Aaaaaaand We're Home

SUMMARY: An OK weekend. Some things to write home about and others to just hope they're better next time.

OK, for all you short-attention-span theater types, here's what happened in a nutshell (almond probably):

• Tika earned her 25th Championship Jumpers Q to complete her Silver-ADCH. Woooohoooo! Thrilled thrilled thrilled! (And a relief to get it done.) Now to do it all over again in Performance--
• Tika Qed in Pf Steeplechase and Grand Prix yet again and had a lovely 3rd place Steeplechase finish to bring home a whopping $6.30. Better than a poke in the eye with a Snooker flag.
• Tika Qed with a 2nd in today's Pf Gamblers, missed 1st by 1 point, would've ALSO been good for 2nd in Ch 22" and Ch 26"! AND that also finished her Performance Gambler's title. Yowza!
  
• Tika and partner Qed and took 2nd in Pf Pairs.
• Boost had an amazing Snooker run. Amazing. Like the Border Collie I've always wanted. (Too bad her clumsy mom negated the run with her elbow--more later.)
• It was hot. Like, 99F hot (and I'm not sayin' what the F stands for). (37.2C) Observe the hot and sweaty:
  
  
  
  
  
  
• USDAA has given in and now calls Performance Grand Prix "Performance Grand Prix" instead of "Performance National Standard" (try pronouncing "PNS" or "PeNaS" or whatever out loud). Now if only they'll do the same for Performance Steeplechase.
• Boost had zero Qs on the weekend. Ze. Ro.
  

So--how hot was it? It was so hot that today was only 1 degree lower than the record-setting temperature for this date.
It was so hot that the dogs' fabric crates, under a canopy, were hot to the touch in midafternoon.
It was so hot that, instead of leaving the dogs in their crates as usual, I surrounded the fronts of the crates with the xpen and left the crates open to give them more air and access to the grass to lie on. (In this photo, moved xpen to one side to start packing up.)

It was so hot that even us delicate flowers of femininity poured profuse perspiration. OK, now try peeling off those sopping tight jeans so you can put on shorts. Yeh uh-hm.
It was so hot that, in the last run of the day, most of the Performance dogs didn't want to go down on the table. Even Tika. I'm thinking it wasn't that the table was hot; it was that they knew that if they lay down, they'd have to eventually get around to standing up again!
It was so hot that last night I left the van's doors & windows open 6-8" (any more & certain border collies might have gone exploring) and I *still* fried most of the night. (They claimed it was in the 50s overnight. Didn't feel like it.)
It was so hot that people were applying cold asparagus poultices to their necks to cool down.
However, I might be lying about at least one of those things. Well--maybe exactly one.

How did the awesome Performance Tika end up Qing in only 5 of 10 classes, yikes? It was a weekend of mostly so-closes:

• Saturday Standard: Flew off the dogwalk big time. Rest of run lovely. Time would've been good enough for a 2nd place, despite heat.
  
• Saturday Gamblers: missed her weave entry in the opening and I went back to pick it up again, which means that when the whistle blew we were starting UP the Aframe instead of leaving the Aframe, which meant that Tika did the gamble perfectly but was over by .17 seconds. Arrrrgh!
• Sunday Jumpers: I led out about 6 steps and turned to discover that Tika had left her down stay and was standing about 6 inches from the first (26") jump. Think she can get over that without knocking it? Not a chance.
• Sunday Snooker: FLEW off Aframe in opening, which meant I had to do a front cross where I needed to do a pull, which meant that she turned the wrong way after the next red, both of which meant that she was jumping up & barking at me profusely for  not being clearer in my instructions instead of RUNNING FULL OUT which is what we needed to do, which meant that in the #7 closing (tunnel//jump/tunnel) she was only at the jump when the whistle blew. Argh. 
• Sunday Standard: For the first time in a VERY long time indeed, when I sent her out to a jump, she ran towards it, peeled away to bounce back and me, and then turned and took it. Refusal.  Jeez. Of course this time she stuck her start line and got all her contacts and kept her bars up.

How did Boost have a zero Q weekend?

