Agility the Sport of Submillionaires

SUMMARY: Time to win the lottery.

I try not to think too hard about it. I try to make sure my checkbook balance doesn't drop below zero. But, really, agility isn't cheap and it isn't getting any cheaper.

This April features the now-entrenched annual 4-day extravaganza of agility known as Haute TRACS, co-hosted by two clubs.

Not only does it cost me two days off work--plus whatever lodging or camping fees I care to pay (unless I want to drive 2 hours out and back every day--then it's just gas and argh lack of sleep...)--but just the entry fees are astounding. It's not that much more than twice a 2-day weekend of agility, but they are cramming every class known to mankind, multiple times, into their four rings of step-right-up agility entertainment.

Here's what you crazed agility addicts get for your agility dollars:
DAM Team (5 runs. Plus wouldn't "5 Run Dam" be a great name for a rap group?)
Steeplechase (1 run guaranteed plus 2nd round if you qualify)
Grand Prix (1 run)
Standard (4 (!) runs)
Gamblers (3 runs)
Snooker (3 runs)
Jumpers (3 runs)
Pairs Relay (2 runs)

That's wayyy jeeez holy dogedo a bunch of running! Particularly with two dogs. I love it--great exercise mentally and physically for me and the dogs, lots of friends and excitement.

Can't say I wouldn't be happier with only 2 or 3 days, though; four days is a very long, very exhausting weekend. Which makes one think that one should take *another* day off work on Monday to regroup one's depleted axons and muscular fibers.

And the entry fees for all this, if you choose to enter everything, per dog? $270. If you have the know-how and the willingness (latter is a big issue), you can sometimes earn free entries for ONE dog by working your buns off in a trial job all day. I do this whenever I can. And that also sometimes earns me bonus money-off certificates to save up for future entry fees. So I'm lucky enough to get a fairly big discount for this trial. But that does not, alas and alack, translate to free.

Now, horsey people (aka my sister) would tell you that the entry fees are trivial compared to horse show entry fees. Plus I can throw my dogs in the back of my van and they can sleep with me on my hotel bed. Minivans and hotel beds get a little crowded when you cram in those horses (plus you think your spouse's feet are cold under the blankets, try horseshoes).

I would have added that, with dogs, if you mess up, you're not likely to get thrown head over heels and land on your head and end up in the hospital unconscious (like you would with horses) except that exactly that happened to a club member earlier this year, but still I think it's less common with dogs than horses.

So, anyway, it's a good thing I'm the sister who grew up liking dogs. Sister can have her horses and horse shows!

Plus, "Sister Can Have" would be a great name for a rock band.

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Ack! Is It That Time Already?

SUMMARY: Wasn't it just a couple of days ago that I had a whole month until our next competition?

USDAA trial this very weekend! And I haven't been working on our issues because we had SO MUCH TIME until our next competition.

How does this happen?

I guess I should do some bar-knocking drills this week. Especially for The Booster.

Then the following weekend is DISNEYLAND! woo.

Then the following weekend is USDAA Nationals and I AM NOT GOING THIS YEAR! First time they've been in range of California that I haven't gone. I think I've been 7 times. Made it to team finals once with Tika. Got like an 8th and a 10th place ribbon a couple of times with Tika in various random events. And one semifinalist polo shirt. (Hmm, OK, two, because got one with Jake back in 2001 I think. But it looked different then.) That's a lot of time & money & all that for just taking hundreds of photos that I never get around to sorting through. Ahem. Yes, we won't mention that.

Then the following 2 weekends are CPE; need to decide now whether I want to try entering either of them. I'm kinda liking this staying home thing. Although the dogs aren't, so much. Going dog stir crazy.

I wonder if someone else wants to run them for me so I can stay home? They haven't trained with anyone else, that's the problem. And Tika is a proven Mama's girl when we did try to get her to practice and run with Ashley. He was fine as long as he had treats, but otherwise--back to Human Mom.

OK, will just have to decide.

Then one last USDAA for the year in mid-December.

Then on to 2010! Who'd'a believed it?

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Behind the Bay Team USDAA Southwest Regionals

SUMMARY: What classes we offer, why, and how

Just a note: I took no photos over the whole weekend, not one. Hard to believe. Never tried to hand off my camcorder to anyone to video any of our runs, either. Fortunately another Bay Teamer took some shots. Unfortunately, this is me and Tika leaving the Steeplechase ring after she came out of the tunnel limping, and me rubbing her down a bit afterward. Ah, well, it's photos anyway. Thanks, Sandra!



Bay Team's regionals seem to go very smoothly. In fact, so do most of our trials. Some of it comes from lots of experienced people jumping in to help. Some of it comes from having one miracle of a club member who makes everything happen from mostly behind the scenes. Some of it comes from our lock-step rotation groups.

The rotation groups work very much like they do at the USDAA Nationals, although I can no longer recall whether we did them first or the nationals did them first. For a small trial where all the classes can fit into one ring, or even two, it's not necessarily needed. But we've found that, with 3 rings or more at ANY trial, rotation groups make a huge improvement in how trials run. First, it reduces conflicts to almost nothing. Second, it makes it easier for people to work because they know exactly how the classes will change.

Here's what we do: Divide all the masters and tournament dogs into an appropriate number of rotation groups--3 for smaller trials, 4 for bigger trials and regionals. Assign everyone who's in the same family or on the same team to the same rotation group. Try to keep everyone who's in a small height class in the same group to reduce jump-height changes.

You might imagine that this is no small task. Our supreme show secretary has a program that pulls out all the chains of these relationships. It becomes an issue only when, say everyone at the trial is somehow related to everyone else at the trail--sort of a 100 degrees of separation thing. Then some manual tweaking has to occur. I can't imagine doing all of this manually, but I suppose it could be done.

