.
• Lots of people food he didn't seem to consider worthwhile. Rejected beans (like cooked kidney beans), cooked egg white (but he liked the yolk), banana (well, Tika doesn't like that, either), and tortilla chips, although I did notice that later the chips had vanished, so he changed his mind about that. Rejected some chicken offered by a friend, but then ate that after she also gave him some tiny bits of bacon.
• Lunges to the end of his leash and barks at other dogs... sometimes! Not sure what sparks that. I think he mostly wants to go check them out, but I worked on telling him that barking at other dogs is not done at agility trials. 
• He got to meet a few other dogs, all on leash and calm, no real playing; that was my choice.
• Oh, jeez, he pees on EVERYthing if he gets a chance! I don't actually remember Remington or Jake being this determined. I had to rinse down an agility tunnel and a friend's umbrella when I didn't catch him in time because I wasn't expecting it. That's an ongoing thing to work on with him and for me to remember to pay attention. Dang boy dogs! 
• Everyone who met him--and lots of people have seen his photo in my facebook posts or blog now, so a lot knew his name already--thought he was a very cute/handsome, sweet boy. And that he looked like Remington. And he responded to people who'd say "Chip!" All good.
• The borrowed crate was a wee bit small for him. On the way there, I don't think he put his head down more than a couple of times the whole two hours. On the way back, he curled up and slept pretty much all the way. 
• He was pretty good about getting into a crate when I told him to. I have been rewarding and releasing him a lot from crates, so that might help. Also that he other dogs were right next to him. He's also waiting fairly well for me to give him a "Break!" before he tries to leave the crate. Don't know whether he learned to do that in his previous life or whether he's actually learning that. Either way, it's good.
• Realized that I really do need to wait a few more weeks, making a concerted effort in training and some basic agility jumping, before deciding for sure whether he'll be a fun agility dog or a problem agility dog (jumping style, attitude). So much to learn, both of us!

I might remember more in the morning, but now must sleep.

ADDED MONDAY MORNING:
Because the borrowed crate was really too small for him to spend an extended period in, I put Boost loose in the front of MUTT MVR because she's the most trustworthy of the bunch, and Chip borrowed Boost's crate.

Chip mostly watched everything, which (on top of our walking around and meeting people and dogs and training work) I think is what tired him out mentally. I eventually draped a towel over his crate for an hour or so here and there to give him a chance to relax.

He was pretty good except raising a storm whenever I took Boost away to go run a run.

Tika slept a LOT.

Weekend Away From Everything Normal

SUMMARY: Relaxing fun in the heat with friends and family.

"Vicon" is an annual event; has been going on since the early 1980s and started as a few college kids sleeping out in the back yard of the people who are now my sister's in-laws. It has turned into a group of --ahem--slightly older--folks and their kids, some of whom are now adults themselves--sleeping out in the back yard of the people who are now my sister's in-laws.

This is probably the last time it will be held in this location. Sad for the passing of an era, but fun to once again share memories and jokes and just have a good time hanging out.

This year, to commemorate our host's 50th and the Final Vicon, we all got t-shirts. And here's the whole gang.

As far as dogs--Merle Girls stayed home, so except for the two tiny dogs next door who yapped at us during breakfast, and this--

--it was a dogless weekend for a change.

Which is sometimes nice.

No Excuse for Not Doing Agility This Weekend

SUMMARY: So many choices, so little time.

USDAA in Dixon.
CPE in Elk Grove.
AKC in Woodland.

It would take you less than an hour to drive to all three sites.

Maybe this is why attendance is down at so many trials!

Another Week Gone

SUMMARY: More about last weekend's agility trial, and just stuff.

Don't you hate it when you start having a major hot flash just a little while before bed time so you're suddenly craving a long cold drink but then of course you have to get up in the middle of night from all that last-minute liquid you consumed? If you don't know what that's like, well, pfui on you!

I have been so tired this week--recovering, recovering, and then recovering some more.

Last Saturday, the 5:00 alarm put me into my usual "why the heck am I doing this again? Can't I just lie here and sleep a few more hours?" mode. But no--paid my entry fees, committed to being score table czar, gotta go.

Fatigue and damage

The hole in my eardrum certainly didn't help. Imagine filling one ear full of water and then stuffing an earplug into it; that's sort of what it feels like, all the time. When my teeth click together, feels and sounds like my whole head is full of water, that weird underwater echo sound. And accompanying it is this always slightly vertiginous feeling. Not dizzy, not actually off balance, not really disoriented, but something that feels like i ought to be. And a little tiny wee bit queasy to go with it. That's wearing, all by itself.

Throw in that I'm so much more out of condition than I was last year. I set up MUTT MVR on the far south side of the field under the trees so I could crate out of there instead of having to haul and set up canopy and gear. Saved my time and back and shoulders, but that meant that I walked a LOT. Almost 11 miles on my pedometer friday, 9 Saturday, 7 Sunday. Seems like I often put that kind of numbers on it, but--not doing my walkies! So that really wore me down.

Not doing well in the competition was wearing, as well. Or at least, not doing what I wanted to do.

And my muscles were just so so tired by the 2nd day and positively leaden by the 3rd day. Out into the ring and I felt as if I could barely move. No wonder Tika was spinning when I couldn't keep up with her.

On top of that, for some reason my left running shoe dug into my ankle and bruised it. Same shoes I've worn for agility for quite a while; don't know what that's all about. Eased it by taking the laces out of one row of holes (which then made the shoe a little loose), but by then the damage was done.

Sleeping challenges

I also had decided to not move the crates out of MUTT MVR and sleep in the van across the width, rather than the full length as usual. Can't do it well with the doors shut, but if I can slide them open six inches, they pop out about 6 inches on each side, giving me plenty of room to be able to stretch full length. Because it was going to be really hot, right?

Well, WAS hot--in San Jose, 45 miles north (nearly 100F/37C). But the advantage to our site in Prunedale is that it gets the mitigating coastal weather. There was sun for a few hours each day, but the wind carried an arctic chill. Brr. Not a warm weekend.

So although I tried very hard to sleep with the door popped--even tried clipping blankets over the openings, but noooo still way too cold--I ended up closing the doors, which made for two cramped nights of sleep, and Sunday night, my one knee couldn't get comfortable for nothin'. By Monday morning, it had achieved a good solid ache whenever I walked that never really went away.

I was a pitiful sight, lumbering slowly across the field to get my dogs by the end of the weekend.

The emergency room visit that didn't happen

The piece de resistance was Boost's Sunday night bladder issue, or whatever it was. We all settled in to sleep for about half an hour, and then she got restless restless restless. I thought maybe it was the fireworks all around us (go figure--we're out in a wooded area, fire planes already had to put out one fire a couple of ridges over the day before--). But finally got half dressed, took her out. She peed once a little, then kept trying and trying and not doing any more. Wouldn't settle back down. Convinced her for about 15 minutes, not comfortably, and then wanted out again. Up and down every 20-30 minutes until 1:00 in the morning, when I finally called the emergency clinic.

