Good News/Bad News

SUMMARY: To start the year running, I've got good news and bad news. And more good news. Etc.

Gratuitous dog photo: Dogs love riding in the car around the neighborhood when they don't have to be in crates.

• Good news: My house appraised for much more than I thought it might in this market.
• Bad news: That means my property taxes will keep going up, not down like so many other people's.
• Good news: That might mean that it's a shoo-in for my refi application to go through. Just waiting to hear when closing should be--I think--

• Good news: Paid off the last 73 cents on MUTT MVR last week!
• Bad news: It's wayyyy overdue for its xxx,000 mile check-up.
• Good news: Passed its smog check again.

• Good news: Tika has been running around like a lunatic without her bootie and no signs of a sore foot. Ran her two runs (jumpers courses with weaves) and she was fine. Haven't tried contacts again yet.
  
• Bad news: She continues to look, every once in a while, like she's sore for a few minutes or more.
• Good news: It goes away again. But I wish I knew--our next trial is in just under 2 weeks, and she's signed up for a day of agility.

• Good news: Boost loves doing agility.
• Bad news: In class last week, after we've done virtually no agility for 3 weeks, she popped out of the weaves EVERY time at the 10th pole as I moved away from her. Instructor said, well, I had to support in in N following ways, and I was maybe rude and said, no, I don't have to, this is why we practice weave distractions down to the bone at home until I can't get her to pop for any reason.
• Good news: When I finally just picked her up, carried her off the field, and put her away until the next run--then the next time, she did the weaves all the way through.

• Bad news: Shattered tooth down into the root. Happy New Year! The dental surgeon I had to go to to get it excavated said I didn't *quite* win the prize for the most pieces of tooth to be dug out.
• Good news: Didn't hurt before, hurt afterward more than I had hoped but less than I had feared, and only for that first evening, and it's been fine ever since.
• Bad news: I dread finding out how much an implant is going to cost. No dental insurance.

• Good news: Doctor says, Those things? They're harmless. They're called ruby spots (cherry angiomas).
• Bad news: Yeah, you'll probably keep getting more. Yeah, they can get bigger.
• Good news: Can burn them off with liquid nitrogen. [Like warts, I guess.]
• Bad news: THAT's not a fun procedure. And it can scar. Either way, I'm going to end up looking like a giant polkadot by the time I'm 100.
• Good news: Remind myself: they're harmless.
  

Tika sees another dog while on leash:

And, Oh Yeah, Sunrise

SUMMARY: Tuesday morning across the big field

Gotta Love January in San Jose

SUMMARY: Photos from my yard.

52 Weeks for Dogs, week 1

SUMMARY: A photography challenge

I've been accepted into the Flickr group 52 Weeks for Dogs. The challenge is to post a different photo of the same dog every week for an entire year, stretching your skills as a photographer, because there are SO many dogs and SO many photos of them. Fellow agility blogger Many Muddy Paws got me into this; Mutts and a Klutz are also new members this year. They've stopped accepting people with Border Collies this year because there are so many already! But I'm going to use Tika this year in any event; she's getting on in years (well--9 in February--) and I think I tend to take more photos of Boost.

Here's my first week's photo:

Vacation in the Snow

SUMMARY: Do we look happy, or what?

Dogs can't wait to get back to running amok.

Tika's Happy Toe

SUMMARY: Update on Tika's toe: Doing great!

Somewhere over a week ago, I put the doggie door back in so that Tika could go in and out on her own again. No sign of problems with the toe. (Just a problem with Boost whom I spent 2 weeks unintentionally teaching to tap at the door when she wanted to go out or in. Now guess who taps ALL THE TIME even though the doggie door is now available once again!)

I'd been putting a little bootie on her left front foot whenever we were out in the yard, and I continued to do so. Then earlier this week I started letting her run and chase the toy when we go out to play, instead of holding her collar while Boost chased it, like we've been doing for weeks now. (And, yes, that was as much fun as it sounds.)

And the toe was fine. So we went to the park and played frisbee with the bootie on. (The bootie on tika's foot, not on the frisbee or not the frisbee on tika's foot...) And the toe was fine.

