How Big Was the Nationals?

SUMMARY: The site was huge, hence the need for a bicycle for my poor knee.

Read my post about it on the bay team site.

Bodily Parts

SUMMARY: Knee hangs in there; thumb better.

Although my knee was quite puffy for our physical therapy appointment on Tuesday, in fact the pain and stiffness levels were quite low, and I was able to do 10 minutes on the exercycle easily (had been doing half an hour or more daily before the Nationals). I ran Tika in class last night without a lot of easing up for the knee, and it still felt great (at least, comparatively) this morning, so I ran Boost in class today, too. Still feels pretty good, and the swelling is down considerably.

I can walk normally except when wearing the big ol' knee brace, which rather forces me into a bit of a limp, and I found that I didn't want to push it in class either last night or today, so although I got some decent practice in, it's still not full speed, which is what I really need to work on with Boost in particular. Although pulling off of jumps because I stop even though I've given the command and keep my arm and shoulders pointed is something we can practice without tremendous speeds, I think.

Some of us from our Thursday class are going to try renting the field Sunday morning to do some practice. If the knee keeps feeling good and the weather holds up, every little bit will help.

The left thumb that was swollen and painful and wouldn't bend on Monday was much better on Tuesday, but it sported a very raised, 1/8" translucent lump on the back of the first joint, making me think that I got bitten by something that resulted in the swelling. Never felt anything, don't know what it could have been. It's a bit worrisome that my body reacted that way. Is it an allergic reaction to something? Doesn't seem like the usual mosquito bites, to which I seem to be having more and more of a reaction over time.

Life is so full of opportunities to discover new an unusual properties of one's all-too-human body--

Boost Herding Instinct Video

SUMMARY: Video of Boost's first herding experience

Here's a Quicktime movie to view. You see us when we first walk onto the field and I drop Boost's leash. She's quiet the whole time; the barking you hear is sometimes Tika and sometimes any of the zillions of other dogs onsite, possibly doing agility or flyball or whatever.

The woman is just trying to keep Boost moving around and in front of the goats and to observe her natural instinct for herding; I'm just there for decoration, I think.
Quicktime herding-instinct video

Onward with the Knee

SUMMARY: No more agility for a while.

The knee wasn't too happy with me on Sunday; more painful and MUCH more swollen than it had been, and not much better on Monday, but this evening it seems to be calming some. Some of it was lack of opportunity for icing & too busy to remember anti-inflammatories; some of it might have been forgetting myself and dropping to my knees while looking for Tika's collar, which instantaneously hurt like ... well... a whole lot.

I've cancelled out of Power Paws winter camp, the Greg Derrett seminar, and the Thanksgiving weekend WAG CPE trial, which is a real pity, because I could probably have nice runs with all 3 dogs there and have a go at winning the annual turkey trot for the 3rd year in a row. Deep sigh and pout.

I'll still keep going to classes, I guess, for now; keeps the dogs doing *something* and it doesn't seem to aggravate my knee any more than anything else I do.

Appointment with the orthopedist on Friday afternoon. I don't know where the appointment with the sports doc that she was supposed to arrange for me is gone. I have left a voice message and walked in and left a written message and talked to the nurse, and I've had no response whatsoever. I hope I don't get in there on Friday and have her say, oh, I wonder why you don't have an appointment, it's going to be another 4-6 weeks to get one--since that's what she told me the first time.

Tonight, I just really need to get more sleep; last night's good sleep and a long nap this afternoon were still not enough to make up for the last week of insufficient sleep and Sunday night's mostly sleepless drive home.

Tika and Boost Summary, Redux

SUMMARY: Summarizing more succinctly, for the layperson, I hope.

I had a lovely time at the USDAA Cynosports World Games, featuring dog agility, including:

• the Dog Agility Steeplechase championship (Tika and I blew it in the semifinal round, clean until and offcourse 2 before the end).


• the Grand Prix of Dog Agility World Championships (Tika and I blew it in the quarterfinal round, clean until an offcourse 5 before the end).


• the Power and Speed event (Tika turned on the rockets and kept all her bars up and we placed 10th of 130 dogs in our group for a ribbon--best we've ever done at the USDAA championships; I'm pretty happy about that indeed, considering that all these dogs are among the top in the country and had to earn qualifying scores to get here.)


• The Dog Agility Masters International Three-Dog Team Championship (say *that* in one breath!), which consisted of 4 individual qualifying events--your scores combined with your teammates'-- and the final 3-dog relay, in which only the top 30 of 208 teams ran; Tika did:
  
  
  • 37th of 130 in Snooker (half designing your own course, half speed)--knocking 1 bar in the first half that would've put us in a tie for 6th place, oh well, lots of other people in the same boat :-); her teammates were in about the same place, putting our team amazingly in the top 20 after the first day--we had hoped to be in the top 50%, so pretty happy.
  
  
  • 87th of 130 in Standard (numbered course with all the obstacles) with some faults but no offcourse, but her 2 teammates did quite a bit better than that.
  
  
  • 35th of 130 in Jumpers with a clean but not superfast run; her teammates did fairly well, too.
    After these 3 runs, our team ("Three's a Charm") was seeded #24 of 208 after the 2nd day, which stunned us all. We were pretty sure we'd drop out of the top 30 the next day.
  
  
  • 12th (!) of 130 in Gamblers (design your own course for points plus tricky time-estimating gamble, risking losing everything, at the end) with a superfast and beautifully done run--same number of points as the 8th place dog, but we just couldn't squeeze out an extra second or so to place any higher. Very happy with this run, too. And teammates did average or better, which is very good in Team.
    
    And we ended up seeded 26th of 208 teams! Pretty exciting for a team who had hoped against hope to be merely among the top 50%. So we went to the finals!
  
  
  • Final relay round, Tika knocked her first bar and I mispositioned what I thought was a meat-and-potatoes kind of front cross for a refusal error, but my teammates were clean and none of us went off course, so we hung in there well enough to move up to 22nd overall, so a very successful weekend.

Boost (my Border Collie "puppy") ran in only 4 things for practice, and she did good on the things I wanted to practice, and very clearly revealed one major issue that we can now focus on improving.

But she did get a chance to take a herding instinct test, in which they throw the dog into a ring with livestock and an experienced herding person--and she did beautifully, which I knew she would, just needs some work on self-confidence to move in front of the stock; did her natural border collie circling/herding behavior, it was soooooo cooool! I'm going to try to put up a video sometime soon.

Herding Behavior

SUMMARY: Tika flunks, Boost passes

The Arizona Herding Association was giving herding instinct tests this weekend, so I signed up my Aussie-probably Tika and my all-Border-Collie Boost--at $20 a pop for a 5 or 10 minute test, wow, but I've been wanting to do this since Remington was so interested in livestock way back when.

Tika ignored the critters (goats) for a bit, which I saw with a couple of other Aussies who went in at other times, then ran and lunged straight in at them, barking, and the lady bonked her (or right next to her) with a bottle on a stick to make her back off some, and I just forget how soft she is--she backed way off and wanted out of the ring, and it took some coaxing to get her to come in at all, and she'd come in and bounce forward a bit at them barking, then move away again; peed off to one side although I had pottied them before coming over (obviously very nervous). The woman--who had said that Tika looked like she had a lot of husky in her (about the 20th person this year who's said it, no wonder I always call her Sheba in moments of odd stress), said that Tika was exhibiting chasing behavior but not much in the way of moving or herding the goats.

Boost started quarter-circling almost immediately; came in once or twice a bit nervously to try to nip at them and the woman just blocked her off with her stick, so she went back to circling; took a few minutes before she worked her way up to circling all the way around. She started by wanted to circle behind and next to them, the way she does when "herding" all the other running dogs, and the woman said that she just needs to build up her confidence on working in front of them. But she went into circling behavior just beautifully and naturally, watching the goats' every move, and then didn't want to quit when our turn was over. Very much fun to see, and someone taped it for us; I'll see whether I can get a small version online.

The Knee, The Head, and the Thumb

SUMMARY: Oh, yeah, all those pathetic body parts

The knee held up remarkably well until finally it started giving in on Sunday, but that's probably largely due to (a) no time for icing until 2 in the afternoon, with two walkthroughs and two runs in the meantime, and (b) a couple of very painful incidents involving the knee that had nothing whatsoever to do with agility--forgot myself and knelt down quickly (owwwwwwwwwwwwYikes!) and someone opened a car door in front of me unexpectedly on the bike and I slammed my wrong foot to the ground (yowwwwwwww)--that's also the day I tripped over a chair trying to get to the coolr to make an icepack (ayayayayayaouch!). It all came together nicely to really aggravate it. Has been slightly swollen & slightly painful only, but as of last night and right now it's only the size of a small grapefruit and aching.

The headache did go away with the 2nd Maxalt, thank goodness.

And my left thumb is swollen and painful and completely stiff, can bend the 1st joint only about 10-15%. What's the deal with that? WHY CAN'T THEY LEAVE ME ALONE? I have NO clue why. So, I repeat--it's time to go sleep on it.

Tika Summary and Off to Nap

SUMMARY: Tika does worse--but better--

I'm thinking that we did better than in previous years, because Tika had no minor course faults in either the Steeplechase or Grand Prix, unlike 5 faults in each the previous 2 years. I'm thinking that we did worse, because we Eed in both within sight of the finish line.

I'm thinking that we did worse than last year, because then Tika was 11th out of something like 130 26" dogs in Snooker and this year we knocked 2 bars in the opening, although I believe that our score was still above average. But I'm thinking that we did better because:

We did not Eliminate in Team Standard unlike previous years, although we still managed a bar, a runout, and a refusal (which isn't so hot either)

We ran clean in Team Jumpers, which is not all that common for Tika, but it wasn't a particularly fast or tight run. Still, we did place something like 37th of 130 dogs, which I'm not at all ashamed of; it was a challenging course.