• Several runs with meltdowns, and not because of the heat (I don't think), but runouts, refusals, bars going down, missing weave entries--I WANT MY *NEW* BOOST BACK!
• Sunday's Jumpers--OH so close! Pretty nice but one bar down in the middle.
• Pairs: One refusal, but with Partner's 10 faults, we were .69 (!) seconds over time. So we were fast but not fast enough with the time-wasting bobbles. Sheesh! 
• After assorted mess-ups, Eed entirely in Standard, Grand Prix, Jumpers, and another Standard.
• Second-LOWEST points of 20 dogs in Saturday's gamblers.
• And then there was Snooker.
  

OK, so here's the Snooker thang. It was worse than a speed course; it was a super-speed course. To do all three sevens and get thru to the end in 48 seconds required running around 3 sides of the field three times! It was just a bloody awful lot of yardage. I tried to think of a smoother, easier course for Boost, but there WAS no smoother, easier course.

But to get the full 51 points, you'd have to be VERY fast and, furthermore, you'd have to be PERFECT, not a bobble or wasted yardage anywhere. And, of course (and especially this weekend), Boost and I do not HAVE runs that have no bobbles or wasted yardage.

But I just couldn't come up with a better course. We were the next to the last dog of *all* dogs to run, so I had already seen that, out of 70 dogs who had already run it, only 3 who had attempted all three 7s had made it to the end, and (a) they had run their buns off, and (b) they were top-flight competitors with super-fast dogs, and (c) two of them had made it with only a fraction of a second to spare, and the third with maybe a second.

I came up with a plan where we'd do two 7s and a 5, which was also pretty smooth and we'd be more likely to get all the way through if we had any bobbles.

So. We lined up, I led out halfway across the field leaving her facing the first #1 red, and I released her, and we were off.

Well, jeez, she was PERFECT! Sure, there was the stupid thing where, on our way to the 2nd red, I hit the #2 jump's wing with my elbow on the way past and knocked the bar off. But after the 3rd red and Boost was flying and doing great, I decided to try for all 3 sevens. And she was AWESOME, just AWESOME! Did everything right! We did not complete the last 7--she was IN the last tunnel but had probably a stride to go to get out--but I was, needless to say, absolutely hyper-jazzed. THIS is the Border Collie I want! WoooooooohhoooooooO!

But there's that little issue about the knocked #2. Judge had to think about it (or she'd have whistled us off earlier--glad she didn't!), but essentially the rule is that the *handler* took the obstacle out of play, so Boost didn't have to actually jump it in the closing (bar was down), which negated all obstacles #2 and after. So we got none of our closing points.

I wasn't too surprised; I didn't know the rule, but I knew when I hit it that I was probably going to pay in one way or another. So our only class where Boost was not only excellent enough to get Q points but in fact Super-Q points, I screwed up by being clumsy. Sigh. But I am still buzzed from that run! What! A! Bordercollie!

What feels good after packing up on a very very hot day? Clean hands and clean, dry shirt and socks!

What feels good after a long, hot weekend of 21 runs? Air-conditioned MUTT MVR, ready to head home!

Dogs are ready to go.

What is a really really good idea after a long, very hot, very perspiring day before a 2-hour drive home with all the ice in your soda cooler melted? Stop at the Quick Mart and get a 44-oz. cup packed to the top with ice for $1.19 and then pour your soda over it!

What's a really really good idea to keep you focused and alert on the road after a long and tiring weekend? Funny tapes!

Okily dokily, good neighbor, I think I probably have lots more I want to say about lots of things, but I'm thinkin' that lots of lying in bed and sleeping would be an exxxxxxellennnnnt plan right about now.

Complete list of labels

OK, Last Videos from Last Weekend, plus Standard Analysis

SUMMARY: Three Masters Standard runs: Compare and contrast.

This course was not a gimmee. From my point of view, the toughest parts were 5 to 9, 10 to 15, and 16 to 18. Hmm, that's pretty much the whole course, eh? But I divide them like that because they really presented 3 major handling issues.

From 5 to 9. Coming off the Aframe, the dog's path over #6 is toward the dogwalk, so they have to change leads to get to #7, so now they're heading for the tunnel, and now have to change leads again to get over 8 and to the dogwalk.

You could try a front cross between 6 and 7 if you could leave your dog on the Aframe and trust her to get the contact. But it's a lonnnnng way to go to get to the correct position; you need to be out beyond the North/South 80 line to have a straight line in your path from 7 to 8. So, to cover that huge distance, you're driving towards the dogwalk, which pushes the dog even harder in that direction when what you really want is for them to be turning tightly to get to #7. Some people managed it, but not many even tried.

Most of us sent to #6, hanging back so that we could run in a straight line from near the corner of the Aframe directly towards the far wing of #8, giving perhaps a bit of a serpentine cue for #7. Then rear cross 8 to get a turn to the dogwalk.

10 to 15. Here, you have to ensure that the dog goes through the tire on her way to the chute, which is a Northward push. In an ideal world, you'd like to be on the inside of the curve from 11 to 15, which means that you'd have to be in front cross position on the far side of #12 (around the 40N line) before the dog is coming out of the chute; if you're not far enough, you'll have to veer out around #12 , pulling the dog off #13.

But getting to that position is really tough given the push to #10 and the dog's speed from 10 through 11. You'd have to cover 40 feet in about 2-3 seconds--I'm not that fast! Most people with faster dogs opted, instead, to stay on the Aframe side of #12, give a serpentine cue, and rear cross 13.

16 to 18. The line from the table to the weaves is not straight. If you can leave your dog on the table while the judge is counting down 5 seconds, you could get into front cross position between 17 and 18 and get a nice smooth controlled path into the weaves.

You could also get into serp position on the Aframe side of #17. I think that either of these, if done right, would get the smoothest entry into the weaves.

Boost I don't trust to keep her elbows on the table. Tika might be OK, but I'd have to watch her carefully and not make an sudden moves or gestures or she'd be off the table in a flash. I elected instead to stay on the teeter side of #17, pull as if we were going to #14 until the dog was in line with the weave entry, and then use "left weave". Both dogs executed well, but I think it's a slower entrance than the preceding choices because it's not as obviously a semistraight line to the dogs.

Tika's Run

Tika's time was 43.75 on a standard course time of 54. We lost some time when I didn't get my line from 6 to 8 quite right and she turned the wrong way after 8. Still, it was good for 2rd place out of nine P3 22" dogs--the winner was 3 seconds faster.(3-Dog Video versions.)

Boost's Run

Boost's time was 39.96 (4 secs faster than Tika) with a SCT of 51. I expect her to be faster than Tika--in fact I expect her to be MUCH faster, so with Tika's wrong turn, their times are really disturbingly quite close to each other. The main thing with Boost is the stop on the contacts, which I'm not ready to sacrifice for glory in most cases. Not interested in Top Ten points particularly (except for fun). (3-Dog Video versions.)

Gina's Run

I include this with running contacts for comparison with littermate Boost. Tim has worked very hard on consistency; there was a long time where they weren't making a lot of contacts, but this weekend they were gorgeous. Now they just need to fix the bar-knocking thing. (Sound familiar?) And Gina moves through the course with a bit more confidence than Boost, it seems to me. Her time was an amazing 34.2ish, faster than ANY other masters or p3 dog, including Luka (in the same range) and the fabulous Sweep (36-plus). I love watching them run. (3-Dog Video versions.)

Complete list of labels

Obstacle Times

SUMMARY: Are we competitive? Are we excellent? Or are we just dawdling along?

Kathy Keats has did a lot of work over several years accruing statistics on how quickly dogs do various agility obstacles. She was one of the first to start treating agility as a professional sport, where details like exactly how fast your weaves are or how quickly you cover ground is extremely important competitive information.

The latest post that I've seen of her data goes back to 2004; I've tried Googling for more recent info and haven't found any. Anyone seen anything more recent?

AGILEDOGS Digest - 23 Aug 2004 - Special issue (#2004-679)

From Kathy Keats

These have changed quite a bit in the last year or so...now:

A-Frame
Respectable 2.5
Competitive Less than 1.8
Excellent 1.3

Dog Walk
Respectable 3.0
Competitive Less than 2.2
Excellent 1.6 (fastest big dogs are pushing 1.4)

SeeSaw
Respectable 2.0
Competitive Less than 1.5
Excellent 1.0 (big dogs only)

Weaves - a lot of people think that weaving is faster than it is. In
the 60 weave pole challenge dogs are going just over 12 seconds for 5
sets of poles. 12 seconds divided by 5 is 2.4. Although you can argue
the dogs slow down as they get tired, even a dog weaving at 11 seconds
which no one has come near yet is only going 2.2 seconds per set. The
first 3 poles of a set requires the dog to slow a tiny bit and get his
rhythm.
Respectable 3.5 to 4.0
Competitive Less than 3.0
Excellent Less than 2.5

Taj MuttHall times

I'm operating off the videos with a stopwatch, rather than working in real life with electronic timers, so it's hard to know how valid these numbers are. Here's how I timed them:

Contacts: From first paw hitting the obstacle to first paw on the ground on the other side.

Weaves: Head past first pole to head past last pole.

I thought that Boost's contact obstacles were significantly faster than Tika's; in execution, to my great surprise, they're very close on the Aframe and the Dogwalk because Boost runs up from the bottom and down to the end while Tika flies onto the up ramp and leaps off the down ramp in her "modified running contact." The main differences are the teeter and the weaves.

Here's what I got:

Tika:
Aframe: 1.6 seconds
Dogwalk: 2.4 seconds
Teeter: 1.3 seconds
Weaves: 3.3 seconds

Boost:
Aframe: 1.55 seconds
Dogwalk: 2.4 seconds
Teeter: 1.18 seconds
Weaves: 2.5 seconds

Complete list of labels

Boost Steeplechase Round 2 Video

SUMMARY: Thanks, 3 Dog Video!

Here is Boost, just two steps to the right from taking home a big Steeplechase purse. :-)

Between the first jump and the tunnel there is another jump; you can see that she is NOT jumping between there. Really, the jump was almost in her way (I lined her up deliberately pointing at it and not at the tunnel) and it wasn't very much of a lead-out pivot at all, but dang she didn't get it. Rest of the run is lovely, though.

Complete list of labels

Boost Steeplechase Video

SUMMARY: 3-Dog Video comes through again, thanks Steve.

Boost's Round 1 Steeplechase video. Same deal as Tika's; pick the resolution at the top (when you click the play arrow).

Boost's run was 5.46 seconds slower than the winning dog that round. I've used my stopwatch to figure out some differences; held her on the two Aframes for a total of somewhere around 1.5 seconds; the place nearing the end where she slows down to look back at me, turns back to me, spins, and then finally gets going again is at least 3 seconds.

Running contacts, I tell ya-- plus a dog who'll just keep taking obstacles in front of her!--would be handy.

And here's the course map:

Complete list of labels

It's Never What I Expect

SUMMARY: Nor necessarily what I want. USDAA trial results.

I had hoped (quietly) that this weekend maybe I could finish Tika's last Standard Q at 26" (two chances) and get one more of the three 26" Jumpers legs she needs for her Silver ADCH, and then she'd be all in Performance at 22".

Didn't do that. Instead, in the tournaments we had a repeat of the last trial in Performance: Won Steeplechase round 1, came in second in Grand Prix. Would be nice just once in our lives to finish first in Grand Prix to get that bye into the second round at the regionals, but not this time. [I'm getting greedy already--she never won steeplechase in Championship and I don't think ever placed this high in Ch GP.]

Tika also got the P3 gamble--barely--she works so hard to make up for my lack of clarity!--and came in 2nd; ran clean in Pairs (although partner had 2 faults) and she and partner were fast enough to still Q and take 4th of 10 performance teams.

For Boost, would be nice to SOMEDAY get a Jumpers leg to earn our MAD. Didn't do that, either. But she did run clean in Masters pairs, and although partner had an Aframe flyoff, together they were fast enough to make up for that to qualify and place 3rd of 23 teams. Dang fast dogs! And Boost's run was absolutely lovely! No complaints from me at all.

I told my renter--a bit cynically--that if BOTH Tika and Boost qualified in Steeplechase, maybe I'd stay through Sunday morning for the money runoff, and figured I was safe because Boost has Qed only once ever in Steeplechase and it wasn't at the same time as Tika.

So--Boost ALSO qualified in Steeplechase! She knocked a bar and yet was plenty fast enough to squeak under the qualifying course time (just 2 seconds slower than the fastest dog, and I can attribute that to (a) holding her on her 1st Aframe contact and (b) spinning towards me instead of running straight out at the end). She's just so fast--it would be wonderful to be able to really see that come through!

However, in the end, I didn't stay through the night to do round 2: Hopes of monetary return worth the extra night in my van were extremely slim (1st place in Performance around $15, f Tika managed it; Boost was the last of 16 22" dogs to Q, and the odds of her placing in the top 6 or 8 or whatever for checks was about zero) and I was tired and looking forward to sleeping in my own bed.

So, out of 8 runs, Tika Qed 4, Boost Qed 2.

Snooker was a bust mostly because I walked it wrong, combined with issues in the opening. Sigh. My plan was to do three 7s and a 5 in the opening. Well-- Tika did two 7s and then took the 5 due to insufficient handler communication, which put us so far away from the 4th red that I went right into the closing. Boost knocked her first red, so we were able to do only three sevens and then go into the closing.

Problem was that I walked the #4 with the wrong obstacle. So, Tika did 2-3 in the closing and, as I put her over what I THOUGHT was #4, I was surprised to see a red "1" flag on that jump. Doh. With Boost, learning from my mistake, I was able to get her over the #4 correctly, but the angles were sufficiently weird that, without walking it, I couldn't handle getting her into the #5 correctly.

Boost's runs, over all, were starting to feel decent this weekend. We still had the oddball refusals and going past jumps backwards while looking at me and then backjumping, that sort of thing, but not as many as sometimes. And didn't knock an excruciating number of bars, although they still came down.

Boost mostly had lovely contacts; on one Standard run where she already had faults, when she left the dogwalk without a release, I thanked the judge and picked Boost up and carried her off. She got the rest of her contacts, with one exception--end of the day, Steeplechase had 2 Aframes. She did the first one perfectly and I released her much more quickly than is good for training, and then she self-released the 2nd time. On the other hand, if I hadn't release quickly and she hadn't self-released, we wouldn't have made time because of her one knocked bar. So take your pick.

Tika was absolutely delighted to be running after me being sick in bed for 3 days and too weak to do anything with them at all save a couple of pathetic ball tosses in the back yard. So delighted, in fact, that in our first run Friday night, she didn't stick her start line and knocked the first bar (which is what told me that she was heading up behind me), and then flewwwwww off her dogwalk. She calmed down as Saturday wore on and it got quite a bit hotter (at least mid-80s, maybe 90ish).

The best moment of the weekend came during Saturday's standard round; Boost already had at least one fault on the course. We hit the table, she went into a down, and I noticed that BOTH her ears were inside out on top of her head. I hate that! At home and in class, I reach down to flip her ears over all the time. So there she was, there I was, waiting for the judge to count off the 5 seconds, and I couldn't stand it--reached over and flipped her ears over. Which is a 5-point fault for touching my dog. Judge laughed. I realized just as I was doing it that flipping the ears actually counted as touching my dog in the ring. Just glad she already had a fault; would've kicked myself if that had turned out to be one of her few clean runs. OK, we had faults, but at least her ears had dignity.

I actually remembered to have someone videotape the last couple of our runs. Maybe if I have time this week (always the issue) I'll try to post a couple.

As always, it was great to be around friends, although Risk's death gave everyone a gut-punch. Because I had been posting my health status on facebook, many people asked about me and checked up on me frequently to make sure I wasn't overdoing it.

And I did fine, symptoms almost entirely gone today, although I'm very glad I didn't stay for Sunday.

Complete list of labels

Boost's Speed and some Gambling Strategies

SUMMARY: Boost is very fast. Very. But does it ever show?

Hint #1 that she's very fast: Weaves. Jim B suggested in class last week that I should arrange a 60-weave-pole challenge at a future trial to see whether she could break the record. That was unsolicited, and a nice thing to say! Now that her weaves seem to be fixed again. I tried to find Official Scoring Info for the 60 Weave Pole Challenge, but it doesn't seem to be on the Clean Run site any more. Anyone know who's handling that event and tracking of results these days?

Hint #2 that she's very fast: Gamblers. When we can get our act together. I try to pick courses that we can do without bobbles so that we're not rehearsing garbage. It's not always easy to do, and sometimes is a lower-point course than ideal. But when we get it--we get the "how the * did you get xx points?!" from handlers of other very fast dogs. We were SO close last weekend, but no cigar.




