A Little Catching Up

Walkies: I've had it with not being able to go for a relaxing walk with Tika. I dread it daily; half the time I come home more stressed than I left. No one wants to take her for a walk. Last night I tried to take the 3 dogs on leash--Tika without her Gentle Leader--just around the corner to try to see the lunar eclipse. Not only was she manic on the leash (as always) just trying to get out of our driveway and to the end of the court, but then she saw a cat and became unmanageable. Yessirree, the GL makes a big difference. But not enough.

Soooo--today I went back to Plan A, which I abandoned after 3 or 4 months with no noticeable success back when I first got her, which is to walk her alone and then walk the other dogs alone. It's not ideal because then all of the dogs get only half the exercise and entertainment, and Tika goes nuts in the house alone.

First day--every time she started past me, I turned and walked in the other direction (the old method I used for Remington, which also took months or maybe years to get him perfect). Within 10 minutes or less, she was walking docilely at my side, and I was actually able to go half a block or so in various directions without her moving ahead. Will it last? Dunno. We encountered no squirrels or cats and didn't go near the yards with barking dogs in them. How long will I have to do this with her alone before I can add her back to the pack? Who knows. I hope the answer isn't "never."

Agility Casey: Today we went over a jump, into a tunnel, and over a jump again without even really thinking about it. Often we have to repeat the approach to the tunnel or he goes past the jump the 2nd time. We still have the issue that, as soon as I toss his toy, he takes it and heads for the hills so I can't force him to do any more work. But he seems to love it--he blasts through tunnels and jets over jumps like a potential agility champ! Now to get sequences of more than 3 in a row.

Also, if I'm serious about this, I need to start EVERYthing--getting serious about teaching him the nose touch and driving to it, then doing it on the contact board, and so on. Need to work on his Down response and get him even more used to being on the table (and on getting onto it on command rather than having to be guided onto it). Then there are the weaving poles... ah, yes... And of course taking him places other than here to see whether he's still as interested in his toy. But am I serious about it?

Jakey Noodle-ooo: Yesterday we didn't go for a walk (Tika's class in the morning), then he was off doing something else during the one short time I played with the dogs in the yard. Mostly I sat at my desk and worked all day. By the time it was his classtime in the evening, he was rarin' to go. He always seems to be fast and enthused in class, but last night he was a master agility dog in all ways. What a guy. And I want to retire him? Hardly seems right.

But then he'll spend the day lounging at my housemate's feet instead of with me. I dunno, maybe she gives him more food. Right now he's dozing on the floor near my desk, and I know she's upstairs eating dinner, so maybe it just depends on--hmmmm--the vibrational frequency of brainular molecules?

CPE Weekend Results (Turlock)

Tika's weekend ribbons at the top (qualifying on the left, placements on the right); Jake's at the bottom.

It's fun for me to be one of THE dogs to watch, rather than (like at USDAA) merely another excellent dog out of dozens of excellent dogs. But we're still competing against dogs like Bob's Diva and Barb Hasey's Cody and some other very fast dogs.

We got lots of compliments both from people who know us and from people who saw us run last year while we were having the foot-grabbing, contact-popping, start-line-leaving, etc. problems.

Tika Qed 8 out of 10; of the missing 2, one was a dumb handling error and the other was one of very few knocked bars for the weekend. Took 2 2nds, 7 1sts, and one 5th.

Jake Qed 9 out of 10; of the missing one, he was a high-scoring dog but I got greedy and went over time and in that class the rule was over time=no Q. Took 6 1sts and 4 2nds.

Basic trial statistics: This was a very small trial, limited to 350 runs/day over 5 classes, which means a maximum of 70 dogs--divided into 6 levels and 6 jump heights. (Some levels and jump heights have more dogs than others--e.g., 4" jump height had only 1 dog at any level.) On average, if we ignore the 4" jump height, that's only 2.3 dogs competing directly against each other at any time. In reality, Jake competed against 1 other dog all weekend; Tika against from 0 to 4 other dogs (on average, there were 2.5 of us). Tika, however, really earned her first places, as you shall see.

CPE is kinder in time limits and number of faults allowed, but in fact both dogs truly earned their Qs this weekend. In CPE, levels 4, 5, and C (championship) (and sometimes 3) run the same course, just different SCTs and fault limits. So I can compare against all dogs at those levels.

Tika
Saturday	Standard	Flawless, nothing even resembling a refusal or runout. Faster than all 4/5/C dogs except (the extremely fast German Shepherd) Diva, who beat us by .5 second but had a bar down.
	Jumpers	Among the fastest dogs although a handler error made an offcourse into an extra tunnel. But no bars down! No Q; 5th place.
	Jackpot (Gamblers)	Nontraditional with 2 on-course gambles that you could perform at any time; needed only one to Q. Each worth 15, 20, or 25 depending on how far you got... she got one 25 and then knocked a bar in the 2nd one but did it beautifully--1st in her class and 4th-highest of 28 4/5/C.
	Snooker	No contacts, wahoo! A flawless three 7s and 2-7, fastest among all 39 3/4/5/C dogs.
	Full House	(Design your course like gambler's but with certain obstacles that you must complete.) In the rain after dark. She ran past an Aframe so missed 5 pts (friends watching says that they thought I had done it deliberately, so it must've been a gross handling error) but still took 1st in class and one point short of highest among 47 3/4/5/C dogs.
Sunday	Standard	Tika left the DW early so I made her stop, then waited until she Touched on the Afr, so we were slow; then knocked 1st bar on a serpentine. Half a Q (like NADAC).
	Snooker	Again no contacts; an almost flawless three 7s and 2 thru 7A--knocked the last bar on #7 combo; 1st in her class and faster than all the dogs that successfully completed 51 pts.
	Jackpot	Similar to Saturday, except there were 3 gambles, one 15, one 20, one 25--she went perfectly out PAST a dogwalk entrance to the beginning of the 25 (a tunnel facing away)--but ran past the tunnel entrance, too. Got the 15 and 20 perfectly. 1st in her class; 4th highest again overall.
	Wildcard	(A short standard course but with some obstacle choices; you must take a certain combination of hard and easy choices.) No contacts again, VERY fast, no bars down--and an aussie named Mesa, whom I never saw run all weekend, beat us by 1.4 seconds on this 81-yd course! A little scary. But Tika was still 1st in her class and 2nd only to Mesa out of 49 3/4/5/C dogs.
	Colors	(Three 8-obstacle courses intertwined. You pick one.) Tika has a problem with this class because, unlike most classes in CPE, a knocked bar is an NQ at all levels. Last run of the weekend. She has knocked only 3 bars in 9 classes so far. BUT--She wouldn't stay sitting at the start line. In most classes I had to stop and tell her once after leaving her at the SL. This time I had to tell her about 5 times, and then when I finished my lead-out I waited until I knew she wasn't moving before releasing her. She knocked the 1st bar, dagnabbit, first time all weekend for the 1st bar. So NQ. BUT she did the rest flawlessly and was the fastest of about 45 dogs even with an Aframe EXCEPT for Mesa who beat her time soundly again! Still, a 2nd place in her class.

Jake
Saturday	Standard	Missed a weave entry on a fast start (I was ahead of him); in CPE this is just wasted time but in other org's would have been a fault. Otherwise nice; got his contacts with me reverting to his original modus operandi of yelling "Contact!" and then he stops where he is.
	Jumpers	Not superfast but nice and clean. Outside the ring, in lots of ways, I notice that his back legs aren't always working the way they should. He does very well for an arthritic dog.
	Jackpot (Gamblers)	Highest score of all 3/4/5/C dogs! One of those courses in which age & treachery (I mean experience) wins out over youth & speed. He got 20 points on each of the 25-point gambles and took a bunch of extra obstacles that I hadn't intended that turned out to be worth more than the extra 5 points on the gambles. Huh.
	Snooker	Ran the same course as Tika, got 3 7s and 2-7. Both dogs ran nicely; Jake was 7 seconds slower than Tika over the same course with a time of 38.12 seconds. In other words, Jake is more than 20% slower than Tika. I don't often get to compare them directly where they're running the same course and both are essentially flawless. They had, overall, 50 seconds in which to complete the course, so neither dog is at all droopy. A total of 12 dogs, including mine, out of 39 dogs got 51 points on this course.
	Full House	An excellent run although I got greedy and lost 2 of my points by being 2 seconds over time. What kills me is (and I've done this so many times before) that, at the last minute on course, I thought to myself, "hey, I can squeeze in a couple more points than the way I planned it if I do *this*--and then it turns out that my original course would have earned us about 2 more points and NOT lost us 2 points for a net gain of 4 points. And I always kick myself afterwards and then I end up doing it again some other time.
Sunday	Standard	Starting to get light on his contacts again, but this time otherwise very nice.
	Snooker	A nice smooth 3 7s and 2-7; same course as Tika again but enough slower than other dogs to earn only a 2nd place. 16 other of 43 dogs also earned 51 points on this course.
	Jackpot	See notes in Tika's. Got the 25 pointer and 15 pointer perfectly but trying to send to the 20-pointer, which I thought was *easy* for him, he instead went out to a set of weaves going directly away from me, did them perfectly, then much to the audience's amusement, turned around and did them perfectly headed back towards me again. Among the highest-scoring dogs again, but again I got greedy on my way to the table and did one more obstacle--and ended up over time, but in this case the penalty was no Q.
	Wildcard	Fairly fast even with 2 sets of weaves. Same flawless course as Tika's, but his 19.77 seconds was noticeably slower than Tika's 15.44. Standard Course Time allowed was 38 seconds!
	Colors	Ran a different course from Tika to avoid the dogwalk. Nicely done with just one drift away from me but we reconnected before he went offcourse. Good enough for 1st place.

