Not The Best of Days

...continued from yesterday...

On Saturday, I awoke exhausted. Physically tired from the muck and the straw and all that, and my knee rather sore, but also emotionally wiped out from a night of worrying the Q-or-no-Q question to death. I finally met up with my teammates, and we agreed to let the score table know that there had been an error, and that was that. I felt like sitting down in a corner and sobbing. I really wanted that Q, and I had been ready to accept that we hadn't gotten it, but then to find out that we DID get it--only to find out that we really DIDN'T get it and were misled only because of someone else's error--too much for my tired soul to take.

However, as the morning wore on, I felt better and better about having done the right thing and having gotten over it. The score table did confirm sometime in the late morning that indeed that E in the Team relay cost us the Q.

So now we have to do it all over again. At least we have opportunities to do so--the Bay Team trial in Sunnyvale the first weekend in May, with one of the same partners but a different third because the other had already committed to a different team, then back to the same three again for the Turlock trial in June. Then, if by some crappy rotten bit of luck we STILL haven't Qed, there's the Bay Team Labor Day trial. And there might be some in southern cal, too, but I really don't want to make that kind of long haul.

So I returned my lovely TM ribbon and my DAM qualifier patch. It was quite windy and it ripped the roof of my canopy. Not sure how I'm going to fix it (it's along the seam but no way it's going into the sewing machine--I don't think) and it's pricey to replace it.

Tika and her partner for Master Pairs Relay had nice smooth runs that looked pretty fast, and we were both completely clean; hoped we'd get a placement ribbon there, but no, it was good only for 16th out of 61 teams. At least it was *a* Qualifying run for the day.

We had our third Masters Standard run of the weekend and I don't recall exactly what we did wrong, my brain was too far gone to remember even long enough to write it down later that day, but it was two different faults for a total of 10 points rather than our traditional five, and then we had our next attempt at Masters Jumpers, where we managed to knock TWO bars AND get a runout when I pushed her past a jump for 15 dang faults.

I knew that 3 days of agility was too much for us.

Steeplechase

Then here was the other dilemma that I was trying not to argue with myself about until the issue actually arose. Round 1 of the Steeplechase qualifier was on Saturday, but the final/money round was on Sunday. I didn't sign up for Sunday. I wanted to go home at the end of the day Saturday and recover and have a nice Easter dinner with my family, which I've often missed in the past because of dog agility. But, if Tika qualified in Round 1, this was a huge trial, so the purse for the top 8 or 10 or so dogs would be much larger than usual. And Tika's speed could be good enough to place.

To qualify, though, we'd first have to place within 25% of the top 3 dogs in our height class. There were 63 dogs entered at our 26" jump height. The way the calculations work now is that the top 3 dogs' speeds are averaged, and scores that are 125% or less earn Qs and are eligible to go on to the second round. ...That is, "scores" being time plus faults. So, for example, if the top 3 dogs ran the course in 29, 30, and 31 seconds, their average would be 30 and dogs whose time plus faults were less than 37.5 (125% of 30) would qualify.

I decided to go for broke on the run, get her as revved as I could before the run and really push it all the way through. I knew that we'd have to be fast in that crowd, and I knew that we'd have to be exceptionally fast to make up for the real possibility of a knocked bar, which is 5 faults. I walked the course calmly but thoroughly. I felt that it was a course that we were fully capable of getting through flawlessly even at high speed, I felt that I had identified all the possible error areas and felt confident that we could handle them. But Tika does tend to knock bars sometimes a bit more once we really get hauling--possibly because she flattens out more as she blasts over jumps.

I watched quite a few people run it, and many of them had many problems, mostly in those problem areas that I had identified, plus of course knocked bars, slow dogs, missed contact, and so on.

So we finally ran it. Tika was revved. I was revved. We were in synch; we had no hesitations or confusions, our turns were tight, only one tiny tiny hesitation when she didn't stick the Aframe and she hesitated slightly but I had been planning on releasing her the instant she hit the ground anyway, so I told her GO!...and she went...and she knocked the next bar as she executed a perfect tight turn. Otherwise our run was a total joy. I love running Tika.

In fact, I pretty much always love running her. She's so good and so fast and she pays such good attention without ever slowing down for instructions or getting worried about it. I think it's something akin to the thrill of driving a race car. My adrenaline definitely flows. But--at that speed--all it takes is the slightest wrong twitch and you've got major repercussions.

So it turned out that the 3 fastest dogs averaged 29.56 seconds, so 125% was 36.95 seconds. Tika's time was 32.11 seconds--good enough for 7th place--IF she hadn't knocked that bar. Those 5 faults put our total score at 37.11, a whole .16 seconds away from qualifying. Crap crap crap crap crappy crap.

On the other hand, it meant that I could pack up and go home, and it was only 12:30!

Wrapping up

Somehow or other, between stopping to watch Sparkle's steeplechase run, and talking to Dee about Izzy and Dee's puppy, and getting some congratulatory cake for the new champion dogs, and of course packing and packing and packing and packing...among occasional light misty showers and hoping that the rain would hold off til I was done... I wasn't ready to go until 3:30, at which point our club's quarterly meeting was already starting, so I stayed for that, and sat for an hour and a quarter.

When I finally stood up, my right knee was so stiff that it didn't want to bend at first. I followed my friend out of the arena, the friend with a locking device on her knee post-surgery so the knee won't bend, both of us doing the half-frankenstein walk down the sidewalk. I didn't actually leave the parking lot until 5:30.

By the time I finally got home mid-evening, my knee was swollen enough to make my jeans tight. (Well, OK, they're already fairly tight, but I mean really tight.) Argh.

But, I'll tell ya, I went to bed and slept ALL the way through the night without being aware of even one moment of waking up due to shoulder or knee pain and didn't even have to get up once to visit the euphemism. I was TIRED and it was SO nice to be home in my bed. Had an Easter dinner with my family that couldn't be beat, went to sleep again and didn't get up til the next morning when I had to go to... wait... I'm beginning to feel like an Alice's Restaurant rerun.

So, anyway, what I came to talk about was--the next time you get a fortune cookie fortune like this, two days before a major agility trial...look out.

The Bees Knees and Regular Ones, Too

Notice how my left knee (that's on your right) has a fairly well-defined kneecap? Notice how my right knee (that's on your left) has almost no definition and is puffy all around? It's pretty uggy. It's not really bruised; that's just shadows. Have I mentioned how hard it is to try to take photos of your own knees?

Just to keep you entertained until I can get back to my long weekend story...

By the time I got home Saturday evening, my knee was so stiff and thick-feeling that it felt like it filled up my jeans leg. Here's what it looked like after I got out of the shower. Have you ever tried to take a picture of your own knees? It's somewhat like trying to lick your own elbow only it involves more flash bulbs.

Have you ever noticed how ugly knees are just generally?

But, you know what, there's some good news today--I just saved a ton of money on car ins... no, not really--I discovered when trying to look up someone ELSE's USDAA title that the ADCH no longer requires 7 Standard legs--it used to take 5 legs, then they changed it to 7 a couple of years ago, then they apparently changed it back to 5 when they added tournament Q requirements. So in fact Tika already has her Standard Agility Master (SAM) title! And that's the bees knees! Yay! Good thing, since we were 0 for 3 in Standard for the weekend. How we ever managed a clean Team Standard run I'll never know.

The Dilemma(s)

...continued from yesterday...

So it's Friday morning. Fields are drying out but are still not superb. Yesterday we had 6 runs and I'm exhausted. Good thing I'm not running two dogs at the moment. How did I do it for all that time? (It occurred to me the other day that I was 10 years younger when I started doing agility, 9 years younger when I added a second dog. I suppose that makes a difference--)

The morning is a little chaotic again. Once again, we're walking 3 courses simultaneously in opposing corners of the site. And trying to keep track of when it's open walkthrough, when it's walkthrough just for our heights, when the ring is actually starting, how far they've actually gotten in each ring, and so on.

The Relay Run

One of the classes is the DAM Team Relay. The courses are not simple but they're not rocket science, either--but the judge throws everyone for a loop by removing the baton that's usually exchanged and replacing it with a large hard-plastic "rubber duckie" (that I didn't think to photograph, dang) that instead of carrying with you, you are handed by your teammate when you *finish* running. In other words, usually the runner hands the next person the baton; now the next person has to hand the finished runner the duckie.

If we could have harnessed the energy used by 63 teams times 3 dogs in discussing how the handoff was supposed to work, we could've powered the entire city of Sacramento for half a day, or at least have fired up a giant hairdryer to dry out the fields. Conversations were still going on an hour after the walkthrough.

So we got distracted by that during our walkthrough period, although we were trying not to. Partner C was doing full-time ring-coordination work in another ring, so she had to be dragged away from her job to walk the course, and had to leave early to go back there to get her ring ready to run. It was like that for her all weekend. How she held up and made so many great runs anyway is beyond me.

We were team #17 in the running order. I watched some of the earlier teams. Some folks did go off course, but often they were just odd handling errors that I couldn't figure out the logic for. It wasn't like the Team Standard course the previous day, where nearly half the competitors in some heights Eed.

Finally we're up. Partner B is on the line, Partner C has the ducky. I'm the third runner, so all I have to do is take the ducky from B after she gets it from C and C is on course, then hand it to C when she's done running--then run my own course, which is pretty straight-forward. I think.

Partner B has a little bobble somewhere, but stays on course. That's OK; little bobbles are not going to hurt us now. Partner C hands her the ducky and takes off. The first half of her run is beautiful--and then she loses track of how far she has to move to complete a front cross, and pulls her dog over the wrong jump. An E. We're probably dead meat. So I know, going into my run, that we can't possibly make it up with all the mess-ups we've made cumulatively during the competition. Still, I give it our best speedy shot--and lost track of how far I need to front cross and pull Tika off a jump--but manage to save it, so it's only a 2-point refusal penalty.

