Mice and Men Got Nothing On Us

SUMMARY: Sometimes things (let us say, just off the top of my head, CPE trials the day after Thanksgiving) don't go the way you planned, hoped, expected, or even imagined.

Here are some photos with circles and arrows on the backs of each one explaining what each one is to be used as evidence against us.

Had a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat.

And didn't get up until the next morning, when we had to go to agility. In the rain.

I love--just ADORE--trials where I can crate out of MUTT MVR and the only set-up or gear hauling is hanging some sun shade.

Agility as a weight loss device

I swear that I took barely more than a forkful or two of anything on Thursday. ...Well, of *everything* on Thursday. Friday morning, 4 a.m., scale shows three (!) pounds heavier. Good thing I'm going to agility, where I'm physically active, have two dogs to run, and tend to eat lightly.

First thing in the morning, near the check-in window, there are huge stacks of really tasty-looking chocolate chip cookies. Well, what the heck, if I have just ONE that's not so bad, because I'm at agility and tend to eat lightly.

A while later alongside the course maps that I was picking up sat a really tasty-looking cake--not sure what for, but I don't often have a chance for cake (and frosting, which is what I *really* like), and what the heck, I'm at agility where I'm really active and so what if I have just one piece?

Then, middle of the day, WAG had a big birthday bash for one of their key helpers--he'd be like their estate manager--with an amazing-looking carrot cake with the thickest cream cheese frosting you've just about ever seen. Well, I'm fond of carrot cake and I really like cream cheese frosting, and really, OK, I know what's going on here, but I don't get carrot cake or c.c. frosting often, so I'll just have one piece of that.

In the worker raffle, I usually put most of my tickets into the bags for the free trial entries because I already have more beds, toys, books, bags, and so on than I know what to do with. But I usually look for something that I might kind of like to have that doesn't have too many tickets in it as a possible consolation prize for when I don't win the free entries and I'll put one of my tickets into that bag. So there was this huuuuuge tin of Almond Roca--

Need I say more?

On the other hand, my pedometer did indicate that, in one day of an agility trial. I covered enough steps to equate to 12 miles! I'll tell ya, after several years of doing mostly score table at trials, where what's involved is mostly sitting, at this trial I did leash running, scribe running, pole setting--all kinds of things where what's involved is mostly NOT sitting.

Maybe the day was a wash in terms of actual calories inhaled/exhaled.

One day of agility as a way to burn off bored dogs' energy

I get up at 4 in the morning, am out of the house by 4:30, drive 2 hours through occasional drizzles, arrive at the agility place, take the dogs over to the field for a little frisbee warm-up and pottying, and Tika turns sharply on the wet ground, yelps, and comes back to me on three legs.

I have several single-word comments on how I felt about that, most of which aren't printable here. Entry fees for 5 runs, down the tubes. Opportunity to burn off some mental and physical energy, down the tubes. Opportunity to win the Turkey Trot again--well, there's still Boost, but Tika's been my winning dog before and I had high hopes for her. Five chances to earn those precious CPE Qs since we don't do much CPE and Tika has a long way to go to her C-ATE, down the tubes. Damage to dog--don't know, but guessing that'll be more money down the tubes.

I couldn't find anything. Didn't do the hunchy-over thing like she does when it's her shoulders or neck, seemed clearly to be in her foot. Gave her a rimadyl and an hour's rest. Let her out of her crate. She hopped down from the van with no sign of problem. Stretched fine, did figure 8s around my legs fine, played tug-of-war vehemently. Trotted alongside me out to the field with the practice jump. Sent her out around a couple of posts. Everything fine. Sent her over the jump, and she flew over with enthusiasm, turned tightly towards me with bright eyes, yelped, and came up on three feet.

Scratched her from her first run and found the vet who is also an enthusiatic CPEer and is pretty much always there at WAG competing with her dogs. Waited for her to do her run with her dog, and then she looked Tika over. She saw pretty quickly what my inexperienced eyes didn't detect--the knuckle of Tika's left front little toe is swollen. She doesn't think it's broken, unless it's a hairline fracture. No way to tell without an x-ray.

I thank her for looking (hopefully profusely enough) and ponder what to do. Tika is on leash, has been over the practice jump, and despite now walking again with a limp, she is acting eager and excited to be near the agility ring at an agility trial and clearly WANTs to run. I ponder what to do.

The next class is Full House, which is like a Gambler's opening with no gamble, so we can do almost anything we want to. There are some tunnels and 6-pole weaves on the course, so I decide I'll try to have her just do a couple of those *gently and easily and slowly* to see what happens. So I line her up next to me in front of a straight tunnel, don't put her into a stay or anything, just release her gently and say, quietly and calmly, "Through!" (we don't say "tunnel", we say "through". There's a lady in our class with grayhounds who says "Be small!" it's very cute. They really do have to hunker down to get through the tunnels).

OK, anyway, those of you with driven, enthusiastic dogs just KNOW what happens--Tika blasts full throttle through the tunnel, and because I'm trying to be calm and sedate, I'm way behind her. So when she blasts out of the tunnel, she careens into a sharp U-turn to see what I'm up to (eyes wide open and bright and ears up and looking SO happy to be out there)--and suddenly halts and comes out of the turn limping.

I try once more a couple of hours later, in Snooker, with the judge's dispensation-- just one straight tunnel, which she does fine, and one gently curved tunnel--which she comes out of limping. And still bouncing back and forth (mostly on 3 feet) trying to get me to tell her which obstacle to take next.

So that's enough stupid attempts to satisfy both of our desires for her to do some agility. She's scratched for the rest of the day, including (sob!) the Turkey Trot.

The up side to this was that it completely vindicated my decision not to go to Nationals two weeks ago because Tika keeps coming up sore at random times. I was deadly disappointed today, but imagine how awful it would've been for this to happen in Arizona.

Tika as the Mondo Q-Earner in CPE and Boost as the also-ran

I hate going to trials and coming home with few or no Qs or placements. ESPECIALLY CPE, where Tika has quite the record of not only massive Qs and first places, but often THE highest score/fastest time of all dogs at the trial. It's an ego boost for me, who is obviously pathetic in her need for ego boosts like this, but there ya go. After Tika's injury, I was fully prepared to come home with next to nothing.

First run of the day was Wildcard (I am not explaining games today), in which a dropped bar is fatal. I pick a pretty darned simple course--it's essentially an M-shaped path, how hard can it be? We will have to successfully negotiate one rear cross, which isn't Boost's strong point.

Boost runs past one jump on the second leg of the M and I barely call her off the tunnel after it (but in fact she does call off and I get her brought around without backjumping), and she turns entirely the wrong way on the rear cross ( but I get her turned around and on course again with no faults), and, wow, we're CPE-clean and have a Q! But lots of wasted time.

The thing you have to know about "clean" in CPE is that there are never faults for refusals or runouts. AND, although not clean, at level 4 and 5 in CPE (which is where Boost competes now), on many courses you can still Q even if you have certain kinds of faults.

But now Boost has one CPE-clean run and a Q for the day. Not to my surprise, we don't win--but, jeez, with all that wasted time, we're still 2nd place.

Next up is Full House. I love full house with my dogs. Just get as many obstacles as possible (with a very minimal number of rules) for points. And this one was particularly juicy--I could do a course with basically two very smooth loops and one rear cross and pick up almost every possible point on the field--
6 out of 6 5-pointers
7 out of 8 3-pointers
5 out of 14 1-pointers (maybe more depending on how smoothly things went).

So--she breaks her start-line stay, so I immediately put her into a down-stay and walk calmly around her and then release her when I'm ready. Probably means we'll loose the final 5-pointer because of the wasted time. On the first loop, she ran PAST the tire (drop 3 points). Then she missed the weave entry (drop maybe 5 seconds to get her lined up and back in, so probably that means drop the other 5-pointer off the end. After that, she flew, but sure enough the whistle blew as she flew towards our last 2 obstacles, both of them 5-pointers. Ah, well, crappy run but a Q.

And, to my surprise, a win in our group (Level 5, which is almost the top leve). Not the highest points of the day by far if you compare to all other dogs, but I'll take a Q and a 1st anyway.

And, guess what! That's the last Level 5 Q she needs in that class, so now she's eligible for her first Level C ("championship") entry (just in that class) at our next trial. Yowza!

Next is Snooker. It's a very tight little course (really--laid out on a 70x70 field which is literally half the area of a typical USDAA course) and really fast long-jumping dogs--and especially the ones who aren't always the best performers--could have a tough time. I decided, what the heck, we IN THEORY have the skills required to do a three-7 opening and get through to the end. It requires that she hold her sit while I lead out, then pull her between a jump and a tunnel to the first 7-pointer--and of course that she keep all her bars up.

Anyway, once again she turned the wrong way on a rear cross, and it was almost a disaster, but we held it together and completed the course in well under the allowed time.

Turns out--ta-da!--she was the ONLY dog out of all dogs entered at the trial who earned the full 51 points! What a good girl. Pleased with that, indeed.

Next up was Jumpers. Man, some weird sequences in that one AND it would require a ton of running on my part to be in the right place at the right time. And then there's the bar-knocking issue. OK, so she ran past one jump--I pulled hard to keep her off a tunnel trap and she responded too readily--so wasting time turning her around and getting her back over it, and then there was the tough push/turn out of the tunnel that I just handled wrong, so we wasted SO much time on course, but in fact never went off course and no bars came down. So: Another CPE-clean run, another Q, and this time merely 4th place. (Slower dogs definitely had advantages on this course.)

And, finally, Standard, our only regular class of the day with contacts. Thank goodness, all of her contacts were spot-on perfect, and she handled a tough tunnel-dogwalk discrimination with aplomb, AND kept her bars up. So, OK, she ran past yet ANOTHER jump and it took a lot of effort to get her back to it, because I had been trying to send so was a long way away, and she turned the wrong way on a rear cross (sensing a trend here?), and fer cryin' out loud was headed straight at the weave pole entry but turned back to me to see what I was doing, wasting yet MORE time, but it was CPE-clean, so a Q. And apparently it was a tough-enough course that she managed her third 1st-place of the day.

So, for the day, five out of five Qs, three 1sts, a 2nd, and a 4th. Way better than I had expected.

Boost knocking bars everywhere

In CPE, she's jumping 20" instead of 22", and that seems to make a big difference. She didn't drop a SINGLE bar all day, out of 6 runs!

Turkey Trot

I so wanted to win! It's just a fun game, it has no meaning whatsoever, but since my dogs have won 4 times so far, I just really wanted to keep on winning. Plus you get these really cool embroidered Top Turkey awards and a goodie bag.

 

The usual wonderful Turkey Trot silliness ensued.

The game this year was 21. Your team had two minutes, and dogs took turns trying to earn 21 points EXACTLY. There was this simple little 4-obstacle gamble that of course our experience masters-level USDAA dogs should have no troulbe getting, which gave us 21 points automatically, rather than trying to accrue 21 points on the rest of the course.

The Turkey Trot gamble (jump teeter weaves right side of tunnel). Notice that simple but problematic blue jump located right where you want to push the dog out to the far side of the tunnel.

There was an alternative good route of 7 obstacles (including 2 aframes) that was pretty fast for 21 points if you thought you could do that exact course without popping the aframe or knocking a bar. (And of course many other choices on the course.) But we figured we could just do that 4-obstacle gamble over and over one after the other and rack up multiple 21-pointers. Piece of cake, right?

We were all so fast that we each got 2 shots at it and not one of us did it correctly even once (4 times into wrong side of tunnel, one teeter flyoff, and boost who couldn't even do the dang weave pole entry one of her times), which meant that we then had to take an additional 3 obstacles each time to make our 21 points. And then of course two of those runs the dog didn't quite do what we wanted, so it was more than 21 points.

Anyway, we ended up with four 21 pointers. Several teams had 4 or 5 and one had 6.

Then your team drew numbers out of a pot, one for each 21 you earned, and the sum of those numbers you drew determined the winner. (That's the element of luck. The skill is in getting enough 21s to earn the right to draw more numbers.)

Boost's team ended up in 2nd place out of 8 big dog teams, dang. So close. But oh well. Disappointing but not nearly as disappointing as not being able to run Tika in it. (And I don't want to act too disappointed because I LOVE the fun of the turkey trot and the different games each year and don't ever want Susan to stop doing it.)

However, the only other person I know who had 4 Turkey Trot wins going into Friday, a Bay Team friend (and was Jake's teammate on at least one of his wins, as was one of his teammates) DID win in the small dog division, so now he has 5 wins. Pretty cool indeed.

So--awake at 4:00 a.m., crawl into my own warm bed about 10:45 p.m., lights out!

And our agility heroes ride off into the sunset. Much later, after the Turkey Trot is done.

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Thanksgiving Weekend and Top Turkeys

SUMMARY: A little agility, a lot of food, and who knows what else.

Thursday is the big family day. Big. Lots of food. Too much food, and all of it amazingly tasty. Dogs have to stay home with the Renter while I go off and indulge. It's about an hour and a half out of town. Maybe less.

Friday is our one day of agility for this month. It's about 2 hours out of town. Guess I'm going to be doing a bit of driving this weekend.

Friday is CPE. We're not doing much CPE these days in our attempts to save time and money and sanity. Too bad; Tika does very well in CPE, usually. I had thought we might eventually earn her C-ATE, which is similar to ADCH-Gold in USDAA. Lots and lots of Qs. Her Q rate is typically very high in CPE, but it's just--lots and LOTS of Qs. But it's a nice fun way to spend an agility day, and maybe Boost can Q in something, too.

Plus we love Full House. It's similar to a gamblers opening and the goal is just to get as many points as you can (with certain obstacles that you have to take during your point earning) with same rule about each obstacle max of twice for points. Tika and Boost love that kind of game. Faults don't matter, just lower your points.

So we'll go and play and maybe that'll sate the dogs for a little while, since no class this week.

And even more, the Friday evening after thanksgiving is the Turkey Trot. We love the turkey trot! My goal, if nothing else, is to win the turkey trot. And maybe even place 1-2. It's a 3-dog team event, and every year the competition is different. First year it was a basic 3-dog relay. The next year it was a 3-dog strategic pairs-type trio. Then there was the one where you had to do certain sequences to earn the right to pick a letter from a bucket and try to spell turkey. And so on. I've done it three times.

And now I have a reputation to uphold!

The first year, Jake's team won in the 16" group. Tika's team was 2nd fastest in the 20" but Tika took an extra jump at the wrong time so we ended up 4th (of 12 teams).

The second year, Jake's team won in the 16" group and Tika's team won in the 20" group.

The third year, Tika's team won the 20" group and Boost's team came in 2nd right behind them. (I wanted to enter her in the 16" group because she's eligible, but the teammates I found were 20"ers.)

So this is our 4th time to try to win the Top Turkey award. Again, both Tika and Boost are in the 20" group, so they can't both win--but 1st and 2nd would be pretty cool.

WAG tries to design the competition so that it's a mix of luck and handling skill and strategy appropriate for the game and so it's not just speed. That's a nice thing to do. But we still want to be Top Turkeys again!

And then--two more whole days off! Yowza! So many things I can make progress on. Looking forward to it. Maybe a hike or two.

And the weather looks like it'll be clear (but on the cool to cold side--not quite freezing overnight but close) all the way through.

In case I don't post again this week: Happy Turkey Day, everyone! I'm thankful for my wonderful dogs, for plenty of food and friends and family, and for having a blog in which to post my dog diary.

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Turkey Trotters

SUMMARY: #4 of several posts about this weekend. A little info about the Turkey Trot and our Teams

The happy Top Turkey and the nifty embroidered badge we had to wear all weekend under penalty of funky turkey hat.

Blue Chocolate Sandwich.

Tika's Team

We assembled the team on the spot, including Tika, a fast German Shepherd named Trinity who often beats Tika in USDAA, and a pretty fast aussie named Rebel. I cobbled together a team name on the fly: "Tika Rebels against the Trinity." I've known who the handlers were but never talked to them much; talked a little more this weekend as a result of the team, which of course is one of the purposes for doing this game.

The other two handlers are slower than even I am--on this course, it was a bit of a handicap to be a slow handler--but their dogs are fast and all of the dogs are pretty experienced, so we were able to do most of the things that we wanted to do, and luck was with us also. We came in tops of 12 teams in the big-dog division.

Boost's Team

Arranged beforehand. I already knew one handler--we've been competing against each other in a friendly way since she was a teenager with her sheltie, Max, and I had Jake in his prime. She and a friend have very amazingly fast chocolate labs, Cajun and Lula. Cajun was among those topping Tika in some classes, but fortunately was in a different height division so didn't displace Tika's first places. (Whew!) We named ourselves Blue Chocolate Sandwich, and it turns out that we didn't quite synchronize our story and strategy beforehand, so we did more than almost any other team but in fact barely got more credit than most teams, just squeaking out a 2nd place. Still, I'm pretty happy with a 1st/2nd finish with my dogs. (Sure, what the heck!) And the labs' handlers are the nicest young ladies, besides being half my age and almost as fast as their dogs! Nice of them to team with this elderly, stiff-kneed, whiney old lady.

The Rules

Very brief synopsis. I've asked for permission to post the whole thing. The field had 7 different mini-courses of 3 or 4 obstacles. The farther they were from the start line, the harder they were, incorporating more contacts or, for the farthest hidden-in-the-corner wildcard one, a gamble with weaves. Each successful sequence earned you a letter. Goal was to try to spell TURKEY and possibly get more bonus points with wildcards.

Dogs had to alternate on course--do one sequence and get back over the start line before the next could go. You had 4 minutes for your team. Some things that complicated it were that, if you messed up, you had to restart your sequence to earn points (or leave the course and let your partner try), and if your dog accidentally took an obstacle from a sequence that you didn't mean to do, you had to do that sequence instead.

Elements of chance included:

• When you completed a seqence, you got a sealed paper, which you couldn't open until you got back across the start line, so you didn't know what letter you had earned until then.
• The same letter was worth various points at different times, so even if everyone spelled exactly TURKEY, odds were good that the totals would be different.
• The points for each letter were sealed until the scorekeeper tallied them all at the end, so you didn't know the point values that you had accrued. This was tricky when you inadvertently got more than one of the same letter--you just had to pick one of them to use and hope that you were picking one with higher points.
• The wildcards could be used for any letter, but again, the points were unknown until the scorekeeper looked at them, so you didn't know whether you were helping and by how much.

It was pretty entertaining, and there was some strategy to it after we had spent most of the day figuring out the rules, and also some skill in being able to get to the seqence that you wanted and completing it successfully.

As it turns out, Tika's team had 730 points, because we managed to earn two wildcards with pretty high points AND lucked out and got higher-point letter value cards, also. Boost's team beat 3rd place by only 40 points, and that was entirely on the strength of the one wildcard we earned, which happened to be very high points, while all our letter points were lower-pointers.

Might make more sense if I can post the whole thing later this week.

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A Good Weekend

SUMMARY: #1 of several posts about this weekend. Working on our goals, plus we clean up in the Turkey Trot.

This Weekend's Goals

Goals were:

1. Boost earn Qualifying scores in one Colors and 2 Wildcards to finish her Level 3 title.
2. Win the Turkey Trot.
3. Concentrate on Tika's contacts.
4. Relax and have fun.

Goal 1: Finish Boost Level 3

Close but no Bonanza. She Qualified in both Wildcards, but Colors was a disaster--knocked TWO bars AND skipped poles in a mere 6-pole weave! But she was fast. :-) So finishing Level 3 will have to wait until our next CPE, which might not be until Bay Team's March one--I just don't have the time, money, or inclination to do all the available CPEs as well as the USDAAs.

Goal 2: Win the Turkey Trot.

The Turkey Dogs and their gorgeous first- and second-place gift baskets.

Success. Tika's team took 1st of 12 big-dog teams; Boost's team took 2nd. Susan has been trying to add more elements of chance as well as skill to the game to level the playing field a bit. So some of what we did was skill, some strategy, some chance.

Goal 3: Tika's contacts

Welllllll, I'll tell ya, I get out there on a course with the possibility to earn a zillion points and beat everyone else at the trial, and my competitive gland starts pushing out the competitive chemical signals to the brain, and fast contact takes precedence over accurate contact. I did enforce a couple of times. She did have legal contacts all weekend. There weren't a lot of opportunities to practice contacts. More in a later post.

Goal 4: Have fun

For a change, I did well at this. I had no particular "win/Q" goals with Tika, except for the Turkey Trot--which is all for fun anyway and carries no weight anywhere of any kind with anyone except me--and I know that Boost's C-ATCH is maybe years in the future if I cut way back on CPE, so no pressure there, either.

When I started the weekend, I looked at the lists of names of people running, and thought that I knew almost no one (my last CPE was in July, I think--you get out of touch). But as the weekend wore on, I found more people whom I do know, and made a point of trying to talk to a few more, including some whose faces I recognize although not their names.

Schmoozing and being with friends is, for me, one of the important things about agility. I entered only the first two classes (running in parallel) for this morning, and I'll tell ya, if I had concentrated in the morning on packing, I could've been on the road to home by 10:00. Instead, I watched several friends' and acquaintances' runs; schmoozed with various people about random things, not even all of it agility (Yes! It's true!); played a lot of frisbee with my dogs (usually too busy & rushed to do that). I still felt plenty relaxed and was on my way by noon. And traffic wasn't bad at all coming home after the holidays. Home by 2:00. Hot shower. Felt good. And I'm not exhausted as I usually am after a full day of agility.

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Turkey Trot Dreamin'

SUMMARY: This weekend: Thanksgiving and hopefully some big turkeys.

This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday I'll be at a CPE trial in Elk Grove trying to win our third consecutive Turkey Trot Friday night. Then I'd get to be the Top Turkey the rest of the weekend!

Jake won in 2004, with Tika just barely missing it (read blog post).

Jake AND Tika won in 2005 (read blog post).

I couldn't compete in 2006 because of knee surgery.

Unfortunately, Jake will be there this weekend only in memory, but he'll inspire me, I hope. Tika and I will be trying for a repeat in our height, and now Boost is competing in her first-ever Turkey Trot.

The Turkey Trot is WAG's invention. If you're entered on Friday, you can enter this freebie class Friday night. Every year, the rules are different, but it's always 3-dog teams in three height classes. In 2004, it was a straight 3-dog relay; in 2005, it was strategic pairs...er, triplets. The teaser for this year says "Brush up on your spelling and strategy planning..." Could be interesting!

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