Funny, What One Remembers (Or Not)

SUMMARY: Big Qs in (my) history.

I guess some things DO get to be old hat after a while. Especially as agility has been around longer and longer, and there are more and more trials where people can earn Qs, and as I earn more and more titles at higher levels with more dogs.

I can remember so clearly when Jake earned his MAD, landing on the table at the end of the gamble (who uses tables for gambles any more in USDAA? gone!). I floated for days. People I barely knew rushed over to give me hugs. A MAD was a huge deal back then--for me, because it was my first, and for everyone, because they still weren't all that common.

I remember most of the NADAC Standard run on which he earned his NATCH. I remember thinking that he'd been slow and wasn't sure whether he'd actually made time, so didn't even know whether to celebrate. And I remember that the people at the score table told me to go away and not bother them and shielded the score sheets with their bodies so I couldn't even look over their shoulders, and wouldn't even tell me what the Standard Course Time was so I could compare the run on my video. That's when I decided never to go back to that club's trials. That was up near Placerville, in a beautiful little park whose name I no longer recall. [video appears below, after some delay to think about it, apparently--from 2001. Starts out looking funky but it will display a course map and then our run:]

I also remember clearly the exact gamble on which he earned his ADCH. A gamble that I had been chasing up and down the state, driving hundreds of miles in a weekend to try to get, and I finally got it on a course I didn't walk, right here at one of our own trials on the soccer practice lawn at Cal State Hayward (before it became Cal State University, East Bay).

I remember where I finished Remington's NATCH--also a gamble--up in Eureka at a pleasant site, the only time I went to that trial, desperate for

I remember Tika's first-ever USDAA run, which was a Novice Jumpers run (back when there were Novice and Starters, depending on whether you'd ever titled with a dog before). I halfway remember the whole course. I remember that she was super-fast and knocked a single bar. Since that was back when only Standard was titling in Novice/Starters, Jumpers was time plus faults--and she *still* came in 2nd with the 5-fault bar penalty! That was in the covered arena at the horse park in City of Industry in southern California.

I remember where I finished Tika's ADCh, on a Snooker course at Nunes Agility Field in Turlock, watching Rachel Sanders and her dog once again do our course but much much faster, and thinking that once again we'd be one out of the SuperQs as we had been so often. But then, woo-hoo, turns out everyone else didn't do so well, so we came in (2nd to rachel) but picked up that final Super-Q. (Ah, ha, see the course map and read about it in this blog post ... videos below:)

But the things I DON'T remember these days are telling: Although I thought that Tika took forever to get her first Jumpers Q (ha! maybe 18 nonQs?), I have no recollection at all of where or when it finally came. I have no idea when or where I finished her ADCH-Silver, although I do know it was a Standard Q that she needed. I have no idea where or when or even what class it was when she finished her ADCH all over again in Performance--perhaps because it was coming so easily to us by then. F'rinstance, when she moved to performance, she started getting SuperQs in snooker more often than not. She stopped knocking bars pretty much and started Quing in almost everything all the time (sometimes seemed that way, anyway).

I don't even remember anything about the time, place, or circumstances of her more advanced titles, the bronze performance ADCh, the bronze lifetime, the silver lifetime, dang, not even the gold lifetime although that was only earlier this year! It's all just whipping by, pleasing me, but not with the emotional intensity needed to burn it into my memory banks.

I remember where Boost first earned a Masters Jumpers Q, after more than 40 attempts--at Dixon May Fairgrounds. It completed her MAD, but I was more excited about the simple fact of getting a Jumpers Q. I bought a cake the next day for everyone to share. But i don't remember WHEN it was or anything about the course itself.

Will I remember the course, time, and place of Boost's first-ever Super-Q this last weekend? It was so amazing to me to have finished that course clean, and then for it to be a Super-Q, too. At the moment, it's seared into my brain, but will it be in another year? Or two? or three? I think it might be--the emotional impact was huge. Of course only time will tell.

Meanwhile--thanks, susan P, for this gift of a photo (honoring our Super-Q) from the trial photographer Bamfoto (so typical, one ear inside out and the other flying!):

Faustian Bargains

SUMMARY: Sunday USDAA in Monterey.

Today's first run: Tika in Standard. I send her to the chute and move quickly for a front cross--and there she is right next to me, not in the chute where she's supposed to be. I laugh because she has hardly ever done this, try hard not to be disappointed. She's running fairly well, but slow in places still, so we just run out of the ring so I don't overtax her on an NQing course.

Today's second run: Boost in Standard. A refusal on a jump right in front of her AND a bar down, and really it was such a nice course for us, I thought.

Today's third run: Tika in Gamblers. The gamble is almost a gimmee for my dogs. Not sure how many get it, but it's got to be well over half the dogs. Tika has a nice opening, although she's kind of trotting through tunnels again and although the last 5-pointer that I was sure I heard the judge call wasn't on the scribe sheet. Not that it mattered, because I sent her in the gamble over a jump to a tunnel, very simple... but, she abruptly turned back to me at the tunnel entrance--something else she never does--sees me still standing there in position, spins right back around and completes the gamble perfectly, but because of the refusal it's an NQ. I'm bummed. Don't know why she did that.

Today's fourth run: Boost in Gamblers. A gorgeous opening until the teeter, where I am moving away laterally and she jumps off the middle. I put her back on and she stays on but only past the pivot and pivots to 2o/2o on the side towards me without ever actually getting into the yellow down contact. I put her back on, despite the fact that our whistle has blown, and insist that she go to the end and do a proper teeter. Since she normally has a lovely, lovely teeter and this isn't like her but I don't want her to think it's OK. Then we go do a perfect gamble but of course way over time.

Today's fifth run: Tika's Snooker. I am kinda desperate to get some top ten points in snooker so that we can show up on the Top 25 chart, at least. Four reds are optional, but the closing is so fast that I know I'll need to do 4 reds for superQing/placing potential. But I find a nice fast course with two 5s and two 6s (the #7 is 2 sets of weaves, and with tika being slower and boost missing weave entries, I avoid them in the opening). It is *possible* that we can do well with that course, although 22" performance is tough! I lead out, call her over the first jump, send her into the first tunnel--and she doesn't come out. I call her. Nothing. The judge goes over and looks in. I walk over and look in. Tika pops her head back out of the same end she went in, looking I think a little puzzled.

Damn tunnels today with Tika! We've now spent so much time on that that there's no way I have time for 4 reds in the opening, and then I just blow a simple move on #4 in the closing and we don't even Q.

It's at this point that I'm feeling sick to my stomach. Seems like every weird thing is happening. It's as though the agility gods have heard my whining and have decided to show me how bad it can get with just really stupid stuff. I really am trying to suppress the overwhelming urge to scratch from the rest of the day and go home. If we weren't short-handed at the score table and I was getting comped for being the table czar, I might have done it right then and there.

This was the one thing I hated about speech & debate in high school and college--I loved it, loved the competition, but felt sick to my stomach so often, and sometimes even tossed my cookies over it. Almost never feel that way about agility. But today I did.

Today's sixth run: Boost's Snooker. Using same plan as for Tika. Because the time is generous, I'm pretty sure that my course will not be in Super-Q range with only 5s and 6s in the opening because other people will be doing some 7s. This is our 66th attempt at Master's Snooker, and we don't have a Super-Q yet, and I expect this to be no different. It's doable *if* I can run run run (and I did run better today than yesterday, another frustrating thing that seems to contradict everything going wrong) AND if she keeps her bars up, which she has failed to do on 45 previous occasions. And then there are the TWO sets of weaves at #7 in the closing, and with her dismal weave entries yesterday, what are the odds?