The closest one was well over half an hour away, and I so VERY much did not want to have to pack things up, rearrange the van again so it was driveable, drive half an hour, wait an hour or two or three, pay a couple hundred bucks and be back in the morning. The first one I called said it sounded bad and I should probably bring her in. The second one I called (first clinic referred me to a closer one) said it didn't sound like a medical emergency to them, maybe a bladder infection although you never know.

Then I had a flashback to something like this happening before. Couldn't remember the details, but when I got home, I found it in my blog here, as well as a follow-up note here, where I note that my vet thought it might have been "some kind of noncalcium bladder stone".

Anyway, I decided to tough it out. Took Boost out again after the call, insisted on her settling in. She was restless for half an hour but finally slept for an hour or so. Then out again around 3, restless for a while, and then thank goodness slept until the alarm went off at 6:30. So I got maybe 3 hours of sleep at the end and a few scattered cat naps before that.

And that was the end of that. (Although since we've been home, she's needed to go out at 3 in the morning twice. Hope that's done with now.)

Other than that, how was the show, Mrs. Lincoln?

So I don't mean to sound like all I have is complaints. Agility friends are good friends. Had dinner with the judges and trial committee and a few others on site Saturday evening. Chocolate cake twice in one day, woot! And dinner sunday evening on site with a few other friends in their big ol' motor home.

An amazing number of championships were awarded this weekend, and lifetime achievement awards, huge things like that. And Bernie the Beagle--not the fastest or most driven dog in the universe, but he keeps on keepin' on--he earned his championship, something like only the 3rd beagle ever in USDAA to earn a championship. Yay Bernie! It's so cool that everyone always claps and cheers when these things are announced.

Also, Boost's littermate Derby earned his ADCH over the weekend. That might make Boost the only one of the USDAA littermates who doesn't have hers yet. Not positive about Gina or Beck, but pretty sure they've both got it. Bette definitely does. Ah, well. But mine's got the best name. ;-) (Hi C-Era Interstellar Propulsion. But you knew that, right?)

I love the names that people are coming up with for their dogs. Making their debuts this year: Space Monkey and  Tricky-Woo. Then there's Jenn, the party girl, whose newly debuted dog is Tonic, so they're appropriately Jenn and Tonic. (Tonic is another half sibling to Boost.)

We were done around 4:30 both Saturday and Sunday, and 2:00 Monday, thank goodness! I needed the rest! Although mostly the dogs got to do a lot of running off leash.

Boost goes off to play with her friends

My SMART club had a meeting Sunday afternoon. Had both dogs with me on leash. Tika's OK to hang out and get scritched and rubbed, but Boost couldn't stand it that there were border collies out running around in the field and SHE WASN'T THERE TO HERD THEM! I finally let her off her leash and she ran wayyyy out to join them (her half sister and my teammates from this weekend).

She came running back a couple of times, suddenly remembering that I wasn't there, just to check up on us. After that, she didn't worry about me at all and just hung with them. Got a lot of good running in that day. (I wondered whether that could've caused her problems that night, but not sure how.)

It was funny to me that I could do that with her, just let her go, and know that she wouldn't run off randomly or get into trouble. Unlike Tika.

Who, when she was off leash, spent most of her time scrounging around on the ground for minuscule tidbits of one sort or another, particularly around people's canopies. Must have been many good crumbs. Or else hunting gophers. She stalks them so professionally! But hasn't caught one yet.

End of the weekend

Not many ribbons to bring home this time. Although, dang, realized I forgot to pick up their Pairs Relay Q ribbons. Dangies! My hoard of ribbons is now incomplete! What shall I do?!

The drive home Sunday was very slow. As in, about 20 minutes at a literal complete stand-still. When we finally started inching forward again, eventually we came to a collection of police and tow trucks at the side of the highway. There was a huge drop-off there, and I suspect that someone went over the edge. 

Sleepinnnnng...

I have slept very soundly and very long every night this week and it has never felt like quite enough.

Tiring myself some more

Tuesday I was so sore and tired that I did nothing (no agility class this week due to a funeral in their family), and Wednesday also did nothing. THEN I figured that a  nice strenuous hike Wednesday evening with the Sierra Club would be fine, right, because I was all rested up?

We drove up to Skyline and parked looking out over the valley. Not the clearest air, by far. But can make out the blimp hangers at Moffet Field although the hills on the far side of the valley and bay are iffy.

Then we walked to the cutoff down into Coal Creek Open Space. And went down--down--down--at a fairly rapid clip for over half an hour. I knew I had some sweaty miles ahead of me coming back up!

The area was amazingly lush, filled with ferns and other big-leafed plants (and the ubiquitous poison oak). The uphill was a lot of work for me; as soon as we started climbing, I realized that my muscles were a very long way from recovered from the weekend. It would've been challenging for me at this time even without that, but, wow, whew!  I was *not* the very last person--one guy who used to hike a lot but hasn't in a few years beat me on that score--but we weren't that far apart.  I was glad for a quick rest at a trail junction.

I didn't take photos most of the trip to avoid falling even farther behind. When we crossed the creek, someone said later that there were newts, but I hadn't even stopped to look at all. Maybe some other time.

Just a leetle tiny hike Friday

Thursday I was so tired that I didn't do much of anything at all. My friend with whom I've been walking on many fridays came by this morning and we walked at least a couple of miles, but at a leisurely pace and all on level paved paths along the Los Alamitos Creek trail with the Merle Girls, who think it's something fine to do in between REAL exercise.

I had thought I might get some good hiking in this weekend, but am rethinking that plan.

This afternoon I took a nice comfy, although short, nap. All my muscles are still telling me that they want more rest, not more activity, and I'm inclined to let them have their way. Fortunately, no agility this weekend and I've got time to recover before the following TWO weekends of agility.

And now, yes, it's time to:  SLEEEEEEP!  Hear that, Bladder o'Boost? Let there be no midnight runs!

Busy Weekend Again Even Without Agility

SUMMARY: Friday and Saturday, dog playtime, then photo expedition.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night I took the dogs up to Palo Alto and we had dinner with friends to celebrate their Bump's 10th birthday, right after he finished his LAA-platinum. What a guy. Boost and the 9-month-old Border Collie, Dig, played as if they had never been allowed to play before in their entire pathetic lives. They wrestled all over each other, the floor, our legs, the chairs... Tika mostly hung out and looked for food scraps.

Dig, being an actual puppy still, eventually tired Boost out enough that my girl WANTED to sit on my lap for about 10 minutes! Usually I have to insist that she come up and then kind of hold her there while I stroke her a bit before letting her go. This time, she was plenty happy to sit there and lean her chin on my shoulder. Very sweet. They did go back at it eventually. Not that it apparently REALLY tired either of them out completely.

Today, I picked up a friend at the airport and dropped her off at her mom's. Then I went driving and photographing nature with another friend. We thought we were going on a wildflower hike but it turned out slightly differently. See photos with notes here. (Addition Sunday Feb 15: View the friend's take on the trip.)

Then I shuttled a friend around whose car is in the shop (see post from last weekend--), then finally got to work sorting through and editing today's photos. I'm wiped out, and I hardly took a step all day. And dogs were completely neglected.