We know we have not Qed. It's depressing. And it's not just Partner C's run. If we had all had good runs all the time earlier, this one E wouldn't have mattered and more than any one of our bobbled runs would have mattered independently. It's just more obvious in people's minds because it's the last run of the DAM event.

And what this means is that we all have to hold it together AGAIN for ANOTHER 5 runs on ANOTHER weekend to try to be in the top 50% next time for a Q. The thought is exhausting on top of everything else.

Other Runs

So Tika and I go off and try another Master Standard run. Tika doesn't wait for the "OK" to leave the start line, but she does wait for me to turn around. Not really acceptable but I let her get away with it again. She doesn't stick ANY of her contacts, and because I'm waiting for her to stop, she gets out ahead of me towards the next jump, then turns back to see what I'm doing, and badda-bing, we've got a refusal and a failure to Q. AND she knocks the bar while I'm trying to keep her from getting the refusal.

We run the Grand Prix qualifier. I'd really like to place; we already have the Qs we need for this year. But, in keeping with our history of 5-fault GP Qs, she doesn't wait for the "OK" at the start line, she doesn't stick her contacts, and when coming off one early, I'm stopped to wait for her, so she turns back from the next jump and earns a refusal AGAIN. But at least she keeps the bar up, and we make it all the way through and earn another plain-old no-placement GP Q. It's smack-dab average with that bar down, placing 25th of 54 26" dogs.

We now have a history of Qing 12 out of 20 attempts at Grand Prix Qualifiers--every bloody one of those Qs with 5 faults except for our very first one ever, at our very first USDAA trial ever, 3 years ago, right before she went off the deep end of realizing she was off leash and we spent a year trying to get on track again. Crap.

Later in the day, we have a Master Gamblers run. The gamble looks doable. We have a decent plan for our opening, we execute perfectly, I'm holding her on her contacts for practice, we're right where I want to be when the whistle blows--and then I OVER push her and she takes a jump TOO far out after hestitating and bouncing back and forth a half step a couple of times between the right one and the wrong one. Crap crap crap! Turns out that NONE of the 35 dogs in 26" get the gamble; only 4 of the 170 dogs of all heights get it. We're good for 9th place with our decent opening but that's not a ribbon. Crap.

Then there's Masters Snooker. It's a 4-reds optional and weaves are the 7-pointer. I time the course and there is absolutely no way that I can justify not doing four 7-pointers in the opening. The only tricky bit is that, to be most efficient to get the shortest time, which I'm convinced we'll need for the SuperQ, we need to take a jump sideways at one side of the field and dive all the way across the field to make a sideways entry to the weaves.

Tika has great weave entries and I think she can do that part. She also sometimes knocks bars. I have a plan for that, though--if she knocks the first bar, there's a nearby Red that I can take instead of the weaves--then we probably won't get the superQ but at least we'll get a Q and, who knows, there are plenty of chances for other people to screw up.

So I lead out halfway across the field. She waits for me. I release her, she flies across the jump and towards me and I think Yes! and spin around and direct her straight at the weave entrance and as she dives for it, I hear behind me--clank clank boing--the sound of a jump-bar falling. I scream Tika's name and turn away from the weaves, but it's too late--she has made a perfect weave entry as I was sure she would, thereby invalidating our run (because we hadn't successfully completed a red), and we're whistled off the course, for a 0-point run. Crap crap CRAP.

It Begins

And then one of my partners comes to tell me that we not only actually Qed in the DAM--we were 19th! I worked my way over to look at the posted results. Sure enough, there we were! 35 teams made it, so we were way up in the standings.

See, that's an interesting thing about DAM. Different classes are weighted differently, and depending on when you do well and when you're only around average, and depending on whether you manage to hang on to being merely average on ALL your runs, actually you could end up placing much higher than teams who did spectacularly on some runs but poorly on others. And we had been pretty much average or slightly below overall. It was amazing that, with an E in the last round, we still did so well--not only that, but I asked, and the dogs were worth 150 points each, so if we hadn't Eed, we'd have placed *3rd* overall, which really astounded me.

I was curious how some friends had done on their team, because they had had a very nice relay run with no Es--and their score was very similar to ours. It was puzzling, but then DAM scoring is puzzling, and maybe they were much slower or had more faults than I had realized, or we were faster that I had realized, or who knows.

I was delighted. Got that Q out of the way. AND completed our Tournament Master title. Later in the afternoon I discovered that the club had really cool, huge, gorgeous ribbons for the TM title, and I paraded it around and showed it to a bunch of people.

And I kept thinking--how come our score, with an E worth 150 points, was virtually the same as a team with no E?

And so, finally, I had to go to the score box and dig out our scribe sheet. There was no "E" on our sheet. We had been credited with a complete full set of 3 dogs' points.

I mentioned it to my teammates. We discussed it. We knew that there must be many errors out there. I mean, if we had 4 errors on our various runs over 2 days, there must be tons of errors everywhere, and I'll bet that other people know about errors but don't correct them, and there are probably TONS who don't even know whether their scores are right or not and just accept them, and if it weren't for my nosiness and my comparison of our score to someone else's, my teammates (and probably even I) would never have known at all that something was amiss.

But it's like Pandora's Box; once it's out, it's out and you can't just put it back. We had no idea whether it would prevent us from Qing, but we suspected so. Remember, we had been expecting to not Q. So do we report it or don't we?

We started second-guessing--if it was a judge's error, then was it OK to leave it? Did we remember for sure whether the judge had called it or whether we just ASSUMED that the judge had called it? We couldn't remember. And we've all had experiences where we report something like that to the judge and been told that, well, if the judge didn't call it, then that's that. And we all know that sometimes errors like that are very much in your favor, and sometimes they're very much not in your favor, and the longer you do agility, the more you just groan and pick up the pieces as best you can and wait for it to go in your favor again.

Or was it a scribing error--the judge called it but the scribe wrote the wrong thing or didn't write it at all--in which case, do we have to get the judge to remember that we Eed when it goes against what's on the sheet? And what are the odds that the judge would remember one dog out of 190?

But the thing that's different about the DAM is that--if we got a Q that we didn't deserve, we were preventing another team of 3 people who *did* deserve it from Qing.

And then we started thinking that maybe she hadn't TAKEN the wrong jump, she had just APPROACHED the wrong jump but not taken it (the scribe sheet had a fault on it as if that's what had happened). This is why eye witnesses are so unreliable; we had almost convinced ourselves that maybe it was possible. But no, really, we all knew that it was over when she TOOK the jump; we wouldn't all three have mis-seen the action.

By this time it was late in the evening and everything had been put away for the day and the crowds dispersed.

Then I started thinking maybe I had looked at the wrong scribe sheet and we were OK after all.

Or that maybe even with the E we'd have Qed anyway and it wouldn't matter--I mean, would one E on a 9-obstacle course fraction really drop us from 19th to below 35th? It couldn't possibly--could it?

That Night

I couldn't get it out of my head. I really wanted that Q and that TM ribbon and to be able to relax about it, but I couldn't.

I had bought a backpacking self-inflating, very expensive I might add, air mattress, and added that to the top of my foam pads, and I was much more comfortable physically, although the knee was really acting up and my shoulders were still unhappy and the Case of the Missing E haunting me off and on all night.

...to be continued... sorry, I have to work...

The Weekend Continues...

...continued from yesterday...

Just got email from the trial chair. They used 180 bales of wood shavings and 21 bales of straw (which are huge, BTW, when you see them up close) this weekend. Wow.

Thursday's Competition

We had 6 runs on Thursday, four of which were in the DAM tournament. In DAM, all three team member's scores are normalized according to various formulas and combined for a team score. So, for example, Jumpers might be worth 100 points per dog, then you subtract the dog's times and faults, or subtract all 100 if the dog Es (goes offcourse). So, in that example, a team score of 300 would be impossible; if all 3 dogs were really fast and clean (let's say 33.3 seconds each), the team score would be 200.1; and 0 total would be possible if all 3 dogs Eed. I don't really know what the formulas are, just have a vaguely rough idea of how it works.

Roughly the top 50% of the teams after 5 classes Qualify for the nationals. So the basic strategy for DAM is: Don't E! (In Snooker and Gamblers, a really low score would be sort of like Eing.) So you want to be, overall, average or better.

Tika's Master Standard run (not team) was actually quite nice considering that I could hear her feet going thwok thwok as she pulled them from the mud while going through the weaves, but I couldn't move fast enough to push her out over a far jump, so she went past it and then backjumped it for an E. But I was pleased with her performance overall. (Kept all the bars up...)

In Team Standard, she had an absolutely lovely run, completely clean, no bars down, to place about 10th of 51 dogs in the 26" height. Partner B also did really well; Partner C had faults (scribe sheet doesn't jive with what we think happened on course, but it's not going to prevent us from Qing) and some wasted time recovering from the faults plus the faults dropped her score to below average but not dramatically so. Overall, our team did well in the Standard round, starting at about 14th of 63 teams.

Then Tika's regular Masters Jumpers run was gorgeous and a miracle happened and she kept all her bars up *again* for a Q, despite the muck! I was feeling good!

Tika's Team Gambler's run started out beautifully, exactly as I planned it, fast and happy and smooth and racking up the points. Then, trying to do back-to-back Aframes, somehow I lost her on the 2nd one and she came with me AROUND the aframe rather than over it (missing 3 possible points), and while I tried to figure out what to do with her, we bobbled back and forth a bit, and then the whistle blew for the closing and I didn't have her in a good position--we ended up earning only 3 points in the gamble where the average was 8, with several dogs with good timing and speed earning 15. So Tika was 30th of 51--below average but not drastically so; Partner B did really well at 15th of 51, and Partner C was a bit behind Tika. So we had dropped some in the standings, but overall for the round we were 33rd of those 63 teams, so combined with Standard, we were still well in line for a Q.

