Demo Today

SUMMARY: A survey of demo dogs. Plus napping.

Today a bunch of us are doing a demo for a retirement community where the mother of a friend lives. My parents are thinking about the same place. Maybe. Or not. I hate moving myself, and they've got 40 years in their current home (and the stuff to go with it), so this would be a big decision. Big.

But today is about little. Because the lawn where we do the demo (have done this every year or 2 for a while now) is very tiny, it's hard to demo with big dogs. I took Jake one year, and he was pretty small for a big dog, but even at 13 years old he kept having to screech to a halt to avoid running into a shrubbery. So this demo is best for smaller dogs who have good shrubbage avoidance technology.

Plus my friend has these cute custom-made agility equipments for households with little dogs to practice on--the tire is full-sized but it hangs in this teeny short light-weight frame. Very practical if your dogs never have to jump more than 12". Or 16". Not 26".

So today my dogs are not going; they will hang out here in the predicted 90-ish F (32 C) heat and snooze, like Boost is currently demonstrating.

I'm going to be the announcer because I love to blather on about agility, and I won't be distracted by having to, like, run. We like to share info about our dogs when we do agility. This is great stuff.

I will try to post photos later of the dogs I don't already have shots of. Here are their own descriptions; my comment in [square brackets].

Scully [maybe Havanese mix] - 13 years old and has been doing agility for 12 years. She finished her 5th agility championship earlier this year and is still competing. The weave poles are her least favorite obstacle and she likes everything else. Scully also has titles in obedience and rally. She has more titles than any dog in the history of Mixed Breed Dog Clubs of America.

Sparkle [chihuahua mix] - 5 years old [and about 3 pounds] and has been doing agility all her life. Two years ago she broke her leg while practicing agility but made a full recovery and last month she finished her second agility championship. She has a hard time doing the teeter because she has to go all the way to the end to make it tip. She also has titles in Rally.


Belle [MinPin] is 6 years old and she has AAD in USDAA and CL4 in CPE.
I have been with her since she was 8 weeks old.
She is my first ever dog and she is the reason we started agility because she loved to jump and run since she was a puppy.
I like to dress her up and she has more clothes than I do.

A little info on Bernie [a tiny beagle]-
He likes snacks!
He has his PD2 and C-ATCH titles.
Meatballs (turkey and beef) are one of his favorite snacks!
He has his P3 Standard, Jumpers and Snooker titles.
He likes salmon snacks - too!
He will be eleven years old in September.
He likes popcorn (so everyone should hang on to their popcorn!)
He had knee surgery two years ago - he did 'doggie' physical therapy - it took about 9 months to recover.
Bernie is my first agility dog - so I'm learning too!
Did I mention he likes snacks??
If you run out of something to say, I think you can mention just about anything related to snacks!

Porsche [little Pembroke Welsh Corgi], Porsche, also known as the "Porsche Pupster" for you car enthusiasts out there, is 4 years old, been competing for 2 years. Favorite activities are sprinting, eating, and chasing squirrels ... so apologies in advance if she takes a break in the middle of her run to do one of the later two.
[Porsche was the highest-scoring overall 12" dog at the USDAA Nationals last year and was in the Grand Prix and Team finals. Debbie is so modest, she'll say she just got lucky. Ha!]

Tahles (said like tay-less) [Pomeranian with no tail], named after the great Klingon warrior, Tayles is better known as Tater Tot. He was a rescue, scrapped off the street after a hit-in-run and brought to the hospital that I work at [hence no tail]. After 1 year of surgeries and rehab, he started working the equipment in our back yard all by himself. He decided that agility was too much fun to miss.
He has been to USDAA National Finals twice and finished 5th and 4th. He held the 60 weave pole title for Poms for about 1 and 1/2 yrs. He is a natural-born comedian and knows he is the center of the universe.

[Provided by Art's spouse:] Sooner [Papillon] is Art's second agility dog. They have been competing for 1-1/2 years. Sooner likes to ride in the truck and also enjoys many groceries. He weighs 11 pounds and likes the high obstacles most, like the A frame and teeter. Art lost 60 pounds when he got his first puppy so that he would be agile enough to move with the puppy. Sooner is 3 years old. Art can tell you how old he is.

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A Memorial Day to Remember

SUMMARY: Agility demo and complete exhaustion. A good time was had by all.

We did an agility demo today for our neighborhood association's Memorial Day parade and fair. (We didn't do the parade.) We used my agility equipment rather than trying to find a driver and bring up a trailer from wherever they're currently located--Salinas or some such place. And here is all my agility equipment (save the dogwalk): three tunnels, Aframe, teeter, 7 jumps, chute, table, weaves (partly borrowed), broad jump, tire, fence posts (some borrowed). [Remember that you can click photos here to see a much larger view for details.]


I have never done so much equipment hauling and cleaning and mending in my life. Hours yesterday, hours today. I'se all wored out. Fortunately, BAS, who also lives in the neighborhood, came early with her strong-backed spouse and helped me set up and then helped me haul everything home at the end of the day. Here she is talking to interested parties, while interested Jersey puzzles me out.

