Stuff I've Done In the Last Month-ish

SUMMARY: Your choice: Wordless Wednesday OR Caption Wednesday (hover over image)

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Short Hike Involving Excessive Sweating

SUMMARY: Pulgas Ridge Open Space with dogs and Sierra Club.

(Already posted photos on Facebook.)

Haven't been able to hike with the Sierra Singles Wednesday evening group in a while.  Managed to make it to this one, Pulgas Ridge. OK, it's a 40-minute drive (w/out traffic), and it's 500 feet elevation gain, but it's only a 4-mile hike and the uphill isn't really steep.

Turns out traffic was a mess on the peninsula, both on 101 (several miles north, paralleling I-280) and on I-280, where I was. Usuallygoing north at this time of day, a piece of cake. Except everything was jammed up. Southbound at a standstill, northbound seldom getting over 35MPH and usually less. Drat.

Looks sunny, but look at that fog bank pouring over the coastal range.

Turns out that I was NOT ready to get back to a hike like this with avid hikers--I lagged the whole way and they spent more time than they probably liked, waiting for me. Even the dogs were faster and more energetic than I was. Downhill for the return to parking not so bad, but that steady 2 miles of up starting out took all my energy. Gah. Must do more.

A hiking friend offered to use my camera to take our photo at the top of the ridge. She said she'd been sick for a while and was completely out of condition. Still, she managed her usual dashing back and forth and up and down taking photos everywhere and not even breathing heavily. She was NOT lagging at the back of the pack, and I most definitely was.

But everyone was nice--it's a good group--at least they didn't complain where I could hear them, and lots of people asked nice questions about the Merle Girls. One fellow who also has a border collie (actually got her as a rescue via Jim Basic, my agility instructor) has to leave her at home these days as she's too old for vigorous hikes, offered to take Boost's leash and did for a while. It was good training for mama's dog Boost, trying to get her to be a little independent of me and go ahead on the trail with someone else. She wanted repeatedly to come back to see me, but with encouragement from both of us at the right times, she went for longer and longer stretches and greater distances between insatiable needs to go back and touch Human Mom. She liked it most when he ran a bit.

I mostly didn't want to stop to take snapshots, but had to hesitate for a moment to snap the view from near the ridgetop. Southish, looking across at the Edgewood Open Space park.

Saw quite a few wildflowers scattered here and there--lupine, sticky monkey flowers, blue dicks, white ones whose name I don't know, and a few others. Interesting red California bee plant, another native, which showed up long after it was too dark under the forest canopy and in the shade of hte hill to be able to take a photo, but I did again hesitate in my rush downhill trying to catch up, to snap a blurry shot of these really nice globe lilies, yet another native.

Watched hte nearly full moon rise in front of us among the trees in the home stretch; i could go faster downhill but so could everyone else, so no photos of that, either, but I assure you it was lovely.

Wore out the dogs, which is good. Wore out me, which might be good, too. Every mountain is a step back in the direction of being able to keep up with these folks again.

Three weeks

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday

Three weekends ago:

Two weekends ago:

x

Last weekend:

Another USDAA Day One of Two

SUMMARY: Lots of news.

For a while for a year or so, I'd been giving Tika rimadyl before & during weekends, but she hadn't seemed to need it in so long--after last weekend, and with the toenail dragging thing, although mostly she's looked happy and active and healthy all weekend, I gave her one last night and one this morning. Not sure whether that's the operative event, but she ran really nicely today. Fast, happy, perky.

That didn't necessarily equate into Qs:

• Jumpers, because of the angle of a jump, she apparently misread my being behind her as a rear cross when in fact I was going straight, so a turn in the wrong direction and a refusal at a tunnel. Her time was still pretty nice despite that extra yardage, but no Q.
• Snooker, because of the angle of a jump, she apparently misread my being behind her as a rear cross when in fact I was going straight, so a turn in the wrong direction and I could see it coming in slow motion in my mind as she backjumped the jump, so a quick exit with only 8 points.
• Steeplechase, knocked one bar, not sure why (it wasn't a cross or anything odd), and her time would've Qed without the bar but we were 3 seconds over with the bar. Didn't help that two dogs scratched so we again had to be combined with the very-fast 16" crowd.
• Standard, went mostly nicely. Still a lonnnnnng down on the table despite practicing a whole lot of downs before our run. She was 10 full seconds behind the winning dog as a result, but everyone else crapped out and she was still under time, so our only Q for the day and a 2nd place.

Speaking of rimadyl, our dog-friend and often partner Chaps, whom I mentioned last week had decided to scratch the entire weekend because he was randomly gimpy, apparently ate an entire bottle of rimadyl and spent the night and most of today at the vet's with an IV. Fortunately they caught it in time and he went home this evening. Thank Dog! The very obedient dog who won't even take food from the floor without permission, somehow decided to take the bottle off the counter and help himself.

Some vets whom I know are very much against chewable dog drugs exactly because of this sort of thing. A blessing and a curse--i can just toss the rimadyl pill to Tika and she eats it, no cheese or monitoring required.

Boost's day started out nicely when our customized C-ATCH ribbon from February was delivered--and what a huge ribbon! But our agility  day was the usual mess.

• She once again killed me on Snooker by getting through a nice 4-red opening and most of the closing and then not coming in over a very easy serpentine at #7...again almost in slow motion I could see her shorten up her steps shorter shorter shorter trying to decide whether to take the juuuuummmmmppp...and no. I almost had to shoot myself later, though. I was gasping for breath from running and frustrated, so I walked to the finish line instead of running, despite people yelling "run to the finish line!" I figured, why bother, we had only 48 points and others were getting more than that. But until almost the very last of the 30-plus dogs ran, it looked like one or two of the 48s would actually get a super-Q but, because I'd walked off, we were the slowest by a second or so and wouldn't have gotten it. Thankfully, enough dogs got more than 48 to save me from having to kick myself repeatedly.  So--yet another Q but not a Super-Q.
• Steeplechase was a mess. But someone complimented us on a fantastic lead-out.
• Jumpers was a mess. A four-jump lead-out and she did that nicely, too. OK, so lead-outs are a strength at the moment.
• Gamblers opening was fine until she ran past a jump that she had to take for me to go on to the Aframe--three times! As a result, the whistle blew while we were on the wrong side of the field and I had to stop and think about how to get to the gamble from there. She actually did do the gamble, but not only were we over time, she knocked a bar as well.
• Standard, argh, I don't remember. Not a Q.
• Pairs, missed her weave entry, then I did a front cross to try to keep her out of the wrong side of a tunnel and she wrapped so far around me, or something odd, that she took the wrong side anyway, for an E.

Speaking of Boost not being able to get a Q--our classmate and Boost's full sister (but 4 years younger), TCam, today at the AKC try-outs won the first 26" position on the World Team for this year! Are you listening, Boost? Just take obstacles in front of you!

I still felt surprisingly chipper despite our Qing failures today--weather was great, surrounded by good friends and hard workers-- and we were done pretty early, so took a break to snap a few photos of wildflowers on the hillside next to the agility field.

Plus a gratuitous photo of Team Small Dog's Otterpop and Laura because that's the only photo I took of anyone else all day. Otterpop has an amazing "Bang!" drop and roll on the run. Plus loves her frisbee.