We put one class into each of 3 or 4 rings, then rotate the groups through the rings. For example, on Saturday, the four DAM individual classes were in four different rings. First round, group A ran Team Gamblers in ring 1, group B ran Team Jumpers in ring 2, etc. We wait for ALL rings to finish the first rotation--this is key--then give a 5-minute break for whatever needs to be done to get the rings and workers ready for the next group. Groups rotate clockwise to the next ring, and everyone again starts at the same time; now Group A is in Ring 2 doing Team Jumpers, and so on.

Repeat until everyone has run all the classes.

To facilitate this, we have a microphone goddess who waits for all the rings' chief ring stewards to confirm that all of their workers & judges are ready to go.

It works best when there is one more group than there are rings--so, for example, on Sunday and Monday, we had 3 masters/tournament rings going, with the same 4 rotation groups, so one group was always off and in THEORY would be available to fill out our volunteer ring help positions. Usually this works well.

The other big part is that--just like at the nationals--everyone has to walk all the courses first thing in the morning. We do those in rotation, too--everyone gets something like 8 minutes to walk each course.

This works very well. USDAAers now seem to accept this, although there was some resistance when we first did it. CPEers--including judges--often have a hard time with this. They do not WANT to wait for the other groups to finish. And some competitors complain... "If this ring had run straight through, then *I* could have gone home 3 hours earlier." Yeah, right, means you're not sticking around to help in the other rings to help everyone else get home earlier. And you've got only one dog who's entered in only 3 classes--we should optimize our schedule for *you* rather than for the more typical competitor who's in all the classes and has a 40% chance of running 2 or more dogs?

But we are firm, and it works. Most people like it because they can relax. They know that they're not going to miss a walkthrough because everyone walks through at the same time.

When everyone has rotated through all the rings, then we rebuild for our second round of the day (if there is one), walk them, and run in the same way.

On Friday, we had one class: Pairs Relay. Fewer people entered that evening. We simply split the 22/26" championship masters dogs into one ring and the rest of hte masters/p3 dogs into a second ring.

On Saturday, the four DAM individual events ran first, then Grand Prix round 1 and Team Relay ran in the afternoon.

On Sunday, Masters Standard and Gamblers ran in 2 rings and Steeplechase Round 1 in the third; in the afternoon, we ran the Grand Prix Round 2. Original plan was to split it into 2 rings by rotation groups, but we had so few qualifiers that it all just ran in the same ring.

Similar on Monday: Masters Snooker, Standard, and Jumpers first in rotation, then Steeplechase Round 2 in one ring.

Worked like a charm.

We had one other ring for starters and advanced classes that did NOT go in rotation with the masters/tournament classes. If you had dogs in starters or advanced, you could indeed have conflicts, and we made it clear that that ring had precedence because there were so many fewer dogs. But if you weren't in St or Adv, you never had conflicts all weekend, never!

Very nice, much more relaxing than, say, a couple of my experiences before rotation groups: At USDAA Nationals in 2000 or 2001, where I had nothing for 5 hours, then ran my two dogs in 4 different rings virtually simultaneously (so lots of working out conflicts and trying to be there), then had nothing again for 2 hours. And again at one of our first four-ring trials, where I had a starters dog and masters dog and once again ended up in 4 rings almost simultaneously, with Masters Snooker where I couldn't move my position much and starters where the class was so small, etc. I exclaimed as I ran from ring to ring, "Four rings, no waiting!"

Our superuber secretary has also developed a database application through many years of experience that helps schedule all the classes, prints the reports, and so on, and for a few years now has also done all the calculations for Team and Steeplechase. Very helpful.

So: Regionals. How do we decide what events to offer? Have to offer the three Tournament events: Team (which is 5 classes), Steeplechase (2 rounds), and Grand Prix (2 rounds). We also want to offer enough of the regular classes to make it worth people's time to come. But not so many as to make the days brain-numbingly long. We've learned the hard way to not try to cram in too many classes.

And that's about it!

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Cutting Back On Agility

SUMMARY: Where to cut? How? Why? When?

I have vowed to cut back on my agility weekends.

My first thought was: I'll do only the Bay Team and SMART trials, because I'm a member and because they're fairly close to home--in theory meaning that I could sleep in my own bed on Saturday night and not have to get up at 4:00 a.m. to get there on Saturday. That would still be plenty of agility, because Bay Team is now doing eight (8!!) trials a year, and SMART now seems to be up to three a year. That's about one a month--sounds perfect!

There are two problems with this:

1) Four of the Bay Team's trials are now under cover up in Santa Rosa, which actually takes me as long to get to, or longer, than the VAST, NAF, Haute Dawgs, or TRACS trials in the central valley. Plus I have to go over a big bridge, and the traffic in the evening can be ugly. And I *do* have to get up at 4 on Saturday and I *do* have to stay overnight.

2) Those 11 trials aren't well spaced through the year. They actually run like this:
* One in late January.
* One in mid-March.
* One the last weekend in April and another the following weekend.
* Nothing for 6 weeks, then one every other weekend for from mid-June to mid-July.
* Nothing for 5 weeks, then one the last weekend in august and another the following weekend.
* Nothing for 3 months, then one in mid-December, which is really holiday time and I'm usually busy.

So I don't like the way it's laid out.

If I do only the ones where I can [reasonably] sleep in my own bed Saturday night, that drops me to only 7 a year. Not only am I not sure I'm ready for that drastic a cut [Yet, at any rate], that also drops all the trials from December through March, meaning that I'd have no agility from Labor Day until the last weekend in April. Ack! Can't be done, just can't.

But maybe.

The evolving schedule is a work in progress.

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Going To Your First Agility Trial?

SUMMARY: Is this your first agility competition? You are new to the agility weekend thang? Here are some links to useful info.

• Team Small Dog just posted a lovely article on what to do/look for/see/etc. at your first agility competition; well done, TSD. Read it here.
• If anyone wants to download a PDF of how to read USDAA accumulator sheets, click here.
• And here's a bunch more useful stuff for agility beginners.

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The Agility Blob That Ate the Universe

SUMMARY: Compare and contrast 1996 to 2008.

(Thanks, awesome Karey K who is at least as fanatical as I am about saving cool but barely useful informational historical artifacts and who compiled the original calendars!)
My first trial was in January 1996. I did 6 trials that year.

I never did, and still don't, do AKC, which are shown here grayed out. I'm not currently driving more than about 2 hours for agility trials (except Scottsdale), so these "local" trials are in bold (including the AKCs) and everything farther away is nonbold. (Carson City is about 4 hours, so a lot of local people go to those trials, too; others are 5-6 hours.)

Compare and contrast to 2008's calendar. Hoooooly moley! (I'm doing only 17 trials this year. Gotta restrain myself somehow--)

1996	2008
Jan 6 -	Jan 5/ 6 ElkGrove CPE
Jan 13 -	Jan 12/13 (MLK) ElkGrove HauteDawgs NADAC, San Diego USDAA
Jan 20-	Jan 19/20 SantaRosa BorderTerrier AKC, ElkGrove HauteDawgs CPE
Jan 27 San Martin Bay Team NADAC	Jan 26/27 SantaRosa Bayteam USDAA
Feb 03 -	Feb 2/ 3 Turlock VAST USDAA, SantaRosa AKC, ElkGrove CPE, Milpitas DalClub Zink seminar
Feb 10 -	Feb 9/10
Feb 17 (pres day) Pomona USDAA	Feb 16/17(prez's) ElkGrove NADAC, Madera NADAC
Feb 24 -	Feb 23/24 ElkGrove CPE, CityOfIndustry WVDS USDAA, Madera NADAC
Mar 02 -	Mar 1/ 2 Dixon MtDiableDTC AKC, Fillmore ContactPt USDAA, Madera NADAC
Mar 09 Fresno USDAA	Mar 8/ 9 Turlock VAST CPE, ?Fresno Sunmaid AKC, Wilton NADAC
Mar 16 -	Mar 15/16 Madera CAT USDAA, Dixon VallejoDTC AKC, ElkGrove NADAC, RanCuc DART USDAA
Mar 23 -	Mar 22/23 (easter) Sunnyvale Bayteam CPE, Dixon SheltieClub AKC, ElkGrove NADAC
Mar 30 -	Mar 29/30 Hollister PASA ASCA, Wilton NADAC
Apr 06 -	Apr 5/ 6 Dixon DDTC AKC, SantaRosa R2R NADAC
Apr 13 Nancy's agility funmatch	Apr 12/13 Dixon HautedawgsTRACS 4-day USDAA, CarsonCity NADAC
Apr 20 -	Apr 19/20 ?PP camp, SantaRosa NADAC, ElkGrove funmatch, CarsonCity MDT-AA NADAC
Apr 27 Santa Rosa NADAC	Apr 26/27 Prunedale SMarT USDAA, ElkGrove DOCNA
May 04 Davis AKC agility	May 3/ 4 Sunnyvale Bayteam USDAA, SantaRosa MensonaKC AKC, CarsonCity R@R NADAC
May 11 Hayward Chris Zink seminar	May 10/11 CarsonCity QAC USDAA, ElkGrove CPE
May 18 -	May 17/18 ElkGrove CPE, Hollister SCDTC AKC, Hollister PASA ASCA, Turlock VAST NADAC
May 25 (mem day)Dixon NADAC	May 24/25 (mem) Dixon TRACS 4-day AKC, Moorpark Happydog USDAA/mas, ElkGrove NADAC
Jun 01 dixon terv AKC agility match, border terrier AKC agility	May 31/ 1 Turlock NAF USDAA/team, Salinas DelMonte AKC, Madera CAT CPE
Jun 08 -	Jun 7/ 8 PaloAlto TervClub AKC, Dixon PowerPaws Camp, CarsonCity R2R NADAC
Jun 15 -	Jun 14/15 ScottsValley MBDTC AKC, ElkGrove NADAC, Reno AKC
Jun 22 -	Jun 21/22 ElkGrove CorgiClub AKC, CarsonCity ASCA
Jun 29 Hayward Sheltie AKC agility	Jun 28/29 Portland CAT USDAA/GP+, Dixon SheltieClub AKC
Jul 06 -	Jul 5/ 6 Sunnyvale Bayteam USDAA/3day
Jul 13 Palo Alto Poodle AKC agility (su)	Jul 12/13 Livermore Malamute AKC, Turlock VAST DOCNA, Eureka NADAC
Jul 20 -	Jul 19/20 Petaluma Bayteam CPE, Ferndale LostCoast AKC, ?CityofIndustry WVDS USDAA
Jul 27 Hayward Malmute AKC agility (sa/su),	Jul 26/27 CarsonCuty MDT-AA NADAC
Aug 03 -	Aug 2/ 3 Hollister PASA ASCA, ElkGrove CPE
Aug 10 -	Aug 9/10 Petaluma CountyWide AKC, CarsonCuty MDT-AA NADAC
Aug 17 Ventura West Valley USDAA	Aug 16/17 Dixon NapaDTC AKC, Eureka CPE, Carson City QAC CPE
Aug 24 Davis AKC agility	Aug 23/24 Salinas SMarT USDAA
Aug 31 (labor day) Daly City Bay Team USDAA	Aug 30/31(labor) Prunedale Bayteam USDAA/GP+, CarsonCuty MDT-AA NADAC
Sep 07 Bolton seminar, Hayward Springer AKC agility (su)	Sep 6/ 7 Dixon DDTC AKC, CarsonCity NADAC, Turlock DeltaAussies ASCA, Moorpark Happydog USDAA/mas
Sep 14 -	Sep 13/14 Turlock VAST USDAA, SanRaphael SirFrancisDrakeKC AKC, Ontario DART USDAA
Sep 21 -	Sep 20/21 Woodland TRACS USDAA
Sep 28 Ventura West Valley NADAC	Sep 27/28 Elkgrove WeimClub AKC
Oct 05 Woodside terv AKC agility trial	Oct 4/ 5 Elkgrove CPE
Oct 12 Xnadac nat'ls	Oct 11/12 Dixon Haute Dawgs USDAA, Hollister PASA ASCA, CarsonCity AKC, Moorpark Happydog USDAA/st/adv
Oct 19 Santa Rosa County-Wide AKC agility	Oct 18/19 Madera CAT USDAA, Pleasanton DelValle AKC, ElkGrove DOCNA, CarsonCity R2R NADAC
Oct 26 Fresno UDSAA	Oct 25/26 Turlock VAST CPE, Placerville HangtownKC AKC, Camarillo BVDTC USDAA
Nov 02 carmel bayteam alpaca demo, Sharon Nelson seminar	Nov 1/ 2 Madera FresnoDTC AKC, Scottsdale USDAA Natls
Nov 09 Hayward Bay Team NADAC	Nov 8/ 9 SantaRosa Bayteam CPE, ElkGrove NADAC
Nov 16 Hayward dalmation agility demo (su)	Nov 15/16 Turlock NAF USDAA, SantaRosa GR AKC, RanchoCucamunga DART USDAA
Nov 23 -	Nov 22/23
Nov 30 (turkey day) -	Nov 29/30 (turk) RanchoMurieta SheltieClub AKC, Moorpark Happydog USDAA/mas, ElkGrove CPE
Dec 07 -	Dec 6/ 7 RanchoMurieta SacDTC AKC, ElkGrove HauteDawgs NADAC
Dec 14 Fresno NADAC	Dec 13/14 SantaRosa Bayteam USDAA/tourney
Dec 21 -	Dec 20/21 (xmas)
Dec 28 -	Dec 27/28 (newyrs) RanchoMurieta TRACS 4-day AKC

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Digital Photography at Agility Trials

SUMMARY: Here's what I hate about digital photography.

In "the old days", when a photographer shot photos at an agility trial, the usual routine was to shoot all day Saturday, print the photos overnight, then make them available Sunday by posting, stuffing into albums, or just putting into boxes for you to leaf through.

I could spend maybe 5 minutes, usually less, looking at the photos to identify my dogs. If I liked the shot, I whipped out $6, bought it, took it home, and put it into my album.

Compare and contrast:

Digital photography has put the onus of work on the dog-agility buyer. Understand that I do a lot of digital photography and I spend hours going through my photos, tweaking most individually, labeling them, and uploading them to my photo site. But some--if not most--photographers at trials do only the uploading, with minimal or no sorting and minimal or no editing of any of the files. And they take a whole lot more photos now than they did then, too.

So, instead of maybe 2 to 5 minutes at the trial, now I wait until the photos are available, days or weeks later. Then I scan through barely legible thumbnails on sometimes hundreds of pages containing hundreds or thousands of photos, trying to identify my dogs. Thank goodness that all of my dogs so far have been easier to recognize in thumbnails than, say, black and white border collies, or shelties, or corgis. But it's still a challenge at thumbnail size. It takes real concentration.

For example, I just spent an hour and a quarter going through one photographer's photos of a recent show, and that's without finding anything that I particularly wanted to buy.

If you find a photo of your dog, you click the thumbnail to display a new page to confirm what the photo looks like somewhat enlarged. But of course it's still not quite the same as what you'll see in print; I've been disappointed a couple of times. If you like it, then you click the "buy" button. Then you fill out what size you want and whether you want it cropped and so on, then click the add to cart button. Always waiting for the pages to load, which even on broadband often takes time.

Then you find your way back to the thumbnail page that you were browsing and continue, repeating the whole process for every photo that you're possibly interested in.

Then you go to your shopping cart, fill out all your personal info, go to the payments screen, pay for it via paypal or credit card, meaning that you're going to have to deal with that payment later when it comes due. And you pay postage, which often isn't trivial--it usually makes it so that buying just one photo makes that photo seem amazingly expensive.

Then you wait a week or so for the photos to show up in the mail--which means that someone somewhere is spending the time to package and label them, and ship them, and there's the material used for the shipping container, which now most likely goes right into the recycling bin.

And furthermore, most (not all) photographers charge a stunning fee for the photos. No $6 or $8 prints. We're talking sometimes as much as $20 for 4x6 prints, here. I mean, really. They promote them as works of art, I guess, that are color corrected and cropped and all that. They must get buyers, because they keep doing it. But I resent having to spend all that time and then PAY SOMEONE ELSE more than I used to spend on snapshots. The ones who are still in the under-$10 range are particularly the ones who don't seem to sort (for quality) or do any precropping or anything like that. OK, I can put up with some of that for a lower price.

But I can't even offer to process and print them myself to save $; most photographers charge at least as much for the digital version of a photo on the assumption that then you could, heaven forfend, print as many copies of the photo in any size that you want and THEY wouldn't get any more money for it.