I vowed to take a photo of the whole group of us and our dogs together for posterity, but... it got busy, I got tired, I just forgot.

We started setting up at 8 because they wanted us done by 11 for the parade to arrive at 11:30, and there were only 2 of us, so it took a while. When the parade arrived, so did a bunch of interesting vehicles. Like the Sharks fire engine.
And these vehicles. Holy Achilles Tendon, look at how skinny those ankles are! How do they hold up those huge beasts? (I mean the horses of course.)

The fair included the main "stage" (canopies over part of the pavement), one burger stand with a huuuuuuge line, one drink stand, a few crafts stands, half a dozen games booths, and a central volunteers booth at which to buy tickets for food and games.

Looked like there might have been a thousand people there (I'm not convinced...maybe 500? A lot, anyway.

They had a long program of sequential entertainments. Frankly, everyone came, ate, checked out the games, and left. We were supposed to be after the high school jazz band and by the time the band played, the crowd was down to maybe 50 people scattered around. Then they stuck in the Tae Kwon Do exhibition. Quite a few people stopped by from time to time to ask when we were going to do our demo, and some said they couldn't wait and sorry.

So--the parade arrived at 11:30, the main Memorial Day ceremonies and parade awards took less than an hour, and within an hour after that, pretty much everyone was gone.

We were finally on around 2:30, and the 30 or 40 people who were left came over and were a very good audience. Nothing like the hundreds we'd been expecting.

If we do this event again, we won't do it under those circumstances. It had gotten quite warm by then, and three of our dogs didn't want to be out in the heat doing agility. And while I understand that they have a program and everyone wants their turn to do their stage bit, they'd be much better off running parallel programs, which would give everyone their turn but also allow the audience choices of things to do AND maybe therefore get them to stay around longer to WATCH the things. And I can assure you that, if I'd thought the audience would be only 30 people, I wouldn't have volunteered to show up.

But, even given all that, it's always a blast to get to run your dogs on a fun course, away from home, not in class, not in competition, and for free! (Except for the time involved.) Everyone did a bit of practicing here and there while waiting our turn. We also talked to a lot of people who had come over and were hanging around waiting for the official demo to start, and we talked to them about our dogs, demonstrated some tricks and some training methods, showed some individual obstacle performances, and like that. Then maybe 15-20 minutes of demo, including explaining the equipment and then running a course. Then, after the demo was over and everyone had run, the audience vanished from the site POOF! and we all ran it again and did little sequences and things with our dogs.

Boost is SO FAST! Man, she hauls! Got tremendous OOoohs from the audience when she slammed into the weave entry and continued correctly at her lightning speed... but then, dang, popped out at #8. More than once. And she was knocking bars. But her contacts were excellent, we didn't have any runouts or refusals, although we did have a little confusion and I just couldn't keep up with her! She loved it! Tika was her usual fast-enough consistent self and enjoyed schmoozing with the audience and getting treats for tricks (backing up to "beep beep beep" like trucks do was a crowd pleaser).


I met a couple of new agility people and got to see a couple of folks whose dogs have retired from agility so I don't see them at trials any more, but they were willing to come out and do this and jump at a nice easy low height. And for sure I burned a tremendous number of calories! I should sleep well tonight! Bring on the ibuprofen!

And I learned this valuable lesson: When you clear EVERYTHING out of the van to try to fit in all the agility equipment, don't remove the bag with the sun lotion!

Looking in the mirror after a long hard sunny day.

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Don't Ever Do This Again

SUMMARY: In which we offer to do an agility demo for a big event down the street.

Next time I say, "Hey, cool, there's a big event just down the street from my house on memorial day, what a great opportunity to do a demo, we can just haul all my equipment over there!" remind me that it has already taken me hours to gather, clean, repair, disassemble, and haul stuff out to my van, and tht's not everything yet.

And then there's tomorrow... set up, hang out until it's our turn in the scheulde, then tear it all down again. I'm thinkin' it's going to consume from 8 a.m. until maybe 5 p.m. For two 15-minute demos!

What a dork.

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Demo, Bars, Boot Camp Results

SUMMARY: Filling in some updates.

Demo and possible agility site

Saturday's demo was well-received by the horsey set. They burst into delighted laughter and cheers and applause when a dog did the weaves or the teeter. Cheering and applause for every run. A good group to demo for.

On the down side, the arena was a bowl of mush after rain the night before. So now we know that these arenas won't do after rain. And that was only one day of not-too-awful rain, too.

Took us a while to find someone who could tell us where we were supposed to be. After we found someone who could send for the correct someone who was responible for us, we had much discussion and exploration about where the footing was good enough to do agility, so wasted more time. Our trailer ended up in the wrong area of the horsepark, blocked in among horse trailers, trucks, and so on (thinking he'd be staying there for a while) and, once we finally found where we were supposed to be, he took 10 minutes to figure out how to turn around and get to the proper spot. As a result, instead of doing an hour demo, we did about 25 minutes. And about 30 dogs showed up, so we each got exactly one run.