In the walkthrough, I had picked out about 3 course plans that I liked, with some variant openings on each, and hadn't entirely decided which to do. Plans with the dogwalk were right out for Tika, because her dogwalk is so unreliable. Plans with the teeter were iffy for Boost--although her teeter is really fast, there was no good approach to it for us at our current performance level.

I was watching the scores come through before I ran. A talented friend with 2 fast dogs ran early and scored 60 and 61 points, more than any other dogs to that point. I hadn't added up the points from my plans; I usually don't, just try to maximize the number of higher-point obstacles and assume that it'll result in a bunch of points. But I commented to her that I wanted to know what her plan was, so she told me. It mapped almost perfectly to one of my options--mine had one more obstacle at the beginning--and I decided that if she was getting to the right place with her dogs with one fewer obstacle, I was probably overreaching.

Boost and I were not perfect on course. First, she ran under the tire going from the Aframe to the chute--that cost us 3 points. Then, after the chute, I had trouble getting her onto the dogwalk and ended up having to spin her around me to line her up again. Must have wasted at least 2 seconds. At the other end of the dogwalk, our "perfect" ability to say "left tunnel!" and have her blast right in there failed, as instead she came off the dogwalk towards me, and so we had to bobble a bit to get her into the #7 end of the tunnel--another second or two wasted.

Everything else was lovely, but the whistle blew before she exited the #12 tunnel (I thought that she was out when the whistle blew, but we didn't get our 3 points for it so apparently not). So our total points for the run was 60 (including the gamble). If she hadn't run under the tire, and if we hadn't had silly bobbles at both ends of the dogwalk, she'd have had at least 66. Which would've been 5 more points than anyone else at the trial. Now, OK, Luka and Beadle and Heath and Cap weren't there, but damnit I still think we'd have been in there.

At the start of gamble, we were in perfect position and she did 1-4 perfectly, but came in to me before #5 and it took several lonnnng heart-stopping seconds to get her to finally go out. BUT because we were in good position and because she's so fast, we achieved it with about 3 seconds to spare.

Hint #3 that we have a whole truckload of work to do: Snooker. Getting Qs in Snooker should be easy. Especially ones like this weekend's, where getting three 7s was basically a speed course, not so much a handling course. In Tika's height, 6 of 9 dogs got 51 points, for example.

Two trials ago, Boost and I had so many bobbles--runouts, refusals, knocked bars--on what I thought was a fairly straight-forward course that we got only about 7 points before we finally had to leave the course. Someone looking only at the accumulator sheet said, "How is it possible for someone to be out there for 45 seconds and get only 7 points?" I laughed and explained.

This week: Deja vu.



First, I led out so that the dog saw nuthin' but tunnel when looking over the first jump (I made sure that the teeter was out of sight behind the wing, for example). I released and started running straight at the tunnel. Dog is supposed to come with you, right? Especially a dog who ran around jumps on lead outs something like 5 times this weekend trying to get to where you were? But noooo--she veered right and ran across the teeter, so I had to regroup, work her around to get her lined up to do the teeter instead of the #7 in the opening.

Then, trying to get her over the 2nd red (to the right of the teeter), we went into the "this jump? this jump? this jump?" refusal dance. Got it, got into the 7a tunnel, hit the first weave pole and then skipped, so had to spin her around and retry--reentered in the wrong place. Spun her around and retried and finally got it. On the 3rd red, I front-crossed after the weaves so that it would be an easy handling thing with her on my left to do the #1 and back to the weave, but nooo-- "this jump? this jump? this jump?" and then she crashed into the bar trying to do it sideways at the last minute.

So then I had to line her up for the 2-3, but now her brain is over the top and she's bouncing every which way. I am standing completely still and telling her in a calm voice "here" (which means line up on my right side) and patting my right leg. I'm not sure how long it took before she actually lined up and stopped bouncing bouncing bouncing. I made sure that she was looking straight across the #2 to the #3 (not looking at me) and I had a straight line to run to get to #4a.

I told her "through!" and she blasted across #2 and into the tunnel like greased lightning while I hauled my butt from a complete standstill--and she came back out the same end of the tunnel! I was ready to strangle her.

So there we were, looking at the accumulator sheet, with about 46 seconds used and only 9 points to our name.

Sigh.

If only we could harness that speed for the good of all mankind instead of using our powers for evil!

Complete list of labels