And many of them sell photos through a photo service, removing some of the advantage of dealing in digital--no individual dealing or edits or anything. For example, I recently won cert's for about 6 free photos from one photographer who was generous enough to donate them to various raffles. But I found out afterwards that (a) you can apply only one cert per order and (b) you can apply it only to the photo, not to the postage and handling. And the photographer said, sorry, that's the way it's set up.

From a business perspective, I guess I can understand that. But now i have free cert's that will probably never be used. I guess that makes the photographer happy, too: Looks like a nice guy but never has to deliver.

And are the photos I get any better than the ones I used to get? I'd argue not--because in the day, I bought only the ones I liked that turned out well anyway. Do the photographers make more money at it and are they happier about it? OK, unhappy customer, happy photographers. You figure out how often I buy photos of my dogs any more. Makes me sad, but thank goodness for friends who like to dabble in photography and sometimes do it at agility trials, or I'd have nothing.

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How Many Trials?

SUMMARY: Just don't ask how much it all cost.

This last weekend was my 200th trial.

• 106 USDAA
• 54 NADAC and/or ASCA
• 40 CPE

Taken another way:

• 12 with only Remington (when I first started agility)
• 66 with Remington and Jake
• 6 with Remington, Jake, and Tika
• 1 with Remington and Tika (Jake on injured reserve)
• 69 with Jake and Tika
• 11 with only Tika (while Jake was retired from USDAA but not CPE)
• 1 with Jake, Tika, and Boost
• 34 with Tika and Boost

Taken another way:

• 6 in 1996
• 7 in 1997 (broke foot and was out for months)
• 10 in 1998
• 11 in 1999
• 14 in 2000 (back injury, continuing into the next year)
• 17 in 2001
• 18 in 2002 (skipped Nov/Dec with Rem's cancer)
• 23 in 2003 (we all stayed healthy)
• 21 in 2004 (I started vowing to cut back)
• 20 in 2005
• 18 in 2006 (knee injury/surgery kept me out Oct/Nov/Dec)
• 19 in 2007
• 13 so far in 2008, with only 2-3 more planned

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Haute TRACS Is Almost Done

SUMMARY: Some success. Some failure. Some high-tech fun. Some nifty colors.

Here's a brief wrap-up, in which we determine whether it's possible for me to actually be brief after 3 days of agility. (It's hot. Hot hot hot almost like summer. 90ish degrees. I am glad to be home, not doing more agility. A friend said it was weird that I would do three days and not all 4. This from someone who thinks that 4 days of agility in a row is a Good Thing. They are all still there, being normal and very hot and tired. I am home and clean and coolish and well-rested and typing in my blog and, apparently, weird. Who wins?)

It was largely a weekend of stupid handler tricks. Note to self: Need new brain. Details later maybe.

I thought I'd maybe get a chance to cruise around and take lots of photos, especially to help Team Small Dog's discussion of what makes cool agility fashion, but nooo, I was busy either being behind on my score table work or running my dogs or being exhausted.

I did, however, take the opportunity to photograph what really stylish agility handlers have: all agility gear in their favorite colors. Which is guess what for me.


Thursday was All Team, All Day, All Rings. Five runs each dog. Combine your scores with your 2 partners' and then if you're within 25% of the average of the top 3 teams--or within the top 50%, whichever is larger (see, USDAA wants to compete with CPE on the complexity of scoring, since they don't want ANYONE to be better than them at anything)--well, then you Qualify For Nationals. Five runs for one Q. Maybe.

OK, I have to be brief. OK. I can do this. Tika qualified. Boost didn't, capped by a memorable Jumpers run with about 4 bars down and half a dozen refusals, although the judge claimed it was only 30 faults.

But wait! All is not lost! I won two, count-them-2, things in the worker's raffle on Thursday! Vanna, would you sniff at what we won?



Thanks, Vanna! Yes, a free entry for another trial plus a big box of Guard-The-House Goodies! And a purple tug toy that I forgot to put into the picture!

Friday I started the day by earning 15 faults with Tika in Masters Standard, 15 faults with Boost in Masters Standard, 15 faults with Tika in Grand Prix, and messing up so badly in Grand Prix with Boost that halfway through I finally asked the judge "which way is out?" and he pointed and we went. Fortunately Tom Kula was laughing inside, not steaming with irritation. At least I hope so because he seems like that kind of guy.

Then Tika got a Jumpers Q, which is kind of a miracle because (A) it's Jumpers and (B) we'd not run well so far, and Boost kept it to a mere 10 faults.

Friday afternoon, Tika ran a nice pairs relay course but her partner had problems with the weaves and knocked a bar, so no Q; Boost's partner had a nice pairs relay course but Boost managed to earn 15 faults (this being my number for the weekend, I guess) in little figure 8 with only about 8 obstacles, so no Q.

And I mishandled both through the Snooker course, resulting in a Q (but not Super) for Tika and none for Boost.

In the evening, I had a lovely potluck with some friends and also briefly engaged in a conversation with two of the judges, Tom Kula and Karen Gloor, about how USDAA really should move the Nationals around to other places in the country, and I'm tired of going (but I HAVE to because it's LOCAL, you know) and the people in Arizona are tired of doing all that work (while at the same time enjoying having it there--I am paraphrasing all of this), and how People Think That USDAA Nationals Should Be About USDAA Not A Hundred Other Agility Sports (which I am fairly confident that most of the U.S. bloggers in my list (to the right) have had something to say about although I cannot now find any of those specific posts--perhaps you'll tell me where yours are and I can link to them here).

Saturday continued with non-Qing Standard for both, but I got a boost with Boost's first-ever Masters Gamblers Q (woohoo!), although Tika was over time on the gamble due to (once again) stupid handler tricks.

Steeplechase was depressing--with Boost, I forgot which loop I was on and did the second loop first, although she was clean to that point (although wasted time on a missed weave entry). And Tika knocked the next-to-the-last bar on a badly done rear cross (I was trying to push a bit more speed there). She'd have qualified (as usual) without that dang bar--but, jeeper creeper, her time was only .05 seconds under! That was almost 8 seconds slower than the fastest dog! Still, I'd have loved to get that Q, no matter how squeaky it was.

In Masters Snooker, I mishandled both dogs dramatically again, resulting in a Barely Q for Tika and a Barely Not Q for Boost. Sighhhhhhh--

But things picked up with our final run of the weekend, Jumpers, where Tika again ran clean and Boost ALMOST ran clean.

With Tika's two Jumpers Qs for the weekend, that finished her ADCH-Bronze (like a triple ADCH). I am all, like, happy happy joy joy and Tika is all, like, where's the food?

And Boost's Jumpersrun--no refusals, no spins, no runouts, and only one knocked bar, --was SUCH a joy to finally run a nice fast smooth run with her! She had a couple of hesitations that might have knocked a couple of seconds off our time, but even so her time was more than 3 seconds faster than Tika and barely 2 seconds under the fastest time, and there were some super dogs running this weekend. I am all, like, wow, bouncing around with delight and Boost is all, like, wow, Mom has energy to play way crazy tug of war after the run, not just before it!

So Tika came home with 5 Qs out of 11 possible and her ADCH-Bronze; Boost with 1 Q out of 11 possible which is one leg closer to her MAD.

And furthermore, I got to take my first ride on a Segway! Which one of my high-tech friends (Apache's dad) was tootling around on all weekend. And which was really VERY cool and I would love to ride some more! And which I asked a complete stranger to take a photo of me on it, and I said, "let's move over here so I have just grass behind me, not cars," and he moved, too, so that the cars were still behind me. I would not make a very good even-more-amateur-photographer-than-me instructor.


In other high-tech news, we demonstrate that even major canopy tears can be repaired--at least temporarily--with stylish matching duct tape, as indicated by my stylish popular agility noncompeting slip-on shoe. I don't even know what they call these. But hundreds of people wear them. Horse people too I think. Maybe even normal people, because Big 5 has sales on them all the time and there are about 270 different brands that are all basically exactly the same, just some fit and some don't.


But wait! There's more, to distract us from sad disintegrating canopy covers! We won AGAIN in Saturday's raffle!

Yes, it's another free entry, plus a Costco Samoyed-in-a-bag! No, just kidding, ha ha, I already have one dog with too much undercoat. Really it's a throw for the dogs themselves to sleep on, and we'll try it on our bed and see whether they like that better than they like curling up and shedding directly on my pillow.

However, despite all the raffle-winning excitement, the dogs are ready for me to get the danged van loaded and head for home. I did not put them in the van. They loaded themselves and gave me impatient looks while I rearranged stylish blue and purple agility gear for informative and educational photography.


And now, as this blog sinks slowly and not so briefly into the west, we leave you with one last gratuitous cute photo from this very moment:

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Big Show Statistics

SUMMARY: Haute TRACS 4-day trial is coming up; how big is it? And a comparison with our smallish March CPE trial (well--what Bay Team considers small). And a comparison to the February Turlock CPE trial (which was really tiny for around here).

April 10-14 is the mongo four-day Haute TRACS trial (technically, two 2-day trials hosted by Haute Dawgs and by Two Rivers Agility Club of Sacramento). This event is huge, even though it's not a regional. It's LIKE a regional but with a whole extra day! These people are insane! I signed up for only three of the four days because it kills me!

I'm always fascinated by trial statistics. (Well, you knew I had a sorry excuse for a life anyway.)

Trial	Haute TRACS	Bay Team March CPE	VAST Feb CPE
Dogs entered	407	201	100 (est)
Number of runs / scribe sheets	4,630	1,383	600 (est)
Most common breeds	173 Border Collie 42 Australian Shepherd 39 Sheltie 24 All American (under assorted breed names) 12 Jack Russell Terrier	36 All American 33 Border Collie 28 Australian Shepherd 10 Welsh Corgi (Pembroke) 8 Sheltie
Most popular dog names	4 Piper 3 Callie 3 Chase 3 Maddie 3 Murphy	3 Sadie 3 Sydney
People entered	267	155
Number of judges/rings	5/4	3/3	1/2

I'm meeting with the secretary and friend(s) to assemble those scribe sheets this weekend. That's putting 4,600 stickers on individual sheets without getting anything out of order. Oh--and watching the Iditarod on TV! And eating! (Agility is all about the food. Contrary to what you might have ever heard me say before.)

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Agility Rituals

SUMMARY: Patterns that we fall into.

I believe that some patterns in agility are good. These are rituals that let the dog know what to expect and give the handler something to be aware of and to focus on before and after a run. Some of mine have come about deliberately; some not. Here's what I do with my dogs before and after our runs.

For both dogs, I like to arrive at the ring about 3 or 4 dogs ahead of time (or 3 or 4 minutes). I want my dogs' attention on me when we're preparing to run, and I want to keep them excited, and I myself cannot keep up that level of attention and enthusiasm for much longer than that.

For both dogs, before taking them from their crates, I make sure that our Riot Tug (actually a soft version rather than the original) is nearby and that our competition slip-lead is in my hand.

Boost Before

Boost must sit when I put my hand on the zipper of her softcrate, and wait until I release her. Originally I thought I'd always put her leash on before letting her out of the crate, but between my back and my knees, I've mostly given up on that. Instead, I release her to come out and jump up into my chair where I can more comfortably reach her. I put on her lead and take off her collar.

Then I release her from the chair and present her with her Riot Tug, and we play tug all the way to the ring. I don't have to do much except hold on. While waiting to run, I'll try to keep her engaged with the toy, in particular after a couple of recent trials where she started getting spooky for no apparent reason if we just hung out. Just standing there and holding the toy won't work for that long. We practice sits and downs with a release. If there's a place where I can plop my backside, or if my knee is happy enough for me to kneel, I'll just play little games at ground level, where she's mostly lying down to just put paws and her mouth on the toy. We intersperse more tug.

One dog before we run, we play tug over to the vicinity of the ring exit, where I drop the riot tug. Then she gets to play tug with the leash back to the ring entrance. She walks next to me into the ring, where I stop ten feet back from the first jump and tell her to sit. When the timer says "Go," I step away from her with my opposite foot (a trick from obedience) and lead out to where I need to be.

Boost After

At the end of the run, she knows that she gets to play tug and is starting to look for her Leashie or Riot Tug, although I haven't taught that specifically, so she doesn't know (for example) to look for the leash hanging up. We'll play leash tug until we close to the Riot Tug, then I say "Wheeeerrrees yoourrrrr RIOT TUG?!" and she drops the leash, looks for the tug, and pounces on it.

We play tug back to our set-up, where I let go of the tug and she runs to and jumps into my chair. I have her do some nose touches, lefts, rights for treats, exchange her lead for her collar (I don't like my dogs being without visible ID for any length of time), and, if I have time, do a little snuggling, some light play, maybe a little walking around to cool her down before she goes back into her crate.

Tika Before

When I put my hand on Tika's crate zipper, she hits it hard with her foot. I tell her to cut it out and stop zipping each time she hits it. This was NOT my plan, but it has gradually decreased from digging frantically at the front of the crate every time I put my hand near it. She never quite completely broke through the soft crate material, but parts are very thin. (This has proven to be a hard habit to extinguish in the soft crate, as I have no way of rewarding her without opening the door. A soft crate with an opening top would help.)

When I get the door unzipped, she streeeetches with front feet out through the door, takes a step out, and streeeeetches her back legs. She's now partway out of the crate because I haven't maintained criteria of not putting the head out until released. Oh, well. I slip the lead around her neck and release her from the crate with my hand in her collar. I remove the collar, and she shakes herself thoroughly. It's amazing how predictable her own rituals are.

I verbally rev up excitement about the Riot Tug before presenting it to her and immediately go into interactive playing until she's holding tightly and growling. Otherwise, she disengages and goes about sniffing for scraps of food or treats in the grass. I run and play with her, doing whatever I need to to get her to regrab the tug, because she often lets go, until we're ringside and I release her from the toy. By then, we're both warmed up.

Then I do let her sniff around on a short lead. Who could imagine how many thousands of little tidbits of food are in the grass near the start line! I never knew until I got Tika. For all I know, she could be eating grubs or rotting grass. Any tasty little morsel like that.

About two minutes/2 dogs before our run, I work on getting her attention off the lawn and onto me. Just not with great excitement yet, because I can't maintain it. But I keep her head up out of the grass, scritch under her chin, massage her back, that sort of thing.

About a minute/1 dog before our run, I again get her engaged in the Riot Tug, and tug to the ring exit and, for her, drop it as close to the ring rope exit as I dare. Then I jog her to the ring entrance and get her to "give me a hug", which has evolved into her gently putting her front paws on my chest and really streeeetching out. She walks next to me into the ring, but, perhaps from stress or excitement, she's back to sniffing the grass as soon as we start to walk in, and I often find myself tugging on the lead or even putting my hand in it to hustle her along.

I put her in a Down as far back from the first obstacle as I can. (I need to see about determining an ideal non-bar-knocking distance for her like we just did for Boost and see whether it helps.) I struggled with getting her to stay in a Sit for years; her preference would be to stand up and start slowly moving forward, or to lie down. It finally dawned on me that it's perfectly OK for her to lie down, since she still blasts off with enthusiasm when released, and she's more likely to stay there. In fact, her start-line stay has become remarkably more reliable since I started Downing her right off the bat.

Again, I step away with the foot opposite her. I can lead out a long way with her, but I had better be prepared for her to take off as soon as I turn around. Usually she's good and waits, but that is not guaranteed, and I have decided that I can live with her waiting for me to turn around. If she takes off before that, I take her out of the ring.

Tika After

At the end of the run, she is so revved that she dives in at my feet with a great show of growling and yapping, grabbing at my shoes. My goal is to get my hands under her neck and hustle her out of the ring, running as fast as I can while hunched over with my hands around her, until I get to the leash or Riot Tug (whichever is closer) and can shove it in her mouth in place of my feet. Then we play tug briefly.

Then she's released the energy and is ready for treats. We trot back to our set-up (if I have the energy), where she gets treats for doing lefts, rights, high fives, and so on. More treats after the collar goes on. She has learned that she gets treats when I send her into her crate, so when I stop dispensing treats, she dives into her crate and looks hopefully at me. She might come back out and try it several times, as I don't give her the treats unless *I* tell her to go in.

If I can convince her to stay out of the crate, again, I'll do a little massage and petting, just some hanging out and cooling down. Then I tell her to go into her crate, toss some treats in, and go on my way.

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Scribe Sheet Party

SUMMARY: How many scribe sheets for 5,180 runs?

There they are: 5,180 unstickered scribe sheets.

Last night I went over to the home of this weekend's show secretary--friend Karey--to help put stickers on scribe sheets. We were at it for nearly 5 hours (minus time for futzing with the printer, futzing with the computer, futzing with the dogs, eating dinner, getting a snack, correcting our mistakes--). I finally left because I was starting to make silly errors from fatigue. We were probably 3/4 done at that point. Let this be a lesson to you (choose one):

• Don't put on a 4-day, 4-ring major USDAA trial.
• Or, at least, don't offer to be secretary for such a trial.
• Or, at least, don't be friends with the secretary for that trial.
• Or, if that fails, don't answer your email for at least a month before the trial.
• Or, if that fails, feign a sudden onset of Tourette Syndrome and claim disability.
• Or, if that fails, help out your friend who is worn out and sick, and get a good night's sleep before heading over to help assemble scribe sheets. But all is not lost: your practice for feigning Tourette's will come in handy when you discover that you've just put the last 40 Gamblers stickers on Jumpers scribe sheets.

Well--that's all OK, really because how often do you have an excuse to sit and chat about life, dogs, the universe, and everything for 5 hours?

And the best part is: We get to do it all again for our Labor Day 3-day Regional! Wooohoooo!

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No CPE for Me This Year

SUMMARY: How can there be so many trials and so little time? And money?

First, you have to understand that I spearheaded getting CPE into The Bay Team. I attended the early first demo trials in CA held by other clubs, I researched it, I proposed it to the club, I volunteered to chair the first couple of trials, found a new agility site, and so on and so on. (Although we now do two CPEs a year instead of two NADACs, that was more NADAC's doing than mine. Once everyone had an alternative, almost everyone welcomed it with delight.)

No CPE this year worth mentioning

And yet--I'm thinking that I'm not going to be doing any CPE this year except for the two Bay Team ones and the VAST one in March that I've already committed to be chief ring steward for in exchange for free entries and maybe the Thanksgiving one at WAG, which is always a hoot. I'm really really really trying to cut back on the number of trials. Don't really WANT to, but money is a big factor--both in entry fees/hotel/gas and in time that I'm not putting in my max billable hours when I'm going off to agility for the weekend, and my finances show it. In 2005 and 2006 I vowed I'd cut back from 20-some-odd to only 10 a year. I managed to cut back to 20-some-odd. (Not one of my most successful goal-setting experiences.)

Many USDAA trials

I'd rather concentrate on USDAA, and I count 13 USDAA trials just within 2 hours of home this year, plus Scottsdale, and there we go, that uses up my maximum of 10 trials for the year. (Read: Ha! I'll never cut back to 10!) It's been really tough going for almost 4 months with no agility competitions because of my knee, but in some ways kind of nice. I'm horrified to see that there are 2 months during the summer when there's NOTHING (cpe or usdaa anyway) anywhere at all. (Read my personal online weekend calendar)

Free entries would of course help, but I also don't want to exhaust myself working chief ring steward every trial with 3 dogs to tend to. And I not everyone gives free entries for that, anyway. Score table's a little better but, again, not everyone gives freebies for that, and it does tie me down a lot although not so exhausting.

Other issues

So I dunno. I hate to give up the opportunities to do stuff with Boost in CPE, or to eventually in some distant fantasy future earn Tika's CATE, but I just don't see how I'm going to swing it. And the lotto machine wouldn't take my dollar yesterday, so THAT plan won't work.

AND I'm going to do power paws camp this year with Boost, I've decided--I submitted my application today--we really need the intense time together and the learning experience, and there goes another weekend and my budget all blown to pieces. :-/ Sigh. Why couldn't I take up an inexpensive hobby like... like... I dunno, graffiti? (As long as you don't get caught.)

Take the summer off?

So back onto those 8 weeks in midsummer: I can't believe that there's nothing to do between the VAST USDAA June 2/3 and the Bay Team CPE July 21/22. (Read Karey's Famous Calendar for agility of interest to Bay Areans) That's 6 weekends in a row with no agility! Oh, sure, if you do that namby-pamby AKC stuff or can deal with NADAC so-called agility--or drive to Portland!?!?! for USDAA-- why can't some of these folks move their CPEs and USDAAs from the winter & spring out to the middle of summer? That's a great time for agility in the Central Valley! (Read about the central valley summer climate)

Argh! What will I do???

Qualifying for nationals

Plus it's scary having 3 months(!) from the VAST USDAA to the next USDAA at the end of August. I'm trying to not panic about national qualification, but since I missed a couple of chances in the fall due to my knee, I see only:
VAST: Grand Prix and steeplechase
CAT: stpl only
Haute TRACS combined trial: gp, stp, team (4-day trial, argh, that's where my knee first blew out last year)
SMART: probably stp, gp
Bay Team--No tournament at all??? When was the last time that we ever had no tournament at all? Is this overreaction to last year when Saturday was All-Team, All The Time, and no one came?
VAST: team, stp, gp (all in 2 days??)

then all of a sudden we've got 3 months off before the next set of 3 USDAAs in a row (last chances before nationals) and I'll be stewing like crazy if we haven't already Qed in everything for Scottsdale. This needing *2* each of BOTH Steeplechase and Grand Prix is nuts. Thank the gods that it requires only one team so far. My Q rate is just not that high that I think I can get 2 out of 3 with both dogs in both GP and stpl! Argh argh argh!

There are a couple in there in southern california, but driving 6 hours each way is REALLY exhausting. (I know, I know, I'm spoiled rotten.)

Life as an agility addict is full of difficult choices. And, I know, I'm supposed to be doing this for FUN. Which it is. And think how much time and money it will save me if my dogs don't qualify for nationals for a change!

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