This weekend we went up to the mountains and Thursday we played a bunch in the snow and she was SO happy butt scrunched under leaping ears back running running running grabbing my feet, with bootie on. And the toe was fine.

With much ecstatic growling and tugging:

Then on Friday we hiked for about 3 miles in the snow, and her bootie came off after about 1/4 mile and I decided fagedaboudit so she was unbootied. And she ran ran ran happy foot grabbing happiest. And the toe was fine.

 

Then Saturday we hiked over 6 miles on sometimes extremely icy sharp cold snow. She slowed down quite a bit but so did Boost. And the toe was fine!

I'm thrilled. Happy new toe year!

Taj MuttHall Year In Review: 2009

SUMMARY: Statistics and observations for the year.

Trials competed in: 16. My lowest number since 2000 (with a high of 23 in 2003). So made some progress on my vow to do less agility and more of The Rest of Life.

• CPE: 4 trials, one of which was only 1 day. Tika didn't participate in 2 because she was sore. Boost didn't participate in one because she was sore.
• USDAA: 12 trials, one of which was only 1 day.

Runs: 270

• Tika: 139, 76 of them Qs
• Boost: 131, 30 Qs
• CPE: 42, 32 Qs
• USDAA: 228, 74 Qs

Tika titles earned:

• GCH-Silver (Gamblers Champion silver, 25 Qs in championship)
• TM-Platinum (Tournament master platinum, 50 Qs with at least 10 in each tournament class)
• SACH-Silver (Standard champion silver, 25 Qs)
• PR3 - Performance3 Relay (equals RM in championship, 5 Qs)
• ATD - Accomplished Tournament Dog (equals TM in championship, 10 Qs with at least 2 in each of the 3 tournament classes)
• PK3 - Perf 3 Snooker (equals SM)
• JCH-Silver (Jumpers Champion silver, 25 Qs)
• ADCH-Silver (equals 5 ADChs -- 25 Qs in each of 5 regular classes plus tournaments)
• PG3 -  Perf 3 Gamblers (equals GM)

Boost titles earned:

• CPE CL4-S (strategy games, level 4)
• RCH (relay champion--10 Qs)
• GM (gamblers master--5 Qs)
• SAM (standard agility master--5 Qs)
• TM (Tournament master--10 Qs with at least 2 in each of the 3 tournament classes)
  

Notes:

• Tika earned all those P3 titles only between March and September, moving gradually into Perf as she completed silver in each Championship classs.
• After only 6 months in Performance, Tika is just one Standard Q away from her PD3 (MAD equivalent) and actually needs only 3 standards and 4 Jumpers for her APD (ADCH equivalent).
  
• Tika qualified for Nationals in all three tournaments (Steeplechase, Grand Prix, and Team)--in BOTH championship and Performance!
• Of Tika's 6 performance Snooker Qs so far, 5 have been Super-Qs.
• Boost qualified in Steeplechase 3 times this year--which is 3x more than she had qualified in her entire preceding agility career. ( I mean, before 2009, she had only ever qualified once.)
  
• Boost might hold the record for the most consecutive Masters Jumpers runs with no Q (36). But we keep coming very close--might get some someday!
  

Buster Cubes cracked open: 1 (as of this morning. Congratulations, butthead Boost.)

PVP Silver Team

SUMMARY: Photos from Labor Day USDAA Regional

Just got these lovely photos from a friend. This is Tika and her Performance DAM Team (AKA Performance Versatility Pairs) partner, Brenn, with their silver medals after coming out 2nd of 36 teams after 5 rounds at the Regionals. One of the high points of our agility career.

P.S. The shirt I'm wearing is our team shirt from when Tika, Brenn, and Skeeter went to the final round at Nationals in Team a couple of years back. Another high point. And I'm SURE that shirt is why we did so well on this day.

(Thanks, Erika, for the photos.)

Got Animal? Got Agility?

SUMMARY: Agility is not speciesist.

