Judgement Day Is Coming

SUMMARY: My first date.

Looks like I'll probably be judging one day at a UKI trial in August. Designing courses and everything. So those 4 days of judging clinic won't entirely go to waste, although I'm sure USDAA hoped I'd judge USDAA events. Maybe I'll do that eventually, too. This was offered to me, it's fairly local, it's only one day, and what the heck.

Have been reading through the rulebook. Probably will want to do that again right before the trial.

Meanwhile I can practice calling out snooker numbers. One! Seven! One! Seven! Tweeeeeet! Like that. I'm very familiar with the tweeeeeeet part.

And In Conclusion

SUMMARY: Weekend's attempt at attitude realignment.

Well, I tried, I really did.

For the most part, I succeeded at keeping the perspective that I enumerated on Friday before leaving.

I fought with the discouraged feelings and often won, but by the last class of the day, when Tika ran past yet another tunnel in Jumpers and Boost got called on a runout where it wasn't anything she did but the runout line was just annoyingly tight, I just lost it again. (I saw several people actually stop their dogs after the preceding jump before continuing to that one in an attempt to not miss the runout line.)  I ran Boost off the course at that point--she had done her obstacles well and I didn't want to ruin it after that with my frustration.

So, on the down side with Tika: She Qed only 4 of 10 classes and placed in nothing (except round 1 of Steeplechase, where she was 2nd, but that just seeds us for round 2). As last year's #1 Jumpers dog and #2 gamblers dog, we failed in both of the Jumpers and both of the Gamblers this weekend. Tika is doing odd things again; running by tunnel openings that are right in front of her is so Boost, but it is not and never was so Tika, and if it's a vision thing, I'm not yet tuned into when that's a problem, and if it's a handling thing, i don't know why that's changed. Her Standard on Saturday was slow in general and very slow on the contacts and really really determinedly not going down on the table slow--we Qed but were only a second or so under course time, which is also so not Tika. She isn't wanting to play tug before runs so much. She's not grabbing my feet after every run, which until VERY recently was a standard thing that she did from excitement and energy. She knocked several bars this weekend, so this seems to be getting worse.

On the down side with Boost, she Qed only 2 of 10 and once again got no Jumpers and no Snooker Super-Qs. That's just almost too painful for me to bear at times.

On the down side with the handler (that would be me), I made mistake after mistake after mistake. Not forgetting-the-course kinds of mistakes, but so often just moving a little too soon or a little too late, the kinds of things that (at least for me) are really hard to fix, or I'd have fixed them before in my 16 years of agility.

I was so discouraged as the weekend went on that I stopped taking notes (and people around here know of me as a prodigious and detailed note-taker) and never collected my very few ribbons. That's two trials in a row. Sigh.

So now I try to remind myself of the weekend's ups.

With Tika, mostly she ran happily and fairly fast. I am glad that a dog who will be 11 in 3 weeks is doing this well. Of the 205 dogs entered this weekend, only 17 were at least 10 years old and only 11 were at least 11 years old, so she's held up pretty darned well. She continues to amaze me with how well she responds to  all kinds of handling situations--rear crosses, really really awfully late front crosses, distance work, sharp angles, whatever.

With Boost, oh my, we had SO many nice sequences. Like:

• Saturday's Jumpers, the first 13 obstacles were spot on perfect, and the last 6 also (in the middle is where I moved just a fraction of a second too soon and pulled her off a tunnel entrance for a refusal). 
• Her Round 1 Steeplechase was gorgeous (except where she missed the weave entry, but it was quick and I was right there and we qualified for round 2, only the 4th time that she's ever done so). 
• Her Round 2 Steeplechase wasn't entirely perfect but very close to it, and she ended in 5th place to bring $ home, only the 2nd time ever that she's done so).
• Her Standard on Sunday was spot on perfect. I held her on all her contacts, as I'm not going for Top Ten points and have no reason to blow them off, so she didn't place, but she missed placing by only a second or so out of all those 22" dogs. Someone commented about her table, "She was almost lying down before she even hit the table." And she stayed down (unlike Saturday, where the butt went up and wouldn't go down again). It was really gorgeous. I might have to buy that video.
• Runouts and refusals were extremely rare, or caused by a blatant handler issue (or in today's dang jumpers, the dang tight runout line). So I guess the running in circles in the back yard is helping.
• She didn't knock nearly as many bars as usual. No bars in yesterday's jumpers, no bars in the half of today's jumpers that we ran. No bars in snooker, only one bar in today's gamblers opening and none in yesterday gamblers.  No bars in steeplechase round 1. Since I stopped taking notes, I don't remember for sure, but for whatever reason the bars  stayed up more than usual.
• Her weaves were wonderful: Other than the one miss in Steeplechase round 1,  she made all her entrances, she did them really fast, and she stayed in even when I moved away quite a distance laterally.
• I think she left a couple of contacts marginally early, but mostly she hit the ends correctly and stayed there even when I ran ahead to get into some useful position.

And the people, as always, are so wonderful. Everyone has their times of feeling discouraged or upset about something, but that's human nature. For the most part, people are helpful, cheerful, engaged, funny, forgiving, encouraging, and on your side all the way.

And then there's this, among all the pouring rain going on outside most of the weekend, with a sudden beam of sunlight touching the far sky and the folks walking a course inside the arena, who a moment before had all been in the rain-cloud darkness:

Agility Up The Wazoo

SUMMARY: And comin' out the ears.

Well, boys and girls, friends and family, I'm heading out for a weekend of USDAA agility in Santa Rosa. First trial in 6 weeks.

I will try to be:

• Upbeat
• Positive
• Forgiving to myself and my dogs (I'm pretty much always forgiving to other people already)
• Enthusiastic
• Silent about my failures
• Quietly cheerful about my successes

Next weekend I have off, and then--oh, then, gentle readers--I plunge into a planned insanity of agility, six of the next following seven weekends doing agiliy trials, with five of those six being CPE.  If I don't come out of that agility frenzy with Boost's C-ATCH, I will be greatly surprised (and dismayed).

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

They had been forecasting a huge storm starting Wednesday evening this week (it started more like late Thursday afternoon around here), with huge red warnings on the weather sites like "1.5 inches of rain expected!" So far, in my yard: barely measureable. And, except for the wind and occasional showers, it looks like the storm is a fizzle.

So, happy happy to go off to the arena (under cover) and still be able to get some frisbee in out on the lawn ("in out on", how's that for a phrase?).

Hope you all have a lovely weekend while I'm out there trying to remember to be a better person.

A Little Memory Trip

SUMMARY: In the dawn of agility

In this post, I mentioned that I started training at Power Paws Agility before they became Power Paws. I couldn't for the life of me remember what Nancy's training name was; I knew that it was something to do with being up in the air on the side of a mountain range-- Highcroft Dog Training? Hillside Dog Training?

Digging through my dusty mental attic for 16-year-old information wasn't working, so I had to ask. And Lo! Nancy actually scanned for me the one piece of paper that she still has from back then:

How cool is that?

What's even more cool is that she's the one who drew all those amazingly cute little dogs. Reminds me again how multitalented and artistic so many agility folks are. We've got people making jewelery, painting, creating 3D critters, knitting, sketching, photographing... fun to see it all.

(BTW, later, when I asked a car full of people what Power Paws was before Power Paws, in unison they came up with "Foothill Dog Training." The Collective Consciousness wins again.)

2011 Top Ten Final

SUMMARY: Tika in 3 categories; close in the other 2.

These should be the final results for the year. Nationally, in 22" Performance, Tika ranked:

• 1st in Jumpers
• 2nd in Gamblers
• 6th in Standard
• 12th in Snooker
• 16th in Tournament

I updated the Tika Top Ten page (link above) with the complete Top 25 info, marked up with dogs that we often compete against.

[And this sucks--I typed up a whole post about those other dogs and how old they are and like that, and it seems to have vanished completely. Not going to try to reproduce it, sorry. Mood: Frustrated. :-( ]

January: Winter in San Jose

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday (and Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day).

For Garden Bloggers: Yellow rose, oranges, purple primrose,  red primrose with green changed to black and white in Lightroom, paperwhite narcissus, pink gerbera daisy, pansy, cylamen, purple lobelia with daffodil and cyclamen leaves, red rose

Training Notes

SUMMARY: A little work with both dogs and myself.

One of my concessions to entering a squillion more agility trials this year  was that I needed to work on the things that have been problems or are frustrating me.

As yet, I have no written, quantified plan. At this point, after months of not feeling like doing anything at all, it is enough for me to feel like training with the dogs, and to actually do it at least for a few minutes a few times a week.

Hence, I've been:

• Practicing deceleration moves with both dogs (that seems to be the move du jour for some reason), after observing that in some cases neither one seems to notice that I've stopped moving.
• For Tika, down on the table, lots of food rewards.
• For Boost, practicing just running and going going going over jumps (and tunnels) without hesitation or looking back at me, over and over and over.
• For Boost, trying to build as much value in doing jumps as in doing tunnels.  (We seldom get refusals on tunnels; we also play in tunnels a lot at home.) So, for example, sending her over a jump to get her toy rather than only running through tunnels or on the flat.
• For Boost, trying to put more name recognition value on "Hup!" She's pretty good at "weave", "climb" (Aframe and dogwalk), "teeter", and "through" (tunnels), but just "hup" isn't one that I ever practiced very much.
• For both dogs, some "out" work (for gambles).
• For both dogs, "touch" to a nose touch at the end of contact obstacles (Tika with emphasis on the dogwalk, because that's what she's most likely to do oddball things on, and not at all on the teeter; Boost with emphasis on the teeter because that's where she's been coming off the side.)
• For me, just trying to get a better grip on getting to where I need to be. I have been reviewing online videos of other people's timing, watching so carefully the people in class who are really good at that with their really fast dogs--which (after all these years) I'm finally remembering has more to do with how quickly you can leave the dog on the previous obstacle than with rushing to get to the next one. Boost has made this more challenging for me with her propensity for pulling off of obstacles, but some things we've been analyzing in class lately, on really learning where your dog is taking off for, say, a jump, is helping me refocus on this. I'm not really fast, myself, but watching the people who are really good at being there--90% of the time they're calmly almost loping into position.
• For me, running. Just lifting my feet and moving. Trying to do at least a little jogging around the yard or a little jogging and a sprint or two when we go to the park.

I'm alternately worried and not worried about Tika's hearing. I think she is having some hearing difficulties. Oh, no she isn't. Oh, yes, she is.  I keep thinking back to Jake and my earliest introduction to his hearing deterioration was that he seemed to blow me off on course when I was clearly and loudly calling him or giving him clear and loud verbal instructions. Tika is sort of manifesting the same thing. Sometimes.  Like, she always used to send to tunnels fine. Now she's turning back to me more often, as if not certain what I want her to do.  Now she's not "COMEing" (in nonagility situations) where she used to be fairly reliable about that. She seems to startle more if she's napping and I touch her or something louder happens. A few times she has started alarm barking when the renter has made some noise in the house, as if she can't recognize the noise or its provenance.

In class, she alternates between doing even complicated courses with her usual not-super-fast experience ease, and then completely messing up things that I thought were simple for us to do as a team, and that often involve verbal cues.

This is an evolving question. I am working on emphasizing COME and her name value with treats, with the assumption that if she's not losing hearing, it will help, and if she is, it won't hurt.

Boost seems to be doing better with the run-run-run strategy, even though I'm only doing it in small loops in my back yard. At least, better in class. Last couple of classes, no refusals at all. .. oh, except that she still still STILL doesn't get the  serpentine cue.  Should work on this again; so far haven't been.

Of course--like this last Thursday night--it's all about the bars. At least one bar in every run, but she was fast, kept going even when I did rear crosses, got her weave entries and stayed in, got her contacts, and did nose touches.

So, yeah, need bar-knocking drills again, too, I suppose. I haven't been adding them in because right now the Take Obstacles In Front Of You seems much more critical.  And I have mixed feelings about stopping dogs and taking them off the course for knocking bars. The experts seem to differ on whether that's effective or causes more problems. When I do drills, I've decided that I much prefer rewarding for not knocking them and not punishing for knocking. I'm not consistent in this.

That's it for now; another note to myself that I'm actually working on things again. Not sure where that little dribble of renewed enthusiasm for training is coming from, but i'm glad it's here.

Geocaching With Dogs at Neighborhood Danna Rock Park

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday.

Want to see what others are doing for Wordless Wednesday or add your own? Go here: http://www.wordlesswednesday.com/newhome/

It's Cesar Milan Time Again

SUMMARY: A link to a well-stated article

A few years back, someone gave me Milan's training book, knowing that I am a "dog person" but not themselves really knowing much about dog training and not knowing that I had already seen enough of Milan's work to feel that it was overly harsh and as (politely stated) old-fashioned as whipping your lazy slaves into obedience. You know, "The beatings will continue until morale improves."

I gave him the benefit of the doubt and read the book. I did like some things that his book said. Dogs need exercise, although very few people are going to be able to jog with them 30 miles a day, or however much he does--most of us have other jobs, other activities, physical limitations, and so on. Dogs need clear, consistent, firm leadership from their people, although to me that does not mean choking, intimidation, or brute physical dominance.

His methods, in short, sucked.

I'm not a professional trainer and have not worked with truly troubled dogs, but the trainers with whom I have worked and spend many of my weekends, the well-regarded books I've read, and the dog-behavior trainer training that I have attended are all greatly at odds with his methods.

Enough about me: Linda Knowles (a successful agility competitor and a trainer) had posted the clearest statement I've seen about Milan's work and shortcomings. Please read What Do I Think About The Dog Whisperer?

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Oh, huh, wrote this similar post about 3 years ago with a link to another good anti-Milan article.

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New Member

SUMMARY: A brief bio.

I've been a member of The Bay Team since not long after I started agility lessons, without ever really intending to become an active member (ha! we know how that turned out!). I joined SMART when that club formed, although I consider myself more a supporting member. I attend several other clubs' events regularly but never joined; finally decided that I really ought to join more of them both as a sign of general support and to keep up on the news.

So I joined more clubs (aren't we lucky to have so many with members located nearby?). And one asked for a photo and a new member bio. Well, I hardly think I'm new to most of their members, but OK, I'll indulge:

My obedience instructor suggested agility to me as I was running out of other things to try with my smart and energetic rescue Squirrelhünd, Remington (competitive obedience, tracking, tricks). I fell in love with the sport from the instant that I saw the brilliantly colored obstacles on the emerald green lawn with dogs doing unbelievable feats before my very eyes. I signed up for classes at Power Paws Agility (except back then, in 1995, they hadn't come up with that name yet). My instructors finally convinced me to try a competition, and I did, at a mudful NADAC trial in January 1996 in San Martin. And we got some Qs and some ribbons! And you know what happened next: More agility, and more and more and more! I had to keep my day job as a technical writer to pay for the agility entry fees, the agility training, the agility shoes, the agility videos, the agility gear bags, the agility team shirts, the agility canopy, the agility obstacles for the yard, the agility minivan MUTT MVR, and, of course, the agility house Taj Mutthall in San Jose.

I've competed with four very different dogs and we've earned Qs in NADAC, ASCA, CPE, and USDAA. My second dog, Jake the Semidachshund, earned Championships in all four, but now there are so many trials available that I've concentrated on USDAA with some CPE; my third dog, Tika the rescue Craussie, has Championships in both of those. My fourth dog, Boost the nonrescue Border Collie (littermate to locals Bette, Beck, and Derby and Top Ten dog Gina (sibling envy? what sibling envy?))--well, let's say that she loves to do agility, or any other active and interesting job. She particularly excels at bringing in the newspaper every morning so I don't have to step outside no matter the weather.

I've watched the sport and my own skills change. I'm delighted (in retrospect) how I went from huddling in a dark corner many years ago, cursing the dog gods and myself because we couldn't get even the easiest gambles, to thrilling about Tika's position as the #2 Gambling dog in USDAA Performance 22" for the year 2011. Having great instructors and, yes, sigh, practicing really helped with that.

Tika turns 11, Boost turns 7, and I turn [mumblety-mum] at the end of January; and I'm still shaping up my thoughts on what's next for all of us. I know that photography fits in there somewhere, and hiking, and yeah, sure, someday I'll get back to that budding fiction-writing career that I abandoned 16 years ago for the slings and arrows of dogwalk contacts.

I blog about all this at TajMutthall.org.

The Cost of Vanity

SUMMARY: The cost of "The Campaign"

I keep waffling emotionally on the whole Campaign that I've outlined for this year. I'm just thinking out loud here; I'm sure this is familiar ground.

Cost in weekends: With Tika's age goading me, I'm trying to fit in as much as I possibly can this year in competitions (CPE and USDAA only). You can see what a frightening red mess my calendar is with this plan. This really means probably cutting back again on everything else, because SOMEtime I'll have to do errands and chores and so on.

Cost in, well, money: Tika still needs roughly 90 Qs to finish her CPE C-ATE; with a roughly 74% Q rate, that means we need to enter about 120 runs, at $13/run. Sure, I'll get a few of those discounted for working, but not a lot of them. And as long as I'm running Tika, I might as well be running Boost, so double that.

Oh, yeah, and then there's gas prices going up again, and hotel costs for the winter months.

In USDAA, for Tika's LAA-Platinum, she needs roughly--huh, interesting--90 Qs. With a roughly 65% Q rate, we need to enter about 138 runs at an average of $14/run. Ditto on some discounted. Aaaaaand yes, if I'm running Tika, there's Boost, too.

Cost in other time: Really, if I'm going to be spending this much time competing, I need to push myself to spend more time (and possibly $) training out our weaknesses. And Boost has so many! I'm not sure whether seeing that her littermate Gina is in or near the Top Ten in all five categories this year is a motivator or a discourager. I counted down, and I think Boost actually made it into something like the Top 400 in a couple of categories. But I digress... this means more time, more focus, more planning...

Well, we'll see whether I completely melt down and decide to stop this madness. I entered only one trial in January to give myself a little break and the last one was Dec 9-11, so that's SORT of a month and a half off.

And we'll see whether I run out of discretionary dollars, too. I'm putting this ahead of some other delayed maintenance that I think can be delayed longer. Maybe I should go buy a lotto ticket.

Next Agility Blogger Action Day--

SUMMARY: If you're a blogger, read this.

Agility Nerd's call for discussion.

Christmas Redux

SUMMARY: December Photo Challenge.

Every month, Karma issues a photo challenge. I sometimes pursue it because it gives me a different perspective from which to shoot (thinking outside the brain, as it were). Dawn, who has posted her own results, kindly pointed out that my quick snapshots from the last couple of days's posts have pretty much covered the December challenge. Really, I meant to get around to the challenge any moment now, but--well--I'll take Happy Coincidence (I'm not going to call it "cheating"). So I'm repeating my apropos photos here, with a couple of extras:

lights
I wanted to try the nifty technique for photographing lights described in this post of 10 Creative Tips For Capturing Memorable Holiday Photos.

ornament
I try to take a photo of the family Christmas tree every year; I have always loved the variety of ornaments that my family prefers (over, say, carefully matched colored globes). Here are some others from previous years.

card
Not only is my niece reading a card, but my mom's traditional display of cards floats on the stair railing behind her.

frost
The morning after Christmas, it was a little chilly for San Jose--Boost didn't notice the frost covering the lawn, but I sure did.

treat
In order: A bouche de noel purchased by one sister; frosted sugar cookies that I made this year because I've missed having the ones my mom used to make when we were kids; fondant candy made by another sister, which is another holiday tradition.

family
Nineteen of us gathered Christmas afternoon for too much food and the exchange of gifts.

Bonus: show me the winter holiday of your choice
In case the preceding photos aren't enough:

Noel

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday.

(Just a few of my photos from Sunday.)

The Hike From Hell Leads to True Happiness

SUMMARY: Funny how the most unexpected things can have the best results.

The days leading up to, and then the day of, Christmas were full days. There was shopping to do, gifts to wrap, projects to work on, people to see, errands to run, my mom with a brief stint in the hospital with a minor stroke (if there is such a thing) from which she's recovering well, dogs going nuts from being ignored, food food food of course, and I wayyyyy overindulged this year. All part of the holiday season, but this year has seemed more stressful and harder on me than most years,and I was feeling it.

And also deciding that there's definitely something going on with Tika. Maybe more than one thing, but definitely one thing in that she wasn't wanting to eat her kibble which would be like, I dunno, Magic Johnson not wanting to play basketball. I've decided it must be something to do with her teeth, because otherwise there seems to be no problem with her appetite. Although she does seem more subdued than usual and is drinking more than usual. I think. So I'm a bit stressed about that; left for the day on Christmas with instructions to the renter to call me if he noticed anything truly worrisome about Tika's behavior, and that hung over me a bit all day, with my cell phone turned on in my pocket. Probably worse because of the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 2002 when Remington was in the dog hospital, getting transfusions and trying to recover from his tumor bleeding out again.

Anyway. She survived the day and so did I. She ate her kibble for dinner, although reluctantly again. I got out one stick of string cheese--an occasional treat for the dogs--cut it into small pieces, and did tricks with them in the living room before going to bed, because they were a bit wired from virtually no attention for three full days.

On The Second Day Of Christmas, I got up a little frantically as Tika started making horking noises; she tossed her cookies (so to speak--interlaced with tiny bits of cheese) on the bathroom floor, so at least it was an easy cleanup, then she did complete liquid #2 out in the yard.

My plan for the day had been to do a little hike with some friends, so, then I had to decided (a) whether to take Tika immediately to the emergency vet, or (b) leave Tika at home with the renter and just take Boost. I decided to attribute the digestive issues to the half stick of string cheese and the eating issues to sore teeth, and go ahead and take both beasts.

It was a little earlier than I had planned on getting up, but that's OK--my camera appreciated it.

I gave the dogs each a little kibble, had a healthy meal of hot oatmeal with raisins, eyed the frost in the 30-degree back yard (-1.1C) and decided NOT to bundle up for the hike because I figured I'd get plenty warm when we started going up and down the hills at Las Trampas.

I also had to decide whether to haul my SLR camera, since that's all I've got at the moment. (One goal for this week is to decide which subcompact camera I want to get for myself this time. My Canon S95 was very nice, but do I want to spend the $500ish again for the S100 or save a couple hundred bucks and get something well-rated with a bit less functionality but that will still probably do me fine?)

Decided not to haul the weight of both the camera and the overwhelming desire to stop and take photos. Turns out that most of my friends had their cell phones and there was one "real" camera, too, so there are photos.

Picked up a friend and her two dogs (Steamer and Carson) and finished the hour drive to Las Trampas, one of the East Bay Regional Open Space Districts, where we met up with three other agility friends and their dogs. So: Five agility people, ten agility dogs.

The thing that was cool about the dogs was how different they all were--this wasn't an all-black-and-white-border-collie hike!

• Steamer: What I'd call a "standard" black and white border collie--medium to small dog, longer hair, white blaze on the face, tulip ears, etc.
• Carson: Large, short-haired border collie, floppy ears like Boost's.
• Boost: Blue merle border collie.
• Tika: Blue merle aussie mix.
• Sheila: Shaggy-haired mostly black border collie.
• Jersey: Red and white smooth-haired border collie mix.
• Kipper: Dark red, smooth-coated, prick-eared border collie.
• Kaz: Lighter red, smooth-coated, prick-eared border collie.
• Surely: Tricolor Aussie.
• Kinetic: Our token nonherding dog--the Papillon.

(Photo by Kraig P.)

A little more about our hike beyond yesterday's post: We thought that we were going to do about a 3-to-4 hour hike. None of us had been in the particular area where we decided to hike. We picked our route on the spot and had to do a lot of consulting at each of the many junctions.

(Photo by Susan P.)

(Photos by Barbara S.)

Sure, I could see that there was a lot of steep uphill and downhill along the route, and I did warn people. What I really couldn't say was how very hard it was for me to get up the hills and how very hard it was for my knees to get down the downhills. These were extremely steep trails; I had to use my hands in places or sit and scramble here and there, especially as my legs got rubberier and rubberier (say THAT 3 times fast!). Oddly, although I could feel my muscles approaching their limits, I felt generally pretty good.

Apparently I wasn't the only one; one of my compatriots described it as a "three-hour hike that turned into the six-hour Hike From Hell."  But a couple of the friends just seemed to hop, skip, and jump merrily along the trail, kindly waiting for me/us frequently. (More motivation to do more uphill hiking.)

(The soul-sucking climb from Hell. Photo by Barbara S.; overacting by assorted hikers)


However, we did stop in a number of places for cool photos...

(Setting up for The Ten-Dog Log photo, see yesterday, photo by Barbara.)

... and we found 4 (5?) geocaches! (Another one we looked for but never found, but we didn't know exactly what we were looking for, either.)

 (Large black lunchbox thingie, hidden in plain sight, just 10 feet off the trail! Oh, and down a really steep slope. Photos from Barbara S.)

 (Wee itty bitty cache in a hole found by eagle-eye Williams. Photos from Barbara S.)

The sad note was that one of our hikers lost her brand new--as in, just bought this week--North Face jacket somewhere along the way. And the trails were so strenuous that, although we were willing to go back and look for it and tried to start the expedition in reverse, the owner made the executive decision that we'd just keep going. That was probably just as well,

The dogs had a great time. Tika was more subdued than on many hikes in the past, never saw her actually run at all, but she had no difficulties.

 (Photos by Susan P.)

Boost did a little of the run-ahead-run-back thing.

(Wait--where was I when Barbara was snapping photos of Lisa  fooling around with my dog atop Vail Peak??)

But it was the one-year-old Kinetic, with those itty bitty Papillon legs, who amazed us all, running full speed ahead and back at about the same rate whether it was level, straight up the side of a cliff, or straight down the wall of an abyss. Where does a dog that size store all that energy?

When I finally got home and stepped under a hot shower, oooooohhhhh did it feel good! I never wanted to leave!  But I wanted to get to my sister's house for their Boxing Day Feast, so I dried off, dressed again, and headed out.

And an odd feeling overwhelmed me as I drove: I was really, really happy. It had to be a combination of things: Tika seemed fine. I did something that was healthy (after a day of gorging myself). I succeeded at something that challenged  me. I saw wonderful vistas (well--obscured by one of the smoggiest days in a while--air quality management district says it's everyone's "traditional" holiday fires). Dogs got to be off leash and explore. I enjoyed the success of  finding geocaches. (Well--I was helping to look when others found them, anyway.) And I did it all with a great group of cheerful friends who are a delight to be around.

What a great day. I wouldn't trade it for anything!

(Photo by Lisa W)

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• I mapped our approximate route on Map My Run here.
• Las Trampas official site.

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More of Barbara's photos--I wore my pink Henley. Fun to have lots of photos of me for a change: