Brand New Trail

SUMMARY: An event and a hike.

One doesn't get to do this every day. But we did on Saturday: Attend the ribbon cutting for a brand-new trail, then hike it. Here we are, looking out over the Santa Clara (aka Silicon) Valley, with the trailhead of the new trail beyond us. (The first three of us are agility friends and the others are, like, normal friends.)

This is part 3 of our goal to hike the entire Bay Area Ridge Trail. Not all of which exists yet, so this is a new 6-mile segment.

It has some gorgeous views of the mountains and of the valley--well, OK, the valley would be nicer if it weren't for the inversion layer trapping all those particles in the air.

A bunch of people spoke at the opening ceremony, people from the Santa Clara County Open Space District, the Bay Area Ridge Trail group, the coastal preservation group, groups like that, who work together to make things like this happen. And the usual politicians. Even a meteorologist. Here's San Jose mayor Chuck Reed--

--and the president of the Silicon Valley Leadership group (made up of CEOs of over 300 local companies, and which has been promoting open space), who rode up the 3-mile, 2000-plus elevation gain road on his bike for the event. Just behind him, you can barely see the domes of the Mount Hamilton observatory on the highest peak.

Here's a map of the area in which we hiked (click map,then click Show Original to see larger version):

For you trail-following fans out there, our route was:

• Get off the shuttle bus on Siera Road where it comes into the Preserve from the left (says "no parking").
• After the ceremonies, walk down the dotted line to the Sierra Vista Trail.
• Go east, following the heavy dotted line up and over the Calaveras Fault trail, down to the old homestead.

• Back across the pale dotted line that cuts west back to the Sierra Vista Trail.
• Retrace our Sierra Vista steps .
• Down the Baccardo loop trail (this is half of my hike from last weekend, from here on down).
• To the North Rim Trail in Alum Rock Park, east to its end (still on the dark dotted line).

I'm deeply grateful to the ranchers and landowners who have donated or been willing to sell their properties or have given easements for trails across their properties. These are treasures beyond reckoning, saved for us and for future generations.

If you want more photos--views, trails, cool-looking ancient cattle breed, old barn, bees in a tree and in boxes, an old treehouse, even a coyote--they're all here. 


FYI, here's the whole Ridge Trail. About 330 miles exist now (solid red); about 550 are planned. (Click map,then click Show Original to see larger version)--also go to http://www.ridgetrail.org for lots more info.)

The part we did is a very tiny piece of the part in the very tiny green bit about halfway between Mission Peak and Mt. Hamilton--we covered about 5 miles of the Ridge Trail (but an 8.5 mile hike over all). So, in 4 months, we've done about 15 miles of it.  Maybe by the time we've gotten around to doing the parts that do exist, the rest will have come into being.

Derrett System vs Handling Skills

SUMMARY: A fun timing exercise from class

Last night in class, a dog's path option in the middle of our last course of the evening turned into a long and animated discussion, resulting in hauling out the electronic timers and timing everyone doing the two different options.

Here's the map and some notes--I mention only the specific handling options that we used; there are certainly other handling options that result in the dog taking the same paths. What we're interested in is the dog's most efficient path.

At a glance, the longer option (A) seems like it would be a bad choice--2 extra yards in a jumpers course where the top dogs can be hitting close to 6 yards per second means, in theory, about a third of a second difference.

And, as we know from the recent FCI world championship, where the amount of time separating the midsize dog World Champion Luka from the 3rd place dog is a mere .09 of a second, .33 of a second is a lot of time.

Of course, it's not just about time: In theory, a dog following a smoother path is arguably more likely to get through the course successfully. Plus, the Derrett System says, we believe, that choice A would be the right one.



(NOTE: I don't know that I have the distances correct here, so our times might not be your times.)

Not surprisingly, the two options worked worked differently for different handlers and even different dogs with the same handler.

Tika was 6.90 on the wrap, and although I thought we did the serp fairly smoothly, she was 7.03, so 1/10 second slower. (And she was quite a bit slower at the end of the evening than at the start of class. Older dog. Sigh.)

Boost had the fastest time of all the dogs on any of the options, 6.05 on the wrap (although she knocked the bar). Then it took us 7 attempts for me to do the serp correctly with her, and she was 6.25. That might be because she'd just done 7 full repetitions at the end of a long class and was getting tired, or simply the obvious fact of our inability to handle it comfortably.

SB, who was the primary advocate for the serp method and handled it beautifully, when running Boost's full sister T-Cam (different litter), got 6.17 and 6.18 doing the serp and 6.17 and 6.24 doing the wrap.

But with her older (nationals finalist, former world team) dog Maja, they were about .1 faster doing the wrap than the serp with very close to the same times as her younger dog.

SP and Kip had interesting results--he kept doing an odd hesitation when trying to do the serp compared to a fairly smooth wrap, but still got 6.33 on the serp and times of 6.75 and 6.56 on the wrap.

And JC and Jet were about a tenth of a second faster on the serp.

So--three dogs faster on the serp, three on the wrap.

Comments? If anyone else sets this up and gives it a try, let me know.

On A Serious Note

SUMMARY: Think carefully about medications with dogs in the house.

My agility friends Natalie/Joe's very brief story with an unhappy ending: Riley Oct 26, 2006 - Feb 15, 2011

My agility friend Holly's story with a happier ending: Rimadyl Toxicity – I wish I weren’t an expert…

USDAA, CPE, Precious Weekends, and Precious Dogs

SUMMARY: Big decision #1. What to do?

Here's what I'm thinkin'.

Tika is doing pretty good for a going-on-11 dog. She still tugs full out, still runs full out after the toy or frisbee. But I'm seeing signs that signal "old dog" in so many subtle ways. First, there's the mixed speed in competition--still not entirely positive whether it's soreness, eyes, hearing, or what. Then, around the house, there are little things: She doesn't always immediately stand up when I do any more. She doesn't always get up out of her bed when there's food offered unless she's sure it's worth her while (and this from a dog whose #1 priority will always be food). She's been reluctant to come upstairs for bed at night--not sure whether that's soreness, tired of having Boost scratching off and on all night (me, too), or really is more comfortable on her bed downstairs for some reason. She sometimes does the wrong "trick" when I give her a command, but if I say it louder, she gets it right. Maybe just confusion or lack of practice, maybe hearing. Dunno.

Just things like that.

So I'm pondering what to chase in terms of titles.

My working theory is that she'll continue to be happy and healthy doing agility for another year, and that then, that's probably it for us. I mean, I could get lucky and she'd keep on going--but here are the statistics from our September trial:

Age	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Total
# of dogs	9	35	31	56	42	41 (Boost)	39	35	27	14 (Tika)	5	3	2	1	340

The odds aren't good that she'll be going a lot longer. Even another year with her in agility would be precious.

So: Do I cram in as much as I possibly can in one year? Remember that I've discovered that my nonagility weekends are also precious; I've been much happier at 14 weekends a year than I was getting to be at 20-some-odd weekends a year. I'd probably be happier with even less.

CPE choice

A C-ATE (CPE agility something extraspecial, or whatever), which is wayyyyyyyy beyond a championship, requires roughly 250 Qs at the Championship level--that means clean runs, unlike Tika's C-ATCH championship, which required only 20ish Qs (at that time), most of which didn't have to be clean. This makes it like a USDAA LAA silver in number of Qs. However, it's also THE highest title you can get in CPE.

Tika currently has 178 Qs, so needs maybe another 70ish-- Actually it's a bit more involved than that--it requires 5000 points and she currently has 3855, so 1145 to go. There are 7 different classes, worth between 15 and 25 points for each Q. Soooo if we could do all 25-point classes, she'd need only another 46 Qs. Of course they won't all be 25-pointers. So, say, 50-60 Qs to finish.

We've been doing only one or two CPEs a year since I cut back on agility. But Tika's Q rate in CPE is generally pretty high, 80-90%. So *if* we could go to all CPEs that offered 5 classes a day (10/weekend), that would be "only" about 5-7 weekends... hmmmm... but I'm thinkin' that most clubs only offer 8 classes a weekend. That bumps it up to 8-10 more weekends.

Either way, that's a LOT of weekends to add to my dozen USDAAs/year. I don't really want to go back up to 20+ weekends of agility in a year.

However, add to that: It would be nice to earn a championship with Boost, and I think we could do the CPE one in about the same amount of time that Tika could get her CATE. For her C-ATCH, she needs:
1 jumpers
2 jackpot
3 each wildcard and snooker
6 colors
8 standard (and most clubs offer at least 2/weekend)

It's doable. The Colors Qs are the ones that are killing me at the moment. But, still, yes, doable.

I just have to decide I want to do a bunch more expensive CPEs (because I don't get free entries at any of them except bay team's). Now that I've actually punched in the numbers, hmmm, maybe I'll go for it. Of course I'm also trying to get Qs in USDAA for Tika's platinum LAA.

USDAA choice

As I discussed in A Woman, A Plan, A Dog, I figure that in a year with 13 weekends of USDAA, Dogs Willing, we could finish her Platinum LAA. That's THE highest title you can get in USDAA.

I'd like to do that, too.

But 13 weekends of USDAA and 10 weekends of CPE in a year, whoa!, that's as bad as my worst year ever--er, I mean, as many weekends as my busiest agility year ever.

It is true that I could work on the CPE title later; she doesn't have to be as fast, and jumps only 20" rather than 22" in USDAA. Hmmm, and maybe (have to double-check the rules) I could move her to Specialist, which actually jumps 16", and keep going, so concentrate on USDAA first and then go back to CPE. But that pulls me out of my tentative plan to just do agility for another year.

Also, that's a lot to expect from a dog's longevity and health. Plus, really would be nice to have a CH for Boost.

Pondering

So--thinking--

Why Are My Legs Tired?

SUMMARY: Much hikeage.

I rose at the crack of sunrise today--always worthwhile when one has a nice view like this out one's back windows:

[note June 24, 2021: The original video broke because it was Flash. Ditto my replacement link from earlier. Today I uploaded it to YouTube and now I hope this lasts for a while.]

That was so I could toss the Merle Girls into MUTT MVR, drive up to Milpitas--about 20 minutes from here--and meet IN PERSON the famous Dawn of the "Dawn King" blog, all the way in from Michigan on vacation. For some odd reason she recognized MUTT MVR as we pulled into the hotel and greeted me hardly before I'd gotten out of the car. She was even nicer in person that she is in the blog, and that's pretty darned nice.

We ended up walking for about 2.5 miles from her hotel along Coyote Creek Trail, talking mostly about, of all things, dogs. You can see the route we walked here. (You can click the map options and choose satellite or hybrid view, and zoom in a bit.) We asked a couple of nice homeless-looking people to take our photo.

The rest of the photos I took are here. Then I had to take my leave to go home and meet up with another friend to drive up to Alum Rock Park and hike up into Sierra Vista Open Space Preserve. It ended up being just under 6 miles and 1300 feet elevation gain. That's a lot of up! (And back down, of course.) Here we are at the top of the world. Too bad it was such a hazy day and there were no homeless people to take our photo, so we had to rely on Mr. Self-Timer.

You can see the route we hiked here. (For some reason, there aren't satellite photos of the whole thing. But you can select map options of terrain, instead.) The rest of my photos are here.

On the way home, we stopped at the mall and had frozen yoghurt--mine had blackberries in it. (Thanks, Linda!)

I was home briefly, then got a call from my seester and her spouse, and they came and took me back to the mall, where we walked halfway around it to get dinner. Then back to the car, drove to the NEXT mall, and browsed in the bookstore for a while (standing up, of course). Finally home

Why exactly am I so tired?

Surprises Good and Bad

SUMMARY: USDAA weekend summary.

It's been 38 tries over more than 3 years since Boost last earned a Grand Prix Q. (I thought it had been only 2 years, worse than I thought.) Today, it wasn't pretty, but we got our 4th-ever GP Q. (At Boost's age, Tika already had 22--however, 18 of them were with 5 faults, back when they allowed it. Under the same rules, Boost would now have an total of 12 GP Qs.) So--that was a pleasant surprise.

Boost's Jumpers run was lovely, but had one bar down on a klutzy handling move. So close!

Boost's Standard run was, well, not lovely, but mostly very nice, and we missed a Q ONLY because she came off the side of the teeter again! Something *always* has to be broken that used to be fixed!

Boost was doing fine in Snooker until 6 in the closing where, once again, she had to keep going over jumps in front of her because I wasn't as fast as she was, and she turned back for a refusal. I really need to find the motivation to work on this.

Boost's cracked toenail didn't seem to bother her at all, all day, all 5 runs plus frisbee. That was nice.

Tika and I had TWO off courses today in 5 runs--compared to our average of about once every 23 runs the rest of this year.

Tika and I finally got all the way through a snooker course--but here's the thing: in the 16" performance class (remember, these are big dogs, like border collies etc.) out of 20 dogs, one had 49 points and one had 47 and everyone else was quite a bit lower, so I figured that our plan for 47 points would get us a placement and some top ten points. Well... dang 22" performance class, there were 7 entered, but 3 scratched (last run of the weekend, I guess), and of the remaining, the scores were 49, 47, 47, 47! And because I mishandled a couple of places, Tika had very wide turns, which knocked us into 3rd place for 0 top ten points. Sheesh.

She did well in Jumpers, placing 2nd to a former national steeplechase finalist dog who's just moved to performance.

And she did the hard part of the gamble but I anticipated a different turn than she actually made, and the result was a backjump, so no Q, and earlier handing bobbles kept our opening points low, too.

But she ran very well, pretty fast, very happily, no signs of soreness or slowing in tunnels or anything. So that was nice.

Overall: Tika 2 Qs out of 5, more Jumpers Top Ten points that we don't really need.

Boost one Q out of 5. Got all her weaves, even stayed in when I veered way off in one direction during snooker. Good start lines. Good contacts except for that one dang teeter. Good lateral lead-out pivots. And only one bar down, I think. It's still just a problem with looking for obstacles to take rather than always looking at me.

And the weather was, once again, perfect. So lucky in October! Ground was a bit goopy in places, but thank goodness the rain chose to stop on Thursday and leave us with a gorgeous, sunny, blue-sky, not-too-warm Sunday. That was very nice.

Ash and Luka: Gold!

SUMMARY: World Championships!

For those who've missed it, Ashley Deacon and Luka the Pyrenean Shepherd are Individual Medium Dogs FCI World Champions! Gold medalists!

That's on a combined score from both the Jumpers and the Standard runs.

SO exciting that a fellow Bay Teamer, sometime classmate, and friend, is there! Congratulations to someone who works as hard as anyone else I know at his success, and at keeping his dogs happy and enthusiastic at all times. Ash has a great attitude on top of everything else. Plus, long legs.

Also interesting is that, even though the scores combined two runs, my understanding is that mere hundredths of a second separated the three top finishers.

And even more interesting than that is that the top three are all Pyrenean Shepherds! No Shelties, no smallish Border Collies.

Woooohoooo I am happy tonight!

Dagnabbit

SUMMARY: Teeters and toenails

I'm not usually very good about trimming my dogs' toenails. As I've mentioned before, Tika's hardly ever need it, and neither did Jake's or Remington's, or even Amber's or Sheba's, for that matter. So the fact that Boost's grow so long so quickly (it seems) is a problem for me.

I *did* think to actually trim them (Dremelling) before our last trial 2 weeks ago. AND I remembered to trim them again last week. AND I remembered to check them again this morning, and by golly, Boost's looked long enough to dig the Mariana Trench in my back yard. How is that even possible? I trimmed the first few, but then she fought me ferociously when I tried to do her--uh--pointer finger on her right front foot. I couldn't figure it out for a while, except that she'd let me do the others, but absolutely not that one. Finally discovered that she had cracked it on the underside, maybe 2/3 of the way towards the tip, into the quick.

This explains why, for the last few days, I keep thinking she's limping, but then when I watch closely, she's fine.

I gave up on Mister Dremel and managed to get one snip using the old standby doggie nail clippers, which she yelped at but at least I took off a little of the length.

Thing is, if I try to clip any more, I'll be hitting the very tip of her quick, looks like from here.

