BBQ Party in an Agility Yard

SUMMARY: Party here Sunday without any agility. Well--mostly.

Yes, in her excitement over life and rodents, Tika dug a big hole in my lawn right while I was trying to groom everything for a BBQ on Sunday. I was beginning to wonder whether I'd have a yard left! It didn't seem to be connected to a gopher, and it was in fact in a big bare spot already, and I managed to rake and scrape most of the dirt out of the surrounding lawn and back into the hole, so I doubt that anyone noticed the hole.

The BBQ was nice. Mostly nondog people, although one friend whose young corgi just made her debut (at a trial I didn't attend) came and we chatted briefly about young dogs, and another friend who lost her German Shepherd a couple of years back has been on the edge of getting a new dog, so there were some doggie discussions there. And I have a couple of friends who have had dogs in the past, so most people had dog experienes to share.

A boy named Remington attended (I had to show him my Remington's NATCH plaque). I think he's in the 8-to-10-year-old range, and Boost wasn't sure about him at first, but her love of playing overcame most of her worries, and she did a few tunnels for him and then played fetch off and on all afternoon. But she still wanted to play after everyone went home! Dang border collies.

Then, when he asked questions about how to get the dogs to do the agility equipment, I had to show him a few things and also get The Booster revved up a bit to show him how it looks when done by an expert. Of course, being a kid, he was thereafter perfectly spot on in doing it himself (mostly tunnels, which she loves), although Boost slowed way down and was a little stressed out about it. She was much happier eventually just playing fetch.

He tried to get Tika to play, too, but she is considerably more food-motivated than toy-motivated, and as there was a sea of people milling around with snacks in their hands, she was too busy monitoring for crumb drop to want to go chase moving things. Although by early evening, when most folks were gone and no one was eating any more, she did put on quite the ferocious display of squirrel chasing, verbal abuse thereof, and throwing herself against the fence trying to knock them off.

Having a party here is rough, in two ways. (1) It takes a while to move enough agility equipment out of the way that you can actually see all the nice flowers and lawn and get a feeling of spaciousness. (2) I *like* it like that and don't want to put it back to an agility yard afterwards! It looks so nice and pleasant out there without tunnels and jumps and weaves and tables every 10 feet and across the patio.

Anyway, the BBQ was nice, friends were pleasant, food was good (if I do say so myself)--my homemade banana bread is one of my favorites, and my homegrown/homemade blackberry sorbet was the bees knees! And there is even some left over for snacks this week! Although as usual the deviled eggs and potato chips seemed to go the fastest.

And so busy, I forgot to take any photos, even though I left my camera out!

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Brrr! But Keep On Practicing

SUMMARY: Near-record lows for California, but that deters our agility not a whit. So much to work on. And my back yard is less limiting than I thought.

Saturday morning, 10 a.m.

Tika's favorite pond still has a layer of ice.

My back yard as no one has ever seen it before--from my plum tree! Jake ponders the incomprehensible activities of mom.

The low parts of the Bay Area have been colder before, but not by much, and not on these dates. It's cold. There oughta be a law. We live in California for a reason, and this sort of thing just shouldn't be allowed. All our artichoke and citrus crops are freezing to death, literally. What will we do, what will we do?

But at least the sun is shining. So, in the sun, it's fine to be out in the yard running around with the dogs, as long as I'm dressed snugly and don't mind numb fingers.

I could probably get by without weekly classes, after 12 years of them, if I were any better at--on my own-- (a) figuring out what I'm doing wrong, (b) keeping up with the latest knowledge and skills about training and handling, and (c) figuring out how to create simple yet versatile course layouts in my yard to assist in developing my handling skills.

The latter is quite hard for me. Probably I just never work at it very much. Course design just doesn't excite me. Plus, as you can see from the photo, although my yard is about 95 feet long and varies from about 25 to 40 feet wide, there's a lot of unusable space (patio and trees and such) plus that danged lilac shrub and planter right in the middle of my practice area. I'd have torn it out along with all the other shrubs, trees, and planters 5 years ago, except that the landscape designer I talked to convinced me to leave it. It really is gorgeous and smells delicious. For about 6 days, once a year. Is it worth it? I've been threatening to take it out for the last 5 years, but of course I also planted a whole lot of smaller plants and bulbs around it, so I want to take those out, too--and so it stalls.

But I digress.

I got a complementary copy of Dog Sports magazine at the USDAA nationals this year, and it has a lovely little backyard grid of 7 obstacles that allow you to practice a phenomenal array of techniques and paths in a small area. They've got it laid out on a 40 by 50 grid, but with only a little tweaking here and there, I've got it fit into about 30 by 40. I've used it for three days now and I'm not yet running out of handling challenges that we need work on.

The obstacles are:

• the tunnel (theirs looks like maybe a 15-footer spread over 10 feet; mine is just 10 feet)
• table
• teeter (mine, which you can barely see in front of the Aframe, is at an angle to avoid the aframe and the corner flower garden, but theirs was aimed straight at the table)
• 6-pole weaves (mine isn't quite where theirs is in relation to the tunnel, but close)
• Three jumps arranged in a pinwheel--one next to the teeter, one opposite it (next to dogwalk in my yard), and one perpendicular to them that you can barely see out by the winter-naked lilac shrub. (OK, you can barely see it and only if you peer really closely)

They've got a dozen or so courses of 6 to 9 obstacles laid out starting at the table, and another dozen ending at the table, so you can combine them for longer courses if you're inclined. You can get to either end of the weaves from either end of the tunnel. You can go past the weaves on either end to get to the pinwheel. On those three jumps, you can practice pinwheels, wraps, 180s (bypassing the back jump). You can practice a push out and turn over the left jump to the teeter. You can practice either end of the weaves from any of the three jumps from any direction--coming towards you or going away and wrapping. And from the teeter. And from the table. And from the table you can do jumps, either end of the weaves (far end is tricky), eitehr end of the tunnel. And so on.

I of course have an added level of complexity because I have a dogwalk set up to the right, and beyond the far jump of the pinwheel I can send the dog straight to another tunnel or turn left over an additional jump which can get me to *another* tunnel and so on and so on.

The only major flaw here is that the approach from the table to the tunnel is on the concrete patio, but I do few enough of them that they probably won't hurt--and Tika, for one, is always up on the hot tub and flying off onto the patio all on her own, so if that doesn't bother her, a few table exits won't, either.

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