Some Agility Statistics

There were 212 dogs entered in this last weekend's trial. It was a medium-to-small trial.

• 73 were Border Collies.
• 28 were Australian Shepherds. (Including Tika, whom they still had listed as a Craussie.)
• 17 were Shelties.
• 18 were All-American (including Jake, entered as a Semidachshund as always).
• 12 were Pembroke Welsh Corgis. (And an additional 3 were Cardigans.)
• 5 German Shepherds.
• 5 Jack Russells.
• 4 Labs.
• And 47 other dogs representing a total of 26 other breeds.

31 of the dogs had earned at least their ADCH. Five of them are in Jake's Wednesday night class (not including instructors but including Jake, of course); five more of them collectively belong to my dogs' three assorted instructors. 18 of them are fellow Bay Team members.

This trial didn't list dogs by age; at the TRACS trial 3 weeks ago, with 179 dogs, there was one 12-year-old dog (Jake) and one 11-year-old dog; jumped to eight 10-yr-olds. There were none older. Highest quantity was 5-yr-old dogs with 32. Dogs can't compete in USDAA until they're 18 months; only 2 entries were less than 2 years old; 2-yr-olds jumped up to 22.

Tika's Weekend

Tika feels as if she's running so nicely--fast, smooth, paying attention. Seems a pity when we come away with only one Q out of 8 runs. Pairs relay wasn't her fault; everything else seems we had only one fault each time (but that's enough...)

Saturday:

• Grand Prix: Nice run, missed up contact on dogwalk, Q, 13th out of 33 dogs.
• Relay: Nice run, no faults, partner off course.
• Gamblers: I bobbled lead-out pivot to the weaves & wasted maybe 5 seconds trying to get back in; overhandled & put her into a tunnel instead of across the 7-pt dogwalk, and then she flew off the top of the Aframe (like she expected it to keep going up? It was scary--she looked startled and I was afraid she'd hurt herself landing) and then I tripped over her & fell as the whistle blew and it was a mess.
• Snooker: Knocked 1st bar in opening but I recovered & got the other 3 reds; in closing, knocked bar in #5 serpentine and so didn't Q. Otherwise smooth & fast.
• Standard: Pulled too hard to the Aframe & pulled her away from it for a refusal & wasted time; knocked a bar, too, but most was nice.

Sunday:

• Snooker: Knocked first bar but I recovered & got the other 3 reds; in closing, she slipped after the first jump of #5 and lost her footing and so ran past 2nd jump of #5 (the one that other dogs were knocking)... so didn't Q. Otherwise smooth & fast.
• Jumpers: A nice fast smooth run except the runout on that 12-to-13 threadle--she then felt that we had to have a discussion about it when she came towards me, which wasted several seconds. No bars down.
• Standard: Very nice except missed the weave entry--I think she was looking at me and didn't even see them because she ran through them about pole #4 (which probably means I overran them); no bars down, got the DWalk OK, too.

Start line: Gina watched several of Tika's runs. I've been keeping my head turned and trying to watch her at the start line all the way into my lead-out; had to tell her to sit again immediately on about 5 of the runs. Then she'd stay sitting... but at some point I have to look away to make sure I'm in the right spot before I stop and turn and look at her. She was sitting every time. But Gina told me that almost every time in those couple of seconds she was standing up and moving forward a foot or 2 or 3 and sitting again immediately. Argh!

Jake's Last USDAA Titles, Ever

This was Jake's last career opportunity to earn legs at a USDAA trial. After this, he'll be at 2 CPE trials and the USDAA nationals and then he's retiring. We came into this weekend still shy 2 snooker Qs for his AKD-Bronze and 1 Jumper Q for his AKD-Bronze (Performance equivalents to Snooker Ch Bronze (SCH-bronze) and Jumpers Champion Bronze (JCH-bronze)--that's 15 legs each at the Masters (or P3) level).

With fine form for a dog who'll be 13 in 2 weeks, is largely deaf, and is starting to have problems with arthritis, he got exactly 2 snooker Qs and a Jumpers Q this weekend, leaving his career USDAA title list as:

ADCh APD Jake, SACh-Bronze,SCh-Bronze,ASD-Bronze,AJD-Bronze,AKD-bronze

I am thrilled, sad but not terribly so yet because he's not really retired yet--but perhaps not surprisingly I am also scared. This really means that he's old and starting to be infirm, and in my limited experience it accelerates quickly once it starts. I'm holding on.

Progress with Tika on Slamma Jamma

Progress in at least one area. I've sort of realized for a long time that, when playing with toys, she always brings them back and slams into you. I think I just mostly ignore it or sidestep it, except when it's a muddy toy and I'm wearing clothes that I care about. (Neither of which happens often.)

But a couple or three months ago, my favorite computer repair guy came by to help with a problem, and while we were waiting for the diagnostics to run, we went out into the back yard. He also has a dog and enjoys dogs, so he was throwing toys for the beasts. Tika returned the ball and slammed it into repair guy's you-know-where. I suddenly realized (takes me a while sometimes) that this was a real problem, and not merely a small annoyance.

So we started two new rules: 1) that I wouldn't play with the toy until Tika let go of it and 2) she wasn't allowed to hit me with it. We worked with clicker and spray bottle, over and over. There were times it seemed that she'd never let go of the ball except on the far side of the yard when she got tired of me not playing with her. And although she'd blink when she'd get sprayed when jamming the ball into me, it didn't really seem to have a strong effect on her. Still, she was getting to the point where she'd come almost to a stop, start squinting in expectation of being sprayed, and take a couple of very slow steps towards me and PUSH the ball against me. It's as if she believed that that's what she was *supposed* to do. (Which is certainly possible.)

I realized over the last couple of days that she's almost never hitting me with the ball (except when approaching from behind--apparently this isn't a behavior that generalizes well). And she almost always drops the ball fairly quickly when she brings it back.

This has been an interesting process. I figured that it would take a while because she's been doing it the wrong way for so long, and I was right. But I've tried to be extremely consistent. Sometimes I lose track of what I'm doing, for some reason--multitasking, usually--and grab the ball while she still has it in the air.

And I've started making certain exceptions where she has just earned the reward of the ball, and she loves to play tug of war, so if she has it on the ground in the play position, I will sometimes take hold of it and play there.

It's nice to feel that I've made progress on *one* of her social issues. Now to deal with knocking out the come-from-behind issue.

We've also been trying to get her to back off and, preferably, lie down when people are eating, instead of standing two inches from the table and your elbow, panting. I think I'm not as consistent as that, although I'm trying hard to be less laissez faire about it. Someday...

Not dogs; just copy editing

For a break from dogs, I uploaded more examples of Why Copy Editors Aren't Useless from my private collection.

Wow, It's Happening So Fast

Monday night, Jake was ill. I couldn't tell whether it was his back and legs or something else that was bothering him, but when we went to bed, he'd lie down--then get up and move around and lie down--then get up and move around and lie down--then get up... I didn't sleep much. Then starting around 1:00 he'd jump off the bed and look at the door (my dogs' way of letting me know that they need to go outside--and my motherly instincts *almost* always wake me up for this. This is one good reason why having the dogs on the bed is a good idea--if they were sleeping on the floor, I might never hear them get up, and they never stare at the door loudly enough.), and I'd let him outside, and he'd wander around a little, pee, and then go back to bed.

Then he'd lie down--then get up and move around and lie down-- you know the drill, and then I'd finally doze off, and then he'd jump off the bed and stare at the door. At about 6:45 he finally threw up a couple of times and got it over with, so it apparently wasn't his back and legs.

But all day that day he wasn't enthused about playing chase in the back yard. I'd get the toy out and he'd look slightly interested; I'd throw it, he'd start to trot (trot!) after it, then veer away and give me a put-upon look. But eventually, after wandering around the yard a bit while I played with the other dogs, he'd go over, pick up the toy, and bring it to me to throw. And then he'd chase it madly as always.

We went out in the car, and he had trouble jumping in and in fact yelped when he missed and started sliding.

Was he still feeling ill, or was it his back & legs?