We're off and running, and, OMG, short story, she gets through AN ENTIRE snooker course with NO refusals (>24 previously), NO runouts (>8 previously), NO knocked bars (>45 previously), NO missed weave entries (>11 previously), NO off courses (8 previously), and NO really stupid handler errors (7 previously, including yesterday). It's the first good thing to happen all day, but it's a very good thing and I start to feel better, although it's a pity that such a nice run has pretty much no chance of being a Super-Q. It's the only masters snooker course we've ever completed successfully.

An hour or two after the class is over, I wander by to see how much we missed the Super-Qs by.

And, well--we are #2 of 37 dogs! 2nd place! And that's very definitively a Super-Q! A real super-Q! OMG OMG OMG. I'm telling everyone and bursting into tears every time.

The excitement of that gets me through most of what's left of the day, except here's where I have this weird feeling:

Did I ever say, or even THINK, "I'd give anything to have Boost earn a Super-Q"? Like, even have Tika fail to Q, blow completely simple gambles, have my tunnel-loving dogs pull off very simple tunnels--more than one, my perfect-teeter dog screw up the teeter twice only to taunt me with a perfect gamble that doesn't count, have Tika get slower and weirder, and all the rest? Did I ever say that? Because if I did, I'm sorry, and I'll try never to say it again. Because apparently I didn't know who was listening.

Anyway, deals with the devil aside-- the rest of the day goes like this:

Tika Qs in Grand Prix but is slow, slow, slow--still places 3rd but a full 7 seconds behind the winner.

Boost--the Grand Prix is another course that is SO DOABLE, but once again she knocks a bar and turns back to me at a perfectly obvious jump right in front of her, honestly, if she would just keep going in a straight line, she'd have to go over it!

Tika Qs in Relay with no weird mishaps and she and her partner actually place 2nd, so that's nice.

And our relay half is just about the simplest half I've ever seen; it is MADE for me & Tika & Boost. Simple simple simple. And within those 9 obstacles, boost STILL manages to achieve a knocked bar, a refusal, and a runout. AuggghhhH! Her partner then Eed, but it might have been in trying to make up for our 15 faults, which was really impossible to do.

Tika Qs in Jumpers, so we're ending the day better than we started, but a really wide turn where I forgot a front cross drops us to 3. Still slow in the tunnels but the jumping looks pretty nice, thank goodness.

Boost's Jumpers--a really nice flowing course that I really haul butt through to get in all the important front crosses, and we have NO refusals and NO runouts and a really fast time--but, sigh, 2 bars down, just to taunt me that on a smooth run where I'm where I need to be, it still all goes to pieces.

Summary of weekend

In case you weren't taking notes.
Tika--no wins all weekend, but overall not quite as bad as it felt at times:

• Sat Gamblers, Q, 2nd of 11
• Sat Jumpers, E
• Sat Steeplechse, Q, 5th of 8
• Sat Steeplechase Rd 2, 3rd of 4
• Sat Snooker, Q, 3rd of 12
• Sat Standard, Q, 2nd of 8
• Sun Standard, E
• Sun Gamblers, NQ, 5th of 8 (?)
• Sun Snooker, NQ, 7th of 10
• Sun Relay, Q, 2nd of 7
• Sun Jumps, Q, 3rd of 10
• Sun Grand Prix, Q, 3rd of 6

Boost:

• Sat Gamblers, NQ, 18th of 35
• Sat Jumpers, E
• Sat Steeplechse, Q, 19th of 42
• Sat Steeplechase Rd 2, 15th of 19
• Sat Snooker, NQ, 32nd of 37
• Sat Standard, E
• Sun Standard, NQ, 21st of 33
• Sun Gamblers, NQ, (didn't note placement)
• Sun Snooker, Super-Q! 2nd of 36
• Sun Relay, E
• Sun Jumps, NQ, (didn't note placement)
• Sun Grand Prix, NQ, 15th of 34

Weather Was Lovely Today

SUMMARY: USDAA trial Saturday.

Score table was chaotic. Don't know why it felt so much more that way. I had a new person on the score table--I'm loving this getting more people interested in scoring & volunteering for it--and she's working out really well and I love her attitude, but there are so many little bits and pieces for each class that you just don't know until someone explains it, and I was running two dogs and, well, I dunno, we were behind most of the day and so I never got a chance to write down my results.

Scribbled some notes on course maps and glanced at some of the results, but that's it.

So here's what I know:

Human Mom having trouble really running; legs seem so heavy. But knee and hips are feeling pretty good, thank goodness! As usual, vowing to get back to doing a little more running other than just at trials and in class, and as usual I think I'll probably end up not doing it. We'll see--

Tika was slow again, like 2 weeks ago. In so many ways. Tiptoeing through the Tunnels--I'd be standing there waiting for her to come out. Weaves pokey and kind of awkward-looking. Wouldn't go down on the table in standard for the longest time, and then slowly. In steeplechase Round 2, STOPPED halfway down the Aframe and just stood there. Never never never has she done that. And, just, I was waiting for her so often. She definitely had fast bits, but it's not the Tika I'm familiar with.

Worried about all the things it could be. Something's sore? Muscles tightened up (she got a good massage from Pawssage at the end of the day and LOVED it)? I'm also wondering, vision or hearing issues? (With Jake, I started having weird results on course that I was able to finally attribute to one or the other or both.) And trying not to be scared that it's something else more evil.

She runs full out when I throw a toy, so if it's painful, it's not in a way that affects that.

She has been more reluctant to jump up into her crate in MUTT MVR for a while. I attributed that to work that was done on it a year or so ago and they did something on the bumper so it was slippery, and she slipped a couple of times jumping up to it, but it hasn't been like that in a while. Has not always jumped up immediately onto the bed at night.

Anyway, I need to look into maybe a ramp for the van and setting up "steps" onto the bed (like I did for Jake--took him a few times to figure out that he was supposed to use them instead of jumping on & off, and after that he just always did so without further prompting from me).

Tika Qed in Standard, but the slooooowwww table down dropped us (I think) to at least 3rd place.

She Qed in Snooker but the slow tunnels killed us--I did 3 of the same C-shaped one and she was very slow all 3 times and we were one jump away from finishing when the whistle blew, so dropped to 3rd instead of 1st. I really wanted those top ten points to try to at least show up on the Top 25 list, but it was not to be.

Slow in Gamblers--so again, on the UP side of the teeter when the first whistle blew so didn't get the points, which dropped us from 1st to I dunno, lower; she did, as usual, get the gamble like an old pro.

Her Jumpers wasn't all that fast, and maybe I was thinking more about that than about the course when I sent her into the wrong end of the tunnel. Judge had to explain why he blew the whistle.

Steeplechase she was clean and Qed in Round 1, but was far behind the 1st-place dog; in Round 2, placed 3rd mostly because a couple of the higher-ranked dogs scratched and one E-ed. Wow, another $8!

And Boost--missing weave pole entries like they're poison, plus bars, refusals, and runouts. I'm not seeing any improvements there.

We had 6 sets of weaves today and she ran past the entry on 5 of them. And I was making sure she had a good line! It's like she's back at square one again, like she just doesn't understand that she has to go IN THE FIRST POLE.

So much for intense weave pole practice at home. I'd been working with 6 poles because I didn't want to overdo the stress, but I've always thought that she has more problems entering 12 than 6, so maybe it's time for a week or 2 of intense 12-pole practice. Sighhhhhhh.

Gamblers: Missed weave entry in opening, so didn't get all the points I'd planned so can't even brag about high opneing points; in closing didn't send out.

Jumpers: I was late on a front cross between 3 and 4 and she went off course, followed by a couple of knocked bars, refusals, and runouts in the next half dozen obstacles, so I left the course.

Standard: Missed weave entry. In a sequence where I couldn't keep up with her, she turned back to me instead of TAKING THE JUMP IN FRONT OF HER. Some bobbles. At the end, I abandoned the real course with the goal of having a nice jump-jump CORRECT finish, but she ran past the jump instead, ARGH!

