Chip is a Very Good Boy

SUMMARY: And a tattletale. Which keeps Zorro safe.

        Posted on Facebook June 9, 2019, without photo

Dogs can convey so much with their voice and body language. If only we understood. Sometimes I succeed. I was sitting here quietly typing away, beautiful quiet morning, and heard Chip whimper in the front hall. Well, earlier he had said, "I just heard something and it was scary," so I figured it was more of the same.

But then he came into the kitchen in a little trot on his tippy toes, little whines, head and ears down like "something's wrong" but in a bouncy happy way, if you can picture it, like "something's exciting but different and I don't know if it's OK." I asked him casually, half paying attention, "Is there a cat in the front yard?", then >>sudden lightbulb!<< I leaped up, raced to the front door to open it, and sure enough, there was Zorro wandering around out front. I said HI! to him and he dashed into the house. Chip was very happy and I praised him enthusiastically.

Side gate was open. Latch apparently isn't working properly and needs repair. Thank you, Chip! I think I recognized the message because on a very few other occasions Zorro has been out front or accidentally closed in the garage (latter is not quite so exciting, but still concerning, apparently).

Buds playing, September 2015

Dear Santa

SUMMARY: Please consider what I want:

• To be able to focus better on what's really important to me.
• To be a better friend and relation.
• To be able to enjoy the things I have to do as much as the things I want to do.
• To always do the right thing.
• To be able to think clearly under pressure.
• To not be unhappy about things that I am unwilling to make a serious effort to change.
• To make a serious effort to change things that bother me.
• To smile, and mean it, in agility no matter what silly things I or my dogs do on course.
• To not crave sweets so much.
• To always do my best when it's important, and to be able to let it go when it's not.
• To be able to let it go, let it go, let it go.

Could You Not Lie Under My Chair Sighing While She Whines and Paces In The Other Room?

SUMMARY: Dogs would like me to know that they are bored.

I've been BUSY. A long day of work, at the client site mostly but quite a bit here on the computer. I have a big deadline! This is important!

We DID go into the back yard and I threw the toy and played tug late this morning. Yes, with YOU TWO specifically, as there are no other dogs here, if you will remember!

SORRY we didn't go for our usual walk; I thought we'd have class!

And it's NOT MY FAULT that it's IT'S RAINING, you guys, and they canceled agility class!

You GOT dinner, fercryinoutloud, WHAT ELSE DO YOU WANT?! Leave me alone! I have important stuff I have to do! I'm not in the mood for playing gingerly in the living room! You had the last of the bully sticks last night! Just--Go away!

Some times are just easier without dogs.

Guess I'll go play gingerly in the living room.

Tournament Silver and other Tournament Statistics

SUMMARY: Tika's new title plus mining my database for tournament minutiae.

Oh, yeah: Because Tika Qed in Steeplechase, that completed her Performance Tournament Master Silver title (25 Qs with at least 5 in each of the 3 tournaments). It took her 4 years and 4 months to complete her Championship TM Silver; it has taken 1 year and 6 months for her Performance equivalent.

Tika's Grand Prix History

I felt a bit of a pang when admiring a friend's Bye certificate from winning Grand Prix this weekend. (For regular-weekend Grand Prixs like these, a Bye cert gets you into Round 2 at a Regional.) With all of Tika's Grand Prix Qs in her life--37 to date--she has never won a Grand Prix and never earned a Bye certificate.

Wellll, OK, neither of those are strictly true statements.

Because Tika *did* win one Grand Prix--Round 1 at a Regional. Which doesn't get you a **certificate** because you're at a regional so you just go on to round 2 the next day anyway.

Oh, and there is another way to get into Round 2 at a Regional, and that is by Qing in Round 1 at a Regional. Which, in fact, Tika has done 6 out of 8 times. So the result is exactly the same as having a cert from an earlier trial; it's just that--jeez--it would be nice to have one of those certificates on our record plus one of those fancy Grand Prix first-place ribbons (which you don't get by winning Round 1).

She's placed 2nd five times. (Three times in Championship, twice in Performance.)

Her Qing rate is odd recently. After she moved to performance last spring, she Qed in 6 out of her first 7 Grand Prixs. And since then--only 2 out of 10. Gotta pick up my game, obviously!

It's a little hard to compare to her Championship record: Virtually all the time she was in Championship, you could Q with 5 faults, and she Qed 29 out of 47 times. But 20 of those were with 5 faults--ouch!

So in Performance, those first 6 Qs were all clean runs, and since then she's had 2 more clean, which is just about as many in a year and a half as she had in 6 years in Championship! Meanwhile, 4 of her 9 performance NQs have been 5-faulters, so in the old days those would also have been Qs. Ah, well. Not too worried about it yet.

But just in case I WANT to worry about something--

Boost's Grand Prix History and other sad stories

To add to the general feeling that I'm rushing madly nowhere with Boost, she's earned only 3 Grand Prix Qs out of 41 tries.

Not quite as bad as 1 Jumpers Q out of 56 tries, or zero Snooker Super-Qs out of 52 tries, but the three of these combined makes for a good excuse to get depressed and give up the sport forever.

What it SHOULD do is serve as a motivator for me to more regularly do the things that I know I could probably do to probably improve the situation, but for some reason those all fall into the category of Not Interesting Enough. I know what Susan Garrett (and everyone else who's successful at this sport) would say about that, and I can say it in my own words: Do something about it or quit whining and just enjoy being out on the field with your dog doing what you're capable of doing.

Bleah. I hate good advice that makes sense but actually involves work or ceasing whining.

I mean, she DOES have 7 Steeplechase Qs, which Tika only ever got 11 of in Championship, and she has 22 Pairs Qs, which Tika only ever got 27 of in Championship.

And I'm not too unhappy with 10 out of 70ish Standard Qs or 10 out of 60ish Gamblers.

But, really, I was in despair over Remington's failure to get more than one Standard Q out of 41 attempts, and that pales in comparison to Boost's unachievements. Or his only-one Gamblers Q out of 29 attempts (between NADAC and USDAA) that had me sitting in a corner sobbing pathetically on more than one occasion.

Of course now I'm older and wiser and don't tend to go sob in a corner over missing Qs. But, frankly, if it weren't for Tika, I dunno whether I'd have the strength of will to keep going in agility at this rate with Boost. Or, conversely, whether that would in fact motivate me more to do something about it.

And in conclusion

Have you heard all this before? Probably. Like a broken record.

OK, this was supposed to be a 2-line post about Tika's Pf Tournament Silver. Now it's back to the real world.