We had a Team Gamblers run that's one of those runs I love to dream about and get so rarely in reality; Tika was turned on and blasting full live-on-the-edge speed, my timing apparently was right on; the course was our kind of course; even though I released her early on her contacts, she didn't actually fly off; and we got the same number of points as 4 other top dogs, including CA competors Nancy with Panic and Olga with Luz, which I'm very pleased with, although all 4 had faster times than Tika's, dropping us to 12th of 130 dogs so no ribbon. (But I'm not complaining! The run felt marvelous and I'm still reliving it.)

My teammates also held it together for all the team events, and we made the final cut of 30 teams out of 208! Which I never imagined we'd do! In fact, we were 26th going into the finals, and we ended up 22nd overall.

But I think I'm doing worse because in the relay my teammates ran clean but Tika knocked her first bar AND I misplaced a perfectly ordinary type of front cross to the weaves, costing us 2 points for the refusal and probably 2 or 3 seconds of wasted time.

But I think I'm doing better because in the Power and Speed, Tika got all the way through the power part (contacts, weaves, broad spread hurdle) and then once again turned into full-speed rocket-powered Tika for the Jumpers section AND she kept her jumps up AND we had absolutely no bobbles and I felt that I was in the right spot for every turn, which she did all of without a millisecond's hesitation. I didn't work tight turns, just letting her fly comfortably wide around a couple of turns, knowing that in this crowd we can't possibly compete for speed among these 130 north america's top 26" dogs, even though I KNOW that we can get right in there if we're close--I need some work on my self confidence, because in fact we placed 10th for a ribbon! Our first-ever USDAA nationals ribbon!

I'd been moaning all weekend about wanting just one measly ribbon (how quickly we forget--just a couple of months ago I was moaning about wanting just one measly team Q, and of course lots of people don't qualify for the natioanls at all, let alone in all 3 events as Tika did). So, had I been able to shave even half a second off, I think we'd have been in 8th, and so on... would never have been able to clear 1st place's time, I'm almost certain, because Tika was flying and a total agility machine and I've seldom seen her better. Another run among those perfect moments in agility that make it all worthwhile, no matter whether there's a ribbon or not, handling a dog covering 6 to 7 yards per second without a fear or bobble or moment of confusion.

So, OK, with the appearance in the team finals, and 12th in gamblers and 10th in P&S, I'm really a pretty happy camper. When what I had been hoping for & almost expecting was move-ups in GP and Steeplechase, or maybe another high placement in snooker, and never even thought about these as possibilities for us!

That should teach me something. I'll think about it when I wake up.

Is Everything I Own Lost, or Only My Mind?

SUMMARY: It's hard to believe that one person can lose so much in one weekend.

I've now been competing in agility for 11 years through something like 170 trials. This does NOT mean that I'm getting older. It doesn't. I don't ever remember losing anything at an agility trial. Oh, sure, I dropped my pedometer once, but since it had my name on it, it came back to me. I've left my chair next to a ring overnight on Saturday, but it was there when I returned on Sunday. Things like that. But most trials--not even Haute TRACS' 4-day monster--is anything like the Cynosports event in Scottsdale, which must cover several acres, combining agility crating & rings & tenting & such for the equivalent of maybe 2 or 3 Haute TRACS, plus a full fly-ball major event, plus a 2-tank major Diving Dogs event, plus herding--every group with their own competitor tent cities--plus a full major frisbee tournament event, plus dozens of vendors in their own vendor city. This might give an idea of what one is facing when one drops or leaves something.

On Thursday, I tucked Tika's toy into my back pocket, clipped on my goodie bag, slipped on her slip lead, unclipped and removed her collar, and worked my way out past the agility crating area, the security gates, the dog-diving crating area, the two huge dock-diving pools and lines of waiting competitors, the first set of rings, and to the staging area. Played with Tika and her toy. Ran our run, played with her toy, put it back in my pocket, walked back to our crate past the rings, the dock diving tanks, the dock diving crating, the security gates, and into our crating area, giving her treats for walking nicely on lead. Reached for her toy, and it wasn't there. Retraced my steps immediately. Wasn't there. Asked at the security gate, dock diving area, and USDAA info table (where 2 different people gave me different answeres on where the Lost & Found was), and it was nowhere to be seen.

It's hard to find large purple Riot Tugs these days, and they cost something like $14 bucks anyway, and this one was my newer one. Crudola! I checked all the assorted lost-and-found places all weekend and in never showed up.

On Friday, I tucked my old beat-up riot tug into my rear pocket, clipped on my goodie bag, slipped on Tika's slip lead, unclipped and removed her collar, and worked my way out past the agility crating area, etc. etc. Got to the ring, reached for my toy to play with her before our run--and it wasn't there. Retraced my steps immediately and was so lucky as to find it in the vicinity of the sopping wet but ecstatic diving dogs.

Early Saturday afternoon, I took both tika and Boost past all the aforementioned places, plus past the food area and the vendor area and the main event arena and the restrooms, out to the herding area for their herding instinct tests. Walked them both over on gentle leaders, but removed the gentle leaders while we were waiting for our turns, clipping them to each other to make it harder for me to lose them. Mary held them for me while we went in and handed them back to me when we were done. I took the goodie bag, my hat, both dogs' leashes (with dogs), my new certificate for Boost, and the gentle leaders and headed back past the... (fill in long list). Often I clip the gentle leaders to my belt or the leash handle to also keep from dropping them, but for some reason I didn't this time.

I got back to the crates--and had no gentle leaders in hand. I retraced my steps carefully, and they were nowhere. I asked at the herding place whether anyone had turned in two Gentle Leaders clipped together. They said that no one had, but on thinking about it, said, "someone did turn in this" and held up my gentle leaders--perhaps herding people don't know what gentle leaders are? Interesting topic for speculation.

Later on Saturday, as I waited for one of Boost's runs, the ring was delayed for a huge discussion among judge, a competitor, ring crew and officials, and the Shah of Iran and who knows else about something, which delayed us about 15 minutes. I know this because I looked at my watch just moments before they started the ring up again. I played briefly with Boost right outside the staging tent where I was standing, then got in position in line for 1 or 2 dogs, then ran. When I came out of the ring and put on her leash, my watch was gone.

I traced all over the ground outside the ring in the very narrow area where I had been since last looking at it; nothing. I couldn't interrupt the ring to go look there, but I told the ring crew (who told me that lost & found was in 2 different places and otherwise weren't interested in being involved). I came back after the ring had been set of the next day, and one of the guys who had set the ring said they hadn't seen a watch, and I looked around pretty carefully. The watch was not in the 2 places where there were people or stacks of lost items waiting for owners, and 3rd lost and found was closed for the evening. I posted signs in the morning offering a reward but heard from no one. Late in the morning, the 3rd lost and found (supposedly the official one) opened and, lucky me again, someone had turned in my watch.

I taped it closed and took down the signs.

Sunday, Tika and I were the last ones of our team to head to the relay ring. I tucked Tika's toy into my back pocket, clipped on my goodie bag, slipped on her slip lead, unclipped and removed her collar, and worked my way out past the agility crating area, etc. etc. We watched the other teams and ran our run and then Tika and I returned to the crating area a while after Mary and Skeeter but before Brenn and Carlene. Tika's collar wasn't there. I looked everywhere, even in the cooler (brain already known to be fried for the weekend), and then looked again, and then again, feeling like I was going insane. Who would steal a collar with random ID tags? Logically, it had to be there. Then Mary looked all over again for me. Finally it occurred to me that it must have somehow stuck to her slip lead, so that when I thought it was dropping to the ground, it was just hanging there and fell off somewhere else. That's all I could think of.

I bicycled aroudn the site to the various lost and found locations, and again I was lucky--it was already there in the 3rd (unofficial) lost & found place, halfway around the world, waiting for me. I bicycled back past everything and put Tika's collar on.

So in the middle of the night last night, we make one of several stops along the way, where I put on the dogs' leashes and let them out to potty. Jake I have to lift back into the car because of the way it's loaded, then remove his leash & tuck it into a corner next to him and close the door. Somewhere after that, this morning, in the early predawn hours while driving across 46 from interstate 5 to 101, I relate this story of how I don't understand while I'm losing everything this week. It strikes me as more than a little odd. It strikes Diana as more than a little funny.

We get to 101 and stop at the Arco there for gas and to let the dogs out.

I can't find Jake's leash.

Understand that the car is packed so tightly that I can't fit anything else in, but since Jake has been enthusiastically rearranging this bedding over and over for the last 4 hours, I figure that maybe he's kicked it so that it slithered down into--something, somewhere, I don't know where, but that's all it could be, since I know that I put the leash in the car (I almost never remove their leashes before they're in the car and I have hold of them there--not worth the risk). So I borrow one of the other dogs' leashes to walk him.

At the end of the trip, dropping Diana off, we virtually empty the car to get all of her stuff out.

There is no purple Jake leash. Diana now finds this to be MUCH more than a little funny. My reputation, what's left of it, is ruined. But WHERE could that danged leash have gone?!

Note to self: Reread Thurber's "The Night the Bed Fell." If I can figure out where the blanket is, I might know where the leash has gone.

Saturday at the Nationals

SUMMARY: Tika shines in Gamblers; our team does better than expected.

