Jake seems soooo slowwwwww

I've been thinking that Jake is really slowing down. Some runs he's just flying--and lately that seems to mean offcourses, so I don't get accurate course times to determine how many yards per second he's going. Sometimes he seems really slow--and often (like this weekend) this means that he pulls away from obstacles so that we have to go back and redo them, which *also* means that I don't get an accurate course time.

I've been tracking how fast my dogs ran their courses from the very beginning, but I didn't start writing down how many yards the courses were until just over 3 years ago, so I don't have data from Jake's first couple of years of agility. About 3 years ago was also about when we confirmed for sure that he had arthritis in his lower spine when he was in so much pain one week that I had to take him in to the vet for xrays.

However, in those three years, Jake's Jumpers courses have ranged pretty steadily between 4.5 and 5.5 yards per second, with a high of just over 6 yards per second. I'm looking at the jumpers times because there are no contact obstacles, tables, or weave poles to slow them down--it's just jumps and sometimes tunnels, all of which are fast obstacles.

That's pretty fast, you know--that's 13 to 17 feet per second! That's movin'! Nice to have 4 legs designed for running--

Anyway, I just ran Tika's specs, also. She's pretty steadily in the 5.5 to 6.5 range with a high just over 7 yards per second. Hmm, no wonder Jake seems slow--that's an additional 3 feet *per second* that she's covering compared to Jake. Of course I *know* she's fast on course and I have to really bust my buns to try to be in position when she's taking a series of jumps and tunnels. So maybe I'm just getting faster, too?

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