But in class last night, he ran just fine, like a lovely little agility dog, although I did jump him at only 12" for the evening.

Oh, My, Age Zooms In

The old dog taking his justified rest, one white paw just visible next to his face. (And NOT on my pillow.)

This week has not been good for little red dogs. On several occasions, just touching his lower back or thighs caused him to Yipe. I couldn't figure out where or what specifically--I didn't want to put him in so much pain that he'd yelp again, and almost everything I tried caused him pain. Yet he could go out into the yard and chase the ol' squeakie with aplomb.

He's occasionally on our walks slowed down for no apparent reason and just wanted to walk slowly. I've attributed it usually to there being too many other dogs along (Tika and Casey) or maybe he's thinking about producing some environmental contributions. But yesterday morning we went down to the Guadalupe trail nearby and started breezing along, and then abruptly he slowed. Visibly limping, although it was more of an uncomfortable gait rather than favoring a foot, and once again I couldn't figure out what, where, or why. Walked slowly back towards the car about a quarter of a mile or so--

His tail wasn't down, he still looked around interestedly and sniffed at things, but he was walking instead of trotting (and Jake in his whole life has never merely walked anywhere). Nothing visible in his feet anywhere, and I checked pretty carefully. Then, about a block from the car, he perked up, picked up the pace, and went back to the usual Jake trot with no sign of the limp from moments before. Something's probably popping in and out. I keep threatening to take him to one of my many friends' many chiropractors, but then I keep looking at my wallet--

I gave him half doses of Rimadyl all weekend (that's all I had left) and got him back on Glucosamine last week. There's been no yelping the last couple of days, and this morning's walk was completely normal.

Why Do I Always Wake Up With Dog Hair In My Mouth?

My pillow is always saturated with dog hair despite my best efforts to keep it covered. I can't figure out why. (You would think that a king-sized bed would have plenty of space other than on my pillow for certain rebellioius coat-blowing dogs to do their nesting--wouldn't you?)

Fortunately, Superdog is here to save the day. At least--in her dreams--

Finally started a photo album

Have been wanting to do this for a long time. Don't really have the tools for it, but here is a start on the photo album for all the photos that have appeared here. I've included only 5 of the 25 or so photo subdirectories so far, and each one changed/got better (I hope) as I went).

Feedback welcome. First I'll try to get all the photos in (and probably not any time soon, sorry), then I'll go back and try to add captions and/or a link to the blog entry in which they appeared.

Conservation of Dog Toy Mass/Energy

Apparently there is some natural physical law concerning the quantity of mass of dog toys in the back yard. I hadn't realized it before, but, like Newton, I experienced a dramatic demonstration of the natural law in my very yard yesterday.

The ideal toy. Blue version.

Prehistory

First, we must detour to about 5 months ago. I had a couple of nifty latticework rubber balls, one red, one blue, about 6 inches in diameter, each containing a squeakie ball. These turned out to be the ideal Jakie toy: A squeakie that he could still squeak but that he couldn't tear to shreds when unsupervised, a ball that you could easily throw and that would bounce a bit and roll enticingly, and yet a lovely toy for playing tug that both dog and mortal could grasp easily.

On the Hunt

Well and so, about 5 months ago, the red one vanished. Toys often vanish around here--Casey loves to have a toy in his mouth, but he is also wont to drop it wherever he happens to be standing at the moment that he has some other thought about what to do with his mouth, and he seldom goes back and gets the toy in the same thought process event. I'm constantly retrieving toys from behind the shrubs, behind the waterfall, over in the side yard by the recycling bin, over in the other side yard behind the shed, in the middle of the flower bed, on top of the compost pile (don't ask), and so on. Often the retrieval involves hands and knees. Finding and retrieving Casey's dropped toys could be a full-time job if it paid a little better.

And he's particularly fond of taking the other dogs' favorite toys when they have a moment of disattention. So I was pretty sure that Casey must have taken the red one and dropped it in some place that we mere mortals would not occur to look, let alone put our little canine bodies into with a mouth full of toys. Back then, I wandered all over the house & yard looking for it.

On about three other occasions, I made concerted hard-core efforts to find the red one--moved everything I could think to move, peered under everything that I could imagine had an under to it, shoved my arms and head INTO various shrubberies to see whether it had gotten caught on, among, or behind branches. Pulled the Aframe forward from where it's leaning against the fence--that's where we found his missing collar after a couple of months, but I was pretty sure we had narrowed the gap to where even Casey couldn't enter, and indeed there was no collection of dog toys back there. Mangled myself on the blackberry vines just to be sure it hadn't gotten lost in the bramble. Went into parts of my yard that I never dare go because there are spiders and things.

My final conclusion was that perhaps some visiting child or guest had tossed the red one over the fence somewhere and, if no one had returned it by now, it would never see the light of day again.

Handing Myself Over to Fate

Therefore, finally, last week, I gave up. Now, although I still had the blue one, I always like to have a backup version of Favorite Toys because the one I expect to be around occasionally goes walkabout (see also, "Casey loves to have a toy in his mouth," etc.) and then I and the dogs can do nothing but pout for days until it reappears. Hence, backup versions. SO I went to the dog store, paid an exhorbitant amount for *two* rubber latticework balls (because the blue one is already torn in one spot and is acting a bit creaky), and added the new purple one to the collection of backyard toys.

You know that getting a new one tempts the hand of fate, right?

Tika's Toy Ties In

Shortly thereafter, Tika's favorite teal Jollyball (about 6" in diameter, with handle until Casey removes it, see previous posts in this blog) started exhibiting signs of having had enough. All those months of tug-o-war and dog chomping have sliced myriad tiny slits into its surface, and several of them finally banded together into one large slice near the handle side of the ball. I hate throwing away a Jolly Ball that still has nominally a handle, but yesterday afternoon, while we were out playing (pre-Dogwalk move), Tika chomped hard on it, her nose and upper jaw went right into the large slot, and it grabbed right down onto her schnozz, harder as she tried to pull her nose out, and she looked a little panicked.

I just happened to have a brand-new Jolly Ball, bright purple, waiting in the garage. SO I set aside the holy (sic) teal ball, got out the new purple one to Tika's quivering delight, and played with her for a few minutes. Then I returned to the garage for a few seconds to get my tape measure to begin measuring the yard for the dogwalk moval. (OK, come on, if you can have a REmoval, you've first got to have a moval, right?) As I came out of the garage, Tika was kind of shaking her head to one side as if something were in her ear. I *think* she had the purple jollyball in her mouth at the time, but I really don't remember clearly. I called her over to me to look in her ear. A bit dirty, didn't see anything, but kind of rubbed it and scraped it with my finger and sure enough got a tiny bit of grass. Then I had to scritch her a bit and she had to rub her head around a bit.

Another Vanishment, More Mysterious Still

Then we couldn't find the brand new purple jolly ball. It's purple, right? So it's not going to be hard to see among all of the green shrubberies and such. I kept prompting her to find it, and she bounded all over the yard and even into the house, looking for it, to no avail. I eventually joined the hunt, and we looked and looked and looked. I even went back into the garage, although I was pretty sure that she hadn't followed me in. I crawled under shrubberies (found several Casey-deposited toys even though he's been out of town for 4 days), looked behind all the furniture, even sent the dogs through the tunnels in case it had somehow gotten in there, looked in the ground cover on the one side of the yard.

How is it *possible* for a bright purple 6" diameter brand new ball to vanish while it's allegedly in plain sight of an allegedly intelligent human and two toy-motivated dogs? I can only begin to describe my level of frustration. Eventually I had to relent to the "It'll Show Up Eventually If I Pretend To Ignore It" strategy, got out the old cruddy teal ball again, and continued playing with the dogs while beginning the arduous dogwalk-move episode.

Little did I realize that the purple jollyball was merely a sacrifice in the conservation of dog-toy matter.

A Revelation From Above

So there I was, rapidly moving towards exhaustion, sweat trickling down my delicate feminine form, 400 pounds of dogwalk in my hands, lifted forward and above my head to get it between the tree limbs, struggling to drag it against the clutching tufts of lawn grass just another couple of inches so I could rest it on the branch AND simultaneously trying to lift it just another six inches, and as I shoved and yanked and looked up to see what was preventing the dagratted thing from going UP--what to my wondering eyes should appear, lodged in the very highest center branches among the foliage of the apple tree, but a red rubber latticework ball.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that Casey didn't put it there.

Why Agility Is So Much Work

I moved my dogwalk today.

About Moving Equipment In General

Many people move their agility equipment all the time. For example, I move my jumps and weave poles around as much as possible in my little hanks of grass and mulch. I occasionally move my tunnels, but mostly I leave them wrapped around trees in the yard's corners and looped around the patio, which makes the yard seem bigger because I can send the dogs over jumps or weaves in the middle of the yard and blast them full speed through the tunnels and on to more obstacles, making the yard seem bigger and getting more speed from the beasts.

Plus the tunnels are heavy. Plus if I move them where there's grass, I have to move them again right away or the grass dies. A whole lot more of it than dies when I leave my weaves or jumps in place for more than a couple of days, which I do too often.

Away Way Back In the Ages Dark

I got myself a dogwalk and an Aframe at Power Paws Camp, hm, I believe it was 2 years ago last May. Sort of a housewarming present to myself. Back when I thought I had unlimited money. I scouted around the yard and determined that there was exactly one place where I could set up the dogwalk. It took me a couple of hours to figure out how to assemble it, to assemble it, and then to get the tension right so that it would all hold together.

I should explain--it's not that I didn't know where the tension needed to be--there was a perfectly obvious loop, clip, and wire. The problem was in how to get the tension tense enough to be able to slip the clip over the loop. Somehow I managed it--don't remember how (that was way way back in the ages dark, you know) but I do remember that it took me a very long time and I worked up a big piece of oozing sweat.

After that--well, even if I had had someplace else to move the dogwalk to, that sucker's heavy, even broken into 3 pieces. And it doesn't have wheels.

Why the Time Has Come

You're supposed to move equipment around often so that the dogs (and you) can work different approaches & strategies & learn that equipment can be located anywhere at any time, not always 5 feet out from the shrubbery along the back fence. So I decided it was time to move my dogwalk around (2.5 years is "often" for this equipment, IMHO). The dogwalk is almost 36 feet long. You'd like to be able to give the dogs a running start straight at it. In its previous position:

• One end had a fairly clear straight-on approach--except that the ramp ended in a depression, so really the dogs were forced to leap onto the ramp, in Tika's case always missing the contact zone. Since she's had so many problems with faults for missing the up dogwalk contact, I stopped doing that a few months back.
• The other end had a fairly straight on approach--if I took the dog back between the back shrubbery and the apple tree and the pond, in a little narrow gravelly area that's wide enough for the width of a dog. But that kind of precludes running straight on from any other obstacles.

So, for months, we've been practicing speed dogwalks from one end to the other, and wraps onto the dogwalk, but nothing straight on.

Plus I'm getting a little tired of it taking up so much space (5' out from the rear shrub & fence; I couldn't move it any closer to the shrubbery because there's a big old mongo apple tree in the way). (It takes me a while to get tired of things that would require work to change.)

The best seats in the house. Squirrels, beware!

The Move Begins

Soooooooo--I remeasured the yard. I discovered that there is, in fact, exactly one and only one other location in the yard where it would be available for straight-on runs for both ends, take up a bit less space closer to the back fence, be off more of my lawn and more into the mulch area, therefore taking up less visual presence in the part of my yard where people are ever likely to go.

It took me over an hour to move the son-of-a-catwalk. (Which is another reason I don't move it all that often.) First, the ramps have to come off. They merely have a tab (A) that fits into a slot (B) on the main walk--but the suckers weigh about 60 pounds each and they have to be at the perfect angle to slip in and out of that slot. If the downside ends are higher or lower than that perfect angle, no-comie-outie. And my yard is just not level back there. So I had to do some clever maneuvers involving several muscles (I dosed up on Aleve at my back's request later on), bricks, shovels, and convenient profanities just to slip tabs A out of slots B.

Then I had to move the main part with the legs and supporting pipes. (Decided it would be easier to do that than to attempt to disassemble the legs & reassemble.) After trial and error I found that, if I managed to get the bottom of the frame into the air at waist-level, then the legs on the other end would more or less slide across the grass rather than dig in and hold. Getting it to waist level, however, required considerably more muscles and a good sense of balance, because one has to lift about 100 pounds (guessing) straight up from ground level without doing anything stupid with your back or knees, and the shape of the framework made that ding-dangily difficult. But I did it. More than once, in fact.

Aye, There's The Rub(s)

Then I had to get it into the designated position. To do that, however, I needed to unhook the tension-wire clip from the loop. It took much huffiment & puffiment to get enough slack to wrestle the clip off. At which point the supporting pipes fell out, which I had forgotten about. At least that lightened the whole shebang by probably another 50 pounds. (It is possible that my aching back and shoulders were not allowing an accurate estimate of the weights involved.) THEN getting it into position required some more muscles that I don't usually recognize as regular participants in my anatomy, plus luck, plus sweat, plus balancing a 200-pound dogwalk on one of its feet while running back and forth from front to back to inch it gradually between two big solid wood limbs without dropping it on anyone or anything fragile. (Interesting, related, story about conservation of dog-toy matter tomorrow.)

THEN came the tension thing. I replaced the supporting pipes, then tried and tried and tried to push one set of legs hard enough towards the other set of legs to be able to slip the wire-clip back over the loop. I got the gap from 3" down to 2" down to 1"--and gave up and called my sister, who conveniently moved in down the block so that she could provide assistance with agility equipment and conveniently has a fiance with a strong back and an agreeable personality. I begged him to stop by for *one minute*--which he did, came up with a clever way of getting the slack I needed for clip slipping (required one person for tension and one person for clipping even so). As his minute was up, he took his cleverness and went home again.

Then I had to get tabs A back into slots B. By this time, well into my second hour, I'm sure, I was getting the hang of lifting one 300-lb. item with one shoulder while balancing the end of another 100-lb. item on the end of the one on my shoulder and nudging carefully with random parts of my anatomy to get it to *fall* into the proper position--ensuring that in the meantime assorted dog assistants hadn't wandered into the work area without their hardhats.

But Wait--There's More!

Then I had a bunch of vegetation trimming to do. Then there were all of the flower planters that I had judiciously arranged this spring into areas that were complementary to the dogwalk, didn't kill too much of the lawn, were out of the dogs' ways as they slalomed among the breaks in the back shrubbery, and yet still received water from the lawn sprinklers. Now, with the new dogwalk position, none of those positions worked, so I had to rejudiciously rearrange them all, including replacing one sprinkler head (and probably need to do another) for better coverage.

Golf isn't the only sport with hazards.

I took Tika over the dogwalk, slowly, in both directions (not simultaneously), to see whether she'd freak out at its new location or whether it would collapse and kill her. Fortunately neither occurred. The second time, Jake followed on her heels, not wanting to miss the unique experience.

I still haven't figured out what to do with the crocodile. At the moment he remains sunbathing directly in the newly created head-on path from the tunnel to one end of the dogwalk. And, in case you haven't moved a croc lately, they're bloody heavy, too.

So--I moved my dogwalk today. I can hardly wait until I recover enough that I can acutally use it in a practice session.

The Artist's Life is a Hard One

Read and view the story of trying to fulfill a request for Wikipedia for a big dog and little dog together.

Added a photo

Backfill: Fri 9/24, added a photo to Tuesday's entry.

Mixed-Breed Dogs in the World of Knowledge

I've been working in my stray spare hour on a public-domain online encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org. One of the articles that I worked on and provided photos for will be a featured article on the main page on Sunday, Sept. 26.

You can get a preview (or, if it's now LATER than Sept 26, you can still see it here thru the end of the month)
-- scroll down to Sept 26
and just click on the "mixed-breed dog" link to see--well--do any of those dogs look familiar?

New Dog Shelter Opening

On Oct 1, the new City of San Jose Animal Care Center opens. Supposed to be a huge, state-of-the art facility with room for hundreds of dogs and cats. The Humane Society will no longer be providing this service--I'm not sure what they *are* going to do. Close up entirely?

Anyway--it's at 2750 Monterey Road near Umbarger Road.

There's a sneak preview/pet adoption madness this Saturday, Sept. 25. Too bad I'll be out of town doing agility. Or maybe it's a good thing.

Where Do People Get These Ideas?

You notice that there's a big difference in the hidden meanings between these two semantically similar questions: "Where do writers get their ideas?" and "Where do people get these ideas?"

The dogs and I were perambulating in a new neighborhood (while JiffyLub changed the van's oil--look at me! I'm multitasking!), and a nice man came out and asked to pet my dogs. Of course I said yes. But what he really wanted was to ask whether I knew a lot about dogs and dog training (assuming I did because I had 3 dogs who weren't pulling on the leash, sort of, most of the time). He bought his nieces and nephews a Border Collie. He said he was having trouble because he'd tell it to "sit" and it wouldn't and he'd tell it to "come" and it wouldn't and he wanted to know whether they got smarter as they got older. I told him, well, of course, dogs don't understand English; they're dogs. I said that you have to teach them each step, and that he needed to go to a training class to learn how to train dogs. And as soon as possible, because BC's have a lot of energy and he needs to know what to do with the dog or it could become destructive, chewing and digging for example. He said his Great Aunt (who apparently is responsible for the dog) was worried about the dog not behaving. I suggested that he go to the local pet store and ask for recommendations for dog training and to not delay.

He said, "So I can't just train it the old-fashioned way?" I had many questions vying to be the first out of my mouth in response to that, but wiser brain cells prevailed and I asked, "What do you mean?" "Well," he said, "my grandfather got a dog when he was 14, and he told it to sit, and it would sit!" I pointed out that he must have known something about dogs, but the guy emphasized, "He was only 14!" I said that there was no way of knowing--but back then, maybe there were more people around with dogs whom he had seen training or had had some other experience with dogs. But that this guy himself needed to learn about dog training. Then he said it wasn't for him, it was for his Great Aunt, who wanted to know about dog training.

This isn't the first person who has ever asked me this kind of question in this kind of situation. Be afraid! Be very afraid! I'm thinking I'm seeing the possibility of yet another BC rescue--

Can You Teach an Old Dog to be a New Dog?

Does this look like a dog who's turning 13 in a month?

Jake is getting old. It's hard to accept.

It seems to happen to dogs--I know that surprises you, as it did me--but Jake seemed eternal. Now that I've allowed myself to decide that it truly is time for his retirement, it appears that I've also allowed myself to see the signs more clearly. And yet, sometimes I wonder--when I thought he'd go forever, like the Everready Agility Dog, did I see only the positive signs to rationalize my perception? And, likewise, now that I'm working towards his retirement, am I seeing only those things that rationalize my decision that the time has come? One wonders. Perhaps more than one wonders, perhaps even two or three.

Now I have been telling people that the USDAA Nationals will be his retirement show, but I found that that wasn't easy enough for me: There's one more trial that we'll attend this year, a CPE trial Thanksgiving weekend (2 weekends after Nationals), with just 3 runs a day, and I thought--you know--he finally earned his CATCH in June, just in time for the CPE Nationals the following weekend, and at the Nationals we just totally sucked. And that would be our going-out for CPE with his still-new CATCH. I couldn't bear it. So I have entered him at 12 inches (for the dog who earned his ADCH jumping 24" and 22") as a Veteran for the first--and last--time. Six more runs. And then--that's it. The end. All gone. No more agility competitions for the JakeyMon--my Jakemeister--my JakeyNoodle-oo, my little red Jedi Gambling Master.

I might be repeating myself from earlier posts, but it'll be the first time since May of 1997 that I've had only one dog to run at a trial. And I don't even have another one in the works (unless I get serious about training Casey My Man the Emergency Backup Wired Dog). And, for a few, very few--too few--weeks, I was running three.

Tika's first fully-entered trial (rather than just 1 or 2 jumpers runs) was Remington's next-to-last. So, painfully, Jake's retirement brings back those memories--I thought I'd have another dog to keep running for a while after Jake got too old.

Yelling and clapping and whistling won't wake the sleeping Jake any more. No reaction whatsoever. I have happend upon the tactic of lightly touching one of his feet to wake him; I believe that it avoids his wild-eyed frantic awakenings where I'm afraid I'll end up with dog teeth embedded in an unfortunate part of my anatomy.

He seems to sleep a lot more. (Except that every time I turn around and look at my snoozing dog, he has another apple stashed under his chin, dagnabbit. He's got to stop eating those! Putting on weight! So he's going out long enough to hunt down the elusive apple and bring it to heel.) Several months back, maybe as much as a year ago, he stopped wildly chasing Tika out to the yard when some eventful activity (e.g., squirrel, bird, cat, noise, fence, tree, grass, air, exciting things like that) occurred. He'd start to follow, but slower, then stop at the sliding door and just look out, woofing, wagging his tail if that seemed a strategy appropriate to the level of threat. I had thought at first that it was because the new, young, wild Casey had moved in and was always 3 inches from Tika's heels as she blasted through the doggie door. And that might have been some of it--he himself suddenly realized that he wasn't part of the A team any longer.

When my housemate is here watching TV upstairs, Jake seems to prefer snoozing on the floor with her than downstairs here with me and the Wild Things, even when I'm working at my desk. (Just to balance things out, Casey likes to lie under my desk near my feet--Tika and Jake used to take turns doing that. Who knows how these hierarchies work...Casey always waits for Jake and Tika to finish eating before he starts.)

I think he hears me clearly sometimes, and then I'm sure he doesn't. We were sitting at the dinner table the other evening, and it was quiet, and Jake went to stand and look out the door. To test, my guests started calling his name, clapping, whistling. This is people at the dinner table. Food is potentially involved. Other than my inability to imagine Jake ignoring people paying attention to him in any situation, this was so clearly exhibiting deafdoggedness that it was almost startling.

I have noticed for quite a while that his back legs do not always behave perfectly. Months ago, when Jake started sometimes missing his leap onto my bed, I again set up the makeshift steps that Remington had used in his illness. True to form for a one-brain-celled dog who takes a while to learn things, it took forever to convince him to step up onto the box, thence onto the chair, thence onto the bed, rather than leaping from the side as he has always done. But, once figured out, he seemed to seek it out.

I see more of it all the time. Last night I was downstairs late, reading at the table, and he was snoozing underneath. When I woke him to go upstairs, he was undoubtedly stiff and woozy; when we started up the stairs, his back legs didn't carry him at all and he slipped and almost fell back down. I grabbed him and steadied him, but he seemed frozen with fear and incomprehension at what had happened.

It will only happen more. What then, when he can't walk up the stairs on his own? When Sheba got to that point, she just didn't go up--but then, it seems to me that she often slept apart from us anyway, exerting her Husky independence. But Jake always wants to be sleeping where I am. Taking a nap on the dining room floor with a view of me and my desk isn't enough; he has to be here in the office with me.

And yet--he flies after his toy in the yard with the same vehemence and speed that he has always shown.

We are in transition.

Clicker Training

Tika loves clicker training

Read the article about clicker training that I started.

Sheba's Page

I finally put a little something in Sheba's page.

Oh, For a Little Dictionary Help--or Some Common Sense--

Entries from this week's Pets classified in the San Jose Mercury News' The Guide:

Under Cats: "Cheetohs! Wild/domestic hybrid." Do they mean cheetah? Do they mean cheeto? Huh, no, here's what I found: "the Cheetoh is supposed to be a unique, new breed blending Ocicat and Bengal. Unfortunately, it's not unique, new, or a breed. The Cheetoh is just a mutt. It is not recognized in any registry, and is no different genetically than a Bengal, albeit an unregistered one, because the Ocicat was used to develop the Bengal" Now you know. And they want $1000 each. (Quote from this site.)

This breeder (note, site plays music everywhere), identified as the "Cheetoh founder", feels that I am being unfair by posting this comment without talking to a breeder first. Feel free to do a web search on "Cheetoh", read a bunch of the pages, even call some breeders, and form your own opinion. (Addition posted 10/29/04)

Under Dogs: "Alaskan husky-wolf pups." You can *always* find wolf hybrids in the ads. In California. The last time there was a wolf in California was 1912. (A fact that I just made up.) (Oh, wait, I just found some true information; 1924 is more factually accurate.) In the whole mainland U.S., there aren't more than a few hundred wolves, mostly in Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Michigan, and that kind of neighborhood. Where are these wolf hybrids coming from? Why or how do people go out of their way to get their dog bred with a wolf? Or are these Nth generation wolf hybrids (so that they're essentially 99% domestic dog) but it sounds cool to have a wolf hybrid? Inquiring minds want to know.

Pit bulls for sale, from--yes, you see it in print--"Bully Kennels." Yes, officer, we breed these dogs as pets; oh NO how could one even THINK of these as fighting dogs? Also listed: Argentine Dogo pups and Dogue de Bordeaux pups. Not familiar with the breeds? No one was familiar with the Perro de Presa Canario, either, until two of them killed Diane Whipple.

"Austrian/Shep" also for sale. OK, if we assume that the slash means a mix or cross--what is it a mix or cross of? There ain't no Austrian anythings that I'm familiar with ('cept the Austrian Brandlbracke, which as we know is an American breed that is so common that familiarity breeds contempt so it could easily be ignored by its owners such that it's out cavorting with Shepherds and getting a little too cozy). Could this be (no, not working for a NEWSpaper) someone who took the ad by phone and had no clue about what an Australian Shepherd is?

"Chihuahuas:" There are twelve--count them--a Baker's Dozen minus one--ads for Chihuahuas. The next closest are Labs with 9, then Poodles with 7. Chihuahuas make up a full 10% of the ads! Do you ever see any Chihuahuas? No one ever sees Chihuahuas! Where are they hiding these dogs? Is it a conspiracy to take over the world? Most of us think that Labs are the dominant canine force, but we can easily control them because they're essentially agreeable and amiable. Chihuahuas are clever; they don't want you to know that they're slowly becoming the most common pet next to probably only husbands.

"Dolmation:" Also for sale. Is this, like, a toy Dalmatian (Doll + Dalmatian)? Or are they confusing it with Doll Motion? Or is it the fact that more American homes have Chihuahuas than have dictionaries, and Chihuahuas are notoriously bad spellers?

"Golden Ret/Malpoos/Labs AKC $550 to $800." OK, I'll give them that Golden Retrievers and Labradors are registerable with the AKC. But Malpoo?? I'm guessing: Malamute plus Poodle? Was it a toy poodle? What is it with Poodle hybrids? There's nothing else so commonly mixed, at least according to what people call their dogs. For a partial list--not including Malpoos, BTW, unless perhaps the Maltese/Poodle is it)--see here. Would you pay $550 to $800 for a mutt?

"Golden Retreiver:" How's that go--I before E, except after C...? You don't even need a dictionary for that! Or you could just look at the ad right next to it, "Golden Retriever". Maybe they spelled it both ways to be sure they'd be right at least once. Maybe that's why most are listed as Golden Ret, Golden Retrvr, and so on; can't spell it? Abbreviate it!

"Great Dane puppy: Harliquin." Oh, yes, a dictionary would be a nice thing to have. At least it wasn't Grate Dane.

"Lab, AKC, Yellow, Spaded." Do we have to dig our own?

"Labradoodle. Sacrifice $800/900." There are two ads for Labradoodles. Same price range. I ask again--how much would you pay for a mutt? Is it a breed? Is it a scam? Here's a brief overview of the so-called breed.

"New Foundland puppies." I wonder how much they want for Old Foundland puppies?

Weekend results

Tika
Saturday	Standard	An extremely challenging course for large, fast dogs. 19 of 39 E'd on this course and only 4 26" dogs Qed. We hung in there--not even bars down--until 6 obstacles from the end, when I pulled her too hard and ended up with offcourse into tunnel under Aframe.
	Jumpers	Smooth and fast, but 2 bars down. Still, not bad--17 of 38 dogs E'ed on this course.
	Team Standard	Looked great and then we knocked the last bar. Still, good enough for 18 of 45.
	Team Gamblers	r5c3
	Steeplechase Rd 1	Was late calling her to one sharp turn and she knocked the bar. Dropped us to 24th out of 61 dogs; without the bar, we'd have been in 14th place, earned a Q and gone on to the 2nd round.
	Snooker	Her first Masters Snooker. A tough course that knocked out a lot of dogs. We hung in until #6 in the closing--a threadle--and I moved too soon and pushed her past the 2nd jump. Even so, we were 7th out of 33 dogs, missing a super-Q by only 2 places.
Sunday	Snooker	Got through 4 opening 7s with only one knocked bar on a 7, then on #3 in closing she went into the wrong side of tunnel #3, something I hadn't even anticipated. My fault--I had run beyond it and was looking back at her.
	Standard	Missed up on the dogwalk, plus one refusal. But otherwise very nice.
	Team Jumpers	A twisty technical course and we ended up offcourse into a tunnel, probably my fault again.
	Grand Prix Rd 1	The 4th obstacle was the dogwalk and she missed the up contact again--I was on edge the rest of the way, but no other faults, so we earned another Q to the nationals and went on to Round 2. 21st of 44 dogs.
	Relay	Tika was very fast; her partner was very slow. Still, between them they earned a Q.
Monday	Standard	Finally! Our first masters Standard Q! Placed 6th of 40.
	Team Snooker	A good girl. Got all the way through, on a course that we ran very conservatively but that wiped out a lot of competitors. Knocked the 1st red in the opening but I had planned for it and we continued smoothly through the 3 optional reds and the closing. 13 of 42 dogs.
	Gamblers	A nice opening. In the right place for the gamble but I probably turned her the wrong way over the #2 obstacle and she came back over the #1.
	Grand Prix Rd 2	We were both hot and tired. 3 5-pt faults and I don't know what 2 of them were--one was probably up on dogwalk. Known one was a refusal on badly directed weaves. But I don't think we had bars down.
	Jumpers	Last run of the weekend. Tika's 17th of the weekend; my 28th. 6:30 on a very hot day. Offcourse almost immediately, so we kept going--she knocked 3 bars on this course. Herky jerky handling and turning.
	Team Relay	Tika did great. But over 5 classes, our team missed Q for the nationals.

Jake
Saturday	Standard	An extremely challenging course for large, fast dogs. Of all heights of Performance dogs, 13 of 22 E'd on this course and only 3 Qed. So we were inbetween--didn't Q, didn't go off course, but not fast, not accurate, with 5 faults for flying off his Dogwalk down contact and 10 seconds over time to make up for all the wide turns and recovery times. It is so hard to run him with his deafness. If he loses sight of me, he doesn't check in, just keeps going, then I stop to wait for him, then when he figures out I'm not there, he comes back but thereafter runs slower, etc. He seems to like going out there and has fun until that happens, then he's clearly more cautious and concerned.
	Jumpers	Smooth but not particularly fast; still, we were more than 6 seconds under course time, took a Q and 3rd of 7 dogs.
	Snooker	Jake and I used to be a wonderful snooker team. Now I can't send him away from me and expect him to be making tight turns to come back, so it really hampers the kinds of openings I can pick and our general level of success. Picked a very simple opening sequence, then he missed the weave entry to a 6-pole weaves, completed them, then I had to pull him back around to restart them so we could go on. Got all the way through to the last obstacle--which was a 6-pole weave--and the whistle blew. We had enough points for a Q and 3rd of 4th place, but way out of place for a Super-Q (even had we completed #7, we'd have been 2 points under the first-place dog).
	Babar Pairs	Paired with, of all dogs, Babar. Fairly smooth on a not-too-tough course. No Qs involved, just for fun. Babar not zippy. 6th of 11 pairs.
Sunday	Snooker	Got him revved up ahead of time and we whipped through the first sets of jumps and tunnels but then he got ahead of me and I couldn't call him off of an offcourse.
	Standard	Ran across and off the table again, dagnabbit. Got his down contacts with a tremendous amount of help. A variety of refuals and it was just a mess, finally Eed offcourse.
	Grand Prix Rd 1 (Performance)	Not super fast. Barely got contacts with help. Missed weave entry for a 5-point refusal, but managed to make it to Round 2. Only 2.5 seconds under course time.
Monday	Standard	Another mess. Flew off contacts, I crossed in the wrong place and pushed him into an offcourse, just ugly.
	Gamblers	Picked a conservative opening that he got through OK with a bit of a fumble on an attempted serpentine, then got to our last obst before the gamble, and the whistle didn't blow. Send him over my spare obstacle and called him back, and the whistle *still* didn't blow. Between the fumble on the serpentine AND using the spare obstacle AND my last obstacle having been an aggressive plan anyway, I yelled to the judge while I tried to figure out what to do next, "That's a lot more than 25 seconds!" Finally the timer sounded and we attempted the gamble but he had no momentum and couldn't carry out to #2. Sure enough, the timer had failed to go off after the opening, so the judge let us run it again. I gave Jake a few treats and we ran it again immediately. This time our placement was perfect when the whistle sounded and he got the gamble like an old pro. It's been a while.
	Grand Prix Rd 2	Another unmitigated disaster. Popped *both* down contacts, refusals everywhere, finally missed a jump for an offcourse.
	Jumpers	Jake's last run of the weekend. Amazingly, Jake was ready for it. Although we weren't fast, and had some iffy turns, he stuck with me and we were 4 seconds under time, for a Q and our first and only 1st place of the weekend, out of 4 dogs.

Boiling Toil Spoils the Goil

Our agility club, The Bay Team (external), hosted a supersized-with-fries three-day USDAA (external) agility trial at Twin Creeks Sports complex (external) in Sunnyvale. Holey sunshade, did it ever overtax my very molecules, even the athletic ones. We can enumerate the reasons (because we're using HTML and it lets us):

1. Temperature reached 95 all three days. The slight breeze helped but not nearly enough. And of course dogs don't sweat. I do, but barely.
   
2. Although the site was as compact as possible for four rings, and sat right next to the parking lot, and I hardly ever had to go to the far two rings, I stepped a tremendous number of steps. I ground myself down on both Saturday and Sunday until every muscle from my linty toes to my sweaty shoulders ached; by Monday I felt bad enough and suffered enough from a pinched something in my right hip that I concentrated my skills on sitting around rather than on doing as much casual strolling, assisting, and moving equipment. As a result, my pedometer showed, for my "sit around" day, that I covered a mere 11.9 miles (about 23,000 steps). The mortal mind boggles at how much ground I trod the two previous days.
   
3. Tika competed in 17 classes, Jake in 11. Fortunately, Tika had moved up to all Masters, so I didn't need to walk completely different courses for each, although—because of Jake's deafness and Tika's speed—I did have to walk the overlapping classes (10 of them) for more repetitions than I would have for only one dog. That's a lot of bingey-hingey walkthroughs--and runs, with all of their emotional, physical, and mental intensity.

Twin Creeks has only recycled, hence nonpotable, water on the soccer field, so we had no running water with which to hose down our pups before and after their runs. We had discussed renting a water truck to come in for the weekend, but the expense (or something) prevented that. The solution turned out to be two dog-bath-sized metal tubs filled with ice water; Twin Creeks personnel appeared every hour or two throughout the weekend on a golf cart with a barrel of fresh cold water with which to refill the tubs, followed by buckets full of ice. Freshly filled tubs were numbing; they'd hit Tika just about chest level and Jake about halfway up his body. I'd get the dogs in, splash the water over them quickly until my fingers started feeling painfully numb (about 10 seconds), then let them pop out again.

By the time the time came for the next refill, the tubs were left with about six inches of brown, grassy, dog-hair laced, nearly luke-warm water. I kept thinking, "Gee, I hope that, unlike two-year-old humans, dogs' first reaction to being immersed in water isn't to loosen their bladders."

It was certainly better than no water, however. But--for the father, nothing. (Or mother, too.)

I, myself, drank prodigiously and produced barely a drop of liquid output.

new photo

Backfill: FYI, I added a photo to Sunday's post.

BORED dog

I've been trying to put in many hours at work. Both Monday and Tuesday I worked at my client's site rather than at home, and also worked long hours, and also had to rush out in the morning, so I was gone until late in the evening and the dogs got only a walk in the a.m. and a very small quantity of playtime.

Last night I dragged in sometime after 10:30. The dogs were ecstatic to see me, which I expected--they always are, that's the nice thing about dogs. However, all my dogs have always understood the concept of bedtime enough that, if I'm not heading up to bed by around 10 or 10:30, they precede me up there and start the long snooze on their own. Or start looking disgusted if I'm still mucking around actively.

That's usually true even when I've been out for the evening. They're happy when I come in, but their little internal doggie clocks get them to settle right into bed when I do.

Not last night. Tika had not had any mental or physical interaction worth mentioning for two days, and she was not going to let me forget it. When I crawled into bed, she crawled right up next to me and started putting her paw on my leg, my stomach, my arm, whatever she could reach. And then her chin. While I put drops in my ears and let them wrestle with the little bacteriae, I skritched and stroked her. When I turned out the light, even that wasn't enough. She snuggled more. Wanted more. I finally just told her to knock it off, and she did. But she was up in the middle of the night a couple of times, looking for something to do. She found a tubie-thing (empty toilet paper tube, valid dog toy) and slowly tore that into little pieces, alone, in the dark, at 3 a.m.

Poor poor dog. It sucks having a lot of energy and intelligence and enthusiasm to give and no one to give it to.

This morning, after another trip to the doctor's before which I did nothing with the beasts but feed them, we went for a nice long walk and then played a bit in the yard and tried to do some agility obstacles--problem was that by that time it was getting up well into the 80s in the sun and Tika got too hot too fast. So I hope we did enough--because I have to shower and head out to the client again for the rest of the afternoon.

And Tika has no class this week or next.

Tonight is Jake's weekly class; maybe I can split the evening between the two of them. I hate to take away from my time with Jake, but I also hate having a stir-crazy aussie thang.

Omigosh omigosh!

(excerpted from email to a friend) Omigosh omigosh omigosh. What a weekend Tika had! In the "minor" events--Snooker and Gamblers, wherein we basically invent our own courses and try to rack up as many points as possible within certain time and obstacle constraints, she not only did great and Qualified and took first in her height in both classes, but also got much higher scores than any other dog of any height in her entire level. That's always a big stroke for my admittedly competitive brain parts. In her pairs relay class, she did great, but her partner had a bobble, which dropped us to 3rd out of all the pairs in our entire level (nothing to scoff at, though, even if you're inclined to scoff).

So then we get to our Jumpers run, which I really wanted to Q so badly but have been knocking bars for 2 years--our first USDAA Jumpers run was in Aug or Sept of 2002--she was nearly stunning! Not a bar down! Not a single offcourse! She veered slightly in the wrong direction after 2 jumps where I was crossing behind (dang--and our instructor has been after us to practice more cross-behinds the last couple of weeks, too), which cost us a little time and dropped us to 2nd place, about 1 second behind the first place dog. But she Qed! So now she can move up to the top level (Masters) in all of her classes. Yow. I am jazzed about that.

THEN there was the Grand Prix qualifier, which was the other thing I really wanted. I ran her conservatively, which meant holding her on her down-contacts for a couple or 3 seconds, and tried to be relaxed and confident because when I get stressed I tend to do really stupid things or rush my signals. She looked perfect, all the way through! We did get one fault, and it wasn't for something I saw--it was probably missing an UP-contact on her dogwalk, which we have problems with periodically. But it was minor enough that we still qualified! Wahoo! So she's going to the Nationals in the Grand Prix and I can relax about that.

AND, BTW, Jake also qualified, so now they're both valid for the National Grand Prix--although Jake already had the option of merely competing in the "veterans" division, for dogs who have previously competed in the National Grand Prix (which he did twice).

Then there was the bonus Steeplechase regional qualifier. I walked the course--it was a challenging course, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized that we were completely capable of doing it. Our instructor starts dogs out at a challenging level in classes and works up, more or less with the goal that nothing we ever see in the ring would be more difficult than what we've already faced in class. It really paid off this weekend, because I went out there feeling just confident enough--my goal was to get through the course without an offcourse and hopefully no bars down--and there were many opportunities for a fast dog to go offcourse without the right handling--because (as I said) I've almost never Qed in the Steeplechase before.

Man, she was a delight to run. I watched the first 8 dogs crap out on that course, and then we ran, and she ran clean and plenty fast. (She ticked one jump bar, and I thought I heard it fall behind me, but interestingly the *lower* of the 2 bars fell, and that's not a fault!) Only 10 of 40 dogs would be going to the 2nd round and qualifying for Nationals, and she was in 1st place after 9 dogs(!). Then I had to watch through the next 32 dogs as, one by one, these awesome dogs, some with previous national championships, also ran clean with slightly faster times. We were in 10th place as the last dog ran--and they were clean, but slower than Tika's time. So we were Qed for the Nationals again and moving to the 2nd round on Sunday by the skin of our dogteeth! I just about floated away from the ring.

7 of the 10 dogs would get cash awards on Sunday, but I knew we didn't have chance for that, because I'm just some shmoe who does agility and sometimes gets lucky with my dogs. Although Tika is really a fine dog; still, I'm not the best handler in the universe, and because it's all about speed, the finalists have to use the most aggressive handling techniques and the dogs have to be letter-perfect without slowing down. It's only been 6 months since Tika stopped being a rebellious teenage novice dog, testing me on course, and began slowly to settle down to learn how to work well as part of a team.

The Steeplechase Round 2 is a time-plus-faults course; in other words, if you run the course in 35 seconds with no faults, you could get beaten by a dog who ran the course in 29 seconds with a 5-fault knocked bar (29+5=34, which is less than 35). So it's not only speed, but accuracy, too. And the courses are usually very challenging, even more than the first round. (Oh, and, yes, the dogs are usually so fast and so close together in times that a single 5-point fault is likely to make your chances of taking 1st pretty much zero.)

So they set the course, and the first time I walked it, there were clearly half a dozen quite challenging handling choices--even the very experienced, successful handlers were trying several methods to see how they felt. And yet--and yet--I felt that it was a course that we could do without looking like dorks. Once again, all I wanted was to not crap out on a course where only the best were competing--no offcourses, no stupid spins because I didn't identify the next obstacle quickly enough, no running past obstacles. And I felt that we could do that. Didn't matter if we came in 10th but looked good--the whole rest of the trial shuts down while the Steeplechase Round 2 runs, so *everyone* is watching.

That doesn't actually bother me when I finally get out there--no time to worry about it, I'm so focused on my dog and my body and the course. But *beforehand* I could think about feeling humiliated if we mucked up, and my stomach started manufacturing butterflies. And yet--again--and yet--I still felt that it was a doable course! In the past, I didn't always feel so confident about that with the challenging top-level courses.

There were several places on the course that required particular attention or clearly masters-level handling skill, but one place in particular had me double-guessing.

At that place on the course, you had to send the dog ahead of you over 2 jumps and straight into a U-shaped tunnel and they'd blast back out at you and have to make a weave pole entry straight ahead. To be in the best position for the sequence *after* the weave poles, you'd want to try to outrace the dog and cross his path between the tunnel exit and the weaves, but the dog *really* blasts out of a tunnel in that kind of setup, and the slightest misstep on your part could knock them off the weave pole entry. And Tika has been fairly solid on her fast weave-pole entry the last couple of months, but it hasn't been that long since she was regularly bobbling the entry when blasting straight at them full speed without my giving her guidance--sometimes hit the first pole so hard that she'd knock herself right past the 2nd one for a fault, or fly right past the first pole and enter at the second. I walked it both with that cross and with the weaker but safer move of staying on the inside of the weave poles. I wasn't at all confident about trying to make that cross-- because I didn't think I could get there with Tika's speed, and if I tried and missed, for sure we'd blow the weave entry, and I didn't want to do that--and even if I got there, I wouldn't be giving her guidance, I'd just be picking her up on my left side and moving with her, and she'd have to rely entirely on her own (still limited) experience and skills to manage that weave entry. So I decided that I had to do the 2nd, conservative, choice, staying inside the weaves.

Then I had the advantage of watching 13 dogs in the class ahead of us. These are all really fast dogs. Two or three handlers stayed on the inside of the weaves, but they really had to work to get into position for the next sequence, as I had expected. But all the others *made* that cross between the tunnel and the weaves, even with their blazingly fast dogs! I decided that the only way I could be competitive was to do that cross. One handler did the cross but ended in not quite the right place and, sure enough, it caused problems for her dog in the weave entry. My resolve wavered, but so many others were making it that I finally decided "If THEY can do it, *I* can do it!" and decided to go for broke.

I also saw that almost all the dogs were knocking at least one bar, dropping them rapidly in the placements.

Well, boys and girls, she was a lovely thing. Did everything I asked, all the complicated turns and crosses. By the time we got to that pre-weave cross, she still hadn't knocked a single bar. I went for the cross--and got there perfectly! She smashed into the weave pole opening and my heart skipped a beat, but she was in total control and stormed those poles! We got through the next tough sequence beautifully--and then there were only 5 jumps remaining to the end, with a couple of tight but not difficult turns-- and, sigh, she knocked *2* of them. Maybe because I was relaxing and getting sloppier. But it was a totally beautiful run. I had pushed my limits as a handler and her limits as a working dog, and we both came through beyond my expectations. I was (and still am) one happy handler.

In fact, so many dogs were knocking bars or missing the weave entry or other bobbles that cost them time, that Tika ended up taking 6th place overall--for a big check of $10. She was actually the 4th fastest dog--which I'd been wondering for a while how she'd stack up on a well-run course in comparison to these other wonderful dogs--but the first-place dog, who was the 5th fastest, was the ONLY one who didn't knock at least one bar, and the times were all so close that that made all the difference.

Am I waxing ebullient? I'm a happy mom.

Oh please please can we qualify for the nationals?

Backfill: Aug 29 p.m. (from email to a friend)
It's dog agility this weekend and next. Both weekends provide me with opportunities to get Tika qualified for the big USDAA nationals in November in AZ. Gawd, I hope we manage it. There's one more chance two weekends after that, but I'd just like to get the stress over with.

Actually there are *3* events at the nationals--Steeplechase, Team, and Grand Prix, but the Grand Prix is the really big one and the one that people refer to when they mean "national championship". My dogs have only ever qualified for the Steeplechase twice in 8 years of competing--but it's a specialized speed event rather than the more general all-around Grand Prix -- qualifying in the Steeplechase requires that you be in the top some-small-percentage of the dogs, whereas qualifying for the Grand Prix just means that you meet the required standard performance. The challenging part about Qing for Steeplechase in this part of the country is that most of the top dogs in the country compete here, and the prizes are for cash, so they don't stop competing in the regional qualifiers even after they've qualified for the nationals, so the same dogs keep qualifying over and over.

And Team consists of 5 events--you and two teammates compete in four events individually and then all 3 of you compete in a relay. The combined scores of all 3 of you over all the events are compared to all the other teams to determine who Qs-- I *think* that the top 50% of the teams at any qualifier go to nationals. Odds are decent that we can do it, although all 3 dogs on my team this year are young and not that experienced yet. Again--kind of a specialized event.

Sooooo anyway Tika has one chance to Q for Team and two chances each to Q for Steeplechase and Grand Prix. Mostly I care about qualifying in the GP. The others would be bonuses.

AND I really want to qualify in Jumpers, because she's earned enough Qs in the other games to move up to masters if we can get only one clean jumpers runs. I think we're coming up on 30 total USDAA jumpers runs with only 2 clean (both in novice), so I'd really like to get there. But we have such a problem with knocked bars. (Takes only one to prevent a Q.) Still, we've been doing Susan Salo's jumping exercises and taking a few more lessons from her. Not sure that I can afford more, but I think they help. We shall see...

It's Been A While/That Old Deaf Dog

My, time flies when there's not enough of it.

Jake still teases me with his Am I Deaf Or Ain't I? scenario. When we're at an agility trial, walking to the start of the ring, I let him get ahead of me and turned away. There's a lot of ambient noise and distraction. I say his name loudly and he spins instantly, ears perked, eyes bright, looking for the goodie that he knows I have in my hand.

Sitting in my office, I have goodies in my hand. I wait until he's lying on the floor, head turned away from me. It's completely quiet except for the sound of the computer. I call his name. No response, although he's lying there with the ears-in-the-back-of-the-head posture, as though he's expecting to hear something. I call his name louder. Nothing. Finally he turns his head casually, as if it's something he just decided to do, then suddenly perks up when he sees me looking at him and holding food. Thirty seconds later--he knows I have the food--repeat with same results.

This puzzles me.

The other evening I was out with my sister in her car. Came home through the front door, rattling the lock and jingling my keys. Tika and Casey came blazing downstairs in a frenzy of ThankGodWe'reNotAbandoned-ness. Jake remained upstairs, out of sight, with the "woof----woof----" that says "I don't know why the other dogs are aroused and running around, but in case there's an intruder, I want him to know that I fully support the other dogs in whatever they choose to do." I started stomping up the stairs, saying his name louder & louder. Same level of time-delayed woof----wooof----woof-- until I poked my head around the doorframe into the bedroom, at which point he looked startled and shocked, and then absolutely delighted to see me there.

It's a challenge.

Talked to another agility person who runs a deaf Border Collie. I've been trying to come up with a gesture vocabulary for things--touching my nose means "good", swooping my open hand palm-up away from me and him means "release/OK"; I've always often used the forearm-swung-across-the-chest for "come" and forearm-swung-up-at-elbow for "sit", so you'd think he'd know those, but he seems oblivious. In agility, I've always tried to use a raised arm for contact equipment rather than pointing as I do for other obstacles. With Jake I've started using a wavy hand for weave poles.

She suggested having signs for every different obstacle that I'm likely to have obstacle discrimination on, so including a different gesture for tunnels than for jumps. Not a bad idea. She uses a closed fist for tunnels. I like this idea; we've been missing a lot of gambles lately in straight carry-outs to tunnels that he used to just blast through; now he seems to head out there, turn back towards me, see that I'm still pointing & gesturing, and loop around and sometimes make it back out to the tunnel. Maybe if I had a different signal that was for tunnels only, it would help. But I'll have to practice it a zillion squillion times and I don't know whether I have the patience for it.

People are asking me when I think I might retire him now that he has just about every championship in the book. (NADAC NATCH and O-NATCH; ASCA ATCH; CPE CATCH; USDAA ADCH and veteran's version APD. And even higher titles.) I keep looking at him running and thinking I have no physical reason to retire him. He looks like he's having a good time. Seems particularly to enjoy the time with me without the other dogs. Runs as crazy fast as he always did after his squeaky.

Oh, and that's another thing--he still squeaks a squeaky to make it squeak. Can he hear that? Can he detect the vibration? Is he just assuming that it's squeaking? Inquiring human minds want to know.

It's especially interesting to me now that I've been suffering for nearly 3 weeks with an ear infection or something that makes it extremely difficult to hear from my right ear. It's not like losing half of my hearing; it's like losing 3/4 of it. It's amazing what difference it makes, having only one side of good hearing. So I suppose Jake could have the same thing--maybe it depends on which ear is turned towards me (which I've sometimes had my suspicions about).

Oh, well, it's all a Learning Experience.

West Nile Virus vs Dogs Straining Themselves.

Tika investigates our main source of mosquito larva: the plant holder in the floor of the old pond

It is just not fair that mosquito-borne illnesses should creep into the American way of life! We used that lovely DDT stuff to wipe out the nasties that carried malaria decades ago--what's a few birds here and there? This year for the first time they're confirming the presence of West Nile virus in deceased birds in Santa Clara County.

Where before we were supposed to try to keep down places where mosquitos could breed, now we really ought to be taking care to ensure that we're never bitten. But musky-toe repellant should be for the outback! The hinterlands! The wilderness! Not for one's own backyard.

Or dining room.

Dog-modified screen door handle

See, my dogs don't get the thing with screen doors. Every time I try to leave a screen door instead of the glass door closed around the patio doggie door, some one of them crashes into it. At best, it knocks it off its tracks and it takes me 10 minutes to get it back on. At worst, it bends and cracks the frame. Tika has made my kitchen entry screen door almost unusable. Not quite, but almost. It certainly won't close and latch on its own any more, although I personally never wanted to do that. Doesn't look too good, either.

How does that go: Did you hear about the dog who ran through a screen door and strained himself? (OK, that's the best I can do at this time of the morning.)