Snooker: I was not having a good handler day; forgot to walk Snooker, invented a course from the sidelines, and Boost started out nicely but I got whistled off because a jump that I thought was a "red jump" wasn't; it was just a jump that happened to be red, doh, I could kick myself.

Steeplechase: In Round 1, Ran past weave entry, turned back to me instead of taking a jump in front of her, but miraculously we Qed. Then I forgot that she Qed (she barely squeaked in) because it hadn't been a lovely run, so I walked Round 2 for Tika but not for Boost and didn't really have a good idea how to handle it with her. Well, didn't matter, she missed the dang weave entries again. One was my fault but not the other one. Plus, yeah, NOT TAKING THE JUMP IN FRONT OF HER.

Anyway, it was a fine day weatherwise, a bit breezy but not unbearably so, sunny after the morning fog burned off. Good people all around me. But not my most favorite day agility-wise with either dog.

Again trying to convince myself that I should just not enter boost in any more USDAA trials if I'm not going to work harder to fix things, but then I think, "what will I do with her all day if I'm running Tika?", and then after the last couple of weekends with this slowness, I'm thinking, "Maybe I shouldn't be running Tika," and then I'm heading towards the depressing thought that that would be the end of my agility career.

So, on that cheery note--dogs came home, had dinner, CRASHED. OUT. BIG. TIME. Neither one has moved as much as a whisker in the last hour. And I'm ready to do the same and then try again tomorrow to have a better day.

More Agility, Coming Right Up!

SUMMARY: USDAA, then CPE.

Lots of agility in July: Three days the first weekend, one weekend off, then two more weekends--like a huge multicourse agility feast, the food keeps coming with barely time to clear one's palate.

USDAA

This weekend, another 2 days of USDAA (I didn't sign up for the bonus classes this evening). Down in Monterey (isn't there a song like that?), 80-minute drive from here. That's another early morning two days in a row.

Title Chase

Let's see--titles?

Boost STILL needs 3 super-Qs and 3 Jumpers Qs for her ADCH. Coming up on four years and counting since we moved into Masters, and only 2 Jumpers Qs and no Super-Qs to show for it. Just the same 5 Qs standing in our way FOR. EVER.

Tika? Two Snooker Qs for her performance silver (25 Qs--took 4.5 years to do it in Masters, now not even 2.5 years later she's almost there in Performance). Two Jumpers for her performance silver, too (5 years to do it in Masters, now not even 2 years and she's almost there again).

In the bigger Tika picture: 79 Qs until her lifetime platinum (500 Qs)! We might actually get there before she retires! It would be nice. But I'm guessing that will be another year, and if she's slowing down--well--I'll call it as we go.

Also, only 2 DAMs and 7 any additional tournaments to her Performance Tournament Platinum (50 Qs), which was the only thing she also went Platinum in Championship. We could actually do that this year, I think--or, wait, do we have two more DAMs this year? One at the regional--huh, not sure.

Attitude

As I was preparing for this weekend, i found that I wasn't actually looking forward to it. You've heard this all before. Maybe it's the early mornings, or the drive, or the whole weekend vanishing again. Or maybe it's because I'm just tired--haven't been sleeping well this week, not sure why--Maybe I have so much to do in general, maybe because yet another friend's dog died suddenly of hemangiosarcoma, and I'm scared all over again. Or maybe it's possibly tied to:

CPE

Charining next weekend's CPE. We went through a couple or 3 weeks where entries were so low we were afraid for our [financial] lives, but now we have more than we had expected (this is a very good thing). So we put off some things because we didn't know what our finances would look like, now it's rush rush rush to fill in the gaps. Thank Dog I have a co-chair who's doing a lot of stuff, too. I keep thinking I'm forgetting something REALLY IMPORTANT even though I've been over the checklists and have been trying to keep the whole committee involved.

I wasn't ever going to do this again--chaired a few CPE trials early on--except that I found that I really wanted one close to home, and we didn't have other people ready to do it yet.

I'll be very glad when it's done. And next year, maybe, hopefully, there'll be a crew happy enough to put it on and I can go back into chairperson retirement.

But I'm definitely looking forward to the CPE trial itself. Maybe it's because (a) it's only 20 minutes from my house and (b) Boost can still earn Qs and titles with faults. And both dogs usually come home with some nice ego-boosting (or ego-tikaing) wins as well.

Back to Attitude

I dunno, I like the agility when I'm there. Most of the time. But I've been so enjoying the weekends when I'm not doing agility. And then, like the other weekend, when Tika was so slow (for tika) on so many runs, is she getting "old" finally? At 10 and a half, she's entitled to do that, it's just that she's done so well for so long. And in USDAA, even in Performance, ya gotta be fast to do well (by my own warped definition of "well").

Anyway, this weekend: I'm doing it, I'll be there, I'll have a good time, visit with friends (when not at the score table, which is somewhat easier to do with the new computer scoring we've been doing with our own Karey-Made Software), play with my dogs, be outside in lovely weather. Really, sounds perfect, doesn't it?

Hope you all have a great weekend doing what you love.

Fast Happy Dogs

SUMMARY: Some videos from the USDAA trial.

Certain people were encouraging me to post videos of my weave pole training. Well, I took some, and it's pretty bad. Maybe I'll still post it. But meanwhile I decided to try to upload the 3 measly vids I managed to remember to do out of 32 runs last weekend, and since I do this so seldom, that was 2 hours of time (between waiting for upload from my camera & then upload to youtube, and all the figuring out what I needed to do, picking the part of the video to include,and so on--no captions, no music, dunno how you all have time for that sort of nicety!).

Boost Masters Snooker Saturday

This is just the opening--four reds (numbered obstacles are #4 jump, #6 Aframe twice, and #7 weaves), followed by #3 in the closing because my brain was so focused on getting past the offcourse jump before the tunnel that I forgot to do the correct #2 right after the weaves. You'll hear the video person comment on that.

Of course, BEFORE that, she veers off a jump that's RIGHT IN FRONT of her, then pulls off an Aframe that's RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER. But she does make her weave entry nicely, and keeps her bars up.

Then you'll see how fast she can bounce-run backwards in front of me. And then go find her leashie on the chair.

Tika Masters (p3) Snooker Saturday

I did one fewer reds with Tika in the opening, so it's just the #6 Aframe twice, #7 weaves, and I *remember* to do the #2 jump with her. However, after the #3 tunnel, I attempt a deep serpentine after the #4 jump and I'm very late, kind of in her way, and she knocks the bar. Stuff like this is why we were #4 in the country last year and this year don't even show up in the Top 25 list. Doh.

You can tell that she's happy and feeling good because she grabs my feet at the end. Funny girl.

Boost Masters Standard Saturday

In which we miss the danged perfectly obvious weave entry, thereby negating an otherwise lovely run. She even gets a sharp rear cross right at the end, which normally would be a refusal.

Of course, she also leaves the teeter without waiting for a release, so I have to "down" her so that I can get a couple of steps ahead so she doesn't bounce-run backwards in front of me and get a refusal or runout on the next obstacle. Otherwise, her contacts were nice.

Fashion Police, Come Get Me

SUMMARY: Why I do poorly in agility, I'm sure of it.

It came to my attention last year in agility class that I was the only one--The. Only. One.--with my shirt tucked in. A fluke? I started watching the other classes come and go. NOT ONE of the other gals tucked in their shirts.

OK, well, maybe this is a casual thing for agility and I just didn't get the memo.

Except today, well, I was at this party consisting entirely of agility people. Not quite so casual as the agility field yet not too dressy at all. And, yes, you know what I'm going to say: I was THE ONLY ONE with my shirt tucked in among the female types. Many of the mens tucked in thems shirts (not all, but many). But no, I have somehow missed an entire fashion boat.

But wait, there's more: I carefully, as always, picked socks to match my shirt (which was, of course, tucked in). Guess what. Do other ladies's socks match their shirts? No! Because they weren't wearing socks! Not a single female in that whole group. It's not like I'm wearing socks with birkenstocks or anything nerdy like that; I had real shoes on.

Oh, crap, I'm the only one NOT WEARING SOME KIND OF SANDAL.

At least blue jeans were in ready supply, so I was not completely head to foot wrong.

Maybe if I started dressing right, I'd run my dogs as well as all these other people run theirs. Ya think? Because, remember, in agility, it's all about the clothing.

----
I didn't take my camera in, so I borrowed this photo from Barbara S--just some of the gorgeous, charming, and talented women with their shirts not tucked in--Mary, whose aussie always knows what mary wants her to do and usually gets the highest points of anyone in the gamblers opening, Wendy who runs an astonishingly fast border collie AND an astonishingly fast papillon and keeps up with them, one of the Lauras, who has taught half the people in the universe how to do agility and started her own agility organization, and another Laura, who does amazing agility things with a team of small black kick-yer-ass dogs plus has a kick-yer-ass blog. Also, they are not wearing socks.

Sigh--the follow-up

SUMMARY: Comparisons

See, Boost was going to be my premier agility dog. No more rescues, no more dogs starting off in agility as an adult already. Bought her from a breeder with great parents (all of whom I knew already), got her as a puppy, did everything right from the beginning. Right?

Anyway, it's hard not to compare.

In the 6 trials after Tika's 6th birthday, she Qed in 28 of 63 runs, for a 44% Q rate. That was fairly well balanced--

Gamblers: 4
Jumpers: 5
Relay: 4
Snooker: 3 Super-Qs, 2 regular Qs
Standard: 5

Team Gamblers: 2**
Team Snooker: 1**
Team: 2

Steeplechase: 1
Grand Prix: 2

In the 6 trials after Boost's 6th birthday, she Qed 15 out of 72 runs, for a 21% Q rate. And not quite so balanced:

Gamblers: 2
Jumpers: 0
Snooker: 0 Super-Qs, 3 regular Qs
Relay: 4
Standard: 2

Team Gamblers: 1
Team Jumpers: 1
Team: 2

Steeplechase: 0
Grand Prix: 0

----
**NOTE: This was before individual team events were Qable. But given that she was 2nd or 3rd out of 20 to 40 dogs, I'd say those would safely have been Qs.

Sigh

SUMMARY: Why I'm sometimes discouraged.

Tika's awards from the last two weekends:

Boost's awards from the last two weekends:

Weave Entries (and Exits)

SUMMARY: Some exercises.

Because Boost missed a lot of weave entries last weekend, I decided to work on weave entries with both dogs for a bit. Again. I am so tired of weave entry drills, but it's been long enough now since I really drilled entries that I'm ready to face them again.

Here's how I started.

I added the bonus of having the weaves end with barely two feet between the last pole and a large flower pot, so the dog has to wrap tightly around the last pole to get back to me without popping out early.  It's good to practice this (as we learned in class last night--actually Boost did very well on close-quarter exits and entries).

I want to aim the dog at the first pole because that's what I want her to focus on, not on the gap. That's because there are a lot of gaps but only one first pole. From a distance of 10 feet, of course, I'm not going to be able to ensure that's where she's looking, but it gives her a chance to think about it.

I also make sure that my body and shoulders are facing that first pole. I release and send with my left arm and leg, but don't take more steps towards the poles.

As the dog makes the entry, I turn my body (feet and shoulders) and run parallel to the weaves so that I can toss a quick reward at the end of the poles and so that the dog is used to me moving with her.

Next, I will do the same pattern with the dog on my right. I expect this to be harder.

Next, I will do a similar pattern arcing around the other side of the poles, with the dog first on my right, then on my left.

I intend to repeat similar patterns from different distances. F'rinstance, can I stand right up next to the last pole with the dog on my opposite side and send the dog from there? (So she's going almost paralell the length of the poles back to the beginning.) Can I do it from 30 feet away, not just 10 feet?

I also intend to do it with the dog starting at the end with the flower pot.

I'm doing this with 6 poles because I just don't want to do that many sets of full 12 weaves.

I will next add similar patterns, but instead of going straight to the poles, add a jump in between. Of course this would be from much farther away.  Also probably do it from a tunnel. My goal is to get the dog up to speed so she's going full tilt and has to think and gather to make the entries.

I'll mix it up with doing sets of 12 here and there to keep them used to the longer sets, and I will also try some patterns around the full set of 12. Boost seems to make her entrances better when there are only 6 poles; maybe she is dazzled by all the gaps in a set of 12 poles and can't process where to start.

Day After A Wild and Crazy Agility Weekend

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday.

Not The Best Weekend But Not The Worst, Either

SUMMARY: 3-Day USDAA Summary. Key words: Tika slow, Boost...well...was Boost.

Temps were warm Saturday and Monday but I doubt into the 80s (not >27F), Sunday probably edged into the 80s--there were a couple of hours where I wished that I had taken my shorts with me, but nooo, Ms. Weather Smarty said she didn't NEED no stinkin' sorts for no PRUNEDALE trial and maybe she was a little wrong. Still, by 5:00, we were too cold sitting in the shade for a meeting and moved out into the sun.

Tika Overall

All of that to say that I can't believe that the heat was what made Tika so slow on so many of her runs, but I'm not sure what else it could be. So many factors to consider. Is she a little sore? (Although obviously not so much that she can't run full-speed for the frisbee in the morning and afternoon.) Is she slowing way down because I'm pretty wimpy and can't keep up with her? (Although there were two or 3 runs where I was ahead of her where I didn't expect to be and egging her on.) Is she just bored with agility? (How do you identify ennui in a dog? And anyway, why after 9 years would she suddenly be so been-there-done-that?)

A month ago, there was one run that I remember for sure where she was slow, walking the dogwalk instead of running it. But this weekend, most runs were noticeably not Tika-fast.

I'm not sayin' she's pokey, but she's just not all there. And that really kept us out of placements and Qing identifiably in several runs. Not all of them by any means--I did dumb handler moves in 2 out of the 3 Snooker courses, for example, and mispositioned a front cross in one Standard run before the weaves, pushing her off the correct entry.

In DAM Team, for another example, she has typically Qed in most of the four individual classes. [Note: To Q in a Team individual event, you have to be within 15% of the average of the top 3 dogs.] Before this weekend, Tika had Qed in 24 of 28 Performance Team individual classes.

This weekend--not a single Q in the Team events. It didn't help that there weren't legally enough 22" dogs to Q on their own [USDAA requires at least 7 22" dogs to do that averaging to calculate Qs], so they had to combine us with the much larger and generally faster 16" dogs--so even when Tika placed 3rd (of 6) in two of the events, the average of the fastest 22" and couple fastest 16" combined with Tika's slowness left us Qless (although not clueless, at least. I think).

And in Sunday's gamble, I had what I thought was a winning course by a mile, but that was one where she was painfully slow, didn't make it through the last set of weaves in the opening (which would've won), and another obstacle after that, ending up still Qing but not even placing.

But I am very thankful indeed that Tika did not manifest soreness and I didn't have to scratch her from anything (I was concerned that I'd have to after a couple of the runs on Sunday).

Tika Details

But she remained the amazingly accommodating, experienced dog, handling rough spots with aplomb, doing her weaves (and even her contacts!) independently, and so on.

Out of 16 possible Qs this weekend, she earned 9, including one Snooker SuperQ, Steeplechase, Grand Prix, and the DAM tournament.

Placements (and therefore Top Ten points) were extremely sparse. We competed against about 7-9 dogs Saturday, 5-7 Sunday, and only 5 others in Monday's Team (no top ten points involved in Team, though).

She won Saturday's gamble; she and partner Heath (yay, heath!) won Sunday's Pairs, and she her teammate Maddie (yay, Maddie!) won the DAM relay (first time I've ever won the relay--highest place team relay with any of my dogs was 4th (with Tika in another Performance DAM), so that was cool--but we got nothing for it, not even a ribbon!), but that was it on first places.

Took 2nd in Sunday's Jumpers but 4(!) seconds behind the winning dog; 2nd in Sunday's Snooker for a SuperQ (not lots of points but other dogs crapped out); and 2nd in Steeplechase Round 1.

3rd in Saturday's Jumpers; 3rd in Grand Prix; 3rd in Team Standard and Gamblers but those were distant 3rds.

Knocked more bars than she has been, I think: Bar in Saturday's snooker when I tried a really aggressive serpentine but I was in the wrong place, the first bar in Saturday's Standard, and a bar in Steeplechase Round 2, dropping us to 4th from 2nd fastest.

We Eliminated in Sunday's Standard and I don't know why--I came off the course thinking that we had only a weave entry bobble. Never heard a whistle, and of course that's one class where I didn't go check my scribe sheet right after the run, so nothing to be done about it at the end of the day.

So, for the weekend: 9 of 16 Qs, three 1sts, three 2nds, four 3rds, three 4ths, and four with no placements.

Boost Summary

Still having blatant issues with refusals, runouts, and bars. The big story, though, was missed weave entries! Not sure how many we missed--but they seemed to be mostly better by MOnday, so I hope that was just a brief relapse.

For a while on Saturday, I thought that the work I'd been doing was making a difference, as we had some nice sequences and not TOO much in the way of runouts or refusals (but, yes, bars). The highlight of Saturday was her Gambler's opening score, which was highest of all 112 Masters and Performance dogs competing, but on a pretty simple jump/weaves/jump gamble, she stalled out before the weaves and came back to me.

But Sunday and Monday, the refusals and runouts were majorly in force--we Eed on refusals in Team Standard, for example.

Sunday's highlight was--uh--one Q in Pairs Relay, although it wasn't much of a highlight--boost missed her weave entry--5-point fault plus the loss of time going back to fix it--and her teammate knocked a bar, but collectively fast enough that, even with that much penalty, we Qed with .19 seconds to spare.

Monday's highlight was placing 4th of 32 dogs in Team Gamble, although our score was paltry compared to the few who tried *and succeeded* the high-point bonus, which we had plenty of time for but I picked something that I was more confident that I could handle, and I guess I was right about that. And she actually earned a Q in that run!

Oh, and we Qed in Team--but mostly not through our own efforts. More later.

Boost details

Saturday: Eed in Steeplechase and Jumpers. In Snooker, two refusal/runout messes in the opening and then I left out an obstacle in the closing. Standard: One bar and a little confusion here and there. Grand Prix, absolutely gorgeous right up to the next to the last obstacle, where I was behind her, so instead of (yes, sigh) going over the jump right in front of her, she turned around to look at me, and when she turned around again, she went past the jump. Gamblers I already mentioned above.

Sunday: Eed in Jumpers and Standard, refusals in snooker opening followed by missing hte weave entry, gamblers, lots of bobbles and a gamble that (sigh, yes) she'd have completed the last obstacle if she'd kept going instead of turning back to me, Relay I mentioned above.

Monday: Team standard and gamblers mentioned above, snooker the opening was smooth but knocked the #2 bar in the closing, Jumpers not bad but a bar down, and nice in the closing 3-dog relay.

Tika Team

There were not very many teams this weekend (at least by our local standards). Ten performance teams, only 16 or 17 championship teams.

Tika--whom I register as a Craussie (Aussie cross, ha ha?)--and her teammate Maddie entered as "Don't Get Mad, Get Craussie." Neither of us had spectacular runs in any of the four individual classes, but they were good, solid, respectable runs. Often that will win you the whole event if you don't E in relay, because other teams will crap out somewhere. So I was kind of surprised to see that we were only in 5th out of 10 teams going into the relay.

But on closer examination: While the first and second place teams had 710 and 596 points respectively, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th place teams had 577.70, 577.62, and 577.39 points! Amazing--pretty rare to see points this close after combining the first 8 scores. So the 3rd-place medal was up for grabs, assuming that none of the teams Eed in the relay. All we needed was to beat the other two teams by at least .32 of a second, and we'd take 3rd.

And, Lo, as I noted above, we won won won the relay. I don't think either dog was super-fast, but we had absolutely no bobbles or faults between us and pretty good, tight turns, and other teams also had faults.

So, ta-da, we brought home bronze medals, 3rd of 10!

Team Scoring notes:

If you understand Team scoring (or don't care), you can skip this. But it is important to know this for understanding Boost's team's situation. For a team to Q, their total points over 5 events (4 individual plus relay) must be within 25% of the average of the top 3 teams. So, not only must your team do OK, but the top three teams must not do SO much better that they knock out a lot of the lower-scoring teams.

Points are gathered like this:

• Standard: Each dog has 130 points. An E loses all 130 points. Otherwise, dog's time and faults are subtracted.
• Jumpers: Each dog has 120 points. An E loses all 120; otherwise, time and faults subtracted.
• Gamblers and Snooker: The judge assigns a factor for the points, usually something like 1.2. Multiply your points earned by that factor.
• Team Relay: The team starts with 300 points (2-dog performance) or 450 points (3-dog championship). If a dog Es, subtract 150 points. Then at the end subtract the team's relay time and other faults.

In short, it's very bad to E in Standard and very very bad to E in relay. As you can tell from, for example, the close scores noted above in Tika's case going into the relay--less than a third of a second separating three teams--losing 150 points in the relay is a Really Big Deal.

Boost Team

Boost, Jersey the Border Collie mix, and Ariel the Aussie, ran as Boo-Jer-Ari...or simply Boojerari. Cool name, huh? Fun to say.

First run of the day, Boost and one teammate both E in Team Standard. Wow. That just about does us in for any hopes of Qing at all.

Team Gamblers: Boost has a pretty good score--87 points, for a 4th place in her height group. But there are probably half a dozen or more dogs with well over 100 points, and Boost's teammates score lower than that (although not terrible at all).

After the first two rounds, we are in 2nd to last place of 17 teams. Seems unlikely that we'll be able to Q.

In Jumpers, Boost has a nice run with only a bar down, and teammates I think get through without Eing. Snooker--boost knocks the #2 bar so basically we miss more than half the points that the top dogs are getting. The teammates get further than we do, and one is a pretty high score I believe.

Still, after four rounds, we've moved up only to 4th from last. Our score is 632; the highest three scores are 945, 936, 846, and so Qing range would be about 690. The 4th and 5th place teams are at 838 and 791. A quick estimate says that, IF at least 2 out of the top 3 and at least one more of the top 5 Es, we'd probably manage a Q--

that is, if the best teams are unlucky enough to E *and* we are lucky and skilled enough to NOT E. The course didn't look that hard initially, so we weren't holding out high hopes for that to happen. But then, when other teams started Eing, we weren't holding out high hopes that we'd be able to succeed where others had failed. Still, I was pretty sure I could get boost through our section...

We ran before most of the top teams, and although two of us had LOUD SCREAMING moments to keep our dogs on course, we actually made it all the way through with no faults and no Es!

Then--just like the last Team event for Boost, when we were down near the bottom but 5 out of the top 6 Ed in relay, enabling our Q--same thing happened here. We watched as our friends, classmates, agility buddies in four of the top five teams Eed.

Doesn't it feel odd to be feeling happier and happier the more your friends screw up? That's the thing I *don't* like about Snooker Super-Qs, Steeplechase, and Team: You're rooting for your friends to do badly, even if you don't really WANT to root for them to, still, your own star rises as theirs drops.

Result was that we Qed handily--and, oh by the way, took 4th in the relay. (And all but 3 teams Qed, and I think one of those was because they lost a teammate due to injury.)

So the weekend ended on a high note for both dogs.

What I Forgot

(1) Sun lotion on Monday. It was a shorter day with smaller groups of people and I was a crew chief so I had hardly a moment to do anything--ate lunch a bite at the time on the run, for example--had a hard time finding workers because of the limited pool, so spent a lot more time than usual in the sun.

Forearm tops, lower face, and neck where the polo shirt opened are burned worse than I've had in many, many years. No blistering, thank goodness. But, ouch.

(2) To take pictures. Of anything. Ever. All weekend. Too busy, and then, well, who had the energy?

Happy 4th of July!

SUMMARY: Independence Day for the best country in the world!

Yes, I'm really still off doing dog agility.

Visiting The Park

SUMMARY: And Experimenting with Photography

Yup, still doing agility. Meanwhile, back at the park--

Camera almost down on the ground next to the water bowl and up close and personal. Shoot and hope for the best.

Noticed some awesome glow in tika's backlit fur from the setting sun. Several attempts as she kept facing the wrong way or walking out of the light, and then, poom, the sun was below the horizon and that was that.

Moonrise

SUMMARY: June 16--full moon.

Yes, I'm off doing agility. This is the virtual me posting for now.

Weekend Hopes and Fears

SUMMARY: Thoughts before signing off for 3 days of USDAA agility.

I haven't been working Tika very much. I hope she's got the stamina for 16 or 17 runs.

On the other hand, after we came home from class last night, and the dogs lay around for a little while, Boost got up limping. Yikes. I stopped her, rubbed her a bit, and she walked away normally. Maybe her leg just fell asleep. One can hope that's all it is.

I actually remembered to charge up the Dremel and trim the dogs' toenails today. Yay me.

Car is packed, camera batteries are charged, oh dang I always forget the clothes until the last minute. Better go do that--

Still don't really know how this danged new videocamera works for downloading so I can erase everything. Maybe I better figure that out right now. I'm supposed to be in bed in the next half hour and still have to shower, too. Ah, well, maybe shower in the morning, instead.

This weekend:
Two each Standard, Gamblers, Snooker, and Jumpers. One Pairs Relay.
Tournaments: Grand Prix. Steeplechase (and Steeplechase Round 2 if we qualify). DAM Team, so five more runs: Team Standard, Gamblers, Snooker, Jumpers, and Relay.

I'm crew chiefing this weekend insead of score tabling. Exhausted me last time I did that. I hope *I* have the stamina for 32-34 runs and keeping the ring staffed! Three days ago, my knee for no apparent reason was so sore that I could barely walk on it. Iced it repeatedly. Kept me up most of the night in pain. Finally slept--when I woke with the new day, it felt fine. At least, as fine as now-a-days normal. Hips haven't been too bad. Keeping fingers crossed (and assuming that won't make my fingers sore).

I've actually been working on Boost's go-on--working on getting her looking ahead at all times and moving forward without always looking at me first. Hoping to fix some of the refusals and runouts. Seems to be working, but boy, she's still whacking those bars down. Trying to be patient.

There is only one title possible this weekend: Boost's Bronze Standard Champion (15 Masters Qs) IF she Qs in both Standards. I don't hold high hopes for that. So I guess I can relax and enjoy the show. From right in the middle of it.

Hope you all have a lovely holiday weekend.

Littermate Rivalry

SUMMARY: Top Ten, Sigh.

First, let me tell you this. There are eight different height groups in USDAA in which you can compete: Championship 12", 16", 22", and 26", and Performance 8", 12", 16", and 22". In number of competitors, Ch 22" is by far the largest, followed fairly closely by Perf 16" (which is the same height dogs moved down one jump height).

For example, at this weekend's trial, there are roughly--in order from most populated to least:

Ch 22": 50 dogs (Boost's group)
Pf 16": 23
Ch 26": 14
Pf 22": 9 (Tika's group)
Ch 16": 8
Pf 12:" 5
Pf 8": 4
Ch 12": 2 (Well, that's an interesting switch between Pf and Ch at the lowest heights!)

I can only surmise that the proportions are similar throughout the country. So, to say that Tika won a class locally, that's cool. But to say that Boost won a class (which she has done only once, at the last trial), that is awesome.

To say that Tika is in the Top Ten in two out of four possible categories at the moment, and in the Top 25 in 3 out of four, well, that's awesome.

But to say that Boost's littermate Gina is in the Top 25 in 3 out of five categories--in a group that consists of roughly five times more competitors than Tika's group--well, wow, what can I say, except that that is muy super bien awesome! ...and... what the heck have *I* been doing with my dog so that I can't even get dang Qs most of the time? I'm trying not to play What If games. And actually I'm very excited to see that, halfway through the year, Gina is doing so well. Her Human Dad is a great handler and they've worked hard to overcome bar knocking issues and to create an amazing running dogwalk and Aframe.

Ah, well. I'll just have to take my one moment of glory where Tika is sitting, after half the year, at the top in Jumpers:

22" Height Class (from the USDAA Perf Top Ten Jumpers page)

Points	Owner	Dog	Breed
28	Finch, Ellen Levy	Tika	All-Breed
22	Zurborg, Laurie	Gumbo	Catahoula Leopard Dog
21	Keller, Linda	Stewart	Australian Shepherd
20	Danver, Jean	Chaps	Australian Shepherd
18	Brooks, Elizabeth	Finn	Australian Shepherd
18	Scott, Gregory	Skye	Border Collie
18	Ross, Nancy	Spotty	Border Collie
18	Mckinney, Colleen	Dexter	All-Breed
17	Eizember, Joleen	Scorch	Border Collie
16	Scott, Liz	Milo	Australian Shepherd
16	Lieberthal, Kelly	Reggie	Border Collie
15	Hope, Paulena Renee	F5 Tornado	Border Collie
14	Luckraft, Julie	Strider	Border Collie
14	Yarchin, Joe	Pan	Australian Shepherd
13	Plummer, Lauri	Jade	Border Collie
12	McKnight, Bridget	Molly	Border Collie
12	Gooding, Kris	Summer	Labrador Retriever
12	Gregory, James	Pilot	Golden Retriever
11	Elkins, Laura	Keegan	Border Collie
11	Heck, Kathleen	Runner	Golden Retriever
10	Glines, Marjorie	Kash	Border Collie
10	Clement, Kathy	Psyche	Border Collie
10	Closson, Margaret	Brash	Golden Retriever
10	James, Kim	Skillett	Belgian Malinois
9	Herman, Jill	Oso	Australian Shepherd

...AND that she's one of only two nonpurebreds on the list...and we won't mention that we don't even show up at all in the Snooker 25 so far this year.

I know we won't end at #1, so I have to wallow in this while it lasts. Wallow wallow wallow. And, crap, I'm now late for class! C'mon, doggers, let's go!

Cool Things In My Yard #237: Garter Snake

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday

Blogger Action Day: Volunteering

SUMMARY: Read more.

Agility Nerd is posting an ever-growing list of bloggers who've posted related topics today.

Plus of course his own post.

Be sure to let him know if you're posting on this topic on your blog today.

Slaving Away For Fun And Profit

SUMMARY: Working at agility trials.

The Saturday of my first-ever agility trial dawned with pouring rain. The trail was under cover, but the cover had no walls, and we slogged through boot-eating mud to get anywhere. I was cold, wet, exhausted, miserable, and my classmate (Rachel Sanders), who was in charge of workers, had the nerve to assign me to work setting jump poles.

I was deeply resentful. I didn't want to be away from my dog. I was tired, wet, and muddy. I hadn't volunteered. And yet, despite all my internal whining, my internals also knew that *someone* had to set poles and most likely everyone else was tired, wet, and muddy and didn't want to be away from their dogs. So--for one, single, solitary class, I sat in a chair inside the ring and set poles.

And discovered that it was no big deal at all. Plus, I got to just sit, with no other obligations, and rest, and relax, and dry out, and watch other dogs and people run, which would've been hard to do if I hadn't been in that chair. And that put an end to my resistance to working at a trial.



In recent years, I have settled into being a score table czar. That means being responsible for the score table from set-up to tear-down, ensuring that all the paperwork is correct for every class, training and monitoring workers, resolving issues with scribe sheets or scribes, figuring out why we're short one dog's score in a 100-dog class, checking and double-checking addition and multiplication and placements and super-Qs, answering people's questions, posting scores in a timely manner--and it doesn't matter whether we're doing it on computers or on paper.



I like it because I can get up and go away when I need to.

Back when I started agility (how long ago was that? We had to carve our own obstacles out of stone. And run dire wolves. You think YOUR dog plays a tough game of tug?!), people volunteered because the trial didn't happen unless people volunteered, and there were few enough folks that it was obvious that everyone had to take a turn. I think that we've always had free lunches for workers, but that was it.

Nowadays, workers get tickets for raffle entries, and reductions in entry fees for some jobs. Wimps! (Not that I turn down the raffle entries or the entry fee reductions. If they help me to do more agility, well, anything to feed the addiction.)

Still, I'd work at a trial anyway. Because, yah, it still takes people volunteering to make things work. Plus, it gives me something to do when I'm not running my dog. Because otherwise I'd be working anyway, like-- sitting in the bleachers taking notes about people's runs--



or wandering around taking photos of people--



And, really, I have PLENTY of photos that need sorting already, thanks very much. So it's better for my idle hands to be busy doing something constructive.

If I'm not at the score table, it's often hard for the crew chiefs to assign me to anything, because I always seem to have dogs in different groups. Back when I had a 22" and a 26", they often lumped the 26" dogs with the small dogs (because 22" are such a massive object). With one dog now in Championship and one in Performance, they often walk (and run) in successive groups rather than the same group. And, of course, as boost was working through starters and open, those schedules were completely independent of masters, so my schedule was all over the place.



But that doesn't stop me from TRYING to work, to make the trial go faster, to make things run smoothly, to help the judges have a good experience and want to come back, to enable a great day for my fellow entrants. There's always so much to do--find equipment, pick things up, set up or rearrange shade for the ring workers, help build a course even if it's just to make sure all the jumps have enough bars, set bars if even for half a class (when they're yelling for help, they're often delighted to get someone who can do it for half the time--much better than having no one at all).



(Photo borrowed from Team Small Dog--it's pretty chaotic at the score table, too.)

My biggest challenge in setting bars these days is that I don't do it often any more, so I'll be sitting there watching, and a bar goes down, and the judge has to reset it, and I think, "Tsk, what a shame that the judge has to set her own bars; where are the pole setters anyway?" followed by a sudden realization... oops... but at least I'm trying! In fact, I'll even set bars if I find myself hanging outside the ring waiting for my run (and don't have my dog out yet), I'll run into the ring to help set poles, EVEN IF (gasp!) I don't get raffle tickets or any other reward for doing it! Can you IMAGINE?!



Don't think that setting poles is the only day-of job I've done. I've also timed, scribed, run scribe sheets, run leashes, been gate steward. All of them, many times. Sometimes I make mistakes. It happens. We're not professionals. And you learn a lot from doing any of the jobs:

• Gate steward isn't for everyone--you have to be willing to yell, you have to keep an eye on the dog currently in the ring and be bold enough to tell the next person to get into the ring, and you have to do at least a marginal job of keeping track of the next 3 to 5 dogs. On the plus side--and this was big for me--you get to know more dog and people names--and actually associate them with faces--than from any other way possible.
• Scribe isn't for everyone, although jumpers and standard are pretty simple and almost anyone can do them easily--watch the judge and write the R, S, or E on the scribe sheet based on the judge's hand signal. Even though you're watching the judge, you still see enough of what the dogs are doing to learn a lot about what makes a refusal or runout or standard course fault. Snooker and Gamblers are a bit more difficult because you have to hear the numbers that the judge calls and not leave any out. But still, mostly, that's not too hard.
• Timing has become really really simple with electronic timing. Not to say that things can't go wrong or that you won't miss something, but basically it's: make sure the clock starts, make sure the clock stops.
• Run leashes, reset the chute: Trivial but hard to do for a long time if you've got problem knees or back. Which I do. But i can still do those for a while without ill effect.

And, yes, I've also done almost all the Committee jobs, too. I figure if everyone does a couple of committee jobs ever in their life, we'll have it all covered. I've been:

• trial chair or cochair (3? 4? 5? times)--Depends on the trial and your available committee, but it can be fairly easy or it can be difficult. Big up sides: You get to pick the classes that you want to offer, and if you've done your job well before the trial, you have to do almost nothing AT the trial.
• Co-secretary (3? 4? dunno times)--In fact, I rather liked this, but my schedule didn't always fit well with the large number of hours required in the couple of weeks right before a trial.
• worker scheduler (couple of times)--We've had one or two people take this on and always do it for several years, so I haven't tried it recently. Plus now we usually try to get full-timers to fill the key ring positions (scribe, timer, gate) and take the other people by whiteboard signup.
• crew chief (several times--not my favorite because I think of it as a "people" job and I'd rather work with inanimate objects)
• chief course builder (kind of fun, but I feel weird doing it with a bad back because I can't actually lift anything heavier than a jump). You definitely have to know some things about how and where to put equipment--like which part of the table should face the dog's incoming path, and what kind of triples are legal--but you can ask any good chief course builder to teach you that stuff while you're helping to set courses and learn it pretty quickly.

But, mostly, trial chair willing and if I speak up soon enough, you'll find me at the score table. Down side: I get to chat with other people at the score table a little, but not with anyone else at the trial. Definitely limits my social activities. But still, rain or shine, heat or cold, wind or calm, light or dark in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer...doesn't matter what job, but working: there I am.



(Photo credits, I think in order--Rich Deppe, Barbara Snarr, Barbara Jones, Amy Hanridge (with my other camera), Barbara Snarr, Laura Hartwick, unknown (my camera), Jean Danver.)

Blogger Action Day Is Coming June 28

SUMMARY: If you blog, note June 28.

From an email from Agility Nerd:

I've been contacting dog agility bloggers in an effort to organize a "Blog Action Day" where we all post to our blogs on the same subject. There have been a lot of of email list discussions about volunteering at dog agility trials in the last few weeks and I thought this might be a good subject on which we can open up a discussion with our readers. I'm certain we all have different, and possibly conflicting, views on the subject that will make for good reading!

After discussion with some other bloggers we chose Tuesday June 28th as the day we'll post an article discussing the subject.

Some ideas you might consider for your blog post:
- why/when/how you choose to volunteer
- when/why you choose not to volunteer
- the impact of volunteers
- how can clubs make it easy/fun/rewarding for people to volunteer
- how not to alienate those who don't want to volunteer
- jobs you like to do
- what has dis/encouraged you to volunteer

I hope you will join us on June 28th! When you post your article please send me a link so I can put it on my blog. Monica at Clean Run will also host a list of all the articles - I'll forward your link to her for you.

I scoured the internet for dog agility blogs and tried to find their owner's email addresses. If you aren't a dog agility blogger I'm sorry for bothering you!

Please forward this email to every dog agility blogger and occasional agility blogger you know, I'd like to get everyone involved!

Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Best Regards,
Steve
http://agilitynerd.com/

Well, That's A Fine Howdy Do

SUMMARY: Blogger finds a way to try to suck money out of me.

Blogger. It was free. They charged briefly, then refunded everyone's money. It was free and was going to stay free because Google bought them and they could afford to do that.

Then a few months back, they forced everyone to do blogging on their site. Before, you could use their tools but publish on your own site. So, for example, all my blog photos before that date are on the same service that all the rest of finchester.org is located on. All the photos after that are now forced to upload to Google's photo site, Picasa. OK, well, that didn't make me super happy, but what the heck, if that's what they wanted to do, that's fine.

It's now a mere 8 months later, and--well, lookie here--I'm out of space on my free picasa account and have to pay them if I want more! I really don't want to pay them. I'm already paying for a photo site (http://elf1.smugmug.com) and for my own hosted web site (http://www.finchester.org) and I really really don't want to pay for more space when I'm already paying for plenty of space somewhere else.

But that just means that I'm going to have to load my photos somewhere else and then manually insert the code for each one of them that I want to use in my blog.

That sucks. It takes a lot of time. Maybe that's why they think I'll pay them.

Grrrrr.

So I have two blogs lined up and partly written that involve photos. But--well--dunno what I'm going to do now. Guess refer everyone to my photo site.

Thinking.

Pretty Things In Yard

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday

Bits O Things

SUMMARY: International Jumps redux, updated Steph's post, hiking/wildflowers, AND geocaching.

Rather than make a whole new post on Jim B's cool new international-flavored agility jumps, I simply updated my previous post with more photos.

I knew I'd forget something important in Steph's post--I added a photo of hers and marked it.

This morning (Sunday) I took the dogs for a hike and found half a dozen geocaches and more wildflowers than I had expected. Maybe the late rains and cooler temps are keeping them around longer? The photos, with commentary, are on my photo site here.

I decided to put the geocaching photos into a separate album.

At the beginning of the hike, we switchbacked up the hillside pretty quickly. Here, the Merle Girls show how far below MUTT MVR has been left behind.

Near the end of the hike, Human Mom was still stopping to take wildflower photos but was getting tired of geocaching, so left some for another day.

Trip From 2008 Now in Google Maps

SUMMARY: An experiment.

This took wayyyy longer than I thought it would, but you can now see my Havasu Falls/Grand Canyon trip in an interactive Google map; I've added place markers, and by clicking on the place markers, you can go to my online photo albums for that segment of the trip.

See it here.

(If you were reading my blog 2 years ago, you already had the chance to see all this stuff. Nothing new except putting it in google maps.)

Goodbye Steph

SUMMARY: September 1954 - June 2011

June 12, 7:30 p.m., added more (flagged below).

Last Tuesday, my friend Stephanie lost her battle with cancer, and it's been hard to think what to say.

I've known her since the late 1970s through mutual college friends here. She moved up to Reno and worked as a dealer and then as a pit boss in a casino, and then was actively recruited to move back to New Jersey when the Atlantic City casinos opened, which she did for a while, too. Came back to San Jose, got married, moved to Maryland (where I visited her once), got divorced, moved to Berkeley to finish her computer science degree as a 30-something returning student. Worked at Apple and a couple of other high-tech companies. I just learned that the founders of Cisco attended her wedding, back before there was a Cisco.

She never recovered enough from her last rounds of chemo, and the cancer's steady advance, to take the road trip that she really wanted. But she did get a chance to spend money on herself, things she'd been wanting to do for years but, being sensible, had put it all away into retirement funds. She had the whole interior of the house cleaned and painted. Replaced the old leaky, sticking, cracked windows with beautiful, new, smoothly-operating, double-paned windows. She got to enjoy them for a few short months, and that was very important to her.

She always avoided having her photo taken, so although we did lots of things together, I have almost no photos of her. The one time we actually sat together, up at Henry Coe, and had a passer-by take a photo of us together, dang, my camera malfunctioned and I never got that photo (and didn't double-check until I got home).

Mostly I have photos of her covered up to protect herself from the sun (some of the treatments she got made her more sensitive to sunburn), often with her camera--we went off together to take bird photos, flower photos, nature photos, mountain photos, anything.

It's too bad there aren't more photos of her--she was a handsome woman. She did pick one of my photos of her to use as her official Facebook photo for quite a long time:

Added following paragraph and photo: June 12, 7:30 p.m.
She liked taking photos, though; her digital SLR was a pretty new thing for her that she researched carefully and was given as a gift by her family. She got some great shots of birds in particular. Here's one she particularly liked (and I do, too), of avocets up at the baylands--I didn't get my camera up in time and missed the cool pas de deux that she captured.

Steph was a good and generous friend. She could sometimes be a little overwhelming, but she really did seem to place other people's needs higher than her own. She spent a lot of time in the last couple of years doing really excellent genealogical research for people to whom she wasn't even directly related by bloodlines, and working hard to make sure that it would be easy for her family to take care of her and her estate.

Her love for, and knowledge of, birds and flowers and all things natural were amazing. She could cite common name and scientific name. She could identify many birds by their song. (She had similar encyclopedic knowledge of just about anything that she ever paid any attention to at all, and she wasn't shy about sharing it.) She could strike up a conversation with anyone and wasn't afraid to do so (here with a volunteer trail worker on one of our wildflower hikes at Edgewood Park).

When she decided to fight the cancer by being as healthy as she could be, she arranged regular weekly walks with two or three different people--I was Friday Walkies. She liked dogs, too; because of her illness, she hadn't gotten another after her last one died. But she was always willing to hang onto my doggies while I and my camera got up close and personal with various plants.

She also approached her cancer with as much humor as she could muster. She had quite a variety of shirts like these.

Sparky—her midsized "doglet"—and my Remington joined our respective households at about the same time. Sparky manifested cancer of the anal gland at a too-young age, and Steph went to amazing lengths (washing the backside sometimes several times a day with special treatments and so on) to try to make Sparky's life as pain-free and fun as long as possible, a couple of years at least. She had a Sparky cancer diary while I had Remington's, and both dogs moved on out of this life at about the same time.

Her last posted photo of Sparky she titled "Heavenly dog." I do hope they're back together now.

Steph's web sites:

• Sparky's Cancer Page
• Steph's web site with brief bio, links to photos and notes
• Free-Range Turtle, her blog mostly about gardening and nature, lots of photos
• Kicking Butt, Taking Names, the blog she started with the cancer diagnosis but covers her life in general, too--trips, genealogy, hikes, whatever, although the last few months it's just been her health status. (In the teeny tiny font list of tags on the left, scroll to the end and click on "View My Tags Page", then click, say, genealogy to get posts mostly about that.)
• Her Facebook page

I Have A Database And I'm Not Afraid To Use It

SUMMARY: Just going over some USDAA numbers for my own entertainment, Tika amazes me, and I finally do something about Boost.

Tika has Qed in 18 of the last 21 gamblers. This amazes me. So yes, you, too, can go from sitting in a corner crying because you've only gotten, like, one gamble out of the last 30 with 2 dogs (11 years ago--this also amazes me) to actually getting gambles.

Boost has gotten only 4 of the last 21 gamblers.

Tika has Qed 16 of the last 21 jumpers. This amazes me. So you, too, could go--same dog--from 21 novice/starters jumpers with no Qs before you get the one that you need to move to advanced--get that one advanced immediately--then take 13 tries in masters to get your one jumpers Q for your MAD... to Top Ten Performance Jumpers. (6 years later.)

I'm still waiting for that miracle transformation for Boost in Jumpers. The count now is 67 masters attempts with 2 Qs to show for it.

Tika's qualifying rate for the last year is 66%. Out of her last 100 runs, her Q rate is 72%--and over the last 4 trials, 81%. In USDAA! This just amazes me, period. I can't believe this will continue like this, but it's nice while it lasts.

Boost--well--Sigh. But she sure is cute.

I did get a private lesson this week and I'm jazzed about the specific things that I now can work on. And we adjusted what we did in class Thursday night, too, to avoid things that invoke our problem spots, and we did pretty good (that means not running exactly the same course as everyone else, tweaking one or two places).

Next trial isn't until the first weekend in July, so we have a chance to make progress if I keep up my motivation.