But how quickly things can change.

Team Snooker started to do us in. Tika had a perfect, lovely, flowing, plenty-high-point opening...and then dropped a bar early in the closing, putting us again just below average at 31 of 51 26" dogs. Another partner knocked a bar in the opening, negating a bunch of points, and then lost her way early in the closing, for a very low score--but our 3rd partner got an awesome score, keeping us at 37th of 63 for that round. Our overall standings would be dropping, but figure that at least 32 teams and probably more would be Qing, so if we could only hold it together a bit longer...

Interestingly, 2 of our 3 scribe sheets have addition errors that I discover much later in the day when I check the postings. One slightly in our favor, one very much against us. We correct those. That's 3 possible scribing or score table errors so far just on our team. This matters later.

In Team Jumpers, Tika had a very fast run but knocked a bar, which kept us at 20th of 51 26"ers--just above average--rather than in the placements; partner C has a clean run although not speedy and that's good--about average-- but Partner B had an offcourse on a place that got an awful lot of dogs. Dang. For that round, the E put us in 38th of 63 teams. Not sure exactly how all the 4 rounds thus far combined added up, but remember that our Standard run still gave us quite a big of wiggle room...I'd guess we were at about 30th overall after 4 rounds, and probably higher...if we all managed to complete the team relay the following morning without Eing, we'd probably be In, but it was awfully close.

That night

I slept on 3 firm foam pads on the floor of my van. It didn't rain, which was good. It was actually on the warm side and REALLY REALLY STUFFY in that van. I opened the door a crack a couple of times to let in fresh air. Between that and how HARD the floor felt even with 3 pads and my aching, throbbing knee and both shoulders acting up, I didn't have a great night despite my exhaustion from slogging through mud and deep layers of straw and having soppy wet cold feet all day. With the delay in the various rings while they waited for the bales to arrive early in the day and the 4 rings with so many runs simultaneously and so many dogs and so much muck--the last ring ran until after 7:30 p.m.! A very long day for a tournament, with the first walkthroughs starting before 8:00 a.m.

... more tomorrow...

Home After 3 Days of Agility

Filling in from the beginning:

Monday night

I go out for Chinese food with my sister and brother-in-law before viewing a Ronald Colman double-feature at the Stanford Theater (good theater. Must visit more often. Prisoner of Zenda and Talk of the Town, good films, recommend>). Here's my fortune-cookie fortune:


This worries me, with an extra long, national-qualifier-packed weekend coming up and rain, rain everywhere.

Wednesday

It's been raining for years. March had the most rainy days in Bay Area history. April had 11 rainy days as of the 13th and was looking to be on track as the rainiest April in history. The host team for the upcoming 4-day trail had been sending out periodic updates to the effect of "entire site under water; bring agility arks" and "Our special guest judge, Noah..." (Actually more like "half the roadways through the site are closed due to water; the fields are lakes and we're trying to figure out where we're going to set up our courses; all the areas in which we usually park motorhomes and campers and under water; be prepared to be flexible.")

I was dreading doing agility in three days of rain and mud and muck. Weather reports changed daily. I'm planning on sleeping in the minivan again, and I'm picturing trying to get it set up in the rain, trying to maintain clean, dry bedding for myself and a pleasant atmosphere with 3 sopping wet, muddy dogs in the car with me and no good way to provide ventilation if it's raining. I pack for cold and rain and wind. Twelve layers of thermal underwear, forty pairs of dry socks, that sort of thing. I exhaust myself by spending the day dreading having a miserable weekend.

The Body Is Falling Apart

Plus I'm tired anyway from my physical ailments. How have these grown on me so rapidly? My knee is bad and seeming to get worse; it started sometime after I got the Booster-Pup and I realize that she crashes into it way too often when we're playing tug-o-war or the like. I'm sure that falling on it in January didn't help, but it was a bit crappy before and continued to be crappy afterwards. The last three or four weeks it has seemed to deterioriate. I've been trying to rearrange my life so that I don't have to use my knee, but I spend SO much time kneeling to do stuff with the dogs or in the yard or in the house, or dropping to one knee for this, that, or the other, it's a real challenge to avoid it. It throbs often. It stiffens when I'm sitting at my desk.

No, I haven't taken it to the doctor.

My shoulders have not recovered from all that mulch-hauling back in January. The right one is particularly bad. I try to limit my tug-o-war and toy throwing in the yard, but that's how I interact with my dogs and get them excited and reward them, so it's hard to stop completely. It has been interrupting my sleep fairly regularly--every time I turn over, it hurts and rouses me from my slumber.

Drugs don't seem to make much difference. I try to remember to do some appropriate gentle exercises, but I'm not good at remembering.

The Upcoming Haute Tracs Trial

Haute Dawgs and TRACS teamed up last year for a 4-day extravaganza of agility including all three national-qualifying tournament events (Dog Agility Masters Team, Steeplechase, and Grand Prix) plus a bunch of other regular classes. It proved so popular that they're doing it again this year. They are expecting hundreds of dogs from San Diego to Canada and I believe even farther afield. There will be many top competitors and handlers. Our competition will be stiff, but it'll be a lot of the same ones that we'll see at the Nationals in November, so it's good to see where we fit.

What I really need:

• DAM qualifier: the last tournament qualifier that I'm missing for this year AND it'll finish my Tournament Master title. I have a good team. We could do it this time. (Only about the top 50% of the teams can qualify at one trial.)
• Jumpers: Any. We have had so few clean jumpers runs in our 3+ years of competitions that it seems we may never get any ever again. Dang bars. We still need 3 or 4 (my database is falling behind) for our Jumpers Master title (needed for our ADCH). Offered this weekend: Two.
• Snooker Super-Q: We need to be in the top 15% just one more time, ever, in our entire agility career, to finish our Snooker Master title (needed for our ADCH). And Tika is capable of being such a great Snooker dog. Remember--8th overall at the Nationals last november! Offered this weekend: One. (well--two--but I didn't sign up for all 4 days, just 3.)
• Standard: Just two more of these are required for our ADCH--we already have five. This weekend: THREE!
• Gamblers: Three more towards our ADCH. Offered this weekend: One.

What else is offered this weekend:

• Steeplechase qualifiers: We've already qualified for this year, but I would SO love to finish in the placements again! Have done it only once so far. Her time is usually right up there but we pretty much always manage to knock a bar.
• Grand Prix qualifier: Also already qualified for this year. AND I've already got about 11 of these babies, way more than any other kind of Q. Why did I pay the dang $30 entry fee? I don't know really. It's just more practice, I guess, aand the Qs do eventually add up to our (eventual) bronze and silver etc. awards--if we ever manage to get past our ADCH!
• Pairs relay: We've finished our requirements for the ADCH in this and a couple more beyond that. Just more Qs for future awards.

Thursday morning. Puddles everywhere. Some people actually find places in the lawn that do not have standing water and manage to set up their canopies. Most people are trying to work out of their cars, an awkward proposition in most cases.

Thursday Morning

I get up with the dogs at 4 a.m. to pack and get on the road. Everyone poops quickly; this makes it so much easier and less stressful when I get to the site. It's not raining. But while I'm popping sodas (soda pops--get it?--) into the cooler in the kitchen, the rain starts. Crap. We head out and the rain continues, lightly, all the way up through Fremont, then pretty much stops as we cut through the Hamilton Range (?) into the Livermore valley and stays dry all the way out to Dixon.

The roadways at the fairgrounds are all open again, but the fields where we'd usually park are still too wet and muddy for vehicles, and the rings have been rearranged tremendously. Instead of four in a close row across the middle of the fairgrounds with us all set up tightly around it, two rings are now way out in the grandstand field, meaning that we have to cut through the surrounding fence and walk all around the grandstand to get to the far ring. I will be doing far more walking this weekend than I'm used to, and my knee already hurts.

The main path across the main agility field--about 9:30 Thursday morning, after the first several bales of hay have been trodden into the muck. Eventually they have a flatbed truck loaded with hay and woodchips ("sawdust") hauled in. It will set back the club possibly the entire potential profit from this huge trial.

There are pools of water everywhere, including in many places on the course. After the first walkthrough in the Standard ring--none of the hundreds of dogs or handlers have yet even RUN--the fields are muddy trails that suck at one's shoes. Instead of starting the rings at 8:00, they're delayed until 9:30 while valiant volunteers bring back bales and bales of fine woodchips (sort of like hamster bedding) for the fields and straw for the walkways. It's going to be a lonnnnng day.

The Standard field after the first walkthrough is complete. Now run 200 dogs and their handlers through the same paths. Then reset the course for the next class and repeat.

Standing on course at the end of walkthrough. Contemplating the course or the muck?

Agility News from April First

If you missed this useful agility-news page on the Bay Team site, I've left it up for now.

Boost Classes

I'm trying to settle in on a class for Boost. There are so many good trainers around here. But our Saturday class with Lisa, an excellent trainer, wasn't giving us enough class time (even though half her siblings were in that class off and on: Derby, Caena, and Becka. Have had one session with one of Tania's classes, which was very helpful, and I was planning on finishing up one session, but it's been rained out (Tuesday seems to be The Rainy Day for this year) and I'm not sure whether that'll work.

Met with Nancy at Power Paws last Wednesday to see where we'd fit in their "puppy class" that's been meeting for 5 months now while we mostly trained on our own and those occasional Saturdays. Her evaluation: We're ahead on weave poles (yay!), a wee bit behind on jumping comprehension, and quite a bit behind on clicker work leading into contacts. But they're not yet doing contacts, still (I believe) working on backchaining from the end of the boards. I'd like very much to be in a class with Nancy--and Bette (Boost's sister) is in that class.

On Thursday, we went just to watch the class and see whether we thought we'd fit in. The biting wind froze my extremities and we didn't stay for the whole class, but we watched their basic obedience work and their basic jump work and I think that the class is really right about where we need to be. Being in a group always motivates me to achieve more, too, so it'll be good to be in a regular class situation. (Witness how a classmate getting the weave poles got me moving to Just Do It with Boostie.)

Regular--hah!--we'll join them next Thursday for the first time as part of the class (assuming it doesn't rain: This March has now tied the record for the March with the most rainy days, and if it rains again today, it'll set the new record for San Jose). But the following week is the "Haute TRACS" combined 4-day trial, so we'll all be off in Woodland or Dixon or some such place on Thursday and Friday trying to qualify for the Nationals in the DAM tournament. And the week after that is Power Paws camp; although I couldn't manage to go this year, Power Paws will all be there.

But what a surprise to walk in on Thursday and discover not only Mary with Bette, and the lady from Tika's Wednesday night class (with her young dog) who's been trying to get me to sign up for this Thursday class, but also two or 3 other people from what had been Tika's Tuesday daytime class with their young dogs...So I think I knew everyone or almost everyone in class. (Don't know why that should surprise me exactly, except that in the last 2 classes Tika's been in, half the people I didn't know.)

Exercises to Work On

In any event, we got tons of tips of things to work on with due diligence.

• Eye contact! Particularly when releasing from sit-stay.
• No circle zone: For Border Collies, avoid anything that gets them circling, either spinning or wide circles around outside of jumps that they're supposed to be taking, etc.
• Jumping 1, facing dog: Set dog facing the jump straight on. Face her on opposite side. Release. Goal is that she'll take obstacles in front of her. Vary distance and angle (of me and or her across jump). Toy (or food) in front of the jump, not in front of me or way out past the jump.
  Note: Food might be quicker because you don't have to play with toy each time.
• Jumping 2, back to dog: Set dog facing the jump straight on. Stand past the jump with my back to her (but remember eye contact). Release. Toyin front of jump. Vary distance past jump and distance away from jump laterally as well as angle.
  
• Jumping 3, pinwheel: Pinwheel w/out using arm or bending shoulders or having to give command every time. Both directions. (And from class on Thursday--try front crossing last jump, try threadle from 4 to 2.)
• Jumping 4, 180 turns: Start with jumps pretty close to each other. (Similar to pinwheel but w/out intervening jump: Turn body but shouldn't have to direct to jump or bend shoulders.)
• Weaves: Work on focus forward and head down, whatever works. Put toy out in front, or toss or reward toy out in front & immediately when done, shorter sets of weaves so reward is quicker, and so on. If she skips poles, just keep her driving forward, or if I must start her over, don't bring her in a circle around me (no-circle zone).
• Nose touches: Insist on firm hard press, no swiping, no gentle pressing. Don't be so quick to click any related behavior, be sure it's what I want. Same with hand touches.
• Contacts: Work on board on the ground or end of dogwalk or whatever, getting to do nose touch.
• Sit position: Work on shaping with clicker to clean up her Close (left) and Here (right).

Tika Did Pretty Good Actually

Well, there I was moaning about not whupping everyone's butts all weekend and how I wish I could've gotten more Qs, but actually I just now counted them up, and Tika Qed 7 out of 10 for the weekend, which really isn't bad at all. I'm pleased with that. And two of the non-Qs were single knocked bars on otherwise lovely courses. So I'm even more pleased with that.

Tika's CADE Status

I mentioned that Tika's next CPE title is hundreds of legs away. That's not necessarily true. But let's go over that stuff.

The CATE (CPE Agility Team Extraordinaire) is the next big title--and the highest title in CPE. To earn it, a dog needs 20 Qs in each of Standard and the six games, plus an additional 2000 points in any combination of Qs, where 25-point Qs are in Standard, Snooker, and Jackpot; 20-point Qs are in Wildcard, Full House, and Jumpers; and 15-point Qs are in Colors. So, at an absolute minimum, after earning one's C-ATCH, one needs 220 legs (assuming that all the extra legs are in 25-point classes, which is unlikely).

There are individual Extraordinaire titles for each of the classes, which require 30 legs in that class. So one will undoubtedly acquire at least a couple of those on the way to the CADE (oops, sorry, CATE--they renamed it a couple of years ago and I still can't get it straight).

Tika's status:

Standard	6
Colors	5
Wildcard	7
Snooker	7
Jackpot	8
Full House	8
Jumpers	2

Probable *maximum* number of CPE trials for us for the rest of this year (since I definitely want to focus on USDAA while we struggle for our ADCH): 6 (you can see that I'm not going to be anywhere near my downward goal of only 12 trials for the year...).

Tika's average Qs per CPE weekend at 3 CPE trials this year: 6.

So that's another, oh, 36 Qs for this year. That leaves us short by only...ohhhhh...141 legs minimum. And if we keep up at this pace, it'll be another 3 years after that before we're even in range. Tika would be going on 10 by then. So it's likely that this will just never happen. Unless I get tired of USDAA for some reason and go to all the CPE trials in a year instead. (And I count 15 CPE trials in 2006 within about 2 hours of my house.)

Mixed-Bag CPE Weekend

It was Taj MudHall this weekend.

It was wet and muddy and cold on Saturday and just cold and somewhat muddy on Sunday, but overall I had a good time. The nice thing for me about CPE at the moment is that I'm competing to play, since the next big title possible for Tika is hundreds of legs away and Jake is playing only for something to do during his retirement. So I take my competition in the form of where I placed compared to all other dogs competing on the same course.

Aaaaaand we didn't do so well this weekend, even though I felt that Tika and Jake were both running quite nicely all weekend. There was a wild variety of factors going into it.

Tika Saturday

Standard: Oh, my, she ran a beautiful and fast course. She stuck one of her 3 contacts, came off the other 2 without waiting for approval but I was pushing it. Stayed at the start line for the release. All that good stuff. I thought we had a perfect run, but found out later when looking at the results that she had knocked the next-to-last bar on a sharp turn that I thought we had nailed. Sigh. So no Qualifying score, although we did place 1st of the 2 dogs in our height class. And Tika had the 2nd fastest time of about 80 dogs who ran the same course, so I was right about it being a really nice run. Only Cody Hasey beat us, by .14 of a second (she said something about how they aren't *supposed* to have running contacts...).

Full House: This is basically like a Gambler's opening--you design your course any way you want, and you can do each obstacle up to twice for points. High scores depend on your dog's speed, your dog's flexibility to be able to pick challenging obstacles or angles or turns, your course choice, and your ability to actually make it happen. I think we had a stellar course design, Tika handled beautifully, and we had the highest score of about a hundred dogs running the same course with 46 points; our favorite competitor Brenn Chandler had 43 and Tahoe Grubel, an outstanding dog with an outstanding handler, came in at 41. I didn't see either run, so I have no idea whether they missed points because of knocked bars or popped contacts or the like. This was the only time all weekend when we managed to beat everyone.

Just another reminder that Tika and I are only playing at being a top team in CPE and there's a whole world of USDAA competitors out there who can smoke us coming and going. Humbling. Sort of.

Colors: I missed my group's walkthrough. But, this being CPE and because I was both working in another ring and competing in a third ring, I was allowed all the walkthrough I needed, by myself--but it's only 10 obstacles and a pretty clear path, so I only needed a couple of minutes. Tika handled like a dream, and I held her on the Aframe down contact since she's been leaving them a bit light all weekend, and then blasted to the finish line. our time was 16.69, but half a dozen dogs (out of about 70 running the same course) beat our time. (With Colors, you don't know whether the dog ran the same half of the course that you did, so it's not necessarily a one-to-one comparison.) One of our regular comparison dogs, Ana the Catahoula, beat us by more than a second; Chance the usual Sheltie and Brandy the JRT beat us barely, and Cory whom I never manage to see run was just behind Ana this time around.

Jumpers: Well, I tried to do a tricky but cool layering thing as Tika was coming out of the tunnel, and as we are fond of saying in our Wednesday night class, how quickly The Cool Factor turns into The Fool Factor, as Tika came in over the jump that I was trying to keep *between* us, for an offcourse, and then after that of course all comparisons are really off. But she was fast and having a good time, and except for that silly handling thing, it was good--

And notice that, once again, she keep up all of her bars in any Jumpers course where *I* screw up.

Snooker: I decided that, although we had time to do three 7s in the opening, the 3rd seven would be really hard and this is, after all, CPE, not USDAA. Hmmm, on this particular course, I might even have decided on two 7s and a 6 in USDAA. We ran On The Edge the whole way, with Tika just a stride away from the wrong obstacle half a dozen times, but she responded well to my panicked calloffs and we blasted through our planned 50-point course in 39 seconds, well below the allowed time. Out of the 100 or so dogs who did the same course, one in fact tried and succeeded at the three-7 opening, for 51 points, and three other dogs got 50, but only one of those beat our time (Jagger Glantz the amazing rehomed Sheltie)--by four seconds! They probably had nice neat little turns instead of Living On The Edge and racking up the extra yardage.

Tika Sunday

Jackpot: Well, I started off the morning with a snide comment about how this particular gamble was one designed to let people Q. I was proven wrong immediately. It was a pretty cool non traditional gamble, actually, after I got a chance to think about it. It was, at its essence, a circle of tunnels in the very middle of the course with a jump in the middle. The jump was number 1 and then you had to do the tunnels in flow around the circle for 2-3-4. My original comment was based on the fact that you could run in with the dog, there was no gamble line.