Agility was invented for dogs. Apparently dogs have such a great time doing it that all kinds of different animals want to get into the act. What did all the species of the world *DO* for entertainment before that fateful exhibit in England in the late 1970s?

• Mouse agility
• Horse agility
• Sheep agility 
• Rabbit agility 
• Alpaca agility 
• Cat agility 
• Ferret agility (ferrets are smart, anyone know of ones who've learned to do weaves?)
  
• Goat agility (on a quick search I found goats doing portions of courses, e.g. one doing aframes, one doing a teeter, and this one, but no real longer sequences)
• Guinea pig agility (ok, we're stretching here)
• Gerbil agility gone wrong (wish I could find the original that she referred to)
• Rat agility
  

Added these additional links January 4, 2010 (thanks, you guys, for the suggestions in the Comments on this original post):

• Chicken agility
• More chicken agility
• Goldfish agility
• Parrot agility
• Bearded dragon lizard agility
  

Thinks I haven't found:

• Pig agility (one pig doing one jump, not worth a view)
  
• Snake agility
• Ostrich agility
• Other suggestions or links you've found?
  

Boxing Day Hike

SUMMARY: A-hiking we will go, a-hiking we will go--

The morning after Christmas dawned cold and cloudy, frost on the grass, with rain predicted for the 2:00 hour. I decided to take the Merle Girls for a hike up Coyote Peak, which we haven't done since August, I think. However, as I'm recovering from a cold, we didn't start at the base and go up 1000 feet. Instead, we started on the hunchback between the two Santa Teresa County Park peaks at just under 600 feet. Coyote Peak is at 1150. We took some alternative trails so did some extra upping and downing, so still probably got in 700 or 800 foot cumulative gain over about 3 and a half miles.

On the way up, you can tell it's winter because the hillsides spring to green life after the rains begin.

Boost (and Tika, too) wanted to graze constantly. Really, I do feed them.


The skies looked like they might be thinking about possibly considering getting ready to rain, but nothing imminent.


Boost is such a mama's girl; didn't want to stay within the friend's control even long enough for me to snap a photo.


To the east, Mount Hamilton (at over 4,000 feet) and its observatory moved in and out of clouds and fog.


We made it! I'm not as tired as I thought I might be after three or four weeks with hardly any walking or hiking or agility (between Tika's sore toe and the holidays and all--), and of course the dogs are hardly even breathing heavily.


Compare to the same scene from August (read the post):


I could zoom in on downtown San Jose to our north, but it remained somewhat obscured by overcast and moisture-laden air. Fog hovers over the southern end of San Francisco Bay much to its north.


Someone who'd been here before us had played numerous games of tic-tac-toe in the soil atop the mountain.


I posed the Merle Girls for some nice, green-grass, mountain-backed photos.


Sharing the top of Coyote Peak:


And as we were getting ready to descend, the sun began breaking out from behind the clouds, and Mount Hamilton and Lick Observatory lit up brilliantly against the dark skies behind.


Arachnophobes, watch out for the next photo--as we descended towards the parking lot, my friend asked what was that on Tika's face? A tick, crawling along, looking for some good canine real estate. When we got back to the van, I spent about ten minutes plucking ticks off the dogs (mostly Tika, mostly her legs and face) and tossing them aside downwind--sorry, whoever comes into the parking lot next! Could've gone looking for rocks to crush them, but it was taking long enough to detick as it was.

When we got home, I filled a tiny Dixie cup with alcohol and began combing the dogs for ticks. Most came from Tika (her nice dense soft fur is apparently very attractive to ticks; Boost's sparser, harsher coat apparently doesn't attract or hold them as much). I never stopped finding them--pulled off about 40 over the next hour to hour and a half of constant looking. My back and arms finally just couldn't take it any more. I checked their heads and necks periodically for the rest of the evening, found one or two more each time, until finally the last time I looked I didn't see any *in that area* (which is the most attractive to them), so I called it quits and have kept my fingers crossed. The good thing is that they keep wandering around for hours and hours looking for location location location, so they're very easy to remove the first day, haven't even started trying to bite yet.