It's 2:00 and we've had the most amazing day. Tika ran very early in the Team Gamblers individual event, the last of the 4 individual events for Team. She was spot on, and I made no bad moves for a change. I released her early on the teeter twice--she wasn't driving to the end, and her feet were solidly in the yellow, and I wanted to go for a top score (my only chance to shine here would be the individual team events, now that we're out of the Steeplechase and Grand Prix, and we've known from the beginning that our humble team is here simply to have fun because the 3 of us are not top-10% type teams. Those teams are ones that have dogs like Tala and Spy and Panic and Luka and Kidd and Bump and...well, you know... THOSE dogs.

So, when I then did two Aframes with her, she released herself early halfway down the yellow, which was good for our time but bad for doing contacts, but I figured it didn't matter, since the odds of us making it to the final 20 for the final round was about 0%. Even though we held 24th place at the end of the evening Friday, today's Gamblers is a place for fast dogs to shine, because they can simply rack up the points by flying across contacts and that's not something that any of our dogs do.

Tika is at her best when it's a handling challenge, so her tight turns outweigh the speed but wide turns of so many fast Border Collies, and this was a handling challenge. Plus the gamble was a time gamble with challenging weave entries, and she is so good at weave entries and I felt that I had a good grasp on how long it would take us to do maximum points in the gamble. The trick was that, if you were over time on the gamble, you lost all your gamble points.

We had 25 seconds in the opening and 13 seconds in the gamble, and I was right on the edge of where I wanted to be when the gamble whistle blew, so I knew that we couldn't make the tiniest bobble in that gamble or I'd never get 5 obstacles in. As I said, Tika was spot on, very tight turns, got her weaves and all 5 obstacles--it turns out, in 37.8-something seconds, so we barely made it, but we DID make it, and she went up on the leader board at 9:30 in the morning (runs starting at 9, I believe) at 3rd place with 39 points, and the highest scores at that point for 36-inch dogs at only 44. I knew it wouldn't last, probably not even remain in the top 8 to finally get a placement ribbon at USDAA Nationals, but it was so much fun to see us there! When they eventually replaced the leader board with the overall team leader scores, we were still hanging in there at 5th with more than half the dogs to run, so I'm sure we're bumped out by now. Won't know til the end of the day.

Brenn, one of our partners, had a safe run of 29 points, probably higher than average, and Skeeter and Mary were so excited about their run that they missed a teeter (for 3 points) in the opening, but she recovered very quickly and went on to earn 23 points, which is good enough, and so consistently timed and executed! Talk about a handler who knows what her dog needs and gets her around the course flawlessley almost every time. She's the cornerstone of our team, with the other two of us less reliable in our performance.

And then--Three's a Charm came up 9th on the leader board! Holy cow. Never in my wildest dreams would I even have expected us to be there, even for a moment. In some ways, this is absolutely thrilling and I'm pleased to be there even for a little while, but in some ways it's so much worse, because that means we'll probably be in the 20th-30th range at the end, JUST missing out on being in the finals, and I hate JUST missing much more than I hate just completely blowing it. That's when you really start thinking "If I hadn't knocked one--JUST ONE--of those 3 bars that she's knocked, we'd be in the finals!" Argh.

As of 2:00, with 2/3 of the dogs run, we were in 12th place. By statistics, that means that we should make it in, but it's my experience that people watch and learn as an event goes on, so I think that more and more dogs will do better and better as they evaluate what works and what doesn't work for other people, so I still think we'll drop out to about 23rd place. PLEASE don't let it be 21st! Arrrrrrrrghhhhh!

OK, now I get to go put my dogs on sheep and see what happens! Film at 11.

Evening It's now 11:15 p.m. A very long day. Turns out that 30 teams are in the final relay, of 208 or so, and we ended up at 26th after the 4 rounds of competition, so we're in! I was so sure that we wouldn't make it that I didn't even bother adding the walkthrough time for relay to my daily schedule, so had to look it up this afternoon. Very exciting--who'd have ever thought our little team would be there?

When the relay is done, the top 10 teams (cumulative over all 5 events) get Team polo shirts, but now THAT's somewhere that I know we won't end up.

I still don't know where Tika placed in Gamblers. That'll have to wait til morning. It would be SO nice to finally earn a ribbon here, even if it's 8th place. Still haven't counted how many 26" dogs there are, but I'm pretty sure it's over 150.

Meanwhile, I've lost my watch. I had it on right before Boost's gamble run this afternoon, where I was looking at it to see how much time we had spent waiting for the inopportune discussion among judge & crew & a competitor about whether the timer was working correctly or not, then 4 dogs later I ran Boost and, when I exited the ring, I didn't have my watch. So somewhere right outside the ring or during the run, it came off, but it hasn't shown up yet anywhere I looked. I'll go around again tomorrow, maybe post signs. I really like this watch, and it wasn't inexpensive, and it was a gift from Jim, so I'd really like to have it back.

My knee is a bit stiff and sore; didn't have but one chance to ice it during the day today, but it's still much better than I had dared to hope. I think I'll be fine for Tika's last Power & Speed and Relay runs tomorrow (nothing for Boost).

Thursday and Friday at the Nationals

SUMMARY: Some good, some bad, you know, a typical agility event.

Thursday

Tika Team Snooker: knocked bars that lost us 4 points and 7 points in the opening but made it all the way through to the end, for 43 points, putting us in 43rd place out of maybe 150 (need to check) 26" dogs. Not a lot of dogs were making it all the way through to the end on this course, either getting whistled off early for course mistakes or not being able to do it all within the 43 seconds allowed. If we hadn't knocked the bars (you know how this "if only" game goes), our 54 points would've been good for 3rd place. Of course--I'm sure that all the other low-scoring dogs have their own litanies of "if only I had called harder..." "If only I had planned what to do if they knocked a red bar..." "If only I had pushed instead of pulling..." "If only I hadn't had that fourth beer last night..." "If only my dog was as good as Tika, I'm a much better handler than that Finch woman..." (I'm sure that that last thought was foremost in most handlers' minds.)

Both of our teammates also made it all the way through to the end; Skeeter the superreliable but slowish Cattledog did lower-point obstacles in the opening but didn't knock any bars, so she probably got the most points among us; Brenn also knocked the #4 and the #6 in the opening, so she and Tika had similar scores. That puts us all well into the top half of teams competing. Yay, Three's A Charm! Three more Team events to go, though. "Don't get cocky."

Boost Team Snooker: I pulled her off the 4 point and 7 point in the opening, although I managed to spin her around and get them, but it wasted a lot of time, so we wouldn't have made it all the way through to the end anyway. But she made her weave pole entry and did them all nicely without skipping any(!) (practice DOES pay off!) and we did get through #5 in the closing, blowing it at #6 which was a serpentine, which we still have trouble with, so it didn't surprise me. Lots of dogs didn't do nearly as well. We ended up with 37 points for about 130th place out of nearly 300 (need to check) dogs in her jump height.

Not bad for the babydog's third trial, and at the National championships, too boot, where most of the dogs had to qualify to even get the right to compete! (Although I suspect that there are quite a few nonqualified third dogs on teams; Boost's sibling Gina is also running as the unqualified dog with 2 qualified teammates; they had a little trouble with their Snooker run and got only about 10 points, I believe. Among other siblings, Bette's here but not competing; not sure how Beck and Derby are doing, but I believe they're both competing here this weekend, too. I have no idea what Kayna (Caena?) is up to; maybe they do only AKC.)

One of our qualified teammates (Kathie Leggett and Griffin) knocked the first red bar and couldn't recover, so got 0 points, and the other (Greg Louganis and Gryff) didn't get all the info they needed, which was provided AFTER the walkthroughs so I think a lot of handlers didn't get it, so got whistled off early in the opening. So I'm especially pleased.

Note to handler self: It's interesting that the jumps I pulled Boost off of are exactly the same jumps that Tika knocked when she ran. Tells me that I'm doing some weird handling thing on those wrap jumps. I think I've got them all on video so I can watch carefully and see whether I can figure it out.

Tika Steeplechase. I don't know how many times I said, "Well, if she can keep her bars up, I'll be happy," since she's knocked a bar in both the previous years' semifinals rounds. I hoped secretly that I'd also be fast enough to make the finals, although last year's time was too slow by quite a few dogs, worse than theyear before. BUUUUUUUT... SOOOOO.... be careful what you wish for: She kept all her bars up, but (a)I had a brain hiccup in the middle and for some reason decided that the Aframe we were headed for wasn't the right obstacle, so called her off it and stood there for a full 6 seconds with her bouncing around asking for something to do before I realized I was correct to start with and went on, and then we were offcourse on the next to the last obstacle. Sigh. But she did NOT bite at my feet on course during those 6 seconds of silence, which pleases me greatly. And she ran VERY nicely. Just the dang handler.

The offcourse was a known handler issue, I believe. My instructors have been after me for years to keep my hands from "flicking" to try to get the dog to do an obstacle, and I walked that straight path over and over, concentrating on keeping my hands glued to my sides. She sort of hesitated when we ran, then turned and went over an offcourse jump instead of running straight with me. Video review: There's a little flick where my arm just comes up, I'm trying to send her straight ahead to the tunnel, but she reads it as a get-out, and out she gets. Dang handler!

So, anyway, am I getting better or worse? Bars stayed up but, for the first time, we were off course.

My knee was fine for competing. Wore my new knee brace, and I ran full out in all the classes, not even thinking about taking it easy, and I held up much better than I thought I would. I iced it at every opportunity, probably 5 or 6 times today at least (jeez, I hate spending the time sitting here doing nothing for 20 minutes so many times a day--but I had dreaded being miserable with an agonizing knee, and I'm doing very well, so it's worth the sacrifice and I am in fact delighted about how well it's doing) and rode the bike whenever I didn't have the dogs with me. By the time we went out for pizza in the evening, sitting at the table for an hour really stiffened it up and it was a bit sore, but frankly I think it was more sore this past weekend at home after a week of rest. This bicycle has been a godsend; I'm so glad I was able to borrow it.

FRIDAY:

Knee feels great first thing in the morning! I can walk comfortably at my normal brisk pace without favoring it. Wahoo! Good thing, because I have 5 walkthroughs and 5 runs today. On the other hand, just to prove that my body isn't going to let me get away with anything, I fought a headache all day yesterday, and have already taken 2 of the 3 migraine (Maxalt) tablets I brought with me, and we've just barely started the week. Obviously large doses of ibuprofen is doing nothing for the head.

Tika Team Standard: We didn't E, which is paramount in Team. Last year she had a superfast, tight, exciting run until she was offcourse right before the end. This year, although we stayed on course, I pulled her off two jumps for a refusal and a runout, and she also knocked a bar, so that was 15 faults. Teammate Skeeter ran clean; Brenn I believe had a bar and a refusal (can't remember for sure). And she mostly stuck all her contacts, although she released on the "Gooo...." on the Aframe, which was the third contact in the course.

Teammate Brenn I think had two faults (refusal and bar?) but got through without E-ing. And Skeeter got through it clean! You know, we could end up near the top just by getting all the way through all of our courses! Although I doubt we'll ever make it into the top 20 teams of 208 for the final round. Still--it would be exciting to be above 50%, if we can hold it together.

Tika Team Jumpers: Clean! No bars down! But really wide turns, so I don't think we'll be in the top 8, which is all they have ribbons for for the 26" class (out of 150ish dogs). But that's danged good for that jumpers course, which had some good opportunities for bars down and offcourses, and I saw an awful lot of dogs with turns as wide as ours in the same places. That's usually where we can beat those top-of-the-line border collies, on those turns, but I was letting her drift out to avoid calling her on top of the jump and risk knocking a bar. Always a trade-off. I'm pretty happy with the run, though, no bobbles at all.

Teammate Brenn also got through it without Eing, although she had two bars down. Just before Skeeter ran at about 2:30 this afternoon, the computer scoreboard showed us in 15th place! Of 208 teams! I never in my wildest dreams imagined that we'd be in the top 20 even for a little while. By the time Skeeter ran, we had dropped to 26th as more dogs completed their runs, but Skeeter's clean run popped us back up to 16th for quite a while. When I last checked about 5:30, we were in 24th. Still amazing! And there were more dogs still to run, so since we had all already run, we could only move down, not up, but that is just soooo cool. And tomorrow all that's left is Team Gamblers, and you can't really "E" (eliminate) in that, but you can get a low score that will hurt you almost as much. I don't think that with Tika's & Brenn's propensity for knocking bars, my propensity for brain freeze, Brenn's propensity for missing contacts, and Skeeter's reliable but not super speedy style will prevent us from possibly earning enough points to get back up into the top 20 and stay there; I suspect we'll drop down into the 40s tomorrow at least. But that's still pretty darned good for us.

Boost Team Jumpers She missed her weave pole entry (but so did tons of more experience dogs), but when I lined her up again very quickly, not even a stop-and-get-next-to-me-calmly line up, she entered perfectly, did well through the first half, and suddenly the I-know-what-I'm-doing rockets kicked in and she blasted through the last half. Wow! Practice DOES help! I'm SO pleased about our work on the weaves over the last two weeks.

However, that tricky jump right before a sharp turn into a tunnel that had so many people worried did us in. I planted and called her, trying to do a cross behind, but it was too sharp of an angle for the inexperienced girl and she ran right past the plane of the jump. Then I brought her around to try again and somehow pushed her past it on the backside, then on our 3rd approach she just stopped and veered away in front of it--poor puppy, she was looking at me intently the whole time, trying to understand what I wanted. But that was our limit of three refusals and caused an Elimination, so I just ran her as fast as I could over the last couple of jumps so she'd come out of the ring happy and excited, and she did perk right up and we played enthusiastically afterwards.

My knee is hanging in there (2 p.m.) although it's been feeling the effects of 5 walkthroughs and 4 runs full out already, with no chance between 6 a.m. and noon to ice it. I've iced it twice now, though, and it'll survive. Again, not nearly as bad as it was after the CAT trial 2 weekends ago. I am SO grateful that's it's doing so well. Headache is toying with me. Do I break down and take the last Maxalt now or wait to see whether it goes away (then I don't need the maxalt) with liquid and caffeine.

Boost Team Standard: Missed the weave entry but got them all when I realigned her, then once again there was a jump that I couldn't get her over, adding up to our 3 refusals for another elimination fairly early in the run. OK, so now I know what to work on. I'm pretty sure that I'm starting to turn my shoulders away, assuming that she's committed to doing the jump, but her commitment point is so much closer than Tika's, in part because she's inexperienced, but I think in part because she runs closer to the ground and so has a lower center of gravity longer before she jumps, so can change direction a little more quickly. Dunno.

Herding Instinct Test Tomorrow: I've always wanted to do a herding instinct teston my dogs. Tried to do it with Remington one year but the person I was referred to never answered my messages. Too bad. But they're doing them here at the event, so I've got both Tika and Boost signed up for tomorrow afternoon. I watched one little Aussie go out into the ring and look like she had been herding sheep forever, although this was in fact the first time she had ever been around stock animals. Very cool to watch! And that's what they're looking for. I'm looking forward to this. I'll have to make sure it's videotaped.

Knee, at 6 pm, is still doing pretty good, much better than I had ever expected, and I haven't had to take it easy during my runs at all, although it does get more sensitive to turns and pressure just walking around as the day goes on. Icing like crazy (a good time to type into the computer, I decided).

First Day at Nationals

SUMMARY: Hanging in there

I didn't have any competition today, so just unpacked and played with the dogs and watched some other people's runs and took a zillion photos. Knee was already starting to bother me just after walking tothe registration desk and making assorted trips to and from the car with gear. Then I was able to start using my borrowed bicycle--what a godsend! This saved my knee today. Hope I'll be able to use it as much the rest of the weekend. Tomorrow I have 3 runs, so 3 walkthroughs starting at some ungodly predawn hour. See you tmorrow night.

Tuesday Trip to Scottsdale

SUMMARY: Uneventful

Took me longer than expected to figure out how to get my borrowed bike on top of the cartop carrier container and to strap it in, so I left my house at 6:15 rather than 6. Took about the expected hour to get to Diana's place in Salinas, and then it took a bit longer than I had hoped to figure out how to jigsaw-puzzle everything for 5 dogs, 2 people, 6 days, and 1500 miles into the vechicle, so left Salinas more like 8:30 than 8. No tragedy, though.

The trip was completely uneventful. Even driving through L.A. from about 2-3 p.m., we encountered almost no travel. Did make use of the express carpool lanes when they were available, but except for a small exciting stretch where we were going 65 and the rest of traffic was going 30, usually the rest of the traffic was moving faster than the carpool lane.

We stopped for longer than I had hoped as we went along, mostly waiting for my dogs to produce some #2. Boost, who had done so at 2 a.m. when I woke up hungry (gak), wasn't interested, even after breakfast. In fact, she didn't care even after dinner on the road that evening or before bed or even at 1 a.m. last night when she woke me up fussing and I took her out again. She managed to go 31 hours without a #2, which drives me nuts when I'm responsible for taking them out on leash to do their business, and to top it, went about 14 hours without peeing, despite playing with great vigor with Cassidy, Diana's 8-month-old Border Collie puppy.

The dogs were all very good for being in their crates from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m., but they all really wanted to play instead of going to bed--none-the-less they settled down quickly and let me get a few hours of sleep.

A quick, free, light breakfast at the hotel, now we're just waiting until it's time to go get ice (for cooler & my knee) and Starbucks (for Diana) and check in and set up our home-away-from-home-away-from-home at Westworld.

Bay Teamers Hit The Road

SUMMARY: I cram my material goods into my minivan and various folks say farewell.

NOTE: I've been trying to post this to the Bay Team blog all day and it keeps timing out, so I'm posting it here instead.
I count 52 Bay Teamers who will be competing or attending the USDAA Cynosports Agility World Championships in Scottsdale, AZ this week. Some are leaving today, some (including me and my rideshare, Diana) heading out early Tuesday, still others leaving later on Tuesday and driving down leisurely over two days. Some of it depends on whether they entered the optional Time Gamble event on Wednesday; many of us didn't, so don't actually start competing until Thursday.

This will be an unusual trip for me because my right knee's medial and lateral menisci are torn, I'm in pain, and I'll probably have arthroscopic surgery sometime after I return. It will be hard--if not impossible--to run with my dogs, despite having worked hard to qualify Tika in everything again this year. Had I known that my knee would go out, I could've saved a ton on entry fees and classes! Why does no one fill me in on these things? The pathetic knee could make it--um--interesting getting around the huge site and competing. On the other hand, if I choose to use the really potent drugs in my suitcase, everything might just have the rosiest glow ever. Between the knee and the drugs, this all might give me a unique perspective on the whole event.

I've been staring at the "whittled down" stack of stuff that I need to fit into my car along with 5 decent-sized dogs and all of Diana's necessary stuff, too. Even with a car-top carrier (thanks, Arlene!), I don't know how this will all go. It's even more challenging now that I'm trying to also fit (because of my knee) a bicycle, a pair of crutches (which I hope I won't need), and a large cooler to hold plenty of ice for icing.

Plus there's the computer, the video camera, the nifty digital SLR camera (thanks, Erika!)...and Diana's computer, video camera, and regular camera... clothing changes for 6 days; the black pants in case I ever make it to a final round (extremely unlikely this year in particular) but otherwise will never wear; dogfood for all the dogs for 6 days; sheets for all the hotel beds; softcrates and shade fabric and clips; frisbees and riot tugs; running shoes; spare shoes; 6 days' supply of human-style bottled water and diet noncaffeine sodas; water bottles and buckets for the dogs; chairs for us; ... it just goes on and on and the car is bursting at its little welded seams. I even went so far as to remove all maps that I wouldn't be using on this specific trip and I got radical and vacuumed so that those little bits of gravel and twigs wouldn't take up perfectly viable molecules of packing space.

Well--here goes, anyway. If I get a chance, I'll try posting briefly Wednesday morning before we head out for the Westworld equestrian center.

Read Karey's and Tania's and other official USDAA reporters' USDAA blogs here: http://usdaa.com/news.cfm; they will also in theory post results as they're available.

And Meanwhile, Back at the Knee

SUMMARY: Could be better. Has been worse.

The knee really hasn't recovered from last weekend. It's still clearly swollen. It still hurts to go up and down stairs (before that weekend, I was actually trotting up & downstairs normally without thinking about it). Hurts at night when I'm sleeping. (Hadn't done that in several weeks.) Soooo in truth, last weekend's experiment was a success: I figured out what I could and couldn't do and determined what is likely to happen to it with 5 days in Scottsdale. I'm more prepared for what I'm likely to go through. I'm borrowing a bike to take with me to help me get around during nondog times and also am taking crutches--neither of which I'd been particularly planning on before last weekend. And my expectations are probably more realistic. On the other hand, I'm dreading the pain and inconvenience more.

However, I still want to go, and there's no good way to talk me out of it. So I'm hitting the road Tuesday morning about 6 a.m. (so much for a noncompetition day!) to head down to Salinas to pick up my rideshare, Diana, and her two dogs. We barely know each other, but she seems like she'll be a good person to get to know better, and what better of an opportunity than two 12-hour trips!

Status On All Three Dogs

SUMMARY: Tika diarrhea, Jake playing, Boost doing weaves

Shooting Boost across a jump.

Tika and Ellen waiting for the timer's Go signal.

Went up to Power Paws practice for Nationals yesterday morning. Had two runs with each of Tika and Boost. Tika wasted her first and half of her second chasing the sheep, which had all gathered just outside the agility field fence to cheer everyone on. She was slow on her dogwalk contact, even when I tried revving her up and redoing it. But she held her startline stay both times--although the first time when I released her, she made a full-speed beeline for the sheep across the field. At least she waited for permission...sort of.

Boost--did her weave poles! I was so proud of her. We had only had chances to practice with the stiffened weaves at home that morning and the day before, and all day Friday I was having to use small barricades (green wire garden fencing, about 8" high) to block the places she was frequently skipping. Slowed her down and slowed her down, and I dropped the number of poles back down to 8, and then gradually (well--pretty quickly actually) she stopped skipping and started speeding up again. I wasn't sure whether just two days of stiffened weaves--and only at 8 poles at home-- would make a difference up at Power Paws with the full set of 12, but apparently it did! What a clever girl. And today, in the yard, I removed all the barriers, and she did all the 8s fine, so I added two more, and she did all the 10s fine, and she's speeding up even more towards where she was, although it looks a little uncomfortable. Wish I'd fixed those wobbly poles a long time ago. Oh, well, live and learn!

Jake is playing again just like the old Jake. --Well, almost. I still have to insist on him coming outside, and I still have to insist that he fetch the Tug-N-Treat the first time, but then the switch just flips, and he fetches and fetches and fetches. I've worked gradually up to today's extravaganza, where I just threw and threw and threw. I can even let Tika off her leash, and then Boost, and I just watch carefully to be sure that Tika's not crashing into Jake and that Jake has a clear view of where the toy lands. He didn't want to quit! What a guy! We must have gone for 15 minutes. I'd swing back my arm to throw the toy, Tika would take off running, Jake would take off like lightning as I started my forward throw, Boost would take off running on the periphery, watching the whole thing with her Border Collie Eye but staying plenty out of the way.

When we were done (I let Jake decide), everyone's tongues (except mine--poor unexercised mom) were dragging on the ground and everyone except Boost plunged into one of the Water Features or other. Boost I had to hose down, but since she's discovered how much fun playing with spraying water is, she stands patiently long enough for me to get her feet demudded and then we play a little water-chase.

Tika has very liquid diarrhea. I don't know why. In 20 hours, we'll be On the Road to Scottsdale, and she's got diarrhea. Unlike with Remington, who always seemed to have something upsetting his intenstines, this is uncommon with my other dogs. She hasn't had anything unusual to eat that I know of; she hasn't been anyplace unusual that I know of; her appetite and energy are fine. I'm just hoping that it was some random tasty piece of dirt that she dug up and ate and that she'll be fine later today.

And here are bonus photos of me and the dogs doing agility (waiting at the start line and running) from the VAST trial back in September where my knee went definitively south.

By George, I Think We've Got It!

SUMMARY: I think I've found Boost's weave pole problem.

I've been worrying that Boost's problem with skipping was my crappy set of weave poles where the bases rusted out, so I've been using only a better half set, plus occasionally poles pushed into the ground, but they're all more flexible than most competition & class poles. And she blazes through them at home without skipping, in between skimming past poles in class & competition, so I've been more and more suspicious of their give.

So, after this week's class where we talked about making the poles stiffer to solve an entirely different problem, I bought rebar for the push-in-the-ground poles and I finally found stakes that'll fit my good half set, so I can have a full set of 12 very solid poles--and, voila! She's skipping like crazy at home, too. Victory! This means that it's something I can work on here, and probably make very fast progress with. I'm so relieved! (How often do you hear someone say "I'm so relieved that my dog is messing up"?! But naturally, in training, if you have a problem, you can't fix it unless you can reproduce it in a situation where you can do something about it.)

Of course, it might not be so easy as it seems at first glance, but i'm very hopeful at the moment.

I Should Know Better

SUMMARY: Knee is miserable. Boost weaves are...well...

In Tika's class last night, I continued to try getting her around the course without doing any running or sharp turns, but pushed maybe a bit more than a simple stroll, because in previous weeks, when I stroll, she loses motivation and interest. We did a bit better but still not up to our usual stuff. Knee was still quite sore from the weekend. Class didn't *seem* to make it worse, but it sure stiffened up overnight and woke me up a couple of times turning over.

Today in Boost's class, as I worked with her, I realized that the more I moved, the better my knee felt, which was interesting. I thought that maybe the problem this week was that I was letting it be *too* inactive and it really needed to be kept mobile. So I relaxed a bit and let myself go on more of her exercises, actually running a couple of times, and I felt pretty good. But then, by the time I had driven the 30 minutes home, the knee had *really* stiffened up, and now (8:30 p.m.) it is truly unhappy, doesn't like walking much at all, is just sitting here aching front and back and top and bottom.

OK, in retrospect it was stupid. But it *did* feel better in class than it had in 3 days! So go figure.

Since the weekend, I've had Boost doing only 12 weaves, not sets of 6, and lo and behold, she's often skipping poles even here in the yard, although much less than at the trial. She'll do 3 or 4 or 6 sets beautifully, then skip a couple or 3 times, then more sets beautifully. I can't quite put my finger on what the issue is, since it doesn't seem to be fatigue.

I've tried to stiffen the poles up a bit, too (interesting that Nancy brought that up in class today, too, as being important), but it's hard to do at the moment because the half-set that is still good doesn't have any stakes to nail it down with, so even when I'm careful about having its braces straight out to the sides, it still rocks as the dogs go through. And the other poles I've just got slipped over landscape poles shoved into the lawn, and they're quite springy. Rebar would probably be better, but I don't have any lying around. Guess I could go buy some. But, until I get the 2nd half of my regular set welded, the poles-in-the-ground are better than they are.

In class, she was a bit better this week than last--when practicing beforehand, she could go over a jump or through a tunnel and make the weaves happen correctly, oh, maybe 3 out of 4 times, but in class exercises with exactly the same sequence, she always skipped poles the first time. But then, when I'd line her up again, she'd get them almost always the 2nd time. And if not, if I just put my hand in her collar for the first 2 poles (even if she wasn't skipping the first 2), she'd get them all.

So I don't know. I'll just keep working it, moving the poles around, using the hand in the collar...

Various Thoughts Around Nationals

SUMMARY: The brain's in overdrive.

I've been thinking about Nationals a lot. A lot.

The only one of my dogs who has ever made the Grand Prix semifinal round is Jake. That was our second year at the Nationals near San Diego. They announced that 50% of the dogs would move up to the semis, and then they posted the list (something like 200 dogs in our 22" height class), and Jake had missed by just a couple of dogs, along with our friend Eric's JJ. Being obsessive-compulsive about things like this, I actually counted--and discovered that they had miscounted by about 4 dogs and Jake and JJ should actually be in the semis. I reported it quickly so that we got a chance to get our walk throughs and actually run. I believe we were offcourse right away, but at least we got there. A couple of years later, JJ went on to win (or 2nd place?) in the Veterans Grand Prix national championship--veteran being dogs who had previously made it to at least the Semifinals in previous years. So Eric was pretty happy on both occasions.

And I just got news that JJ is coming home from the hospital and appears to be doing better--I created a blog just for his status here: http://jjstatus.blogspot.com/.

I think Tika's my best agility dog so far. (Boost has much promise, but we're not there yet.) She has missed the GP semifinals three times by 4 or fewer dogs, and there were no miscounts on these occasions. Driving me nuts. But whereas Jake was at the edge because his speed just was never up to the top level, Tika has missed because of assorted 5-point faults...but if she had been, say, 1 second faster even with the faults, in each case I *think* she'd have gone on to the semis. But I have to really drive her to get her best speed.

And my knee is not going to be up to driving my dog on any course.

That will be even more of a pity in Steeplechase. Even though I drove her hard the last couple of years, on speed alone we missed the finals by at least a second or maybe even 2, and with the competition at the level it is, that was probably 10 to 20 dogs faster. BUT we ALSO had 5-fault knocked bars each year, too, putting us way down in the list. So the odds of us making the finals in Steeplechase were very slim to start with, but if I can't push-push-push my dog before going into the ring and all the way through the run, we haven't even a slug's chance in the Indy.

It just breaks my heart, she's running so well, I've worked so hard, I've spent so much on entry fees and trying to qualify for the Nationals, training fairly hard at home on the things we need more speed on AND trying to fix the knocked bar problem, and I just won't be able to capitalize on any of it this year.

Not to MENTION the tremendous angst and grief and huge expense of trying to qualify in the Team event and finally, FINALLY making it-- not that our team would ever have made it to the final round (Brenn and Tika are fast but not the most fault-free dogs; Skeeter is remarkably reliably but not fast by any means) because the teams that make the finals are fast AND reliable, all 3 dogs of each-- but, gee, last year Tika placed 8th in team Snooker, our one moment of near-glory, and I was hoping to at least get some personal bests in the various team events.

Maybe it wouldn't seem so bad if it seemed likely that they'd hold the Nationals west coast again next year, but historically they claimed to want to move them around the country every 2-3 years, and this will be the 3rd year in Scottsdale. And I can't afford the time off for a much longer trek plus hotels and so on. This trip is pricey enough.

AND I can't get my entry fees back this year, so I might as well go anyway. Plus it's a kick to see all my friends run and do so well with their dogs. Watching a half-hour video summarizing the final Grand Prix round isn't nearly the same as seeing every detail of all three finals (GP, Steeplechase, and Team) in person. I am looking forward to that, anyway.

And, also on the other hand--my dogs are healthy and happy and good-looking, too. I'm thankful for that. Plus that it looks like the weather will be gorgeous in Scottsdale; just hoping not too hot.

After the Weekend

SUMMARY: No championship, no weave poles, no knee

Once again, Tika failed to earn that final Snooker Super-Q. On Saturday, all we had to do was complete my planned course, which was a nice, smooth, fast course that I was confident that we could do, even with me not running much. BUT she knocked a bar in the opening, which took us out of the Super-Q running right there, and then had a refusal on #6 in the closing, which was probably me slowing down because I didn't care much any more. So it was another regular Q but nowhere near Super-Q range.

On Sunday, the opening was tricky and I mishandled it right away, so we did exactly 2 jumps--one of them the wrong one--and we were whistled off. It's doubtful we'd have made the Super-Q on that one, anyway, because it became another speed-through-the-weaves competition primarily, not a versatility and sendability course, and sometimes we can compete in that crowd and sometimes not.

Ashley (classmate who's run her in class for 2 preceding weeks) tried to run Tika in several classes, but Tika kept leaving the ring to go find me. Didn't seem to matter whether I was standing where she could see me or not. They actually made it halfway through one course, but missed an Aframe entry, and when Ash brought her back to make another try at it--which is where in real life she'd likely be yapping and leaping and maybe biting at my feet--she bailed and headed back to me. Oh, well. I considered it part of her education (would *like* her to be able to run well with other people) and am grateful to Ashley for making the attempt.

Boost couldn't do weave poles. Period. 6 weeks ago (5?), she had trouble with each first time, but when I'd pull her back next to me and settle her and then send her, she made them all. This weekend--nothing doing, no way. The closest she came was doing 10 and then popping out. But the rest of the time it was skipping, skipping, skipping. So perhaps I need to rent the Power Paws field for half an hour a couple of times and work only on weave poles up there, since we've established that she often skips poles in class.

But most of everything else she did very well and very fast. At Tika's second full trial, she started flying off the contacts, taking off out of the ring to chase something more interesting, leaving her start-line stay without a release, and grabbing my feet and hanging on (the first time that she had ever done it, and boy did it take me by surprise!). But--her weave poles were almost flawless.

This was Boost's second full trial, and she held her start-line stay perfectly every time until my release, she ran to and held her two-on, two-off position on every contact and waited for the release, did some nice sending away when I didn't want to even try to run--including an experimental but perfectly done double loop through a tunnel 20 feet away from me! And never jumping or biting at me. But--she can't do weaves!

She finally earned one Q the last run on Sunday, in Gamblers, and took 1st place as well. (And that's even with a failed attempt at doing weaves.)

I watched her siblings Gina and Bette all weekend--2nd full trial for each of them, too, I believe--and alhtough they each missed some weaves here and there, eventually they both got them all well, and fast, too (Gina flies! like boost when we started!). And Gina is very fast and confident around the course. They're working on running contacts--which is dangerous, as on Saturday's Standard run, where they got called for missing both the dogwalk and teeter contacts--but also glorious, as in Sunday's Standard, where the judge didn't call the contacts and they not only Qed and earned first place, but were 10 seconds faster than we were--and Boost was only 40-some-odd seconds around the course. Of course, I'm holding her a LONG time on the contacts while I walk up to her (minding my knee), and I did try twice for the weaves before going on. But, still--when Gina and Tim get it together, they'll be tough to beat.

Still, when I looked at the scores through the whole weekend--Boost Qed only once, Gina and Bette each Qed only twice. And Gina took only one 1st all weekend, too. So in fact the scores don't show us that far apart...

My knee is not happy with me. (Although it's already better now, at 3 Monday afternoon, than it was when I got out of the car last night.) I think I'm going to be in for a rough time with 5 days at the Nationals. I'll take my cane-with-a-seat and my crutches, just in case. (Heave deep sigh.)

Something For My Knee and This Weekend

SUMMARY: I have a wrap for my knee, which I'll try at this weekend's USDAA competition.

Backfill: BACKFILLDATE

My knew knee hinge.

The human body is an amazing collection of limbs, joints, skin, and protruberances of various sorts. It always seems amazing that we can move around on two legs--even stand completely motionless on two legs--without falling over. Have you ever tried to balance something atop two sticks? Will the assemblage stay upright? Well, perhaps, if the sticks have some sort of horizontal foot that is heavier than whatever you've balanced atop them, and that locks in place. But our body is quite top-heavy compared to our spindly ankles--which, incidentally, can flex in many directions without bending, and yet we still remain upright.

Our body's ability to do this is called proprioception, which is a collection of inputs given to our brain from assorted mechanisms such as the inner ears--which affect our balance--and the tension and pressure going on between and among hundreds or thousands of muscles and tendons within our body. All is fed back to our brain, which allows us--most of us, at any rate--to chew gum while walking, without either having to watch our feet and without our tongue getting in the way of our teeth.

Proprioception is more than a little important to athletes. Without it, Monday night football would be... well, perhaps far more entertaining, but more likely would be a pile of inert collections of skin and bone lying around on the field waiting for someone with a better-developed sense of their body's position and orientation to come along and kick the ball. Without it, you'd always fail the touch-your-nose drunk-driver test.

I mention this because my orthopedist says that, with my kind of injury, a knee brace isn't going to do much for the injury. However, what she says it will do--what any kind of wrap or brace or support does--is somehow add to the information that the body collects into the package called proprioception. In theory, one becomes more aware of the joint and what it's doing without being aware that you're aware of it. I think this is cool.

The man who fitted me with a knee hinge (they don't call it a brace--it has stiff metal inserts up the sides with hinges in the middle) says that it does help to provide support when turning, so maybe the knee won't grind down as much on the torn menisci. Maybe.

So, this weekend I'm going to Madera for a USDAA trial. I've been preparing. I'm working the score table, so I won't have time to do a lot of walking around. I'm staying in a motel, so no hauling or setting up tents or van for sleeping. Friends are letting me share their canopy, so I shouldn't have to haul nearly as much stuff out to the field. Tika has been practicing with a guy in my class, so he can run her some runs. I'm going to try to run her in Snooker, which will be very challenging because, for SuperQs, you really need to push your dog, and I don't know whether I can do that.

And I'm going to try running Boost some and see what happens.

Overall, though, I'm going to try to save myself for Nationals while still getting in some experimental running. Then I've got 2 weeks to recover before we leave town for Scottsdale on Halloween morning.

It's All About the Shirt

SUMMARY: At Nationals, clothing makes the agility handler!

OK, it's all very well and good to talk about fixing up-contacts on dogwalks, about driving driving driving through practice snooker courses, attending Nationals practices and reviewing courses from previous years, but, really, let's admit it, Nationals is all about having the right matching outfit with the rest of your 3-dog team (assuming that you're so lucky as to have qualified in team).

My official palette. Photo colors are not the best reproductions. (Click on image for larger version.)

Tika and Skeeter have moms who are fair-skinned and fair-haired, but Brenn's handler is fair-skinned but dark-haired, and soooooo what do we do about colors? (I have not, however, edged in close enough to perform a detailed exam to determine what the basic underlying skin color is--for example, mine is vaguely yellowish compared to some people's much pinker tone). So what looks good on one might not look good on another. How to choose?

We decided early on that we wanted WendyWear for our shirts. Wendy Bruce is our local tie-dye guru. Her shirts are quite popular. We put in our order early, and decided on polos rather than t-shirts (150 t-shirts for me is quite enough, thanks, and I'll be getting another one for simply attending nationals anyway). My colors are basically "summer" colors; Carlene's (Brenn's mom) are basically winters. Of course--there are various types of winters-- and, as I suggested above, a lot goes into determining someone's palette.

I had my colors picked out individually for me by a professional in a long session in a brightly-lit room, but there are plenty of places where you can see the basic color sets for various "seasons" of coloring; for example:

• Summer palette
• Winter palette 1
• Winter palette 2
• Winter palette 3

So we had some polite but "um, I dunno about that" sort of color discussions, then turned it over to Wendy to make the ultimate choice, with the main principle being "subtle but not too subtle". (It's always nice to abrogate responsibility.)

Last year's team (Run-TMZ); shirts also by Wendy. And so were my previous year's team shirts. Coincidence? I think not!

Now Wendy says that the coloring is done but they're subtle enough that they probably ought to have a team name or logo or similar on them. (Commonly done on team shirts--photos of your dogs, team name, dogs names, clever mottos, and so on--but sometimes the shirts just match nicely, as in my team from last year.) But what to put? Our team name is Three's A Charm. We've sent a note back to Wendy saying, "OK, do something."

Isn't it nice to have a fashion designer one can trust for those really important social affairs, in case Joan Rivers shows up?

Photos of Bay Team Trials

If you have any interest in skimming through photos of the Bay Team's July CPE and Labor Day USDAA trials, I posted mine on my photo site here:
http://elf1.smugmug.com/Dogs
They're mostly photos of people and the site. And none of my dogs at all, at least not in Sept. (Don't remember about July.)

Bad Knee! No Soup For You!

SUMMARY: The meniscus is torn. Surgery likely.

Just talked to the orthopedist this evening. MRI is in. She didn't know it was in when she called me; just returning my call from earlier, so hadn't looked at in great detail. But read the report and looked at some of the images. Medial and lateral meniscus tears. Some wear and tear on the surface of the joint, too--not arthritis (yet) but yes could develop into it. She says I'll probably have to have surgery. She's referring me to a very good sports doc, she says; she didn't say outright but I interpret the discussion as saying it would be a bad idea in this case for me to keep calling them and trying to get in to see just anyone. But that means that for real this time it'll probably be 4-6 weeks before I can score an appointment. That would be after the Nationals.

I talked to her a bit and have been doing reading on knee injuries and have talked to a couple of people who've been through meniscus tears, so I have quite a bit more data than I did a week ago. But I'm a bit emotionally exhausted at the moment so I might or might not type anything up. (Although I might be able to get a copy of my MRI on CD--wouldn't that be cool? I'll have to find out more.)

She said that professionally she thinks I'm crazy for wanting to run at the Nationals with this knee, but as a human she understands what it means to me and she's not going to try to stop me (because, obviously, she can't if I want to do it anyway). She'll recommend a velcro brace that she says probably won't do much for me but if I think it makes me feel better, that's fine. And... so... I'm going to go to Madera next weekend, try running Tika in Snooker at least, Boost in Standard at least, see whether I can get someone else to run Tika some, and just decide there what else I want to do. Argh.

Then it's only 2 weeks after that to the Nationals, and I *really* don't know what I'm going to do there. Karey suggested maybe one of those cool little razor scooters for getting around the site--I've been looking at them and checking them out since they came out, oh, jeez, seems like only a few years ago but it's probably been a while. Not that I need to spend more money, but that might be a good way to do it. Better than trying to bring my dilapidated bike up to working order and trying to get it to scottsdale with everything else we'll be trying to back into my minivan.

So tomorrow, to make myself feel better, I'm going to go town to Renfaire at Casa de Fruta and walk around a lot. (No, no, I'm already planning to be there only a couple of hours max, with lots of sitting down in between.)

Dogwalk Up Contact

SUMMARY: Addressing a long-standing problem

Tika has missed enough Qs (or, in the case of Grand Prixs, clean runs) by going over the up contact on the dogwalk that I've known for probably three years at least that I should do something about it. I really meant to do something about it before last year's Scottsdale Nationals, and didn't get around to a private with Nancy until about a month before, which is really a stupid time to be trying to fix a major problem like that--and then we spent most of the time on attention and obedience stuff because Tika was being such a pill!

We did try adjusting her stride with barriers, but (as I reported then, I believe), she ended up finding amazingly creative ways to blast literally halfway up the dogwalk ramp before setting fooot on it. So, last year at Scottsdale, we missed the Grand Prix semifinals by about 4 dogs (out of 150 or so)--you guessed it, it was an up contact that dropped us below the cutoff.

Similar to what I have. The board is about a foot square and beeps when when pressure is applied near the center. It looks and feels like part of a dogwalk up-ramp.

So REALLY I was going to do something about it this year. So I am. Now that it's a month before Scottsdale (sigh), I've finally gotten a hit-it contact trainer. I worked with Tika for a month or so beforehand on just a plain square of wood, painted and textured the same way, trying to get her to move across it and hit it with her front foot, but it was hard for me to see whether she was succeeding and I'm afraid that my clicking was off. So we made some progress but not a lot. I needed something that would give a more reliable notice to the dog that she had hit the sweet spot.

Have had this for about a week now, and have been working on it every day. It's very odd. Going in one direction, she almost always hits in; going in the other direction, almost always steps over it. I've tried holding goodies or toys in the opposite hand, tried staying back away from her, tried tossing the goodie right on the ground in front of her so she keeps her head down (which she doesn't; she's still looking up at me when she gets to the board before she hits it)....

Oh, I just had a flash of inspiration. Maybe I could combine the treat'n'train with the hit-it contact trainer to keep her from looking at me for a reward? If she hits the beeper, I could use the remote to drop a goodie... hmmm, but then I could go in only one direction at a time over the trainer, not back and forth. OK, worth a shot.

Then, when she's doing it consistently, get her somehow to go faster and faster. Then, when it's the way I want it (ideally, she runs across it and hits the beep), I put a command to it. Then I move the beeper board onto a flat board on the ground and get her to do it there. Then I try putting the board on a ramp up, maybe to the deck, so she doesn't have to go all the way across the dogwalk to get the reward. THEN I put it on the actual dogwalk...

Can I do this in 17 days? Argh. Unlikely... But here we go again... She's clever and motivated and energetic; I just have to find the right way to convey the info quickly and efficiently.

Tidbits--Bad News and Good

SUMMARY: Assorted brief items

I'll start with the bad news and work into the better news and mere statuses:

• Awful dog news number one: my instructor stepped on her teeny weeny (really teeny weeny) Sheltie last night and broke his leg. This is the third time that this dog has had a broken leg in his short life (he's maybe 2? 3?). He had just finally healed enough to get through enough training to start competing...and now this. And we think we have a rough life when the dog can't make the weave entry. Argh. My heart aches for Nancy (and the dog).


• Awful dog news number two: JJ (photo here and another here) the cattle dog is in the hospital in Florida (where he now lives). JJ was one of our teammates at Nationals two years ago, and his handler, Eric, has been a friend for a very long time (JJ and Jake used to run so similarly and we had a friendly competition to see who beat whom by what fraction of a second). He was in a dog fight, the wounds got infected, the regular vet seems to have put him on fluids and antibiotics and said let's watch it and wait. Frantic phone call to vet out here, who directed them to the University of Florida at Gainesville, 130 miles away, where they discovered that he was in renal failure. But have aggressively cleaned out the wounds and are treating and condition is...guarded. Everyone keep your fingers crossed.


• Had MRI on my knee end of the day yesterday. Probably won't know anything until next week (they said 2-3 days to get to the doctor...I'll start calling tomorrow afternoon & pestering them).


• Worked Tika in class last night. (Didn't go last week because knee was bothering me a bit that day AND it started raining slightly, so didn't want to be moving on wet grass.) Nothing involving running. Aside from her usual really annoying habit in class of going off to sniff at things, or stopping in the middle of a tunnel to sniff (thank goodness she never does this in competition), she got slower and slower as the evening wore on. I tried to treat things like gambles: lots of sends and outs, but apparently if they're not preceded by a hard-driven handler running her head off, it's not inspirational (or it's confusing). So I can do it in my yard standing still in the middle, but not in class. But my knee felt fine. (I was also very careful about what I did and how.)


• Worked Boost in class today, more than last week. Again, tried not to break into anything more than a calm, collected walking stride, although once or twice I dared speed up ever so little bit. It's hard to run a fast dog without moving! But the courses and drills today in fact did NOT require a lot of movement on my part, and (except for the contacts, where she slowed down a bunch), she did better at driving around the courses than Tika did. We made more mistakes than Tika and I do, and those DANG weaves that she can't seem to do all 12 of (skips poles randomly) in class--although the last couple of sets she did nicely, not superfast but accurately--she got lots of praise and play. But the one full course we worked she looked great! And my knee still feels fine. So I'm very optimistic. (And everyone yelled at me every time it looked like I was even thinking about trying to run a couple of steps.)


• Have found a way to get Jake to play in the yard again: One of my old tug-n-treats. Don't know why I didn't think of this before (well...because he never needed food motivation to play before! Any toy--or object--would do!). That's three days in a row now, twice a day, and he chases and brings it back and plays tug of war, and except for one treat at the beginning to get him going each time, I don't even have to use the food! I'm very pleased. (I also tie the other 2 dogs up so they can't interfere, which uses even more time out of my day because I can't run them all simultaneously, but at least he's moving. Which is good, because he's put on about 10% more weight...)

Good News on Animal Rescues During Disasters

SUMMARY: Katrina sparks some good work

For those of us who watched in horror as pets were left behind to die during the Katrina disaster, even when it would have made as much or more sense to take the animals with the people--or who read about our fellow agility-club members and friends' exploits while putting their lives here on hold to go there to help with animal rescue-- it's good news to hear that now pets must be included in disaster rescue plans:

Article from SFGate.com

If you want to read our teammates' harrowing reports from Louisana as they worked to save pets in Katrina's aftermath, go here (reports are in reverse chronological order, so click the Archives link for Sept 2005 on the right and scroll down to the bottom there to start at the beginning). Note that I found many of them to be so disturbing that I couldn't read them in their entirety.

But, in the space of a year's distance, one of our volunteer club members just filed this report:

It has been a year this week since I traveled with friends to help with the animal rescue efforts in New Orleans. Since the day I returned I have planned this thank you letter to the many people who donated money to fund that trip. It might have appeared that I had forgotten it, but that is not, by far, the case. I decided when I returned that a simple thank you was not enough, I wanted to give each of you some insight or profound wisdom or lesson or meaning that might grow out of that mess over time. I have waited the year and can wait no longer, the task I wanted to complete lays somewhere between impossible and impractical. To share all that has grown out of the mess of New Orleans in my head and heart now will fill a book. What I can do, stealing from the organizations that sponsor suffering children, is give you this very special list. This list is each animal that my partners Jill Moran, Wendy Volgelgesang and I personally rescued from homes, plus one more that I just have to include. Remember it was three weeks after the storm. THE FIRST: At the very first door I opened my thought was “nothing can be alive in here” then I saw two yellow eyes in the far corner that seemed to be about 4 &1/2 feet off the ground. I ran out and called to Jill “there is a REALLY BIG dog in here”. It took us some time to find him, he was very scared. Jill used the numbers I got off a note in the kitchen to find the owner weeks after we got back to California. He was a boxer mix owner by Dorothy who was in a nursing home. Her family loved the dog and got him back. He was not that big. SECOND: A homeless man who was hiding in the abandoned city asked us to take a brindle pit bull pup he had found, we did. THIRD: A DUCK! “Should we take him?” “How the hell should I know”? This job came with no training. The debate ended with the fact that there was no living vegetation anywhere. You helped save one duck. FOURTH: Black Puppy with a long curly coat, very young under four or five months. “What did he eat?” This house was the worst by far we had seen: imagine a doll house rolled several times then the contents coated with something like oil that stank beyond belief. This house changed us. I had wanted to leave after noticing a parrot in a cage on a four foot stand that had drown. Again I thought “nothing could have lived in here”. When Jill insisted on checking one more time and found him under a bed I knew we had to search every inch of every house. I never again thought that we would not find them alive, even when we didn’t. FIFTH: Black Chow: This dog was hanging around outside of the address we had on the list. We had no idea if he belonged there or not. He was very aggressive and hard to catch. We decided that he would be better off left there with lots of food so we let him go. Then we decided he would be better off coming in so we had to re-catch him. Many choices were not easy, especially when it came to all the strays. SIXTH AND SEVENTH: “Chocolate” a feisty Chihuahua mix and “Carmel” a little spaniel mix. We were often flagged down when we happened to see the odd human. They would tell us of a dog they just saw running or of a pet they could hear but not get to. These were often city workers. This lady was lucky enough to get into her home, but she was worried about her Aunties dogs that lived around the corner. The window was broken so the dogs were able to run in and out. They were very hard to catch dashing in and out of that damn window. All of the family members were living in shelters. The dogs were taken in but I’m not sure what happened to them. EIGHTH: Yellow Lab mix, this poor dog could not walk well at all and was laying in a drive- way. He was happy for the food and water. We took him with us. NINTH: A Black Shepard mix ran right up to Wendy when she got out of the car, “I’d like to get out of here, please”! Inside the house a tan Shepard mix was found in an upstairs bathroom. Wendy worked long after we got home to reunite “Solja” with his family. One of the shelter volunteers adopted the black Shepard at Wendy’s urging, they let Wendy know a few weeks ago that they still have and love her. TENTH: This very sweet orange tabby was in a house that was full of dead cats, the yard too. I just can’t figure how he fared so well when the others didn’t. ELEVENTH Black Kitten about 7 months old, stray in good shape walking down the side walk complaining bitterly. TWELVETH: This house with no damage to it was on our list BUT it had a note saying not to go in, that the dog was fine, but the city had been re-evacuated a few days before because of hurricane Rita and the note had no date. We made the choice to break in, the little Chihuahua mix had no food or water. We left the dog with a ton of food and water, feeling sure that this part of the city would return first, as before. THIRTEENTH: Mexico Street, a second story flat without any damage, small Min Pin mix with a long coat, I have a photo of this dog and tried for weeks to contact family from numbers I got from the house, no luck. FOURTEENTH: Yellow Pit Bull, a meter maid flagged down our marked car. She could hear a dog in the house. Workmen had been throwing food into a window but she was bone thin. She was the happiest to see us of all the dogs we rescued. FIFTHTEENTH: “How much is that doggie in the window” Jill and I started singing at the same moment. The address had a tiny white Pomeranian displaying herself on window sill, she might as well have been waving a white flag. She changed her mind when we broke in and was very hard to corner. As thin and weak as she was I’m surprised she could move. “Snowball” is one of the happiest stories there is, when we called her owner they did not believe us, they had already had several false calls. When Jill described the house and said “your fish are still a live “ they knew it was their girl. I was lucky enough to meet this family and see the reunion. “We will never ever leave you again”. SIXTEENTH: “Muffin”, we could hear her barking the moment we pulled up, but we could not get in. We did more damage to that house trying to get that dog than the storm did. We finally just literally beat the wall down. The dog looked so good we almost didn’t take her… “someone must be coming here”. Not so… The owner cried when I told him we had her… “how fat was she” I asked, “VERY” he said. Not so any more! This dog was featured on an Animal Planet Reunion show. That TV program was the first time I saw Clarence and Betty and their son and they got to see Jill and I too. SEVENTEETH: This little dog was not afraid at all, came right up to us. Filthy and stinky but he wasn’t embarrassed at all! When we called his owners they said “We went home and got our dog last week, saw that one in our house then but never saw him before”. We don’t know how he got there but we know he got cleaned up and came home on the plane with Wendy and I. She found him a wonderful foster home and searched for his family for months. On the plane we named him “Lefty”, because he was and I am! His new family adores him and his name is now Biscuit. Plus one more….. We did not rescue Baby Girl but I can’t leave her out. She was in our kennel area and I was the only one that could walk her. She was just a nervous wreck, you know how Shepards can be. After we started going into the city to rescue I no longer worked in the kennel barns. I would walk Baby as late as 11:00 when we got back in, she would always be very dirty by then. I kept trying to call her owners (their number was on her cage) to tell them that she was not coping. When I went out one morning she was gone, shipped to where ever. I saved her number and Wendy kept track of her, she ended up BY CHANCE ALONE at a shelter near Wendy in the San Diego area, Wendy visited her and facilitated the reunion with the family…. like so much that we saw it was stranger than fiction. This is where your donations went, to these animals that might have otherwise died, you did a great thing, thank you so very much. Please forward this to anyone that you know that donated to this effort, I do not know where many of the donations came from. Sincerely, Sandy Rogers

Waiting...and Missing...

SUMMARY: MRI scheduled; friends have great weekend

Despite the orthopedist's dire predictions about how hard it would be to get an MRI appointment, I called first thing this morning and got an appointment for Wednesday afternoon. Maybe I just got lucky, but I'll take lucky. Now--it's just waiting until then, and then after that, waiting for "about a week" for the doctor to get the results.

My back is holding up fine today, and I've had no diazepam (valium) or hodrocodone (codeine/vicodin) since yesterday morning. So that's one thing out of the way again (I hope).

I've heard that this weekend's competition ran for almost 12 hours both days (that's not counting getting set up and initial walkthroughs and such)--that's a VERY long day, and I know my knee couldn't have managed it. So in that sense, I guess I'm glad I didn't go. BUT three of my friends who have been working for what seems like ages on the last leg(s) for their championships ALL finished this weekend--Jasmine the Huberhound (who was supposed to be our pairs partner this weekend, but we'll try again in 2 weeks), Scully the Princess (aka Little Black Dog) (with whom we've traveled and shared hotel rooms a lot), and Brenn the Border Collie (one of our two teammates for this year's Nationals Team Tournament, and with whom Tika earned a Novice Pairs leg, an Advanced Pairs leg, although has yet to get a Masters Pairs leg with...). And I missed them all! All those months (well, I don't know how long, but it seems like forever) standing unobtrusively on the sidelines, keeping my fingers crossed--and I missed them all.

I just about jumped out of my chair in excitement at the news. It's quite a thrill to have anyone finish a championship, and even more so for a friend to, and even more so for three in one weekend... I'll just have to jump up and down and yell and scream the next time I see them. Which will, I hope, be in 2 weekends.

I was able to walk around this weekend (still--have been all week--) at the grocery store and mowed the lawn (carefully making turns) and across the malls to two movies, but still, walking not nearly at my normal pace, and trying not to favor the one leg. But the weather is gorgeous again today and I don't even have to be on drugs to appreciate that.

Now, back to my exercises and trying to find things to do to keep the dogs mentally and physically active and in good training form. Without being able to run--or nuthin'. I set up a jump bar this morning, stepped one step backwards, and the knee popped again. Hurt for about 15 seconds, then faded rapidly away to its normal state. Argh.