But people found many creative ways to not get the gamble. In the first two levels, more than half missed it, and almost all of them in a different way. And the pattern went on as the day went on:

• One went past the #1 jump and backjumped it.
• One went into one of the tunnels on the way to the #1 jump (a fairly common problem)
• One went past the #1 jump and into a tunnel.
• One tried to take just one tunnel in the opening but couldn't call the dog off the 2nd tunnel, which invalidated the gamble.
• One thought she had put her dog into the correct end of the tunnel, but he popped out as she ran on, and ended up going in the wrong end of the tunnel.
• Jake and I weren't as close as I'd have liked to the beginning of the gamble when the whistle blew, and when I sent him over an approach jump, he kept on going and going and going away from me and, by the time I got him back to do the gamble the whole way correctly, we were over time.
• Tika did the gamble beautifully and under time, but only after knocking the #1 bar.

(She also popped out of her weaves in the opening, which startled me while I was trying to convince myself to stick with my original plan and thinking about what to do next simultaneously. So it was pretty clearly something stupid that I did, since she virtally never pops out of the weaves any more.) Sigh. And because of the missed 5 points for the weaves and 1 point for a dropped bar in the opening as well, we weren't even in the running for top number of opening points among 100 or so dogs on this course. Well--I'm guessing we were probably in the top 10-20% but I didn't check.

Wildcard: A tricky, tight little course that didn't handle at all the way I thought it would. Right off the bat, Tika didn't catch my cue to come to choice A and instead took choice B, which was legal, but she was FLYING and I had to rearrange the rest of my course plan on the FLY to make that not be a non-Q. Well, somehow I managed to pull it off without even slowing Tika down and it was beautiful--and the stopwatch didn't get our time for some reason. We were given a chance to rerun it for time only, so all we had to do was to get through the course in a reasonable fashion--and man, we were offcourse in twelve directions at once. I don't know how I even managed that. So it was still a Q, but we had no way of comparing our times against anyone else.

Colors: Once again, Tika handled beautifully, including a very fast teeter for her (we've been working on making it faster), and we did the course in 14.37 seconds, about a second faster than anyone else (again, about 80 dogs on the same course, I believe)--except Cayenne, whom we hardly ever even SEE in competition and I had forgotten who they were (looking just at the dog's name) until I saw them again later, a really nice fast Aussie who came in at 14.09, wow, I'd have liked to have seen their run, because Tika's was super.

Jumpers: A very nice fast smooth run EXCEPT that as I sent Tika blasting straight into a straight tunnel, I started calling her name loudly to get her to turn sharply as she came out--but apparently she did a U-turn in the tunnel at full speed and blasted out in the other direction. I managed to get her back into the tunnel without an offcourse, and in CPE that's a Q for us, AND she kept all her bars up!--but of course quite a few fast dogs beat our time. Even so, I'm not sure how we'd have done--our usual complement of Really Fast Dogs were between 23 and 24 seconds (Tika came in at 27.37 with the bobble)--and the young upstart, Savanna Tatsuno the baby Border Collie, did it in 21 something! Yow!

Snooker: And, as our playing field sank slowly into the west, we were on another tricky, tight little course in which it was feasible to get three 7s in the opening BUT you had to be quick and your timing had to be impeccable. Wellllllll...our timing wasn't impeccable and Tika ended up going over a 3 instead of one fo the 7-point weaves in the opening, but once again somehow, unusual for me, I was able to think on my feet enough to recover and get her through the rest of the course without an offcourse, which was good enough for a Q, but even in our own height class of 6 level-C dogs, that was good enough only for 5th!

Jake

Jake ran fairly fast all weekend, but nowhere near fast enough to be placing worth mentioning. He did VERY nicely in his Jumpers run saturday, but the scribe sheet says that he knocked a bar, which I never saw go down (and he used to never knock bars, so this was unusual). And I picked a fairly simple course for him in Snooker, which he did with aplomb and Qed, but it was only 5th of 6 in his little C-level height group.

He did pretty good in his Jackpot opening Sunday, but (as I described above) was over time for the gamble. And in Sunday's Jumpers run, I assumed that he was going to carry out over a particular jump, but instead he came past it, and in the process of getting him turned around, he took an offcourse for an NQ. So he was again fairly fast for Jake, but to no avail.

So, oddly enough, the Jakester who almost always Qs on almost everything in CPE was only 1 for 4 this weekend, even though I felt that, overall, he ran well. Go figure.

So the dogs seemed to enjoy themselves, and they were both a pleasure to run, so really what more could I ask for? (Except more blue ribbons... and more Qs...will we NEVER get that perfect-weekend award?... maybe less chocolate--boy those choc-covered raisins at the score table were TASTY) )

Miscellany

• Better Living Through Adrenaline: I did a wee bit of agility equipment rearranging in my back yard this morning, in between doing about 5 minutes of agility work with Jake, another 5 with Tika, and another 5 with Boost, all of course involving excitement and tugs of wars and such. As I was collecting the assorted toys from the assorted dogs to put them away, I noticed that my right index knuckle was drenched in blood. Have a half-inch gaping slice, to which I ended up applying a butterfly closure. What a mess. Where did I get it? I have no clue at all.
• Steelechase rule changes: USDAA recently announced that they're changing the qualifying rules for Steeplechase to make it to the Nationals. (They've tweaked them before, too.) Now, to qualify, you must be within "125% of the simple average of the top three placement winners in the height class, provided at least five competitors compete in the class and receive a score". Used to be that the top 30% qualified, period (well, with some caveats for small groups of dogs...). In theory, this means that if all dogs are fast and clean, they could all qualify. It also means, in theory, that only the top 3 dogs could qualify.

  Let's say there are 20 dogs competing and the top 3 dogs run at 29, 30, and 31 seconds, averaging 30 seconds. 125% would be 37.5 seconds. Let's say that the next 2 dogs run at 33 seconds, well within competitive speed range, but each knocks a bar, for a total of 38, and the next dog is clean but has a time of 38.5. Under the old rules, all 6 would qualify. Under the new rules, only the top 3 qualify.

  Conversely, let's take the same top 3 dogs and say that the next 6 dgs ran at 32,33,34,35,36, and 37 seconds. Under the new rules, all 9 would qualify; under the old rules, only the top 6 would qualify.

  And one more trick, as the 12" dogs discovered this last weekend--five 12" dogs competed, but 3 of them were offcourse for Eliminations, which means they did not receive a score--so the 2 top 12" dogs were lumped in with the 16" dogs, which makes it much harder for them to compete on time, and neither ended up qualifying. Now, in this case it's hard to argue too much--one of them knocked a bar but probably would've qualified even with the 16" if clean, and the other dog went on a detour to investigate the judge (not a fault) before deciding the return to the handler and complete the course clean but enough slower than the 16" that she didn't Q.

  Next year, dogs will be required to Q in *TWO* steeplechases to make it to the Nationals, just as they now must Q twice in Grand Prix. Argh. Tika has barely squeaked out two GPs a year, but has yet to do two Steeplechases in a year. At least we're in for this year, and future nationals will probably be far enough out of state that we won't be going anyway. But it's nice to know that we could if we wanted to!

And We Were Having Such A Good Weekend, Too!

I carpooled with Arlene and her two Little Black Dog(tm)s to Madera. This time, we left Friday evening. It was a mix of good and bad. The whole (shortened) weekend, in fact, was the same way.

Friday evening

I originally thought I'd have to work late Friday to finish some things for work, so we were thinking that Arlene would get here at 7:30 and we'd then load up the car and be on the road by 8, which would mean a late arrival at the motel in Madera. However, it was apparent by midday that some moderate reorganization and research for part of my document was just not going to get done and it would have to wait for the next go-around, so we decided to meet at 6:30 instead.

Well--Arlene didn't expect the southbound traffic to be as thick as it was, and she arrived a bit later than expected (which was good because I was able to finish up work stuff without her sitting and waiting for me, but bad because it delayed our start a bit). We loaded everything into the car--yes, like a jigsaw puzzle or more accurately like those 3-dimensional puzzles shaped like eggs or cubes where every piece wedges into one place exactly.

Then she pulled out of the driveway to get out of my way...and my van wouldn't start. Best guess: battery is reaching the end of its useful life and I had the interior lights on most of the day. That was bad news because my jumper cables were now buried under dozens of heavy, exactly fitting jigsaw pieces. But Arlene cleverly had her own jumper cables (surprising to me how many people do NOT carry them), and we were able to successfully jump the battery. All of that plus handwashing and such probably delayed us another 10 minutes, maybe a bit more.

We had already agreed that we needed to stop at the local shopping center to (a) drop off my bills at Postal Annex and (b) pick up ice at Safeway. Well, the double bad news was that (i) we missed Postal Annex's closing by about 10 minutes, and (ii) because we didn't want to turn off the car while it continued to charge, one person had to attempt both errands.

We were finally on the road--about 8:00! So the good news was that we had tried to start earlier but if we had gone with the original plan, who knows how late we'd have actually been on the road! The other good news was that Arlene's sweetie of a spouse made us sandwiches to eat on the road, so we wouldn't have to make an extra stop for dinner. This turned out to be good news shortly--

Because the good news was that we got past the 152/156 nightmare backup because there *was* no backup at that time of the evening (a bonus for leaving later), but the bad news was that slightly after Casa da Fruta, traffic came to a near standstill. We turned on the radio and KCBS conveniently told us that there was a major injury accident in the clearing stages near Dinosaur Point (wayyyy at the top of the ridge, and we were still at the bottom), but apparently it had been closed completely for a while and now traffic was starting to get through. So, if we had gotten there earlier, we'd have simply been sitting, not moving, instead of creeping along at 5 mph. So the good news was that we hadn't eaten our sandwiches earlier, and this turned out to be an excellent and safe time to consume them. It took us almost half an hour to get to the accident site--I think it's about a 5-mile drive--and the rest of the trip passed without incident.

Saturday morning

Arlene took her dogs out for a quick potty and reported that the weather was cool (not cold) but quite nice, actually. So I stepped outside with 3 wild things on leashes, and it was raining! The nice thing was that there was a complete rainbow (I don't often see complete ones), and I managed to grab my cheap digital camera and get the whole thing in 2 photos. Not great photos, but it's there--by the time Arlene came out again a couple of minutes later, it had already faded to just a partial. I left my bill payments in stamped envelopes on the unoccupied Motel 6 (used to be Liberty Inn) desk, hoping they'd figure out to mail them, and we headed to the trial site.

Rainbow Saturday morning

At The Races

It stopped drizzling long enough for us to set up, and since it was quite a small trial for a USDAA event, we were able to set up near the middle of activity but in an out-of-the-way spot. The BAD news was that, as I was unpacking and setting up, I realized that I had completely forgotten that the zipper on Boost's crate had given up the entire ghost last weekend--totally damaged enough (after failing slowly for the last 4 months or so) that I simply could not zip the bottom closed at all. I had meant to get it replaced last week. But--out of sight, out of mind. The GOOD news was that, at this particular trial on this particular day, my van was parked three feet behind our canopy, with boost's and tika's crates easily available facing out the back. So I turned off all the interior lights and just used those crates for them. Next week's trial I won't be able to park anywhere near, so I'd better remember to get that crate cover replaced.

If I'm lucky, Doggone Good will have it in stock (they're just up the road a piece) and I can pick it up immediately.

Tika's first run of the day was Pairs Relay, and she was teamed with The Booster's mom (Tala). It was a gnarly course, particuarly the first part. I thought that we could handle both, but the first part had a dogwalk, so I suggested that Tala do that part. Turns out that Tala had an offcourse early on, so then it didn't matter that Tika knocked *two* bars on her part of the course, but we moved around the course itself very nicely.

Next class was Gamblers, with a send out over a jump to a set of weaves, then a slight push out over a jump and then in to a final jump. *I* thought it was going to be a piece of cake that I could mess up only by one of my usual stupid moves on "piece of cake" gambles and that everyone would be getting it. Well, turns out that (and of course I know this) (1) not everyone's dog has excellent weave pole entries, (2) not everyone's dog will send out, let alone to weave poles, (3) not everyone's dog will weave solidly through a set of 12 that's 15 feet away from the handler. And although in the opening we had one knocked bar (costing us a point) and a slight pause for disagreement and confusion when she didn't stick the Aframe contact (probably costing us a 3-point tunnel at the end that we didn't have time for), overall the opening was beautiful and we couldn't have been in a more perfect position for the gamble when the whistle blew and she did the whole gamble without a blink of doubt AND kept all 3 bars in the gamble up, and, wahoo, not only a Q, but we placed *3rd*--we hardly ever place in USDAA even when we Q.

Then came Standard. We don't have a lot of Masters Standard legs--only 3--because you must be completely clean and usually we have either a knocked bar, OR a missed up on the dogwalk, OR our other bugaboo, a refusal going to a table after a contact. Well, this course had a table after the dogwalk. I asked Arlene to videotape that portion in particular for us so I could see what the problem was. Tika kept all her bars up, but it looked like she blew over the up-contact on the dogwalk--although I couldn't see the judge's arm go up, I can't always see it when the judge is off to the side/behind like she was. So I really, really drove the entrance to the table from the dogwalk like I've never driven a table approach before--and she went right on and dropped to a down. Handling on the course overall was just lovely--she's running SO nicely!--and turns out that the judge didn't call the dogwalk up contact, so ANOTHER Q and ANOTHER 3rd place!

Steeplechase

The last event for the day was Steeplechase. We ran our standard run about noon and then we were done except for the Steeplechase. Now, the judge who was judging it had to finish the Novice ring first. Nowwwww, the judge who was judging the Novice ring for some reason didn't fly in on Friday night like she was supposed to (I never heard the story) but instead arrived in Fresno about 8:30 Saturday morning. So, instead of the novice ring starting at 8:00, it started about 10:00. Which meant that, instead of the Steeplechase starting at about 1:30, it didn't start until 3:30.

Which meant that the Steeplechase course was open for walk through for three and a half hours. Now, there were two potentially difficult places on the course (maybe more for others but overall I thought it would be a straightforward course for me and Tika). And there were two or three schools of thought on each of those two spots. The 3.5 hours were enough for many of us to rewalk and rewalk and rewalk and obsess endlessly and change our minds repeatedly. By the time the class began, I knew every inch of that course in and out and every possibility for handling every which was but Sunday.

Then I had the advantage of watching the entire 22" class and most of the 26" class run the course. The opening was one of the two problem areas. I had finally decided that we could get it no matter what we did and that I was obsessing needlessly--it was three jumps around a curve to the weave poles, and the choices were to push to the weaves or pull to the weaves. I had decided that the pull was what we were going to use, and it was interesting to see that by far most handlers used the push. Basically--it worked if you and your dog knew how to do it, and it didn't if you didn't. Seems obvious in retrospect, but this was just one of those places. I decided that Tika and I knew how to do it either way and she has great weave entrances, so I stopped worrying about it.

But I watched team after team blow the entrance or pop out of the weaves early. No faults, but lots of time wasted as they had to retreat to redo the poles. Now, remember, Steeplechase is time plus faults scoring. AND it's worth money! I became convinced that we'd beat most teams simply by having excellent weave poles. Our issue would be whether she could keep all her poles up, especially on that fast 3-pole lead-out curve.

The 2nd problem area was after the 2nd set of weave poles, when you had to pull the dog into a right-angle left turn, then go *between* the Aframe and a jump to get to a double (triple?) jump, which was the start of the final 5 jumps. Everyone was worried about the dog not making a sharp enough turn and losing the dog over the wrong jump. I had decided to weave away from my dog, veering close to the aframe while she completed the weaves,and just giving a quick mini-RFP to pull her my way.

So I watched handler after handler overpull their dogs *around* the double, which was another big time waster, and/or knock the bars on that jump. Maybe because the handlers were so worried about it. I decided that I knew what I was doing and stopped worrying about that, too. I was primed to go in and win the Steeplechase. (Well, you know what happens when you get cocky--or do you?)

I went to get Tika out of her crate--and she stood up all hunched over, her little nubber tail down, looking hang-dog. She came out of the crate looking miserable and yet eager. I tried to get her to move around a little to stretch out, and she yelped a couple of times. But then she looked mostly OK. She wasn't limping. She took goodies eagerly,but did Left and Right turns *extremely* slowly. I walked her out to potty and jogged her a bit, and she looked OK, but she absolutely would not under any circumstances grab a toy and play tug of war. I put her over a practice jump and she took it ok, but not really fast, and her nubber tail was down again. Yikes. I trotted her around again, and she looked OK, tail came up.

They were calling our names. So I took her to the line, set her in a sit, led out. She stayed like a good girl. I released her, and she went across all three jumps--not blazing, but smoothly--and they all stayed up. And she made her weave pole entrance perfectly--and stopped almost dead, took one slow step to the next pole, one very slow step to the next pole, giving me the most hangdog look, and I knew that I had a dog with a major problem. I pulled her out of the poles immediately and took her off course.

So much for the money

We checked her out on the sideline as much as possible, some massaging (which she seemed to enjoy) and trying to move her legs and so on. She's not one to let that be done (my fault--I should work at it more), but because she was getting lavish "good dog"s, she pretty much put up with it. Did yelp once and we couldn't figure out what caused it. Decided it wasn't obvious.

So after about 10 minutes I put her away again so I could watch the last of the steeplechase. Then I got her out, and she looked OK at first, but when I grabbed the goodies and she started to look eager, she yelped again.

The good news was that there was a vet onsite competing, and she hadn't left the grounds, and she was willing to check Tika out for me since I couldn't figure out the problem. Managed to narrow it down to her lower back more on the right side, but whether muscle or something worse like disk couldn't be determined mostly because Tika was so stressed and stiff about having someone play with her backside (and occasionally cause pain).

She suggested aspirin and no agility on Sunday and, if it didn't get better by Monday, take her in for x-rays.

Jake not competing

So was this good news or bad news: This was the first trial in which I hadn't entered Jake in anything. So my worst fears were fulfilled--down from 2 dogs competing to none. I had carpooled with Arlene, so I couldn't really go home, and I DO enjoy hanging out with my friends, and I could just work full time all day Sunday (like Karey did Saturday with her dog scratched due to injury). But Arlene kept asking are you sure you want to stay? And then she came up with a plan whereby she could stay and I could go home alone if I wanted.

I will leave out the long story in how we implemented it, but in fact I packed my bags and was home last night by 9:30.

(When I let the dogs out for one last run about 6:30, Tika blasted across the field full-steam with no sign of injury. Same thing when we got home in the evening--out onto the porch, bound down the stairs, across the yard just like normal. And this morning she was wiggling and twisting and turning like nothing had ever happened. So I'm SO hoping that was a fluke, maybe she pulled something a little bit overreaching for a bad frisbee throw earlier, I dunno. But I was SO scared and worried yesterday afternoon...)

Teaching a Dog to Weave

Anyone who can teach a dog to weave through her legs while she's walking can teach that dog to do weave poles--but let me be clear that it's not the same trick at all. The experience just means that the dog is accustomed to learning moving tricks and the handler is willing to work on it. Don't expect to teach weave poles (at least not the really fun, exciting, driving kind) by luring a dog through with a goodie.

Equipment needed: Buckle-type collar (that is, not slip-chain etc.) Shortened weave poles (unless you and dog are tall) Short tab lead Really fun toy

Short tab lead.

Having taught dogs to do both (weave through legs and weave through poles), I know that I can teach an eager dog to weave through my legs in a day or two at most; I've now taught 4 dogs to do weave poles and have watched lots of people do it and seen tons of techniques over the last 11 years, and it's my belief that a very experienced person with a driven, responsive dog can probably teach weave poles in a minimum of one week with 2 15-minute sessions daily. If you've never taught weaves before, expect it to take longer. It took me an elapsed time of 2 weeks and 5 days :-) with at least a couple of days off for rain, and I started with only two 5-minute sessions daily, AND I took what might or might not have been an unproductive detour with a 4-or-5-day experiment with fencing guides.

Disclaimer: Note that I also spent time off and on over the past several months just practicing driving between 2 poles from different angles and distances, first just throwing a toy ahead of the dog after she went through, then gradually moving the toy toss to a spot next to the second pole so that she was already starting to turn right after going through the poles. I don't know how much that helped on having drive during the rest of our training, but I do expect it to help as she becomes more independent and I start reinforcing the entry.

Here's how I taught Tika (who has very nice weaves--won't ever be a 60-pole Challenge winner but she'll be up there in the fast crowd every time) and Boost: Hand-in-the-collar.

The grip.

The Grip

Snug the collar up around the dog's ears. Hold your hand palm up, fingers forward. Standing next to the dog, slip your hand up under the collar. This gives you control over the dog's head movement because your grip pulls the collar up towards the front of the head, allowing you to turn the dog's head left and right.

Getting Started

I started with 4 weave poles (take off the rest of the poles) the first day or two just to get me and the dog used to each other and the motion. (3 is just a single turn and, IMHO, doesn't convey the right-left or left-right weaving motion.) Walking next to the dog, guide her through the weaves, turning her head just enough left and right to get her around each pole.

It might help right at the beginning to use the favorite toy as a lure so that the dog learns to focus ahead instead of on what you're doing next to her. If you want to do this, practice first without the dog. Goal is to keep the toy at least one weave pole ahead of the dog, in the line of the poles (not out to the side), just dragging it around each pole barely enough to get the dog watching it move from side to side and drive forward towards it. I did this with Boost just a few times at the beginning. Some people use it all the way through, but my theory is that (a) the dog is learning the process WITH THE TOY THERE and taking it away changes the picture, and (b) I want the dog to be aware of as little external info as possible, just the weaves in front of her. (Hence I also want to get myself and my hand out of the picture ASAP, too.)

If the dog is pushing ahead with excitement, as Boost and Tika both did during training, the hard part is in getting their head turned and slightly pushed enough to go around the next pole as she drives forward.

Keeping Dog Motivated

Don't make the dog move backwards to get a pole. If you mess up and she gets way past one pole, just cheerfully swing her out of the poles, around you, and race back to the beginning with hand in the collar, making excited noises (this isn't a punishment--you screwed up), and start over again.

If you mess up more than 3 times (maybe only 2x if it's a dog who turns off easily), just break it off, do something else that the dog knows well (e.g., a trick), reward and play play play and keep her excited and happy. Take a deep breath, compose yourself, try again.

Every time you make it through those poles, reward immediately with the toy ahead of the poles and play play play and verbally enthuse.

Repetition

Then go back and do it with the dog on your OTHER side! (If you used your left hand the first time, use your right hand the next time.)

Work both directions on both sides of the poles EVERY time. (That is, with dog on your left, go up, reward, come back down the same side of the poles with dog on your right. Then move yourself to the other side of the poles, go up with dog on your right, reward, come back down the same side with dog on your left.)

Move the poles every day. I moved them every day to a different orientation or location in the yard. I want the only constant thing in the picture to be the poles themselves, not the landscaping to the left or the right.

Next Step

As soon as you and the dog are used to the idea, move to 6 poles (I think this is really the minimum to understand the repetitious movement). Some people think you should start with 12 from the very beginning--same argument about wanting to have a consistent environment because 6 poles *is* different from 12. But I doubt my own energy, enthusiasm, and accuracy over that many poles and that many repetitions with my hand in her collar, and I want to be rewarding as fast as possible with small but meaningful successes--there are just so many more chances for YOU to mess up with 12 poles (remember at this point that it's never the dog's fault, never ever, don't even THINK about making negative sounds or actions!).

As soon as the dog is showing the slightest signs of understanding the idea of moving in and out of poles, switch to a tab lead to let the dog provide the head turning; your goal is to hold the dog back just enough to be sure she's making the turns and give a little pressure in the right direction as needed.

Note: If you find that you're dragging the dog through rather than letting her propel herself and you holding back and guiding from behind, go back to the hand in the collar and get a lot more fun and excitement into the process and reward like crazy each time you get through the poles.

You might need to go back to hand in the collar off and on as a reminder; I gradually did more and more tab work and less and less collar work; it wasn't a complete and abrupt switch.

My other theory is that you don't ever want to reward your dog for skipping poles. If you mess up and she manages to blast past a pole, swing her around outside the poles in a circle around your body, still holding the tab lead, fast and happy and excited --don't reward, but there's no punishment involved here--and start over. Same routine as before. Remember this all the way through your training.

More Independence

The dog will start showing signs of being able to do it on her own. (We're talking a week or 2 down the line, dozens and dozens of repetitions later.) Try relaxing the pressure on the tab lead gradually to give her space to succeed on her own.

This just takes time. I have trouble being patient, but patience is what it takes.

And then--breakthrough!--she'll do a whole series of 6 on her own! Reward like crazy, jump around, make a total fuss.

When she's doing 6 correctly 60-80% of the time on her own (that's 6 to 8 out of 10 times), add poles 2 at a time as fast as you possibly can. Add 2; as soon as she can do all 8 successfully 60-80% of the time, add 2 more. When doing 10 successfully most of the time, go to 12. Boost went from 6 to 12 in two sessions. It should be about that fast.

Now--on to true independence; at the moment I'm still running right exactly alongside her, can't move forward or hang back, not standing up completely straight, but all of that is going to change as quickly as I can change it, gradually moving further away from her, gradually moving ahead of her, gradually falling behind her, and on and on. And then there's reinforcing correct weave entries! There's still a long way to go to perfect weaves, but the hard part (for you) is done.

Final disclaimer: OK, I've taught Boost to weave using this method. Tika was only portions of this whole theory. I have no students to test this on. It's an accumulation of my experience in training my dogs to do many things, thousands of hours of class time with several talented instructors, many long seminars with many other talented instructors, lots of reading, lots of discussions, lots of observations of other students and their dogs. So there ya go.

Boostie the Weavin' Hound!

The little baby Booster is weaving sooooo nicely! We had no practice over the weekend. Yesterday she did several complete sets of 12, with a few bobbles; later, after a ton of other play and exercises, I tried to demonstrate for the housemate and she skipped poles several times before getting all the way through. I'm thinking she was just getting tired.

Today, first thing, she did 2 sets perfectly, one on my right and one on my left, then tried skipping the middle poles a couple of times, then did another 2 or maybe 4 perfectly. What a girlie! And she's FAST, too. I'm very delighted. And she seems excited about it; when she blasts out the end and gets her toy, she really gives it the heavy-duty, full-body shakedown, whereas she's normally more subdued in her (still enthusiastic) tugging. Maybe it's my level of excitement, too, but that's perfectly awesome that she responds that way.

In training I've always done both sides *every* time we did the weaves. Had a discussion with Bette's mom this weekend about how she's been doing dozens and dozens all on the same side because it's easier during hand-in-the-collar training--I told her NEVER again do 2 in a row on the same side, never ever ever. Sounds like they're on the verge of breaking through to actually doing independent weaves, too, but not quite there yet.

But, now, they're doing contacts and we haven't even started. Contact training makes me so nervous. Interestingly, they're OK on dogwalk and Aframe but not so hot on teeter; teeter's the only one of the three that I have an idea about how I might leap right in now and start working on.

Our Saturday morning classes have been very helpful--when there's been one and when I've been able to attend--but between my schedule and the instructor's schedule, I've had only maybe 4 or 5 classes in 5 months, if that. And the next one I could possibly make (if they have it) won't be until April. Power Paws has only one class for "puppies" going on (Bette's in it), but it's during a weekday again and I've been SOOO wanting to try to do weekends if possible. Still, I finally begged to be let in but it's all filled up and it's not clear that they'd want me in anyway since they've been working on their program for 5 months now. So I've signed up with Fortis Agility after a long talk about her training and handling methods. I don't exactly fit into their classes neatly, either; they're almost through their four 6-week beginners classes with the current class, and they're already doing contacts, and the next beginner beginner class won't start until April. Tania invited me to come to the class anyway and see whether we could make a go of it and then maybe, if needed, xfer to the beginning class. I'm looking forward to seeing her training strategies. No doubt at all that she's been successful with her dogs, but some things she's decided to pursue are different from what I've been getting other places. It'll be interesting, and, I hope, maybe even helpful.

CPE Agility in Turlock on a Cold Weekend

This weekend in Turlock was quite chilly, with occasional drizzles. I took my long down coat but never ended up wearing it; as long as I was up and moving around (OK--all weekend--sat down for lunch briefly both days), my body was warm enough with long underwear, jeans, henley shirt, fleece sweater, fleece jacket, lined thigh-length windbreaker. Wore a baseball cap a good portion of the weekend to keep the drizzle off my glasses and to keep the top of my head warm. There were times when my nose, ears, and fingers ached from the cold. Note to self: get cheap gloves that I can chop the fingers off and see whether those work better than full gloves (which I've pretty much given up wearing at agility trials because i have to take them off every few minutes to do whatever it is that I'm doing).

Some club members couldn't get here because they were snowed in--in parts of California that almost never get snow. There was a mongo 30-car pileup on 101 in wine country, I believe, due to ice and snow. Reports said that there was snow on the ground at Altamont Pass on Saturday morning, but when we went through about 5:30 it was too dark to see.

Jake Qed in all four of his runs, but never managed a first place. Barely Qed in Saturday's snooker, where I couldn't pull him off of a wrong jump, but he had just eked out enough points to earn that Q. Missed one weave-pole entry in his Colors run by a mile despite me trying to pull up short and give him plenty of room, but then in his Sunday Snooker run he blasted quite rapidly into a correct weave pole entry on his own and completed them nicely.

Tika, as usual, was fast and excited to be running. Saturday we Qed only 2 out of 5; knocked *2* bars in Jumpers and the last bar in Standard (which was probably me pulling up instead of pushing through) and I tried something tricky in Snooker that almost worked--she hesitated and slowed way down when I called her, but then I let up and she took the wrong obstacle. It probably served me right, because in that run, she did NOT stay at the start line and I let her go because I wanted to try out that snooker course. Fortunately, that's the only time she left the startline without permission all weekend; sometimes that slip on my part escalates. But I *was* more cautious and conservative with leadouts the rest of the weekend as a result.

Tika Qed 4 of 5 on Sunday, once again missing a Standard Q. Still had one of the fastest times of all dogs despite over-calling her on a couple of u-turns so that she turned before a jump instead of first going over it and then turning; knocked a bar again and went into an offcourse weave on one of those over-called turns.

She placed first in 9 of her 10 runs. I'll admit that wasn't hard this weekend because she was the only 24" C-level dog on Saturday and one of only two on Sunday, and the 2nd one is a veteran who's consistent and reasonably fast but slowing down. However, in CPE I always compare against all heights, all levels who ran the same course to get a better feel for how we're doing. There were between 60 and 100 dogs for each class running the same course. She was:

• Tied in points with one other dog (Brenn the border collie) for 1st in Saturday's Jackpot, although Tika had fastest time, so she was top dog
• 3rd highest in Full House and she had a spectacular run; I couldn't figure out how Chance the super sheltie (with 4 more points) and Elvis the super Boston (with 1 more point) could possibly have gotten those extra points, until my friend Arlene (who was trying to be patient with my incessant invented rivalries) pointed out that small dogs got 5 more seconds in which to accrue points.
• 5th fastest overall in Jumpers despite the 2 knocked bars and one missed jump entirely that we had to turn around and come back for; Brenn was 2.5 seconds faster with a smooth run and Chance 1.5 faster.
• 2nd fastestin Sundays' colors with a really lovely run; still, Brenn was.7 seconds faster, which just floors me. Maybe tika's turns weren't as fast and tight as I thought they were.
• 2nd fastest in Sunday's Wildcard; there's some variation depending on which on-course options you choose, so not everyone is running the exact course, but I really thought we had the fastest possible flow and I came off the run totally delighted. I'm sure we couldn't have done better. And...Brenn was .13 seconds faster. The next-nearest times were almost 2 seconds slower.
• 2nd fastest of all dogs who got the highest possible 51 points. For a change, we beat Brenn by .4 second--but little Keeper the BC snuck in and bested Tika's time by .7! Argh.
• 4th highest points in Sunday's Jackpot (Gamblers); we had an oncourse miscommunication that ended up with me struggling to get her to turn and start moving again in the right direction. We probably missed between 3 and 6 additional points by doing that, although of course I can't be sure. Elvis and Chance beat us by 5 points, and Brandy by 3 points--all small dogs with 5 more seconds. Brenn's mom left the event early and didn't do Jackpot. Arlene pointed out with what *I* thought was quite an evil grin, "Look, you beat Brenn!"

At any rate, I'm just glad that Brenn agreed to have Tika on her DAM team for the April Haute Traks 5-class team qualifier and for the Bay Team's May team qualifier. And Arlene's Sparkle joins us as the 3rd for Bay Team, where she can keep an eye on my competitive excesses.

'''Boost''' got to play with her sister Bette on Saturday. This was after both had been playing fetch for a little while with their respective human Moms. They chased each other around and around and around and around and around and around...OK, you get the picture. We practiced some recalls and they did OK--better than the last time we tried this a couple of months ago. When we finally stopped them, they were still chasing each other but in slow motion with tongues dragging on the ground like you might see in a cartoon where a dog keeps chasing a cat but they're both so hot and exhausted that all they can do is drag themselves along. And then, when I put Boost's leash on, she wanted to play tug full force and chased the frisbee a few more times on the way back to the crate. Man, wish I had that kind of energy.

We're Doing Weave Poles! We're Doing Weave Poles!

In class 3 weeks ago this coming Saturday, I found out that Boost's brother had just learned to weave, and he demonstrated them in class. I was bound and determined that I could teach my Booster to weave in one week if I worked at it, maybe 2 at the most. Well--I forgot that I had made commitments for Saturday mornings for at least the next 5 weeks and wouldn't be able to go to those Saturday classes (I didn't know when the classes were going to be starting up again) to show off, so there was alittle bit of a demotivator--no one to show off to. :-)

But I did work pretty persistently. After a week, I felt that we almost almost had them; she was doing weaves with my hand on a tab lead on her collar, but I was really hauling back on it to keep her from skipping and still guiding her through the weaves. She had wonderful drive, though, and I loved it. Wanted to keep that.

I started with 4 weave poles to get the motion down (3 wasn't enough to give the back-and-forth concept; that ended up looking more like a loop). Quickly decided that it needed to be at least 6, so I've just been working with six. Figured I would very quickly add 2 at a time to get up to 12 as soon as she showed signs of being independent.

Well--a week later, we were still almost there. Despite twice daily (most days) efforts, it wasn't clear to me that we were progressing.

So I experimented. Happened to have several of those little folding wire garden fences, about 12 inches tall and green, and they were perfect to set up channels on both sides of the 6-pole set. Her first inclination was to jump over them. Took a lot of effort to get her to still go through the poles even with my hand on her tab lead, but she finally figured it out.

My theory was that, if she could do the weaving motion without my hand on her, I could quickly fade the fencing and she'd be weaving. However, although she could indeed get through the poles on her own most times, she was suddenly very slow. And although I could move the fencing out to about 4 inches away from the poles, as soon as I bumped it even a bit more, she started squeezing between it and the poles.

I finally decided yesterday after several days of this that all the fencing was doing was giving her *more* things to look at and think about rather than *fewer*. I really missed seeing that drive that she had been exhibiting with the hand-in-the-collar method.

So yesterday afternoon and this morning and this afternoon we did really long sessions without the wires. Yesterday afternoon was exhausting and we just were really having a very high failure rate--me failing to get her into the right entry or not being able to control her to get her through every pole, and although once or twice i was able to let up on the tab lead a little and she'd complete them herself, as soon as I gave more ground, she started skipping like crazy. She finally got to where she was looking frustrated, so we did some fast tunnels and played a while and quit.

This morning I was finding that I could actually let up pressure on the tab lead and she actually managed to do about four in a row, skipping the last one, a few times, and maybe 2 or 3 times she in fact did ALL 6 WOW after I let go of her tab, but not twice in a row. Still, it was very exciting.

So, just now, we went out and hit it again, and after a few false starts--wow, she did the weave poles! Repeatedly! Not every times, but most times, all the way through, after I let go of the tab after the entry. Wahoo! So after several times of that and a break to do other stuff, I added two more poles for a total of 8, and it didn't faze her at all. 8 poles without my hand on! Not every time, but I think 4 or 5 out of 6--I was so excited I really couldn't keep track.

And I'm kind of still stooped over as if I had my hand on the tab, and I'm right next to her and she's a little herky jerky on the last couple while she remembers not to pop out too early, but she's definitely doing them on her own--and although not speed-demon fast, much faster that she ever did with the wire fencing on either side. Wahooooooooeeeeee!

We're doing weave poles! We're doing weave poles!

Getting Up-To-Date on The Booster

• We've almost got the weave poles done! Have been doing about two 5-minute sessions a day, missing a couple of days because I was busy or it was pouring rain. As of Friday I was able to put her on a tab lead instead of having my hand in her collar, because she was starting to find her way through the poles. As of yesterday, she was largely leading through the poles, still pushing hard rather than letting up to think about it, but still if release the tab lead, she skips poles wildly. If only I had been doing THREE 5-minute sessions a day--or had the energy for a couple of 15-minute sessions a day--we could've been done in a week, I think.


• Haven't had an accident in the house in just ages. Maybe it was just a matter of maturity for the last little bit of control. She did start waking up between 2 and 3 in the morning and making a fuss over the last couple of weeks, but I think what happened was that *I* woke up a couple of times and got up to get a hot drink, and let the puppy out at that point, about the same time that Jake had a couple of nights of diarrhea and had to be let out in the middle of the night, and so I decided that she had decided that that's something we're always doing now. So, 2 nights ago when she started making a fuss, I mostly ignored her and then told her to knock it off a couple of times, and she eventually settled down and lasted the whole rest of the night. Last night she was fine. (If she had continued to make a fuss and gotten louder, I was prepared to concede that perhaps she was having some bladder problems. But, no, it was just another case of Mom teaching something she hadn't meant to teach.)


• I just looked at our list from class from 2 weeks ago; jeez, I haven't worked on ANYthing except the weave poles (not even an official assignment) and occasional practice on a moving Sit. For some reason she does it better on my left, but on my right goes into a Down on the Sit command. An indication that I've been practicing too much on my left, I suppose.


• Food bowls--Boost finishes her meal and then thoroughly and determinedly licks out every nanoparticle of food or moisture from the other dogs' bowls. Doesn't end there, though. She constantly returns to Tika's bowl (not her own, much) to see what's going on with it. And she carries Tika's bowl around; I've occasionally found it out in the middle of the lawn. Not *her* bowl, ever. That, plus the obsession with Tika's poop, would get her labeled as a stalker in the human world. I wonder what dogs consider to be a stalker?


• Rolling in poop--I don't want to tempt the gods, but (knock on dog toys), the puppy hasn't had a roll in poop in quite a long time, either. This is good. I hope it continues.