We did not have that tick problem back in August. But I was also more careful then about keeping the dogs out of the grass, and this time I not only didn't try, I actually encouraged them to lie there! Doh!

Photos of Holidays Past and Present

SUMMARY: Those were the days, my friend--and so are these.

1970

2009

(The one in the middle here is on the left in the preceding photo.)

1966 - Sam still puppyish

(Me in long blonde hair. Dad in blue plaid shirt.)

1978 - Amber comes home

(Me in long blonde hair.)

1983 - Sheba and Amber

2001 - A rare three-dog Christmas (Jake, Tika, Remington)

2009 - The Merle Girls

1969

(Mom in green, Dad in back.)

2009

(Mom in white, Dad in blue plaid shirt (some things NEVER change!). And these are the sisters and the cousins and they number up by dozens and the aunts!)

Who Eats Better?

SUMMARY: In which we analyze our Christmas goodies.

So, really, who eats better, dogs or us?
These are the doggie treats Tika couldn't keep her saliva off yesterday:

"You will be begging your dog for a taste!" No fooling! *I* start salivating every time I see them sitting on the table. And get this:

There's no liver or pork belly byproducts or anything else dog-like in here. So the big questions are:

• Why was Tika so convinced those were dog treats?
• Can I eat one? I mean, they were a gift TO Tika and Boost from my cousin's dogs, not to me. Would that be thievery? Do I have to ask permission? I know Tika would want them all for herself given a real option.
  

Now, students, compare and contrast to the peopleie treats that Human Mom received:

 

Extra credit: WHAT peopleie treats did Human Mom receive?

Thanks, Santa!

SUMMARY: Do you detect a theme among some of our gifts?

Tika had no trouble at all identifying which one would be more appreciated by Dogs than by Humans. And she'd like to start appreciating as soon as possible, thank you very much.

Christmas at Taj MuttHall

SUMMARY: It's a beautiful morning.

• Frost on the grass that melts the moment it's touched by the sun. The sky is brilliant blue; not a cloud to be seen.
• The Bay Area Air Quality Management District has declared this a Spare The Air Day. We must restrain ourselves from burning that Yule log as long as the weather conditions insist on trapping everything in the valley for us to try to inhale. It's still SO much better than it was 30 years ago.
  
• The Merle Girls took Human Mom for a walk to the park this morning and rejoiced in frisbee in the dew-laden grass until even Boost didn't want to run any more. Tika wore her bootie on her erstwhile sore foot and there's no sign of soreness at all. HOOOOOray.
  

• Gifts are wrapped (although some still don't have ribbons or bows).
• I get to see my WHOLE family this afternoon! Two years in a row--it's a miracle. Might try for another photo if they're actually all in the same building at the same time.
• I say: "Dog bless us, every one."
• Daneen says: "Wreck the halls with Dals and Collies!" (Or: "Wreck the halls with cows on dollies," for those absurdists among you.)
  
• Mallary says: "Hope you're having a great dane!  All the best for the howlidays and the new year!"
• Tracey says: "Fleas Navidog!"
  

Merry Christmas, Happy Belated Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, and the best of everything to all of you.

Best Corgi Christmas Photo Ever

SUMMARY: Just go look.

Corgi channels christmas tree.

Oooh, thanks! many muddy paws for permission to repost it here.

Holiday Music from Taj MuttHall

SUMMARY: Only the best hijacked and misused lyrics from KTMH.

I needn't burst into "Bark us all bow-wows of folly," as Pogo already did that many years ago.

Instead, while shaking and rattling our lovely jolly ball in the yard and listening to the dogs' collar tags jingle, we came up with:

Jingle tags, jingle tags, jingle all the day,
Oh what fun it is to play at tug-of-war this way,
Jingle tags, jingle tags, jingle all the day,
Oh what fun it is to play at tug-of-war this way!

Dashing through the yard with our fav'rite jolly ball,
Running very hard, trying not to fall.
Our bods are lean and lank, have great mobility.
You know what we have to thank--it's dog agility!

Oh, jingle tags (etc.)

OK, back to the drawing board--