Fun Rain Facts and Sorry Kate Elliott's Books

SUMMARY: An interesting first storm of the season, plus fun facts to know and share!

Fun fact: The Taj MuttHall-owned portions of San Jose got 3.5" of water in the last 24 hours! When the whole entire last rain year it got 11.5"!

Fun fact: 3.5" of rain in 24 hours can add the long-forgotten water jump obstacle feature to one's local agility field!

Fun fact: If you give a border collie a rawhide bone because you can't do agility so you want to keep her occupied for a while, she will spend 3 minutes out in the rain burying it somewhere in the yard!

Fun fact: And then come inside and look at you in a bored and reproachful way!

Fun fact: Tika can look bored and reproachful, too!

Fun fact: If you like sleeping with the windows open, and a big rainstorm is coming, and you leave them open only an inch or so because what could happen, there's a screen in the window to keep the rain out, right?, then you can learn some fun facts about the permeability of window screens! (Photo post-closing of window, showing permeable window screens.)

Fun fact: Curtains hanging 6" from windows in such situations get sopping sopping wet!

Fun fact: Because Taj MuttHall Human Mom is not as quick-witted as Team Small Dog Person Member when disaster strikes, TMH never gets photos of things like large pools of water on windowsills and nice oak bookcases! Which are now nice oak bookcases with wet spots! The camera never comes out until the worst of the disaster is already cleaned up! So too bad for you blog readers who wanted to see actual puddles of water on furniture!  Go look at TSD to see cupcake batter on the floor instead!


Fun fact: Wallpaper, being attached with water-soluble paste, can easily be separated from the wall simply by becoming moist! 

Fun fact: To absorb some of that annoying permeating water, you can leave one's down comforter on a chair with its back to the window even as much as 18" away!

Fun fact: Books, particularly those made of paper, tend to absorb water, but only if you leave them under an open window!

Even covers of books! (Sorry, books of Kate Elliott.)

Fun fact: Sometimes you can get giant air bubbles behind wallpaper! Especially if it somehow becomes moistened and thereby detached from the wall!

Fun related fact: You can unobtrusively remove air bubbles from wallpaper by pricking with a pin!

Fun related fact: Vinyl wallpaper, especially when made of actual vinyl, holds water!

Fun very related fact: If you prick a giant air bubble in vinyl wallpaper that has recently been somewhere in the vicinity of an open window and a large rainstorm, be prepared for the fact that all the air inside the bubble is actually water and will ooze all over the place for half an hour!

Fun fact: When it rains a lot, the street gutters fill with water! And it doesn't get charged to your water bill!

Fun fact: Grocery shopping in the rain is not so much keen fun! For anyone!

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Two New Dogs, Two Old Dogs

SUMMARY: And by that I mean--I have two brand new dogs, AND I have two dogs who are doing the same old things.

USDAA trial report: Five classes today.

Tika. Well.

I've been reporting how gloriously well she's been doing in Performance at 22". Including consistently placing 1st/2nd in Performance Steeplechase (and Grand Prix). And getting lots of Qs. And not knocking bars. And hitting her contacts one way or another.

Pairs Relay: She missed her up AND down on the dogwalk--didn't even TRY to hit the down. Fortunately she was fast enough and partner clean enought that we still qualified.

Standard: Knocked the first two bars. FLEW off the dogwalk. Didn't even try for the Aframe contact, so although she got a toe in, she launched beyond me and the resulting confusion earned a refusal at the next jump. How often does Tika get 20 faults in a single run any more? I mean, really!?!

Steeplechase: Ticked the broad jump very thoroughly, knocked the next bar, two obstacles later launched off the A-frame so thoroughly that she did NOT get a toenail in. 15 faults! And then--it was so bloody hot today--she was slower than I expected, I got ahead of her on an intended push and so had to step aside in front of her, pulling her off course. I mean, really!?! (But her time was spectacular even given the slowness and the additional offcourse. Dang.)

So this is my NEW tika--worse than she was back in Championship 26", where her Q rate had held steady at about 50% with only minor faults (like one in a class) keeping us from Qing?

And then the old Tika returned for a while.

Gamblers: Out of 17 Performance dogs, she placed third--an excellent opening, in which she got 2 Aframes just fine, kept her bars up, got lots of points, and then just missed a gamble that stymied almost everyone. Only 2 dogs in her class Qed, and I believe they both had fewer opening points than she did.

Snooker: One of those 3-red 7-point-weave speed courses where everyone does exactly the same thing and there were so many people competing that a goodly number were getting the maximum 51 points. So, to guarantee being in Super-Q range, we'd have to go for the 51, although it was a real stretch for us on time and, with the heat, Tika had been slower than normal. However, by the time we ran, it had started to cool, with a bit of a breeze, and she ran absolutely like a champ, completing the 51 points with a second or two to spare. Turns out only 2 of the 15 or so dogs in her height got 51--she was a bit slower, so 2nd place. But that's my old reliable Snooker dog returning!

OK, so Boost.

I've been reporting how, in class the last 2 weeks, she has suddenly turned into a dog who can do agility! Bars stay up, no refusals or runouts, doing weaves like a true pro, and so on.

Pairs Relay: Absolutely gorgeous! Her partner knocked 2 bars, but between them, they were plenty fast enough to Q and even place in the middle of the Qing pack! Only issue was that she hit bottom on the Aframe and immediately popped off.

Standard: Oh, this one was so close it hurt! She had a just gorgeous run, did everything right, except then I overran her on an intended rear cross, and I could've SWORN she was committed to the jump when I started moving, and she stopped, and I literally almost tripped over her and she spun to see what I was doing--anyway, that was a refusal, and the only thing wrong (except that, ahem, she hit bottom on the Aframe and immediately popped off. I made her Down--her front end went down but her rear never did).

Gamblers: The New Improved Boost was still in attendance. Did GREAT in the opening, just everything I asked her to, and was SO close on the gamble--a couple of friends said that I didn't keep the pressure up, and if I had, they thought she'd have gotten it. Such a good girl. Did 2 Aframes--the first one she stuck the 2o2o, the second one she hit bottom and came off immediately, in front of where I was trying to run, so we had some discombobulation to get back on plan. So, OK, I can handle having a nonsticky Aframe issue given everything else we've worked through

And then.

Snooker. She missed her first weave entrance. Knocked the third red bar, putting me out of position for the closing. She went over the #2 in the closing sort of sideways looking at me, hit the bar but didn't knock it, and then we had a complete refusal-what-this-jump insanity at #3 and then she crashed it. Just like the old Boost.

Then, in Steeplechase, the new Boost returned briefly--long enough for me to completely forget where I was going, send her off course twice--but she did everything I asked her to perfectly, kept her bars up, etc.


Sooo... all is not lost.

Too bad neither dog Qed in Steeplechase. Boost's sisters Bette and Gina and her mom Tala all placed well and will be in the money run tomorrow. I don't remember whether sister Beck and brother Derby made it, though. Fun sometimes to have the whole family around and see how they do. Gina is doing SO well. Won Gamblers by a bunch. Won Standard by a bunch. Was I think 4th in Steeplechase. A good day for them. Finally--they had a lot of consistency problems earlier on. Maybe both sisters are "getting it" at four and a half?

I just hope that it is 20 degrees cooler tomorrow. I am not a fond of excessive heat, and I am ashamed to admit that I did not do well today. Didn't feel great. Too droopy. Every time I ate something, I felt bleahhh. All heat related, methinks. But at least my knee is still doing well, and my dogs look like they're having fun. So I guess we'll go back tomorrow anyway. It got only to 87 today (sure felt hotter than that), and tomorrow's high is predicted at 72, which is much more Prunedale-like, so I have high hopes for a lovely day.

And I hope that these tail ends of Tropical Storm Ignacio get outa town soon.

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Today in California

SUMMARY: Tidbits and updates of a random nature.

By late yesterday afternoon, the clouds had largely cleared away in my area, treating me to a hopeful sunset marked only by one stubborn phalanx of clouds hovering in the west.



To the east, I finally caught a glimpse of Mt. Hamilton, which has been rumored to be ensnowed for the last couple of weeks, as the sky faded through pale pink, to purple, to night.



But it was short-lived; although not rainy today in my part of the bay area, I haven't seen a molecule of sunlight all day. And it has dropped once again to temperatures reminding us that it's a straight shot down the pacific coast from Alaska to California; was still hovering around 39 when I popped Tika into the car this morning and not much warmer now. It smells like impending snow to me, but that just might be my nostrils freezing.

Even the joggers--usually clad in running shorts in the least clement weather--were out in gloves and hats today. I wasn't even sure that Californians even OWNED gloves and hats. I know for sure that no one outside of the rural counties possesses anything like galoshes or rubbers (for shoes, come on now).

In any case, what I'm trying to say is that I'm NOT going to sleep in the back of my van this weekend in this weather, even with two layers of down and a couple of 45-pound furred heat engines. Guess I need to call the hotel(s). There goes another $100.

On my drive, I passed a truck for the Pet Butler--"picking up where your dog left off"--I'd say "only in California" but apparently not.

Filled up the tank in my Toyota Sienna today at $3.09/gallon--not bad; the cheapest it's been since mid-October, when it surged suddenly from the $2.90 range well up into the $3-plus stratosphere. Good thing I get 23 mpg. Wish I got better. Good thing I telecommute. (Definition: "Blog all day and then work at night, cursing about not having worked during the day.")

Last month's PG&E bill was miserable, too--$350! And I use compact fluorescents; the furnace is on a set-back thermostat and isn't even on most of the day or night and is set for 66 from 6:30-10 in the morning and 6:30-10 at night. So I bumped it down to 65 and changed the 10:00s to 9:45s. AND I turned off my hot tub. We're talking real hardship, here; I mean, this IS California.

But then I also bought this little beauty that I've had my eye on for a while--only $18 plus postage on ebay, new. Have already started plugging things into it to see how many kwh they suck out of the grid. I'm hoping that I'll learn something new by doing this and can save myself even more.

Or else maybe it'll get warm again.

Meanwhile, of course, we'll have to satisfy our longing for summer with:

Mr. Chia Head!



His hair is light-starved, so I set him with his back to the window this morning, ergo on Day 7 he now sports that back-swept Isadora Duncan look, except without the bulging eyes and protruding tongue--oh, well, without the tongue, anyway.

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Noah Would Feel Right At Home in Local Microclimates

SUMMARY: Rain, rain, go away, little doggies want to play.[1]

I'm not the only one underwhelmed by the pleasures of constant, dreary, steady rain. Yesterday's headline in the San Jose Mercury News was "When Will It Ever End?" (Subtitled "TOO WET TO GO OUT, TOO COLD TO PLAY BALL: RAIN THROUGH MONDAY, AND THAT'S NOT ALL", showing how much this country consists of Seussophiles[2].)

Gloomy

Sure, it stopped long enough for us to be lucky in our travel and agility yesterday, but within 20 minutes after we'd started driving home, we were encountering drizzle, and by the time we were home, I was dropping my traveling companion off in that same boring steady annoyingly wet but unexceptional in volume dang rain. Today's weather forecast in the Merc (click image for larger version):



Rain rain rain RAIN!

Keep in mind that San Jose averages only about 15 inches of rain a year, and we've gotten about 5 of that in the last couple of weeks. I'm not saying that this is a disaster area (although, now that the ground is fully saturated--finally!--the danger of landslides and floods begins to rise precipitously, so to speak). It's really about the Climatalogical Water Torture, a psychologically deadly device designed to reduce our psyches to blubbering gelatinous blobs.

Scholarly

However, amidst all this, students, we can take an interesting lesson in microclimates[3] in the San Francisco Bay Area. People in most of the US don't live among such amazing variances in such close proximity. The preceding map covers an area of about 120 miles, north to south. The map shows the rainfall from 4 p.m. Friday through 4 p.m. Saturday for each measured location. Samples:

• South San Jose (near where I live): 0.39 inches.
• Downtown San Jose (10 miles north in the same valley): 0.50 inches
• Los Gatos (forming a 10-mile triangle with two preceding): 0.89
• Boulder Creek (about 10 miles from Los Gatos, in the Santa Cruz mountains): 3.04
• Gilroy (about 20 miles south of South San Jose in the same valley): 0.0

It has been snowing in the mountains all around us most of the time (drive time to top--maybe an hour because of curvy roads), but we're just getting rain.

So, we can be gloomy, we can be scholarly, or--

Best Choice

We can check on Mr. Chia Head!

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Mostly Better Than Feared

SUMMARY: USDAA trial went generally well for us, on many counts.

Here's what I had rattling around in the Things To Worry About Department of my brain before today:

• Tika has done almost no agility, and NO 26" jumps, in almost 4 weeks. She'd been sore (briefly) back then. Would a sudden rash of 5 classes in one day at 26" wipe her out? Would she be able to do them at all?
• How come we haven't been able to to get that danged 15th Gamblers leg for our Bronze Gamblers? And will I ever, since I haven't practice distance work with her for 3 months?
• Would the freeway between here & there still be closed due to flooding for our trip up this morning?
• Would the ground under the horse arena cover (for our trial) be flooded? Filled with goopy mud?
• Its been raining and gloomy and REALLY COLD (for rain) with bone-piercing arctic wind all week--this could be a miserable day, even with closing panels on half of the arena, because you still have to load & unload the car and potty the dogs and DRIVE in it.

But I needn't have spent the calories fretting. The freeway was still closed when I got up at 4 this morning, but by the time I picked up my friend with her dogs Scully and Sparkle, it was open. It wasn't raining at all, anywhere along the trip. The temps went all the way up into the mid-60s and there wasn't a breath of wind all day. The arena had one area maybe 10 feet by 3 feet that was floody & muddy, but it didn't really affect us much. The day started with a drop-dead gorgeous sunrise that started out awesome and just got better for the next 10 minutes.

Tika

Tika was SO excited to be doing agility, and no sign of soreness. Her first run of the day was gamblers, and MAN, she flew around that course! Even her dogwalk and teeters were super-fast, as we've been working on (before her medical and rain hiatus anyway). She was one of only about 10 of 76 Masters dogs who got the gamble. I thought that she had actually managed to beat everyone else (rare for Tika) by 2 points total, too, but apparently her fast dogwalk was not as accurate a dogwalk as it had looked to me, because we didn't get points for it, dropping us to 3rd of 19 26" dogs. But I know I shouldn't complain--she ran great, looked great, executed everything beautifully, got a hard gamble, and finished that Gamblers Bronze! (Now it's just the danged Jumpers...)

In fact, she Qed 3 of 5 for the weekend, also taking 3rd of 19 in Standard 26". Also had a nice pairs run, but the course was pretty easy and, so, many many many teams Qed and had very fast times. She and partner were 12th of 27 Open teams.

She knocked NO bars! Woooooo! Didn't Q in Jumpers because I tried to do a bit of a send-and-run, and managed to pull her past a jump for a refusal, dagnabbit.

And she backjumped on a wrap in the Snooker opening, but had successfully negotiated 11 jumps in a row up to that point without knocking any, so that was a bit of a victory.

Boost

Boost ran very nicely, looking more like a Master dog all the time, although the Q rate is still low. I knew that the gamble would be extremely difficult for her, and she failed exactly where I thought she would, but she DID do a serp leading into it with no effort at all--a big improvement. Her opening was nice but did the "THIS tire? You mean THIS tire? THIS one?" refusal in the opening and I just help my position and waited until she took it, so she didn't get all the way through our last Teeter (still in the air)--otherwise she'd have tied for highest opening points.

In Jumpers, she came past a sharply angled jump (my fault for not remembering what a babydog she is) AND knocked a bar, but otherwise she flew around that course without hesitations or bobbles. Looked good.

In Snooker, another babydog/overly assuming mom error--I thought she was with me while running for the next jump, and suddenly realized that there was no dog going over it--nor anywhere to be seen--and she had gone in a different direction than I thought we were going (took my eyes off her, in other words).

In Standard, oh, it was LOVELY, dang it, except for one "THIS jump? You mean THIS jump? THIS one?" refusal--but two in five runs compared to several per run like we were sometimes doing last year is a big improvement.

And in team--whoo!--she screamed around that course (figuratively, not literally--none of my dogs, thank goodness, have ever voiced while running) and her partner was pretty danged fast, too; they were 4th fastest of all 37 teams but she knocked a bar, so Q but no placement. But even with that 5-point fault added to their time, they were half a second faster than Tika's pair. Now, THAT's a fast team!

Overall

I had a good time with my friends, being score table supervisor and keeping busy, taking photos (an assortment shown here), playing a fast, challenging sport with my dogs-- let's hear it for a 2 month vacation from agility and for a 1-day trial. Even my failures as a handler didn't seem so galling today.

As much as it would slow down our Title Chase, maybe I really do need to take more time off from agility. WOuld certainly help my pocketbook, but maybe it would help my enjoyment of the basic experience of agility more, too.

New rescue sheltie, at a year and a half just joining a family dynasty of outstanding agility shelties.

Graffiti.

The photographer is caught at her foul work again.

The remnants of a favorite one of these (I've had some that look like this).

On the trial secretary's box, the added tag says, "How special can it be if there's no beer?"

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Odd Dog-Related Things

SUMMARY: Rainbows and Chia Heads

The last several days have been just plain straight water-come-down-from-sky. Unusual for San Jose, where we often get the Camelot effect ("the rain may never all till after sundown; by 8 the morning fog must disappear"), or a big downpour and then clearing. It hasn't been downpouring; it's mostly been more than drizzling; a good pace for absorbing water into the ground, which is a Good Thing, but bad for doggie brains.

I now know why they called them bored-er collies. Someone has been getting into EVERYTHING and being quite a nuisance. But the yard is just too wet and muddy (and cold!, also unusual for rainy times) to go out into, and who wants to walk in this weather?

Instead--I'm growing a chia head! Yes, have always wanted to try one but never wanted to shell out the money for it. I stole this at our agility club's annual gift exchange; apparently everyone thought I was being nice to the guy I stole it from because who would REALLY want a chia head? Who knew that doing dog agility would lead directly into this fulfilling personal experience?

Three days to germination, it said; here we are at day 2. I can hardly wait!





So, meanwhile, what are we to do while waiting? Today I had a doctor's appointment, so I loaded the furballs into the van and, after the appointment, we went for a walk (yes, in the drizzly rainy stuff) all around the Kaiser campus. And just as we were returning to the parking lot, I looked up and saw this stunning reminder that life will not always be gray and dreary:



It was one of the most brilliant rainbows I've seen. I raced to the car, shoved in the sopping beasties, grabbed my cheapie camera (always carry one, always!), and raced backed to a good vantage point. Then I realized, hey, it's a DOUBLE!


Somehow managed to not take quite the right angles to be able to merge two snapshots into a smooth arc, but the whole thing looked something like this. It was already fading from my first glimpse of it, but note that the colors are reversed on the outer arc. (Click on the panorama to see a larger version.)

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Finally, Some Competition

SUMMARY: CPE this weekend

It's our club's CPE trial this weekend, up in Petaluma. That's almost a 2-hour drive, so I'll be spending the night up in that neighborhood. A friend has kindly offered to let me stay at her place, about 20 minutes from the site.

I and the dogs both need the weekend. Really, I don't know what to do with my beasts when we're not doing agility!

The weather has been weird so far this summer. Seems as if it has been quite humid along with warm, which isn't normally the case in this part of California. Of course, my body-temperature regulators have been on the fritz, too, so some of it could just be me. Dogs don't care much. It's just a matter of whether they return the tossed toy more often directly to me or more often directly into the shade.

This morning it looked like rain. They said that, if it managed to summon up at least 1/100 inch, it would be the first rain ever recorded in San Jose on July 18. (Well, so they've been recording only about 70 years, go figure.) But the overcast has burned away and it looks nothing like rain weather at the moment.

But I feel like I need to stand in the yard and run the hose over my head. I am hot and goopy. Yuck. Claims to be barely 80 F outside--77 inside since it never got much below 70 overnight to cool the house down. Dogs are lying around panting. Me too.

Oooh, yeah, Accuweather.com reports current humidity at 46%! That is so not normal for around here unless it's foggy. At least, I think not. I'd expect more like mid-20s. OK, gotta go perspire a little more.

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Little Doggie Thoughts

SUMMARY: Ellen's mind wanders.

Nope, these are not thoughts about little doggies (of which I have none), or thoughts from little doggies (sometimes questionable whether there are any of those, either); they are my little thoughts related to doggies. Since I'm not competing, I have to think about *something*.

• Dogs are useless as mousers in my houser. Was woken yesterday morning by a mouse gnawing under my nightstand, fercryingoutloud. Didn't wake the ALERT GUARD DOGS up, though. In fact, as I tried to position Tika to where she'd be able to see the mouse when I moved the nightstand--and surely she could SMELL the blamed thing, right?--she was more interested in whether she was about to get a treat for doing whatever it was that I was asking her to do. When she finally caught a whiff and looked interested, I moved the nightstand, and the little bugger streaked out the OTHER side and under the bed. While Tika vigorously investigated the now-vacated nightstand, I shoved Boost under the bed--surely she could SMELL the blamed thing, right?--but she made a u-turn UNDER the bed and came back out to help Tika check out the nightstand. Good thing they're good at agility, is all I can say.
• Boost's weaves are getting very nice. Hope they stay that way. Interestingly, she's doing consistently better at the soft entry to the weaves (she says, bandying about this phrase that I just learned from another blogger, meaning coming at it from the right where they don't have a clear pole to wrap around). Coming at it from the left, she's more likely to skip a pole or two. In fact, that's where she'd skip 7 or 8 earlier this year when her poles had deteriorated so much. But usually I can fix it now by putting any slight sort of diverter to remind her to tuck in, and then she's good for a while.
• No class for Boost last week due to the evacuation for Canby; no class for Tika this week because of the 4th and no class for Boost because it was too danged hot Thursday at noon. Hey, what's a little 100-degree weather where a fanatic, driven dog is concerned? Good thing we've got a fun match tomorrow. And a VERY good thing that the weather seems to have gotten its head together: It's 11:30 a.m. and it has barely reached 70. Nice after a week of scorching.

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Photos, Weather, and Jump Bar Miracle

SUMMARY: Photos from previous weekend, weather variations, and Tika might have achieved a first--

Every day brings new doggie data. And weather, too, apparently.

Weather

Amazing San Jose weather. This past weekend was idyllic agility weather. On Saturday it might have made it to the low 70s; probably only high 60s on Saturday, with a slight cool breeze in the morning that got fairly chilly but not killingly so in the late afternoon. Sun was out most of the time, with just a few light clouds and morning overcast on Sunday.

Thank goodness for that--yesterday it rained most of the day here, and today it is cold COLD COLD!!! An icy wind all day that just won't quit, and it's supposed to be back down around freezing overnight.

Photos

Tika's standard jumping form. Every jump photo I have of her shows her tucked like this, I'm pretty sure. She gets around at a good speed, but her whole body has that upright Aussie thing going.	All three photos by topflightphotography.com
Boost's jumping form? Everything is directed forward for speed--head is lowered, neck stretched, legs straight out behind. I don't know whether this is typical; don't have that many photos yet and she moves too fast for me to see with my naked eyes.
Boost riding the teeter to the ground at full speed. I've seen photos of other dogs riding it with this kind of skidding-to-a-halt right at the very tippy end of the board, so if she always does it here, she's missing a fraction of the momentum that they'll have. But she's got super teeters, much better than any of my other dogs have ever had. Sometimes even skids to the end/bottom. Exciting.

And Then A Miracle Occurred

OK, here's one for you--and you'd think I'd have noticed before driving home this evening for once at the speed limit most of the way: I don't think that Tika knocked any bars this weekend. I know for sure that she didn't in 9 of her 10 classes, but the last one was the chaotic Jackpot round where she was grabbing my feet and I was panicking about getting her around the ring and it's POSSIBLE that a bar came down, but I didn't see it or notice it if it did. If so--(drum roll please)--I believe that this would be the first time in history that Tika made it through a weekend without knocking a bar. That would be absolutely FABULOUS, no other word for it!

Of course, she jumps 24" in CPE, and 26" in USDAA, where she knocked plenty of bars the previous weekend, thank you very much. I've debating before whether I should jump her regularly in practice at 28", but most jumps nowadays stop at 26"; we're so far beyond the days when USDAA's top height was 30" and not a few jumps went up in 2" increments.

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Mid-March in San Jose

SUMMARY: Weather's lovely.

Ah! This is the life! It's sunny and warm (set new record for the date yesterday, by 4 degrees, yet!). There's almost no smog and they say that the pollen count is way down. My allergies aren't bothering me. Not a cloud in the sky. Accuweather says it's 81 in San Jose; my yard thermometer says 82.

I mowed my lawn for the first 2 times in the last week. Daffodils and grape hyacinths are pretty much done blooming except for a few in the deep shade. All the frost-bitten plants are shooting out new leaves from apparently dead stems.

The plum tree is almost finished blooming; the apple trees are just starting to bloom. My sole bleeding heart is peeping out from the soil and the leaves look healthy. No sign of the hosta yet, but I expect any day now.

Boost played enthusiastically with cold sprays of water from the hose and then rolled her wet coat joyously on the lawn, while Tika hid in the shade and watched the proceedings. Dontcha love winter in California?

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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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Just a Cold, Near-Christmas Morning

SUMMARY: Coldest morning in a long time. Dogs don't care.

The tule fog makes a stunning view on many mornings.

This morning, the temperature dropped briefly to 29F around 7:00. The grass and ground were crinkly with frost, although you can barely tell in this photo.

It's so cold that even Boost needs to wear a fur stole.

Tika almost-patiently waits for action, her Christmas collar just visible.

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