We trashed our plans for a full course and came up with something on the fly that was interesting but that fit into the only usable, reasonably firm footing (among gooshy areas), about 60 feet long by 15 feet wide. We didn't use the A-frame, dogwalk, or chute.

Both my dogs went into the weaves at full speed and then pulled out and dashed in front of me to tell me in an excited way that they didn't understand the footing. I made them try again and both did fine the 2nd time.

I had said that I'd come if there weren't enough dogs, and the organizer said that they always need more dogs. Huh. To me, 6-8 dogs, maybe 10, is a good demo group. So I drove 45 minutes, spent an hour futzing around, waiting, and setting up, got in one run with each dog, packed up for the next half hour, then drove home 45 minutes. I'd have never taken the dogs for one run. Oh, well. And they insisted that we finish up at 6:30 as planned, although there was nothing after that. Probably issues with closing the park at sunset or the equivalent.

Boost weaves

But I did make them leave the weaves and one tunnel set up just long enough for me to put Boost through the weaves twice more, and sure enough, the 2nd time she popped out early as per last weekend. So I grabbed her under the chest, raised her front feet off the ground (she was coated with horse-arena sand so I didn't want to pick her up), told her that she shouldn't do that, and redid the weaves, which she then did correctly.

OK, so if that fixes THAT problem again, then the trip was worth it. But the dogs were both rarin' to go when I got home instead of having any steam worked off, having been in crates for the better part of 3 hours.

Boot Camp

I filled out an evaluation for the first week of Boot Camp, giving it 10 out of 10 on pretty much everything. Drill instructor is good, workout is good and pushes my comfort level, we keep moving in a variety of things, so just when you think you can't take another ab exercise, we move into something else. And the final few minutes, lying under the open sky and doing cool-down stretches, feels like heaven.

On the down side, all my weak parts are taking notice. Bursitis in my shoulders, which hasn't bothered me in a year, flared up Friday. I wasn't aware of doing anything in Friday's session that aggravated it, but both Friday night and Saturday night I had trouble sleeping from the pain in the left shoulder. Today I discovered that it's apparently the push-ups that did it--as soon as I tried one, it hurt immediately. That's disappointing, as upper-body strength was one of my reasons for wanting Boot Camp. Plus pushups are one of the two measures they use for your progress during camp. He had me do other types of exercises while the others pushed up.

I guess I need to do more work at home with resistance bands at a lower intensity. Sigh. That's what they had me do for physical therapy when I first hurt the shoulders--using crutches improperly about 10 years ago. Of course I stop doing the exercises when the pain finally goes away. Duh. But it's just BORRRRINNNNG--

Knee tells me that it doesn't want to jog first thing in the session, but after I'm well warmed up, it doesn't bother me much and I can jog fairly well; it's still the knee and not the cardio that's keeping me from pushing myself on the running.

I don't feel nearly as tired today as I did last Friday. In fact, after my usual nap, I was thinking about walking with the dogs, but it has started raining again and I'm a wimp. Hmm, wait, maybe it has let up.

Knocking bars

We did get in a couple of good agility practice sessions today, once after Boot Camp and again midafternoon. Boost knocked bars like crazy again. Last week we got in a couple of bar-knocking drill sessions... have done quite a few lately and The Booster didn't seem to be getting it; then at the last session, again, something seemed to click, and I couldn't get her to knock a bar fer nuthin'. But, today, we were back to the beginning. It's always something.

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Agility Demo and Possible New Site

SUMMARY: Agility demo with the dogs at the Woodside Horse Park.

The weather is absolutely lovely today. Knee is much better, although not perfect (may never be again, of course). We're driving up to Woodside this afternoon to give an agility demo at the Horse Park. Some sort of Horse Show is going on during the day, and we're the wrap-up event while the horse participants and observers are sipping champagne and eating strawberries. Or something like that.

For us--just a fun, free chance to practice. One member has his own small trailer with equipment and designs a course that encompasses both a novice path and a masters path. Long gone are the days when we were eager to do demos just to promote the sport of agility--back when I started, almost no one had heard of dog agility; now, almost everyone has seen it on TV or knows someone who does it. Sure, we still promote the sport as a healthy activity with one's dog, but now it's as much for our own benefit.

A couple of our members have been giving classes at the horsepark for several years, but on a small patch of hillside that's only about a quarter of the size of a single ring. We've had a seminar or two and have done previous demos up there in their main arena, but supposedly it's been completely redone and they're under newer management and eager to sign us up to do major agility events there. We'd love it if we could switch from Twin Creeks, which is so expensive with such restrictive rules. USDAA now requires the regionals to be on grass, and this arena is dirt, so we couldn't do the Labor Day Regionals there.

We're pondering doing other trials, there, though, if the surface looks good enough (and they'd wet it and compact it before our events, anyway). This is a chance for some of us to give it a go.

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