In class last night, too, never noticed a limp except, same as it's been, "was that a limp? oh, hmm, no, she looks fine now", and she was fine... Except for coming off the side of the *!@&@*%# teeter. Really, she used to have a BEAUTIFUL teeter that people would say, "I want my dog's teeter to be like Boost's!" Apparently I've completely ruined that somehow. Dang relaxed criteria. I did drag the teeter out into the yard after the last trial, and then Things got in the way--it was my last week at my current client, so more hours than usual trying to clean things up; got very sick Friday and so didn't have it in me to do much of anything on Saturday either, gone Sunday. Rained several days this week.

Anyway, point is, I was thinking now that the sun is out again, I'd do a ton of teeters with her today and tomorrow in preparation for Sunday's trial. (We're staying home Saturday so I can attend a friend's father's memorial service.)

But with a damaged toenail, nope, don't want to be doing anything at all with her today and tomorrow, and am mulling over calling the vet in the morning and seeing whether he'd trim another eighth of an inch off the end into the quick, or what... worried about running her on sunday either way, but I know that if I take her and do nothing with her, she'll be stir crazy by the end of the day.

Not to mention for the next 2 days! She's already antsy because I didn't do the usual walkies and playtime before dinner this evening.

Decisions, decisions...

Meanwhile, Tika *walked* through the tunnels last night in class, even the straight ones. OK, it had been raining earlier in the day and everything was wet. This just tells me again that Tika's getting older and more cautious, whether it's her bones or her eyes or what. Not sure she's going to be competing for another year. Makes me sad. But she seemed to be jumping well.

Expecting good weather for this weekend, for a change I'm not working any key position at the trial, and the trial is on the smaller side again, about 80 dogs in Masters/P3, so Sunday should be fun and fairly relaxing. I hope.

So that's our lives at the moment.

Pastel Sunset Looking South, West, North, and East

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday evening

Congratulations, Tika; Congratulations, USDAA!

SUMMARY: Tika's Gold Lifetime Achievement Award

Hoody hoo, Tika's LAA Gold plaque, which she earned in May, showed up in my mailbox this week!

In the past, they awarded these at the Nationals each year. Which mean that, for example, if you earned an LAA in January of one year, you'd have to wait until September of the following year to get it. It was kind of worth it, being acknowledged in a public ceremony, although there have been enough dogs earning them that they'd just do an "everyone stand up who earned one" thing; not quite as much fun, and, well, it would've been nice to have the plaque earlier. So, congrats USDAA on getting these things out so quickly! (I guess they're doing them quarterly now.)

The other thing I got this week was an official email from USDAA asking for a photo of Tika (or me and Tika) to be used " in a visual presentation at the Cynosport 2011 World Games." Now, that's a cool idea! Now to decide what photo to use--so many to choose from!

x

I'm sure it's just my weird sense of humor, but I suspect most dog photos will be them doing agility. I'm so tempted by the box one or the standing-on-the-tunnel one.

What do you guys think?

A Woman, A Plan, A Dog--god an alp an amowa!

SUMMARY: I'm not so good at clever palindromes; am I better with plans?

So here's what I started thinking about last week:

Tika has (to be exact) 402 Qs in USDAA Masters/Perf 3. She needs 500 for her Lifetime Platinum, the highest one can go. She's averaged just under 4 per day of competition this last year. So she needs 26 days of competition.

By this time next year, if I keep up at my same pace and Tika and I both stay healthy, we'll have done about 13 weekends of trials, 2 days each on average--so, voila, a year from now, dog willing, Tika will be at Platinum LAA.

Tika will also be 11 and a half.

If Boost can't get 2 snooker super-Qs and 2 jumpers Qs by then for her ADCH, really, there'd be no more point in competing with her in USDAA.

Here is the plan that's forming--a year from now, take a break from agility for a year, or two, or three. Spend all the money and weekends and vacation time that I'm now spending on agility doing some of the vacations and traveling that I used to do and that I want to do.

The plan is still forming. And, so far, it relies on an assumption of continued Tika health and enthusiasm. And on an assumption that I won't continue losing my head and doing stupid things like leaving her collar on.

More, as I mull it over.

Agility Trial Colors: Red

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday