Thoughts From Last Weekend and CPE This Weekend

SUMMARY: strengths and flaws and fun.

Some things I noticed from last weekend:

• Both dogs left the start line early once last weekend. I don't remember which course(s). I didn't even write it down afterwards. I don't know why I kept running--well, maybe I do: It has been ages and ages since either left before I released them, and I think (a) I was surprised and already starting to move, and (b) I chalked it up to, as Bartholomew Cubbins said, one of those things that "just happened to happen and was not very likely to happen again."  It's random, I guess. I hope.
• Both dogs had awesome downs on the table. Why last weekend? Who knows. I have been practicing a bit with Tika doing quick downs while running or repeatedly on the table at home--but I've done that before with no apparent help in the actual competition. It's random, I guess.
• Boost had some weave pole issues. It's another thing that she hasn't really missed or popped out of in a while, but I think we had 3 different cases--hit the entry and skipped, popped out early, and ran past them completely. Why now? Who knows? I hope this isn't the start of another "I don't know how to do weave poles" era. It's random, I guess.
• Boost actually handles well at a distance but from the side, not behind. Like, it seems to be no trouble to do a huge distant arc of jumps where I'm twenty feet inside the arc but parallel. More trouble if I'm closer to her and parallel, or if I'm behind her. And I think knocks more bars if I'm ahead of her. I'm not sure what this all means. Not sure whether it's random.
• Tika is less comfortable now with me crossing behind her. Need to try to find ways to stay ahead of her and always in her sight. This is challenging, because she can still move pretty darned fast. Dang, now I have TWO dogs that I have to manage more.
• Boost's contacts were lovely. I think she left only one early. Why now? Who knows; we haven't been practicing these the last couple of weeks. It's random, I guess.

This weekend: CPE locally. Only about 25 minutes from my house. I go because it's close, because it's a fun relaxing weekend for me, and because I want to support any trial that's close to my house. Unfortunately we don't seem to get many entries for this trial. I don't get it--we used to get lots of entries for the CPEs at Twin Creeks, which is only about 30 miles away. Oh, well.

So we might not ever have agility really close to my house again. The challenge of living in a dense suburban/urban area, I guess. Lots of conveniences--like I had several choices of which theater to go to tonight for a 3-movie Batman extravaganza--but nowhere to do huge USDAA trials.

Maybe I'll go practice some agility stuff with the dogs. Randomly.

Vet Clarifications for Tika

SUMMARY: Follow-up to Thoughts From the Heart.

Spoke to the vet. Yup, I misunderstood about the thyroid. Normal is .8 to 3.5, "low-normal" is .8 to 1.0. Tika tested at .9.

He says that the measurement can vary widely even at different times of the day, so one reading like this doesn't necessarily mean anything. He says the key indicators of low thyroid are a decrease in energy and weight gain, and he doesn't see either of those with Tika.

I did note that she doesn't have as much energy as she used to--chases the ball or frisbee a very few times instead of relentlessly, for example, but does chase them full speed. She looked pretty energetic before and after being in the ring all weekend this last weekend.

I've chalked that all up to being older and/or recurring soreness or arthritis acting up and subsiding.

He pointed out that her heart murmur-- 3 on a scale of 0 to 6--could have the exact sort of symptoms as that or low thyroid, pointing out the difficulty of diagnosing a specific thing.

He recommended another thyroid test no sooner than a month from now, and unless I really notice a change in energy levels, even 3 months or more would be fine to wait, and if it reads low again, then we can decide what to do.

He noted that, once thyroid meds are started, they have to continue for the rest of the dog's life.

Forget the jetpack and the household robot maid, where's the tricorder medical scanner that exactly pinpoints a problem in half a second? Waiting-- and hoping--

(Photos thanks to Diana Wilson)

Vehicle Dreamin' Jeepers Creepers

SUMMARY: MUTT MVR is back in my garage.

Got the oil changed, fluids taken care of, etc. etc. Map light now works. Brakes taken care of and in theory will no longer squeal. Dashboard light--well, they don't stock the lightbulb and would have to special order it. They played with it and said that it's now kinda working but kinda not.

They're willing to order the bulb and charge me only half the labor to open up the dashboard and put it in when it arrives. Jeez. I said I'd think about it.

The car battery failed their charging tests, which could explain why I've been having occasional problems lately starting it right up in the morning. Guess I'm glad they tested it and found that now, rather than it not starting up at all some agility morning at 4:30 a.m.

But the really big wow--$1500 to fix the rear pop-out windows: Both motors are dead and they're $500 each plus labor to open up the side panels and replace them. Ack ack ack.

Car's bluebook is probably around $3000 for trade-in or maybe $3700 if I try selling it myself. I'm SOOOO inclined to not fix those windows. Bleah.

Vehicle Dreamin'

SUMMARY: Repairs for another aging family member.

I said Sunday night that I was takin' MUTT MVR in for a checkup and that we'd go for a long walk, too.

MUTT MVR's brakes have been squealing for quite some time. Makes my ears hurt. A little embarrassing in public, like when inching one's way down a freeway entrance ramp under the control of metering lights. Plus one of the map lights, one of the dashboard lights, and the rear pop-out windows one-by-one stopped working. And we're due for an oil change. (6,000 miles per mfg recommendation; I've added no oil, down not even a quart, amazing at any age, but particularly this age.)

Pop-out windows in particular are an issue when I have dogs in the car and want cross-ventilation. They work only electrically. Which is too bad right now, because it's expensive to diagnose and, I fear, will be expensive to fix because they have to open up the side walls, and dagnabit I didn't think to take the crates out of the back. Oh, well, that might mean another trip in the future.

Dropped MM off bright and early, then the Merle Girls and I walked home in the cool morning air, a bit over 2 miles.

Starting to ponder:

• It would be really cool to have a still-healthy car go over 200,000 miles--I've never come this close before.  That would be about 2 more years. 
• If small things are starting to go wrong, will I end up putting more money into fixing than I would into a new car?
• Should I spend the money to get the damaged front corner fixed, or save it for an eventual newer vehicle? Would the cost to fix it come back in bluebook value, and do I care?
• Should I get a second, small, high-MPG car for tooling around town with just myself? If so, rent or lease?
• If I replaced MUTT MVR, would I replace it with a later model of the same thing?

These are very early ponderings.

Addendums

SUMMARY: Stretching, more results, Grand Prix challenge

Stretching: For years, first thing in the morning when I'm in the bathroom doing my morning ablutions, I've rewarded the dogs for stretching and attempted to put names to it--"Stretch" for stretching out the front, "Other legs" for stretching out the back. Tika always leaves the room to stretch out her back legs just out of my sight, so I haven't been able to reward that for her. I started this after a Susan Garrett seminar back when Boost was a puppy, I think.

They don't always understand it when out of context--and, really, they're not particularly useful commands when they'll already do it in that particular location on their own, which is why it's a good place to shape the behavior. Therefore, recently I've been trying the commands in other locations, such as at the last two agility trials. Yesterday I opened Boost's crate, said "Stretch," which she did nicely out through the crate door; then I said "Other legs," and she did! (She doesn't typically stretch when coming out of the crate, so this was clearly progress.) We apparently impressed a nearby friend whom I didn't know was there.

Friday Snooker: I just now looked at the results--despite having only 24 points (you need at least 37 to Q), Tika placed 2nd of 6 dogs for 3 Top Ten points! How funny is that?! Apparently everyone was having some trouble with that Snooker course.

Grand Prix: Sunday's Grand Prix offered a huge challenge in the final box that the dogs had to get through (formed by 17, 18, Aframe, and 5). It was so tempting for the dog to go across adjacent sides (17 to 5), but I thought that if I was far enough ahead and yelling, they'd come with me. Worked for Tika, didn't work for Boost. Even if you got the front cross in there, dogs would knock bars or take the wrong jump anyway.

It was about a 20% Q rate, which isn't the worst I've ever seen, but sure not the best. Thought it would be worth posting.

Here's a video of a nonqualifying but really nice, fast run (Fireball Pryse) with a front cross and a bar down there.

P.S. Watch the weave entry--that's the one that Boost ran past on the far side because it was apparently too difficult for her to make that entry. Reallllllyyyy?!

Photo Club July Winners

SUMMARY: See my photo and the other print winners.

My Best in Class winning otter photo is now posted with other July photo club winners on the Sunnyvale Photo Club website. (Photos include AM for Award of Merit, BiC for Best in Class, and IoM for Image of the Month.) They'll be on the main page for a couple of weeks, then after that you'll need to click the More link below the slideshow to see them.

Sunday at Agility On The Green

SUMMARY: And another agility weekend goes by.

From our running order for the whole weekend: One of these things is not like the others:

Today often felt more like a handler having a bad weekend than the dogs doing so. Both dogs ran nicely, looked healthy and happy and eager to run, although, yep, Tika can't match the speed of so many other dogs in 22" performance now.

Tika:

• Steeplechase Round 2: It had 2 sets of weaves. We can't compete on time with that these days. Placed 4th of 5, all of us running clean. Brought home $7 for it.
• Standard: Ran nicely, got all her contacts, kept all her bars up, went down pretty quickly on the table for a change--and 4 obstacles before the end, I sent her into a tunnel under an Aframe that I thought was a gimmee, but apparently she wasn't convinced because she pulled off it and jumped onto the Aframe from the side for an off course. 100% handler issue (although I don't think I'd have had that issue if she wasn't checking in with so much as she's doing now).
• Grand Prix: A killer of a course, very few dogs Qualified. She ran nicely and clean, although much slower than many of the dogs. However--out of ten  22" dogs, only two of us Qed, giving her 2nd place. 
• Jumpers: A pretty smooth run, although I was late on a couple of front crosses, slowing her down a little. Qed but placed only 5th of 8 dogs. Our time of 25.82 wasn't *horribly* behind the winning time of 22.97... but, well, 3 seconds, that's more than 10% slower. Ah, me.

Boost:

• Standard: A challenging course and there was one spot where dogs needed to make a sharp turn but instead were shooting ahead for an off course or not turning tightly enough and running past the jump. I vowed that we would not make yesterday's Jumpers mistake, where I knew it would be an issue and still couldn't fix it. So--yes, indeed, I came to a dead stop, did an RFP (reverse flow pivot--aka fake front cross), and yelled her name--and, yes, indeed, I managed to catch her and bring her in over the jump, but I think I was in her way, because she knocked the bar. The rest of the run was flawless. Another one of those "just ONE thing wrong!" courses.
• Gamblers: Almost perfect opening, but a bobble going into a tunnel--pretty sure it was a handling thing although I didn't review the video--cost us 2 points and the highest of all opening scores. Still, once again, I believe we were tied for 2nd highest of all. The gamble--I was rushed, didn't make sure Boost had a good approach line, and we weren't even close on a gamble that I think lots of people got. 
• Grand Prix: The wheels on our agility train started wobbling--she had to make about a 30-degree adjustment in her path to come in to the weaves that I was running at and yelling Weave!, and she had at least 20 feet in which to do it, but she just ran completely past them on the opposite side from me. Later, she went offcourse where tons of other dogs had gone offcourse--the strategy that worked for Tika didn't work for her.  Most of the rest was nice, though.
• Jumpers. After Tika's run, I was determined not to be late on my front crosses. But-- the wheels came off completely.

So--4 Qs out of 10 for Tika plus $7 Steeplechase winnings and a 2nd in Grand Prix. Real pity about not getting Snookers, though, so that PDCH-Gold is still aching for 3 more of them. Down to only 38 more needed for her Lifetime Platinum.  (As of mid-June, only 96 dogs have ever achieved that. Peer pressure is omnipresent when 20 of them are people/dogs you know and have regularly competed against--you know,  as Janis Joplin sang,

"Oh, lord, won't you buy me an L.A.A. Platinum?
My friends have all got one, I must raise a hat to them..." )

One Q out of 11 for Boost--the win in Pairs yesterday. She didn't even win anything in the worker raffle this weekend.

Tomorrow we'll go for a long walk to drown our sorrows and get MUTT MVR's brakes and rear windows checked.

Saturday at Agility On The Green

SUMMARY: Some Qs but not the ones I wanted. But a blue ribbon!

We started the day with Snooker:

• Boost skipped a weave pole in the opening, giving us 0 instead of 7 points, so we wouldn't have gotten the super-Q anyway, but to make absolutely sure, she ran past #2 jump in the closing.
• Tika, after the 2nd obstacle, I needed to pull her past an offcourse obstacle and she didn't pull.

 Soooo 0 for 4 in a row with Snooker. Gads.

Tika looked happy and healthy today on course, at least. The rest of Tika's day had its moments--both bad and good--

• Steeplechase: Qualified (4th of 4 qualifiers, 10 (?) dogs in the class). But quite a bit slower than the fastest dogs.
• Standard: After another one of those really long stands on the table before going down, I rear crossed the weaves, badly, apparently, because she turned out of them to see what I was doing. Tried to spin her around and restart and she went in and out again, so we left the course.
• Pairs: She had a very nice run but unfortunately our teammate had an offcourse, so no Q there.
• Jumpers: A couple of wide, slow turns as she figured out what I wanted her to do--I think that's my timing as much as anything. She Qed--but all the Qing dogs in our class I think were between about 28 and 30 seconds and she was at the slow end of that. So not bad, but not in Top Ten Point range.

So I'm happy to come away with 2 Qs, but of course  one always wants more when one is contemplating a dog's possible coming retirement.

Boost spent the day taunting me with ALLLLLLmosts--another one of those sets of classes where everyone says, "But she looks really good and ran really nicely" and yet we still had only one Q to show for it:

• Steeplechase: Pretty fast and smooth. Even though I held her contacts on both passes over the Aframe, she was within 4 seconds of the fastest dog. Unfortunately, knocked 2 bars.
• Standard: Pretty fast and smooth, did a nice down on the table. BUT knocked a bar and then popped out of the weaves one pole early when I started fading towards the next obstacle.
• Gamblers: Really nice opening--she turned the wrong way out of one tunnel which cost us the time to get the highest opening of anyone at the trial, but she ended up with 25 opening pts and the highest achieved by a few dogs was 26. Unfortunately, did not get the gamble--Tunnel Suck took her after the 3rd obstacle.
• Jumpers: The dog right before us ran past jump #4 on the outside--a hard pull was needed. I commented to Boost, "That's exactly the sort of thing that you would do right there, so we are going to make sure that you don't."  Of course--she did anyway. It really hurt because the rest of the run was gorgeous, no bars down, no refusals, nice turns. 
• Pairs: Fast and pretty accurate, nice tight turns. Knocked a bar, which I thought would keep us from placing. Teamed with her littermate Gina from southern California who's up for the weekend, and Gina is an amazing dog with an amazing running dogwalk and a talented handler, and between us and a really fast baton hand-off, we had the fastest time of all teams. In addition, everyone else had at least one error on the course, and -- so -- even with the bar down,  out of 31 pairs, we won!  She has only ever won two other Masters-level classes, so this was nice, and doing it with a littermate was fun.

Gina has gotten so much darker since she's had her two litters of puppies. I think she was always a little darker than Boost, but now she's really quite a dark merle. Interesting.

So, tomorrow, a bit more of the same. We have to be there early for Tika's Round 2 Steeplechase and hope that we can win a few dollars out of that. Then 4 other classes in 2 rings, so I'm hoping we'll be done by midafternoon.

Left the trial site around 6--I was actually done a little earlier but schmoozed just a little before leaving--had to get gasoline, groceries, and money from the bank. Home, had a light dinner of crackers and hummus, typed this up, and, wow, it's 9:00 already and time for bed.

(PS I have to note that one fast team ran clean and might have knocked us out of our 1st place, but there was a timer malfunction of some sort and they elected to just take standard course time.)

Well, Duh.

SUMMARY: Why did I think this was a good idea? Again?

This weekend's trial is a 3-day trial, starting with the 5-class Team event this morning. I did not enter Team--I don't need to take yet another day off work, I certainly don't need any Team Qs with either dog, blah blah. So I *was* going to enter only Saturday and Sunday, and that's how I sent in my entry.

But as a bonus, they also offered Snooker Friday evening. I thought and thought about it, and, well, you know, Tika still needs 3 Snooker Qs to complete her Gold PDCH, and Boost, as always, needs SuperQs. So, I thought, well, really, Monterey's not that far, and I'm planning on commuting anyway, so what if I just drive down Friday evening for the Snooker?

So I signed up at the last possible minute.

Soooooo there I was at 4:00 this afternoon, still having had to miss a couple of hours of billable work, sitting in Friday traffic, thinking, "Monterey is an hour and a frigging half *without* traffic. What was I thinking? What what what what WHAT? Three and a half hours of round trip driving, with one Snooker run for each dog in the middle! WHY did I think this was a good idea?"

And then saying out loud to myself, "Well, SOMEONE better get at least a Q this evening or this whole trip will have been completely wasted." (Along with $23 of gasoline, plus the entry fees, plus the time off work...)

Back in the days when Jake desperately needed Gambles to complete his USDAA championship and Remington needed gambles for his NATCH championship and Standards for his USDAA MAD, I started doing this stupid thing-- this thing like driving to santa barbara for a one-day competition because they offered gamblers or standard. Driving to nevada because they offered gamblers or standard. Like that.

Like it would help.

Because I always ignored the fallacy of this idea, which is, the REASON we need those Qs is because we aren't very good at GETTING them, so if I drive 6 or 8 hours to get to an event, wearing myself out, and then stressing myself into "We'd better get a Q or all this effort would have been wasted," that it would make it MORE LIKELY that we'd get a Q?!?!

So, of course, in Boost's run, we got through a four-red opening with some bobbles but no major mishaps, and 2 to 3 in the opening, and then I called her to go over jump #4, pointed at it and yelled "hup" as I ran pall mall forward, and then because it was right in front of her and very obvious, I turned my head away to check for my next position--and, yes, you guessed it, she ran right past the blessed jump. Not even a Q. Crap!

And then 5 minutes later with Tika, after the fourth red in the opening, I sent her into a straight tunnel--and tripped and fell flat on the ground, tried to get up and stumbled back down. Tika, getting to the other end of the tunnel and not seeing me, discovered that she could see me THROUGH the tunnel so of course came right back through it for an off course and crap!!!!!

So I'm home. Someone please remind me next time I think that something like this is a good idea.

Gah. Well, to bed, then 90 minutes driving back down to monterey in the morning. At least now my canopy and all are set up (except the crates, which I forgot) so I don't have to do THAT tomorrow. Yay, can sleep in an extra 30 minutes.

Sheesh.

Thoughts From The Heart

SUMMARY: Well--actually *about* the heart. Tika's.

Tika went in for her annual checkup and shots and tests the other week. Actually it has been about a year and half although we've been in a couple of times in the intervening months for various other reasons.

It was about that time, back then, that I think I first was told that Tika has a heart murmur, but very slight.

This year, the vet said that, on a scale of 1 to 5--hmm, or was it 1 to 6?-- a year and ahalf ago it was about a 2, and now it's about a 3. Still nothing to worry about, he says, but if I notice any change in behavior, or less energy, let him know.

Well, of course, I've noticed less energy in recent months already. I attributed that to being 11 and a half. She still runs full tilt after a ball or frisbee, but instead of being indefatigable, she does it only a few times and then stops or takes a break.

So is that heart related or not?

He said to report in if she does a lot of coughing, say, first thing in the morning. She had been doing quite a bit of coughing in odd ways and at odd times, but now that the doc has said something about it, I haven't heard her do it at all. So... maybe just low-grade allergies or a tickle in her throat?

Also, I asked for a nice full panel on the bloodwork, not just a heartworm check. He reported back that her thyroid is borderline--normal is .8 to 1.0 and she's at .9. If I heard the phone message right. Which makes me wonder, if .9, smack dab in the middle of normal, is borderline, what exactly is normal? I just got around to calling him back, but now he's out of town until next week, so the mystery remains.

Mostly everything seems to be in good working condition, but now I have more things to fret over than just her ever-increasing deafness and what I still think is her deteriorating vision.

For a dog who's been so healthy most of her life, this is all quite distracting for me. I guess every dog will be different as they age, just as they've been different when they were younger. How rude.

We have three weekends of agility coming up, so will see how we all do.

Well--kinda 3 weekends. This weekend, SMART USDAA trial in Prundedale. Next weekend, Bay Team CPE in San Martin, about as close as it ever gets to my house any more. Following weekend--"Dreams of the '90s Are Alive in Dog Agility Woodstock", which seems to be an excuse for a bunch of agility people, who obviously don't have enough agility events yet, to get together for 24 hours from midday to midday and do fun, useful, or silly agility-related things and have a big potluck and sleepover party. I think there are about 30 of us.

We will see how we all do there, too.

Another Trip to Elkhorn Slough, with Family

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday.

(I added identifying captions but you don't have to read them.)

Sea Lion mom and baby

Brown Pelican

Oops

Brandt's Cormorant and chick

Brown Pelicans, Cormorants, and Gull

Great Egret

Sea otter

Sea lions

Great Blue Heron

Great Egret

Sea Otter

Harbor seals

Brown Pelicans, huge White Pelicans, cormorants

Long-Billed Curlew

Family, five of us

Brown Pelican

White Pelicans

Brown Pelican

July Photo Contest

SUMMARY: I got another ribbon from my photo club!

Most months, my photo club has a digital photo competition and the photos are displayed on a large screen so it's easier for all of us (and the judge) to see them. A few times a year, though, they do a print competition for those who prefer the print media.

I decided to try printing and entering one of my photos. Gah! Hate trying to figure out how to make something that looks nice on the screen then look nice when printed! But I wrestled with it for a couple of hours a couple of weeks ago and then another couple of hours more this week, finally printed it, entered it into tonight's competition, and it won Best In Class in the Nature class!

It definitely looks better up close than in an 8x10 print from across the room. I posted it first in this post, but edited differently. Here's my version as printed.

Sea Otter Eating A Clam

More Fireworks and Bored Dogs

SUMMARY: All the shots are edited, and the dogs are tired of it.

The rest of my fireworks shots are here--I recommend playing in slideshow mode.

This dog is somewhat bored.

This Collie is boreder.

I'm not entirely sure why they both have bright blue patches. I swear I haven't been painting them.

Photographing Fireworks

SUMMARY: Some people have asked how I got such great shots.

These are most likely the best photos I've gotten of fireworks, and as I told one person today, I got them by following directions.

You can search the web for "photographing fireworks" and come up with tons of pages. Here's the link I looked at this year:
http://www.carynesplin.com/how-to-photograph-fireworks/

In a nutshell:

• For all cameras:
  
  • Use tripod!
  • Use remote shutter release or 2-second timer to reduce camera shake 
  • Zoom in as needed
  • (Of course you know that you don't use flash to shoot fireworks, right? Just in case the thought crossed your mind--)
• If you have an SLR (I have a Canon DSLR):
  • Use lowest ISO (my lowest is 100). (This helps to keep the sky black and not grainy.)
  • Use shutter speed 5 to 8 seconds
  • Use f4 to f8
  • Set lens to manual focus and set focus to infinity
  • Adjust everything as needed based on your situation (see the article).
• If you have a point and shoot, check whether there's a fireworks setting--most do nowadays, the article said. I checked, and surprise!, my Canon S100 indeed has a fireworks setting. Just FYI, when I used the setting, the camera shot at:
  
  • ISO 80
  • Shutter speed 2 seconds
  • f8
  • Guessing it must've set itself to manual focus/infinity, because I didn't notice it trying to achieve autofocus
  • No flash

I shot some of the show with each camera. Some of my notes from the evening:

• The most important thing for me is always using a tripod or some way of keeping the camera completely still.
• The biggest ah-ah! for me this year on the DSLR was using manual focus set to infinity. Neither you nor the camera have to try to figure out how to focus on a nebulous object in the dark. Maybe if you were trying to get a shot with some in-focus, well-lit foreground object--say, the disneyland castle--you  could use auto focus, but even then I think probably manually set it once and leave it there.
• A longer shutter speed gets you longer trails on the fireworks and more fireworks per shot. I ended up at about 4-second shots with my DSLR, after the 5 and 8 seconds just seemed to have too MUCH in them.  The 2-second setting with the pocket camera was too short; next time I would just set the camera to manual mode (I can do that with mine) and give it a longer time.  Of course, this will change depending on how quickly they're releasing fireworks into the sky. You don't really need to adjust the aperture (f stop) much once  you figure it out for your situation, because the fireworks burn and spread so rapidly and are then gone, so it's not like a single light shining in a single spot.  You could probably set the shutter speed to 10 seconds and still get good lighting but a mass of overlapping fireworks--I think it would look quite cluttered unless the fireworks were really spread out across the sky. (And 10 seconds might start making the sky too light.)
• For the grand finale--maybe it's because they were shooting things so close together--the image burned out in the middle. Would've been better to have a smaller aperture or faster shutter speed during that time. Not sure whether that's true for all shows.
• Set up the camera and keep shooting. Each firework took less than 4 seconds and they were usually shooting one up at least every few seconds. I tried to time pressing the shutter either as soon as I saw a rocket head upwards from the ground, or at the instant that it exploded. I could do either of those with the SLR at 4+ seconds, but with only 2 seconds, the timing was more crucial; I think that hitting the shutter at the instant it starts to explode works better for that.
  But, essentially, I essentially just pressed the shutter again each time the previous shot completed.
• Tripod: For my DSLR, I own a lightweight tripod that can have quite a bit of shake just from the shutter releasing. We sat on the ground this time, so the tripod was fairly short. I held it down firmly with one hand below the camera, pressing it towards the ground, to help reduce shake.  For the small camera, I used a gorillapod. We had these nifty chairs that are just a back and a seat so you're sitting comfortably on the ground. The gorillapod on my bent knee proved to be rock solid.
• About using a remote shutter release or the timer--meant to bring my remote release for the DSLR but forgot. Or use a 2-second timer--yeah, decided really quickly that, especially with the 2-second shutter speed, I wanted to press the shutter exactly at a certain moment. So I placed my hand firmly on the camera, also pressing it down onto the tripod, pressed the shutter, and just held my finger there until the shot completed (didn't release my finger from the shutter).
• Some of the fireworks were burned out in the middle of each tentacle. Maybe something smaller than f4 would've been slightly better, although the darker colored ones weren't showing up nearly as well as the really bright, light ones. 
• I would've liked to have more photos with more fireworks in each; guess I'll experiment with longer shutter speeds again next time. 
• Really, though, it's a crapshoot what you're going to get. because by the time you see what a firework looks like, it's too late to get its photo.  You don't know whether they're sending up one or a bunch, or whether they'll all be in the same spot one after the other (burns out the middle) or nicely spaced across the sky, etc. Just start shooting and keep shooting (and as I noted above, try to time it as rocket is going up or just as it explodes).
• If you want photos of what the fireworks really looked like--such as the ones that explode as a smiley face or heart or whatever--you'll need a much faster shutter speed. I didn't even bother trying those.
• We didn't know until the show started how low in the sky the fireworks were going to be and how the distant row of trees would block our view. It was a bit of a disappointment, although I don't think it's a bad thing to have something in the foreground. It was too dark and too crowded to try to move at that point.
• In post-processing, I ended up reducing highlights on almost all the photos, so a smaller fstop even than f8 might have worked better. I also ended up cropping almost all the photos, but I think that's unavoidable if you just want to set up your camera and not move it around.

Good luck trying your own! Let me know if you do shoot some and how it worked for you.

Happy Birthday, USA!

SUMMARY: Wordless Wednesday.

National Camera Day Mementos

SUMMARY: Last Friday was National Camera Day. Who knew?!

Actually, one of my fellow photo club members knew, so she arranged a shooting safari in downtown Sunnyvale (just one of many cities in Silicon Valley that all flow together. So several club members met Friday afternoon and spent some time prowling the streets in search of photographable stuff.

We were asked to pick no more than 10 of our own to put up on our web site for fun.

Herewith the 10 i picked--almost all have had some tweakage, and several have had some kind of filter or other applied. These were all in a spirit of fun, trying to find treasures that a dozen other keen-eyed photographers wouldn't see or put our own unique spin on them.

"What's Going On"

"Shake Me Up"

"Stylin'"

"Green Machine"

"Bench Reflections"

"Oh So That's What That Big Thing Is"

"Photographers Attack Sunnyvale" (all 6 people in this shot are club members)

"The Sentinel"

"Time Slides"

"X Marks the Spot"

If you want to see what others found, here's the link to the slideshow--it's just been made available for us, so more might be trickling in over the next week or so.

Top Ten Nostalgia

SUMMARY: Tika's Top Ten summary

Gee, it was only a few months ago when I was obsessing about getting just another placement or two to get into the USDAA Performance Top Ten. Now we're just out of it; Tika no longer has the speed with her age or the confidence with her hearing issues, I've already conceded that.

Today's mail brought a reminder of former glory: her pin and certs for 2011 Top Ten in three of the four regular classes.

Thereby making me wax nostalgic about her brief but excellent appearances in the Top Ten ranks. We could never manage it at Championship 26", but moving over into Performance 22" at about 8 1/2 years old, her body loved it.

We were never a really astounding team; we did it with consistency, just enough speed to be able to place regularly, and (I like to think) pretty good strategies in the points games. Now, though, the speed isn't there, and the points games (Snooker and Gamblers) have been a disaster for us for the last few months. Still Qing in Standard and Jumpers kinda regularly but not getting the placements.

Herewith some notes about our rapid rise and decline. She's turned out to be such a good girl, for a dog pound reject because she was too crazy for two different "normal" families!

	2009	2010	2011	2012
Gamblers	tied for 12th (Moved to Pf in April; had 29 points, took 30 to be Top Ten)	6th (46 pts; took 37)	2nd (59 pts; took 39)	- (Not even entering gamblers any more; can't get the gambles)
Jumpers	- (Moved to Pf in Oct, for 2 trials only)	4th (53 pts, took 25)	1st (64 pts, took 30)	currently 8th with 13 pts (but we won't get 30ish pts to stay in top 10 )
Snooker	11th (moved to Pf in April; had 29 points, took 30 to be Top Ten)	4th (42 pts, took 31)	12th (had 26 pts, took 27)	- (not even in top 25)
Standard	- (Moved to Pf in July; not in top 25)	4th (48 pts, took 34)	6th (41 pts, took 35)	currently 15th with 13 pts (for sure we won't get mid-30s pts for top ten)

Sunday USDAA Report

SUMMARY: Tika is slow but collects more Qs and $5; Boost, well, not terrible, but no Qs.

Another nice day with good friends and lots of laughter at Manzanita Park, even though the "fog" was so heavy in the morning that it was really a drizzle.

It's 7:00 a.m. and I'm parked here at the trial site wondering whether it's going to stop.

I managed to not get too depressed over Boost's runs and Tika's flagging agility ability. I did realize, though, how draining it is to put all the effort I put into Boost's runs trying to do the right thing and still not Q, even when I'm feeling pretty good and trying to just enjoy the moment.

Doesn't she look good on paper, though? (Thanks Lisa P for the photos.)

I decided that I'm spending so much on entry fees and not Qing that I really need to just bite the bullet, pay for more pro videos of all of Boost's runs, and try to sit with our instructor to go over them. So again this weekend I paid for all of Boost's and some of Tika's. (Thanks 4-Legged Flix.)

Then I watched all the videos when I got home. And I thought, gee, most of that doesn't look half bad. Really, you can't Q with this dog? I also thought, gee, when I'm out on the field I'm running as fast as I can and I can barely breathe when I'm done (hands go up on my hips at the end of one run--that's not pique, that's me gasping for breath) but on the videos I look like I'm loping and running in quite a stilted manner.

I've put all 16 of them up on YouTube (10 Boost, 6 Tika) for your viewing pleasure, if you want to see a lot of runs that look pretty darned good until you realize that this dog has Qed only 3% of the well-over 100 Masters Jumpers that she's entered.

Like, here's her Saturday Jumpers where she ran past only one jump. Maybe I didn't call enough or use enough body language--video cuts me off right at the crucial moment. And rather than trying to fix it, since we already NQed, I just went ahead and sent her into the next tunnel. But otherwise looks good, dunnit? (Well, except for after the 3rd jump where I forgot where we were going for a minute.)


And today's Jumpers, which wasn't perfect (some bobbles other than the 2 knocked bars) although we successfully did manage *3*, count them, three! rear crosses-- but mostly looks pretty ok, dunnit?


But, really, in this Steeplechase Round 1--did I REALLY do anything so terribly wrong on the jump after the first Aframe or, again, on the next to the last jump to make her not take them? This is no baby dog; she's old enough to know better (but I know that she doesn't). (You might have to watch it on Youtube since it's so small here.)


Meanwhile, my subjective feeling that Tika is much slower in the weaves and in ground speed seems pretty objective in this Steeplechase Final Round video from today,  where you can see that she's really forcing it in the weaves, adding extra steps before jumps, and never really fully extending even when she's running fairly fast.


Not to mention in today's P3 Standard--which she Qed but just barely because it took her so long to go down on the table on top of other slownesses.


To see whether I was misremembering, I went back and looked at a couple of her videos from 5 years ago. Sure, we weren't perfect, but at least her default behavior is to go over jumps when they're right in front of her. And they were 26",  not a mere 22"! AND she always got her weave entries.
 
Earning her ADCH with a Snooker Super-Q,  February 2007:


Taking 1st place in Masters 26" Standard, April 2007:


ANYWAY again--

Today, Tika took 3rd in Steeplechase Round 2 (mostly because 2 other dogs Eed), earning 5 whole dollars, even though she knocked the first bar. I thought the bar was because I didn't warm her up properly, but I did warm her up before Grand Prix and she knocked the first bar there, too, so we just quickly left the ring.

Her Standard was OK, but (as shown in the video above) the table down was long long long and I'm not thrilled with my current solution of just repeating "Down" vehemently until she does, but as long as it works and she's Qing, I'll just keep doing that (and practicing fast/rewarded Downs outside the ring).  At her age, she's getting to where Human Mom says "Tika can do whatever she wants." Her Jumpers was nice enough to take 2nd place  of 9 dogs (largely again courtesy of several faster dogs E-ing) , but there were places on course where *I* noticed that she really hesitated--it's hardly visible in the video, but on the course I was hyper-aware of it. And that was it for her today--2 Qs out of 3 Qable runs, so 5 of 8 for the weekend, and I'll take that Qing percentage.

Boost did NOT want to go over one crucial jump in the Gamblers opening so we missed a possible near-high-in trial opening from wasted time. And she almost got the gamble--did the hard part, IMHO, but then came in to me and wouldn't move away again for 2 simple jumps in a row, sighhhh.

In Standard, she made absolutely sure that she Eed on Refusals--3 refusals equals an E and we got at least 4: Ran past a jump that maybe I didn't indicate well enough but it was pretty much in front of her; missed her weave entry (turning to the left--the direction that has always been her biggest challenge but it was her only miss all weekend), spun before a tunnel, and ran past the table. So I just found my easiest way out to the finish line and didn't bother with the last third of the course that included the dogwalk. Four refusals and a huge between-jump spin in only 2/3 of a course.

Jumpers (as shown above), not terrible but not a Q. Grand Prix, not terrible but not a Q.

SO, Tika gets older and slower, I apparently can't run, Boost keeps making the same mistakes over and over. A sad tale made happier only because I and my dogs are fairly healthy and because there are so many good people at agility trials who make my day in so many ways. Seems to me that everyone was in a good mood today (unlike that Sunday 2 weeks ago on the 2nd day of 105 temperatures... ).

So maybe I'll keep doing agility for a little while longer.