Tomorrow it's a movie with another friend and then holiday/birthday celebrations with my secondary family. No wonder I never get anything done even when I'm not doing agility!

Trial Statistics Because I Can

SUMMARY: I love it when trial secretaries extract interesting info from the trial database!

So I'll share the info for this weekend's Bay Team CPE trial with you again, because I know you care. (And, for the more studious of you, you can compare and contrast with my stats from our USDAA trial 2 weeks ago.)

Total dogs entered: 204 (but usually there's a small set each day that enters only one day, so Saturday has 179 dogs, sunday has 173).

Classes: We offer 6 classes a day of the 7 defined by CPE, although CPE restricts dogs to 5 runs a day. That way, we can more easily distribute the classes among 3 judges in 3 rings, plus people can choose what they really want to enter. This time, we're offering 2 Standard, 2 Snooker, 2 Jackpot (Gamblers), 2 Jumpers, 2 Wildcard, and one each Colors and Full House.

Experience Levels: The trial sec didn't pull out the number of dogs by level, but just f'rinstance, in Saturday's Standard (which tends to be the largest class):
* Level 1: 23 (complete beginner)
* Level 2: 26
* Level 3: 29
* Level 4: 18 (Boost's level)
* Level 5: 22
* Level C: 20 ((championship), Tika's level)

Number of runs: 1482 for the weekend. That's only about 240 per judge per day, a moderate level.

Weather: It's supposed to get up into the mid-80s. Yuck. But it could be worse. And dang all that smoke; wonder whether it's clearer 2 hours north of here?

Most common breeds:
* All American (39)
* Australian Shepherd (34)
* Border Collie (26)
* Sheltie (21)
* Golden Retriever (12)
* Welsh Corgi (Pembroke) (7) (Bonus #6 on list of top 5)
The other 65 are scattered among 37 other breeds.

Ages: There's one 14-year-old dog entered, two 13, two 12-yr-olds, then the count rises as they get younger to peak at 41 4-yr-olds, with about 25 each at 2, 3, 5, and 6 years. (Dogs can't compete until they're a year and a half.)

Names: The most common dog's name is Sadie, with 3. 16 names are duplicated once, including Izzy and Ceilidh, for interesting ones that you might not guess would be duplicates. Place-type names: Two each of Sydney, Dakota, and Alaska.

Dogs per handler: 117 people are running only one dog, 35 are running 2, three are running 3, and two totally insane folks are running 4 each.

Our competition: The number of dogs in direct competition (same level and same jump height) to Boost looks like about 8; in direct competition to Tika, about -- um -- 1 or 2. (But both can vary by day and by class.) But note--that I actually consider, being a competitive sort of personage, ALL 204 DOGS to be in direct competition to my dogs. If Tika can't beat everyone at the trial in at least one class, I'll be gloomy.

Predictions: Tika will take a lot of first places.

What I'd like to do: Earn a perfect weekend--10 Qs (qualifying scores) each--for both dogs. Chances--for Tika, decent: She's done it once before and missed by one several times.

What I need: Since it looks like I'm mostly dropping out of CPE--not enough time or money to do both CPE and USDAA--I'm not focusing much on CPE titles. However, Boost needs:
* 1 Jackpot (Gamblers) to move up to Level 5 Jackpot (2 chances!)
* 2 Snooker to move to L5 (2 chances!)
* 4 Standard to move to L5 (2 chances)
* 3 Wildcard to move to L5 (1 chance)
* 4 Colors to move to L5 (1 chance--and she has to keep her bars up to get it)

Tika needs a megatruckload'o'Qs in everything to earn her CATE, and we might never get there with only a couple of trials a year. She's only halfway there. Oh, well. Most legs she can earn in any class, but she must first finish earning:
* 5 more Colors (danged bars)
* 3 more Wildcard
* 1 more Jackpot
* 7 more Jumpers (2 chances)

In total, she must earn (approx) 250 Qs; so far, she has 126. It'll be a lonnnng time getting there with only a trial or two a year. Can you say "14-year-old dog"?

Smallish USDAA Trial This Weekend

SUMMARY: Some stats for your browsing entertainment.

Our trial this weekend is on the smallish side, for our USDAA trials.

Total dogs and DAM Team: Friday is DAM Team only, and there are only 115 dogs entered, which makes 29 Championship teams and 14 Performance teams (translation: Ch = higher jump heights and tighter times). We'll be running it in only two rings. This means that, on average, probably only about 15 Ch teams and 7 Perf teams will qualify for the Nationals. Boost really needs that Q!

Classes and total dogs: Saturday and Sunday we've got Steeplechase, Grand Prix, 2 Standards, 2 Pair Relays, 2 Jumpers, plus Gamblers and Snooker. An average of 280 dogs per day, and for these two days we add a third ring for the Starters and Advanced (intermediate-level) rounds.

Experience levels: Of the dogs entered, 57% are Masters level dogs, 27% are Starters level, and 16% are Advanced. It's pretty typical for the distribution to be like this, because once a dog get to Masters, she remains at that level for the rest of her agility career, so of course that class would be larger. Starters would be the next largest because any dog starting in agility has to start here, and stays here until they earn enough Qs to move up. Some percentage of dogs never pursue an "agility career." And it also seems that, once a dog/handler team has gotten it together enough to get out of Starters, they (usually) get through Advanced fairly quickly and on into Masters.

Number of runs: Saturday has over 1200 runs! That's 400 per ring, which can be a long day depending on how efficiently things work. On Sunday, fewer than 300 runs per ring and maybe we'll be out of there a little early.

Weather: It's supposed to be unseasonably cool tomorrow, but working its way back up to Hot Hot Hot over the next three or four days, so Sunday could be toasty. At least we should have a breeze.

Breeds: The five most-common breeds this weekend are 115 Border Collies, 35 Shelties, 34 Australian Shepherds, 19 All-Americans, 11 Golden Retrievers. The rest are scattered among 25 other breeds.

Ages: There's one 14-year-old dog entered, one 13, four 12-yr-olds, then the count rises as they get younger to peak at 49 5-yr-olds, 48 4-yr-olds, and 49 3-yr-olds. The older dogs amaze me. Jake was still running in CPE at 15, but not in USDAA--I believe he was 13 when I retired him from that. Remington lived only to 9.

Names: The most common dog's name is Chase, of which there are 4 entered. 22 other names are duplicated once. The most common human's name is Nancy, of which there are 6 entered. My sisters' names are Ann, Linda, Susan (or Sue), and Sharon, all of which except Ann appear in the Top Ten human names for the trial.

Jump heights: 150 dogs jump in the 22" height category (Boost's height), 80 in Tika's 26" jump height, 61 in the 16" jump height, and 28 in the 12" jump height. I keep thinking maybe my next dog will be a 12-incher, but I don't know what kind of dog! But there are a couple of cute ones in this group--from Nike Animal Rescue Foundation, through which both Remington and Jake passed at some point. But my requirement is that my next dog must be 6 years younger than Boost, and she's only 3 1/2, so we've got a ways to go!

Boring Notes To Self From Weekend

SUMMARY: What we did well on, but mostly what we screwed up. (This is my third post of the day. You'll probably more enjoy my previous posts about Weekend Courses or Haute TRACS is Almost Done.

Boost

• Weaves: Hitting the correct entry and then skipping a pole. Several times. This cost us 14 points in Saturday's Snooker, time in the Steeplechase, I don't know where else as I didn't take good notes at the time. Popping out early. She did this almost 100% on Thursday, I think. I made her go back in and correct them on the theory that slowing her down is punishment enough. That didn't seem to help, so on Friday I made her lie down and THEN made her go back in and fix them. The next set of weaves she did the entry-skipping thing again; made her lie down, then go back in, and she finished them completely and I whooped and ran her quickly out of the ring over a couple of fast obstacles.
  
  That seems to have fixed it again, as she completed all of her weaves correctly on Saturday, I'm pretty sure, enough that I dared three sets in the gamble and she did great, made entries AND stayed in. Woo.
• Contacts: Oh, bad dog, left the first two early in team standard and I didn't want to mess around in Team events. So later I made her lie down when she left a contact or two early, and that seems to have fixed it again. You really do have to stay on top of this stuff, don't you!
• Start line stay: She is so good! Although in that same first team run, she left before I released her, and I let her get away with it because it was team. I feared for my life after that, but in fact she stuck all of her remaining start-line stays all weekend very nicely.
• Bars and refusals: I just didn't count them well this weekend. There were many, many, many on Thursday but seemed to be better on Friday and even better on Saturday. I wonder, if I had stayed through Sunday, whether we'd have actually had a run or two with no refusals or knocked bars? We just don't practice enough running and jumping, I guess. Not enough room for it in my yard; class is so much more focused on handling.
• Energy: So far she seems to maintain total drive and enthusiasm, although she was more easily distracted away from her tug toy while going to and from the ring. I hope that's just growing maturity and confidence, not a stress reaction. I'd hate to think that I'm slowing her down in the ring by my incompetent handling or stressing her out about doing well in the ring.

Tika

• Contacts: Barely getting toenails into the Aframe down contacts and flying over most of the dogwalk downs. I don't believe that we were called for any dogwalk ups this weekend. Maybe I'm concentrating on the wrong part of the contact and Rachel's right about that being trivial! I need to just decide how she's supposed to do her contacts and what I'm willing to accept in the ring and go about fixing it again. She never used to have so many flyoffs. I don't think so, anyway.
• Drive and enthusiasm: I've always had trouble getting her to play with a toy before a run, except the first run of the morning, where she really gets into it--until we get ringside, where she'd rather sniff the ground. Presumably that's mostly the chow-hound's food obsession, but the amount of time I spend dragging her around by the neck trying to do a little jogging to warm up or just to get from one side of the ring to the other is a little bit concerning. Is this a stress reaction more than mere food sniffing?
  
  She does seem to me to be tiring and flagging sooner and more often. Heat never seemed to matter to her, but this weekend she didn't leap immediately to her feet when I approached her crate saying, "Tika, you want to do some agility?" This is so unlike her. This just adds to the assorted things I have been noting about her getting tired so much faster than Boost, where not long ago she could completely keep up, or about being good for only a couple or three runs in class before her drive visibly drops.
  
  I mean, really, she's still a fast dog, but not drivey fast like she often used to be. Her Saturday Jumpers speed was 5.25 yards per second, which is good but not great (Boost's 5.96, winning dog 6.41).
  
  So I have all these questions running through my head: Is she sore? Is she getting old? Does she have something seriously wrong with her like Remington did that mystified me about his performance for so long? Is she out of condition, am I not doing enough with her? Should I be doing less with her? Argh, so hard to figure out.
• Weaves: I keep relying too much on her being a "good weaving dog" and then don't work the weave entries or exits at ALL and then get errors or pop-outs. But she did make a couple of really beautiful and very difficult weave entries all on her own this weekend. I'm not always certain where I need to give a bit more info and where she's fine on her own. Should probably experiment.
• Start-line stays: She has been so much better at staying since I started having her lie down at the start, which she wanted to do half the time anyway. She still sometimes gets up early and creeps up on the first obstacle, but I'll take it as long as she doesn't actually start doing the course on her own. It's not so much of a problem with electronic timing, so she's not creeping across the start line, but I have to make sure I give her plenty of room--just in case--for those classes (gamblers, snooker) where a traditional start line is still used.

Me

• Energy:I really felt droopy Thursday, which was not the hottest day, and all weekend I seemed to have trouble getting my feet to take me where I wanted to go. It might have been lack of sleep on Thursday. It might have been allergy drugs Thursday and Friday so I didn't take them Friday night, but didn't feel any better Saturday. I keep thinking I'm in reasonable condition. I sure wish I was in the right frame of mind to take these extra pounds off again! It's just not happening at the moment. I'm sure that contributes immensely to my perceived inability to move around the course.
• Handling: I made SO many mistakes this weekend that I SO know better. The kind where the instant you make it you know you've just screwed up, usually even before the dog goes off course/knocks a bar/gets a refusal/etc. Where is my brain? I realize that everyone makes mistakes, but this weekend felt particularly bad for me.
• Attitude: On the other hand, I felt less stress about any of my runs than I have in a long time. I enjoyed myself on course, I didn't feel like crawling into a corner and bawling when I messed up yet another course, I never felt the kind of self-pressure I feel for, say, the last leg for an ADCH or trying to get a needed Super-Q or such. Even though I wanted Tika's 2 jumpers for her ADCH-Bronze, I wasn't thinking about it at all during my runs, just concentrating on the runs themselves. So the question is--did I make more stupid errors because I *wasn't* stressed and running on adrenaline? My Q rate doesn't seem to be horribly different from other USDAA trials, so I'm not sure really what difference any of this really made.

CPE Weekend Wrap-Up

SUMMARY: Mixed bag again. OK, it's almost always a mixed bag.

Tika ran nicely, for the most part. She really is my reliable agility dog. Finally! At age 7!

• She knocked 2 bars --one in full house that didn't matter, one in Jumpers that prevented a Perfect Weekend of 10 Qs. Back to bar-knocking drills.
• Contacts: Got all of her contacts--barely--but there were almost no contacts all weekend on course! Aframe/teeter/dogwalk in Standard on Saturday (she wasn't entered on Sunday), Aframe in Jackpot on Sunday 3 times, and that's it.
• Most of the weekend, the only dog in her same height and level (24" Level C) was Annie the very fast & experienced rescue BC, who debuted about the same time that Tika did.
• But in CPE, levels 4/5/C run the same course, and sometimes Level 3, too, and even sometimes everyone competing at the trial, all levels. So I can compare against more than just my group.
• Sat Jumpers/no Q: Very fast and smooth, that one dang bar. 6th fastest of 56 4/5/C dogs (faster: Cody the Aussie, Reilly the spotted mixed-breed, Vixen, and Cory the super Sheltie, but not Annie for a change).
• Sat Wildcard/Q and 1st: Really smooth-looking on a twisty course. The fastest of all 44 4/5/C dogs--but Annie wasn't entered.
• Sat Colors/Q and 2nd: Nice but I forgot to call her coming out of a tunnel so she way overshot and had to come back. Still, 6th fastest of 57 3/4/5/C dogs (Annie beat us by 3.5 seconds! Jeez! Also faster: Sydney the Aussie, Cody the Aussie again, Steamer the zippy BC, and some dog named Boost.)
• Sat Full House/Q and 2nd:That's the one where she was a stride away from exiting a tunnel for 3 more points. I thought she had made it, she was moving so fast; had to review the video to assure myself that the scribe hadn't made a mistake. Still, she was 5th-highest of all 114 dogs, with 46 points; Annie had 49 and three had 47 (Django the 24" Border Collie, Sydney again, and Sooner the Papillon, who is fast but also had 5 more seconds than the rest of us).
• Sat Standard/Q and 2nd: One big turn where she headed the wrong way after the dogwalk so wasted time. Still, she was 4th fastest of 49 4/5/C dogs (faster: Annie of course, and Steamer again, and that Boost critter also).
• Sun Jackpot/Q and 2nd: I chickened out when the whistle blew and didn't take one more 5-point obstacle. Turns out that I had 7 seconds left, so I could've easily done it, it was right next to me. I remember that when I ran Boost. So, with 59 points instead of 64, she was only 9th-highest scoring of 114 dogs (all levels same course). (Scoring higher: Annie, naturally, with 61, Boost with 61 (would've had that 64 except she popped out one pole early on her last weaves), Cory the Sheltie again with 63, Chaps the Aussie (who wasn't there Saturday) with 64, Steamer again with 62, and three little dogs who got 7 more seconds--Porsche the Corgi with 66, MeiMei the Corgi with 62, and Beau the mini poodle with 61.)
• Sun Full House/Q and 1st: I thought I had a clever course that would get me 52 points, but it involved lots of tight turns and I didn't call/manage Tika tightly enough. We ended up with 46 points (she knocked one 1-point bar and the wide turns didn't allow time for the one final 5-pointer). (For a change, Annie had only 44--they missed 4 more points on a misdirected jump--but Chaps once again had more with 48, and that Steamer zipped with 49.) So Tika was "only" the 3rd highest of all 101 dogs.
• Sun Jumpers/Q and 1st: A clean, smooth run. Annie knocked a bar and bobbled a jump, so we took 1st again, but there were two other dogs faster among the 55 4/5/C (Chaps 0.4 secs faster, Sydney 2 secs faster).
• Sun Wildcard/Q and 1st: Pretty smooth if you ask me. Don't know that it could've been faster. Annie was over 2 seconds faster but knocked the last bar, so we eked out another 1st. (Others faster in the 64 3/4/5/C dogs: Cory again by 1.1, Steamer again by almost 2.)
• Sun Snooker/Q and 1st: The 7-pointer was a combo of a 20-foot tunnel and 12-pole weaves, but I really pushed her and we made it through the last weave just before the whistle blew, for a perfect 51-point round and a 1st place. Only 3 other dogs out of 68 3/4/5/C dogs got 51 (Chaps again, Cory again, and Ouzo), but Annie didn't run this one, or Steamer, or Sydney--and Boost and I blew it.

Boost had her moments. She's very fast--even sometimes having to repeat obstacles or recover from repeated refusals, she still had some of the fastest course times.

• Weaves: Problems again. She's running past them completely again, or ducking in somewhere in the middle, or popping out. Can't they just stay fixed? If I can be there near the beginning and end to manage her a teensy bit, she's good. But I want independent weaves like Tika's! Out of 16 sets of poles, 7 had problems. Back to the drawing board.
• Refusals: Only maybe 3 really bad ones, one of which cost us Snooker on Saturday when I had to run out of position to get her to take the danged thing. I think rear crosses are the worst. Back to the drawing board.
• Go on: At the end of the courses, where judges like to put several jumps in a run for a really fast fun race to the finish, Boost keeps stopping and looking back at me, while I'm running as fast as I can yelling "go hup! Go! Hup! Go! Hup!" and my arm is up and then half the time we end up with a refusal or two because she's too close to the jump to take it comfortably. Known issue. Work harder.
• Contacts and start line: Lovely lovely lovely.
• Bars: Well, she knocked fewer this weekend than last weekend jumping 20" instead of 24", but still knocked enough to make me go back to my thinking that it's a bar-knocking issue, not a height issue.
• Sat Jumpers/Q and 3rd: Ran past 2nd jump on a lead-out so I reset her to get into position, wasting beaucoup time.
• Sat Wildcard/Q and 1st: Missed weave entry so had to come back for it.
• Sat Colors/Q and 2nd: Yay! Kept bars up! Finished Level C! But looking back at me instead of running to end.
• Sat Snooker/no Q: Started very nicely with 3 sets of weaves but in the closing, that stubborn refusal on a rear cross, leading to a juicy tunnel offcourse.
• Sat Standard/Q and 1st: A really really nice run.
• Sun Jackpot/Q and 2nd: I got into the wrong position so we bobbled some things, leading into a refusal, and she popped out of one set of weaves, but our score was 2nd highest of all 112 dogs, so I shouldn't complain too much. Except that the only dog with more points--that lovely Steamer--was in our height/level again, keeping us from a first place.
• Sun Full House/Q and 2nd: Missed weave entry twice, so couldn't pick up the rest of our planned points. Not a bad score, and also, too bad that fast Steamer is in her height and level!
• Sun Standard/No Q: Bars bars bars, missed weaves twice, looking back at me at the end.
• Sun Wildcard/No Q: Missed weaves, and when I pulled her around to try again, took a juicy tunnel offcourse.
• Sun Snooker/No Q: Lovely two sets of weaves, then she didn't go where I wanted after the 3rd red, and I fell flat on my back trying to call her to me. She came over to tell me to GET UP COME ON! and I petted her, stood up, then just took her straight to the table to stop the clock instead of it occurring to me until the next day that what she did was LEGAL and I could've just stood up and gone on and maybe gotten the Q. But I don't think that fast. Dang. You'd think that after hundreds of snooker runs--this was my 305th, if you'd like to know--I'd have that idea embedded in my brain. But no.

But I had a good time, weather was great, judges were nice, friends were fun, dogs were fast and a joy to be on the course with.

CPE Weekend Photos

SUMMARY: Today, some photos. Later or maybe tomorrow, some narrative results info and post-game analysis.

	There is always a workers appreciation gift (WAG--isn't that clever? I made it up back in, uh, gosh, when we were still doing trials up on the lawn between the buildings at Hayward) raffle, and you can get tickets only by working. This is what I really want and why I work a lot each trial. Free-entry certificates. I put in many tickets. Did I win many free entries? Not this time.
	But this looked like it would be a useful thing to have around the house, so I put a ticket in here, too. I also didn't win this. I'm guessing that's a good thing.
	This is what most of the raffle offerings look like. It's exciting until you realize that I already have 60,000 toys, rawhides, and leashes lying around the house, many of them never used ever for anything.
	In the Easter spirit, the pens for filling out your raffle tickets are decorated all flowery. Or maybe that's all the time, to prevent the miracle of the pens rising and walking away under their own power.
	This keychain looked pretty cool but as we saw earlier, my keychain is plenty crowded with useless gewgaws already, so I did not put in a ticket.
	Instead, let's look at some entertaining results for ouir runs on Saturday. The darker horizontal lines separate dogs who are competing directly against each other.
	Compare and contrast Tika's results with other dogs. All the dogs on the sheet are at the same level of competition, just different heights.
	If only she had been one stride further to exit the tunnel, we'd have gotten those 3 points, too!
	This is the only thing that kept Tika from having a perfect weekend (10 Qs out of 10 runs)--that danged knocked bar for 5 faults. Dang dang dang.
	This was Boost's really lovely Standard run Saturday. We went downhill considerably on Sunday.
	Ribbon for Boost finishing her last Level 3 requirement, so now she's earned "CL3".
	Our ribbons for Saturday. They don't fit on Boost's crate, so Tika's crate is kindly holding all of them. On Sunday, Tika had 5 ribbons and more firsts, and Boost had fewer ribbons and fewer firsts. It's nice to have two dogs.
	When I'm eating lunch, I have the crates open to toss them orts (there's that crossword puzzle word again) from my plate. The rule is that you can't exit the crate. Tika isn't big on rules. But it took me about 20 shots to catch her, because every time I raised my camera, she ducked back inside.
	The neighboring Little Black Dogs, Sparkle and Scully, get watermelon cut up specially for them.
	Scully enjoys and Sparkle drools. My dogs get Zukes or maybe cut-up Rollover served from my slobbered fingers. As also previously recently discussed. Not watermelon tenderly and loving cut into LBD-sized pieces and served with a fork.
	Wear sunscreen. Wear sunscreen. Wear sunscreen.

Busy CPE Day 1

SUMMARY: Each dog Qed 4 out of 5; filmed for TV!

A day of mixed success, although the goods outweighed the bads.

The weather was lovely; started out with frost on everything, but warmed up to a short-sleeves kind of sunny day. Should be more of the same tomorrow.

Tika, who has been keeping her bars up most of the time in CPE, has started knocking them again--only one today, in Jumpers, putting us even farther behind in Jumpers than everything else towards our (far-distant) C-ATE award. She had some very nice runs but one of the fastest dogs at the trial this weekend was the only other dog competing in our class and level. So, instead of a given 1st place in everything, we had to work at it:
*In Jumpers, Tika had the fastest time on an otherwise smooth run but knocked a bar, so no Q and no 1st.
*In Wildcard, she had a beautiful run that made it look easy and the fastest time of all dogs all heights in levels 4/5/C (about 55 dogs) by a couple of seconds, so she had a well-earned Q and first.
*In Colors, I neglected to call her for a turn after a straight tunnel, so she blasted straight out and away from where she needed to be, easily wasting 2 seconds or more, which is how much we ended up behind the first-place dog (Annie).
*In Full House, Annie had a lovely run but ran a slightly different course than we did. I thought we had her on points, but in reviewing the videotape, I discovered that in fact Tika wasn't quite out of the last 3-point tunnel when the whistle blew, so we were 3 points behind Annie. (But were were still among the top few out of all dogs all heights all levels.)
*In Standard, she had a very fast run except where she ran through (at least not jumping over) the dogwalk down contact and veered off towards the wrong obstacle before I could call her back, putting her I think about a second behind the first place dog (Annie). But again, our speed was among the fastest of all 55ish dogs all heights all levels on that course.


Boost did much better about bars jumping 20" this week instead of 24" two weeks ago. At least I have that option in CPE. She knocked only one bar...
* ... in Wildcard, which at Level 4 is still a Q, but not a first place, especially since she also ran past the first set of weaves and I had to bring her back around to restart them.
* Her Jumpers started with her running past the second jump on a lead-out pivot, so I reset her before it and walked back out to position to make her take the jump. So it was a Q but with a really slow time. But that also moves her up to Level 5 in Jumpers for tomorrow.
* Her Colors was nice, I believe a first place, and that last Q we needed to get completely out of Level 3! W00t! That's our level 3 title!
* Her Standard run was drop-dead gorgeous, beating even the super Steamer (who for example won Steeplechase last weekend) and she earned a 1st on that, although Annie (at a higher level) still beat her by a tenth of a second or so. But we're in the range! Woo hoo!
* Her 7-7-7 12-pole weaves snooker opening, covering 6 jumps as well (#7 a 2-part obstacle of jump plus weaves) was also drop-dead gorgeous--fast, driven, tight turns, bars up, driving out ahead of me. But then in the closing when I tried to do a rear cross--our bugaboo these days--she just kept refusing and refusing and refusing the #3 jump and I had to run past it to get her over it--at which point she saw a lovely juicy off-course tunnel and took it. Sigh.

Meanwhile, a graduate student in Broadcasting at San Francisco State came down for the day to film for a class project that will also probably air on the college station eventually. Our main club contact turned her loose on me, and she focused on my dogs and their runs for the day, although I tried to direct her towards people with small dogs, more rescue dogs, someone who earned her championship that day, dogs who also do therapy, dogs of less common breeds, dogs who do tricks (well-that's almost all of us, right?), and the trial chair and secretary and so on. She got tons of film and was there almost all day, got most of my dogs' runs, too.

I'm eager to see what she turns it into. Probably a 5-minute segment on their sports show.

I'm tired. Should go to bed.

A Busy Weekend

SUMMARY: Good thing I had a weekend off from dog agility so I could relax and catch up around the house. Not.

But I had fun.

Saturday Morning: Hiking

Got up to the alarm at 7 a.m. (This is a free weekend, right? No alarm? Argh. Remember: I'm doing this because I WANT to.) Left the house at 8:00 with Friend #1 for an hour's drive up into the hills to Henry Coe State Park, where we hiked leisurely for about 3 hours and took photos. Home about 1:30.

	A trail sign partway along our route; more trails visible just beyond. "Flat Frog" trail? Not a pretty image...
	Cool fungus, with the "pitcher" on the left maybe 8 inches tall, at the base of a tree. No clue what it is yet.

Saturday Afternoon: Kooza

Brief hello to dogs, quick shower, change clothes, and dashed off to meet Friend #2 (from agility) and her spouse for Cirque de Soleil's Kooza at 4:00. An amazing show of humor, skill, daredeviltry, and contortion (my favorites: the juggler and the contortionists). Afterwards, dinner at Elephant Bar, which I'd never heard of, but had good meals at reasonable prices and an interesting ambiance.

	For a temporary structure, the Cirque tents are HUGE! And their stripes stand out in the urban landscape. Friend and her spouse turn back to see what's keeping me.
	Elephant Bar: There's a life-sized African elephant emerging from the wall above the diners, and various pachydermous artifacts everywhere.

Sunday Morning: Practice

Home by maybe 9:30, and it's right to bed because I have to get up Sunday morning at 7:00 to the alarm (this IS a weekend off, right?) to bake brownies for the SMART agility club practice/meeting/potluck. Friend #3 meets up with me at 9:00 a.m. with her two dogs, and the six of us drive an hour down to Hollister for a couple of hours of practice, a lovely potluck, and a reasonably short meeting, then more practice, then home.

	Workin' Paws is in the back yard of these people's home. They've got TWO competition-sized fields! (Wouldn't that be grand? Twenty feet from your back door?) Here's field 1 with Friend #3 in the background. Look at the wide-open spaces!
	Here's field 2 complete with Team Small Dog leaving the practice field. What a lovely mountainous view to wake up to every day!
	Here I am, posing. The slightly-less-posed shot was blurry. Technology! Pah!
	This guy came in 2nd in a poker tournament and decided to spend his winnings on something that would help him to remember his victory and make him very happy: Meet Tex[as Hold'em]. Now there's a man with his priorities straight!

Sunday evening:Party

Then an hour's drive home, play with all the dogs in yard a bit (Hey! I'm already getting pretty tired! How come they want to play again? Dang herding dog endurance!), quick shower and change and head over to my parent's house for a family birthday celebration.

	Parents went to town decorating for the birthday party. We even got personalized Welcome letters.
	Eight of us have birthdays within a 2-month period, so they baked two cakes and put our initials on them. (I'm "ELF".)
	Plus we got Mardi Gras beads. In my fave colors.
	AND I got a cool new baseball cap from my sister that combines Disney with dogs (why do people think I like dogs?). I love how Pluto looks as if he's got a really clever, sneaky trick up his sleeve. Reminds me of a truth about dog agility--youth and enthusiasm will always be beaten by age and treachery. Or something like that.

Sunday Late Evening: Photos and Blog

Then...sighhhhhh...two hours transferring photos to the computer, doing a quick search and edit for a few that I can use on my blog (deal with the rest later. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows.) then upload them for the blog and type in some notes...

Sorry, K.A., it'll be yet another day at least for the rest of Rachel's seminar!

Mostly Better Than Feared

SUMMARY: USDAA trial went generally well for us, on many counts.

Here's what I had rattling around in the Things To Worry About Department of my brain before today:

• Tika has done almost no agility, and NO 26" jumps, in almost 4 weeks. She'd been sore (briefly) back then. Would a sudden rash of 5 classes in one day at 26" wipe her out? Would she be able to do them at all?
• How come we haven't been able to to get that danged 15th Gamblers leg for our Bronze Gamblers? And will I ever, since I haven't practice distance work with her for 3 months?
• Would the freeway between here & there still be closed due to flooding for our trip up this morning?
• Would the ground under the horse arena cover (for our trial) be flooded? Filled with goopy mud?
• Its been raining and gloomy and REALLY COLD (for rain) with bone-piercing arctic wind all week--this could be a miserable day, even with closing panels on half of the arena, because you still have to load & unload the car and potty the dogs and DRIVE in it.

But I needn't have spent the calories fretting. The freeway was still closed when I got up at 4 this morning, but by the time I picked up my friend with her dogs Scully and Sparkle, it was open. It wasn't raining at all, anywhere along the trip. The temps went all the way up into the mid-60s and there wasn't a breath of wind all day. The arena had one area maybe 10 feet by 3 feet that was floody & muddy, but it didn't really affect us much. The day started with a drop-dead gorgeous sunrise that started out awesome and just got better for the next 10 minutes.

Tika

Tika was SO excited to be doing agility, and no sign of soreness. Her first run of the day was gamblers, and MAN, she flew around that course! Even her dogwalk and teeters were super-fast, as we've been working on (before her medical and rain hiatus anyway). She was one of only about 10 of 76 Masters dogs who got the gamble. I thought that she had actually managed to beat everyone else (rare for Tika) by 2 points total, too, but apparently her fast dogwalk was not as accurate a dogwalk as it had looked to me, because we didn't get points for it, dropping us to 3rd of 19 26" dogs. But I know I shouldn't complain--she ran great, looked great, executed everything beautifully, got a hard gamble, and finished that Gamblers Bronze! (Now it's just the danged Jumpers...)

In fact, she Qed 3 of 5 for the weekend, also taking 3rd of 19 in Standard 26". Also had a nice pairs run, but the course was pretty easy and, so, many many many teams Qed and had very fast times. She and partner were 12th of 27 Open teams.

She knocked NO bars! Woooooo! Didn't Q in Jumpers because I tried to do a bit of a send-and-run, and managed to pull her past a jump for a refusal, dagnabbit.

And she backjumped on a wrap in the Snooker opening, but had successfully negotiated 11 jumps in a row up to that point without knocking any, so that was a bit of a victory.

Boost

Boost ran very nicely, looking more like a Master dog all the time, although the Q rate is still low. I knew that the gamble would be extremely difficult for her, and she failed exactly where I thought she would, but she DID do a serp leading into it with no effort at all--a big improvement. Her opening was nice but did the "THIS tire? You mean THIS tire? THIS one?" refusal in the opening and I just help my position and waited until she took it, so she didn't get all the way through our last Teeter (still in the air)--otherwise she'd have tied for highest opening points.

In Jumpers, she came past a sharply angled jump (my fault for not remembering what a babydog she is) AND knocked a bar, but otherwise she flew around that course without hesitations or bobbles. Looked good.

In Snooker, another babydog/overly assuming mom error--I thought she was with me while running for the next jump, and suddenly realized that there was no dog going over it--nor anywhere to be seen--and she had gone in a different direction than I thought we were going (took my eyes off her, in other words).

In Standard, oh, it was LOVELY, dang it, except for one "THIS jump? You mean THIS jump? THIS one?" refusal--but two in five runs compared to several per run like we were sometimes doing last year is a big improvement.

And in team--whoo!--she screamed around that course (figuratively, not literally--none of my dogs, thank goodness, have ever voiced while running) and her partner was pretty danged fast, too; they were 4th fastest of all 37 teams but she knocked a bar, so Q but no placement. But even with that 5-point fault added to their time, they were half a second faster than Tika's pair. Now, THAT's a fast team!

Overall

I had a good time with my friends, being score table supervisor and keeping busy, taking photos (an assortment shown here), playing a fast, challenging sport with my dogs-- let's hear it for a 2 month vacation from agility and for a 1-day trial. Even my failures as a handler didn't seem so galling today.

As much as it would slow down our Title Chase, maybe I really do need to take more time off from agility. WOuld certainly help my pocketbook, but maybe it would help my enjoyment of the basic experience of agility more, too.

New rescue sheltie, at a year and a half just joining a family dynasty of outstanding agility shelties.

Graffiti.

The photographer is caught at her foul work again.

The remnants of a favorite one of these (I've had some that look like this).

On the trial secretary's box, the added tag says, "How special can it be if there's no beer?"

A Good Weekend

SUMMARY: #1 of several posts about this weekend. Working on our goals, plus we clean up in the Turkey Trot.

This Weekend's Goals

Goals were:

1. Boost earn Qualifying scores in one Colors and 2 Wildcards to finish her Level 3 title.
2. Win the Turkey Trot.
3. Concentrate on Tika's contacts.
4. Relax and have fun.

Goal 1: Finish Boost Level 3

Close but no Bonanza. She Qualified in both Wildcards, but Colors was a disaster--knocked TWO bars AND skipped poles in a mere 6-pole weave! But she was fast. :-) So finishing Level 3 will have to wait until our next CPE, which might not be until Bay Team's March one--I just don't have the time, money, or inclination to do all the available CPEs as well as the USDAAs.

Goal 2: Win the Turkey Trot.

The Turkey Dogs and their gorgeous first- and second-place gift baskets.

Success. Tika's team took 1st of 12 big-dog teams; Boost's team took 2nd. Susan has been trying to add more elements of chance as well as skill to the game to level the playing field a bit. So some of what we did was skill, some strategy, some chance.

Goal 3: Tika's contacts

Welllllll, I'll tell ya, I get out there on a course with the possibility to earn a zillion points and beat everyone else at the trial, and my competitive gland starts pushing out the competitive chemical signals to the brain, and fast contact takes precedence over accurate contact. I did enforce a couple of times. She did have legal contacts all weekend. There weren't a lot of opportunities to practice contacts. More in a later post.

Goal 4: Have fun

For a change, I did well at this. I had no particular "win/Q" goals with Tika, except for the Turkey Trot--which is all for fun anyway and carries no weight anywhere of any kind with anyone except me--and I know that Boost's C-ATCH is maybe years in the future if I cut way back on CPE, so no pressure there, either.

When I started the weekend, I looked at the lists of names of people running, and thought that I knew almost no one (my last CPE was in July, I think--you get out of touch). But as the weekend wore on, I found more people whom I do know, and made a point of trying to talk to a few more, including some whose faces I recognize although not their names.

Schmoozing and being with friends is, for me, one of the important things about agility. I entered only the first two classes (running in parallel) for this morning, and I'll tell ya, if I had concentrated in the morning on packing, I could've been on the road to home by 10:00. Instead, I watched several friends' and acquaintances' runs; schmoozed with various people about random things, not even all of it agility (Yes! It's true!); played a lot of frisbee with my dogs (usually too busy & rushed to do that). I still felt plenty relaxed and was on my way by noon. And traffic wasn't bad at all coming home after the holidays. Home by 2:00. Hot shower. Felt good. And I'm not exhausted as I usually am after a full day of agility.

More Weekend Notes and A Course

SUMMARY: I'm discouraged about Nationals. And an interesting Standard Course on Saturday.

• Of the 52 dogs entered in Saturday's 22" Masters Standard class, there were 6 Aussies, one Aussie cross, one Australian Cattle Dog, and one over-the-top Tervuren. The rest were Border Collies. Somehow this depresses me, even though one of them is my own sweetie, The Booster herself.
• Of the 23 in 26", a "mere" half were Border Collies. More variety here: Three Aussies, a Rough Collie, a Whippet, a Terv, a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a German Shepherd, a Golden Retriever, and three mixed breeds.
• If Tika's Top Ten Standard points were on the USDAA standings page right now, she'd be tied for 21st (with 25 points). But the stats are a month behind at the moment, and I know for a fact that at least 3 of the people on that list have had at least 3 more weekends of placements (including this weekend's Sunday Standard). So we're still soooo not there.
• Why am I bothering with Grand Prix at Nationals? Tika almost never runs clean. When she does, the gap between her time and the winning times is getting slowly wider and wider. I don't think that she's slowing down much--her times are still fairly consistently in the 4.5 to 4.9 yards per second range. But her time--while excited--on this weekend's course was 5 and a half seconds slower than the fastest dog. That's nearly 20% slower. Twenty percent! I think that the younger, faster dogs keep coming in faster and faster. The only reason that we earned a 1st in Standard was because all the other 26" dogs knocked bars or crapped out. Sure, running clean on that course was a good thing. But she was still 6 seconds slower than the fastest dogs. Six! That's an eternity.
• On the other hand, we can do Team. Because, in team, bar-knocking matters so much less than off-coursing, and we're pretty good about staying on course. And because we can usually rack up points in gambles by picking good strategies and executing smoothly. Still, I think that last year's Finals appearance was a fluke--that, once again, we lucked out that the fast teams happened to hit courses where they crapped out, and we just kept plugging along and got lucky that none of us had a bad run. Seems SO unlikely that that will happen again this year.
• So why the heck am I going and spending all that time and money? This weekend has only discouraged me. That, plus the fact of having been unable to qualify Tika in Steeplechase, and of having only one dog to run for the first time out of my assorted 8 Nationals appearances. Instead of looking forward to a relaxed week, I'm feeling like I'm slipping, my dogs are slipping, my expectations are too high.
• Maybe I'm just tired. Exhausted. It was SO hard to drag out of bed and do Boot Camp this morning, but I did it.
• Are local people NUTS? While I (and I'm not the only one I've heard say so) am burning out on so much agility and time and money, local clubs, including mine, are working FOUR more USDAA trials into the yearly schedule! One argument was that there will be "only" three DAM team events in the Bay Area next year, so a fourth would be good. Jeez--I remember when there used to be one every other year in the Bay Area. One of the usual September trials hereabouts actually LOST money this time--it was the last qualifier of the year, and I suspect that people (like me) had either qualified already or just wanted a break between the Labor Day regionals and the other 3 USDAA trials running alternate weekends from now through Nationals. Can this area really support that many USDAA trials, on top of the CPE, AKC, and ASCA? And now a couple of clubs are doing DOCNA, too!

Saturday's Standard

So, what was Saturday's Master Standard that wiped out so many dogs? Here ya go.

• There were some problems with bars, offcourses, and refusals from 3 to 4 because of the sharp turn. Some people pulled and rear crossed 4 or ran behind the tunnel, others got ahead on the teeter and front crossed between 3 and 4. That worked nicely for both of my dogs; I think that was the better option if you could do it.
• Some offcourses shooting out of #4 and getting a paw onto the dogwalk before the handler could get to the end of #4 or call the dog off.
• A lot of dogs coming off the dogwalk headed for the tunnel instead of the tire. I don't think that anyone expected that, but probably because of the extreme angle of the tire, dogs coming of the dogwalk, with the handler running behind trying to catch up, really didn't see any obstacles except the tunnel. After watching a bunch of those, I ran on the left side of the dogwalk, figuring that then she'd be erring toward looking at me. Instead, when she didn't stick her contact or wait for me (argh, she *also* took a couple of steps towards the tunnel, but at least I was in a position to call her off instead of trying to handle it from behind.
• The 8-9-10 seqence vexed many people; quite a few popped weaves because the handler hung back to make a break for #9; knocked bars or runouts on #9; offcourses after 9 or around 9 onto the Aframe (yes!) or into the wrong side of #10.
• There were quite a few knocked bars in the 11-13 sequence, particularly 11, I believe (it wasn't a straight line from 10 to 12).
• Problems of many varieties in the 16-19 sequence. It was mu subjective opinion that people who could put a front cross between the chute and #17 and therefore push out to #18 had a better chance of avoiding knocking 17 or having a runout when the dog pulled inside #18.
• Seems to me that there were issues in the 18-19-20, as well, but I don't recall anything sticking out in particular. Some people got a front cross in before 19 (I did) and I thought it worked more smoothly than sending to #18 and running on the chute side of 19, because if you were behind your dog there, you risked a bar down when trying to push or pull from behind--unless the dog is really accustomed to working like that.