Busy Weekend Again Even Without Agility

SUMMARY: Friday and Saturday, dog playtime, then photo expedition.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last night I took the dogs up to Palo Alto and we had dinner with friends to celebrate their Bump's 10th birthday, right after he finished his LAA-platinum. What a guy. Boost and the 9-month-old Border Collie, Dig, played as if they had never been allowed to play before in their entire pathetic lives. They wrestled all over each other, the floor, our legs, the chairs... Tika mostly hung out and looked for food scraps.

Dig, being an actual puppy still, eventually tired Boost out enough that my girl WANTED to sit on my lap for about 10 minutes! Usually I have to insist that she come up and then kind of hold her there while I stroke her a bit before letting her go. This time, she was plenty happy to sit there and lean her chin on my shoulder. Very sweet. They did go back at it eventually. Not that it apparently REALLY tired either of them out completely.

Today, I picked up a friend at the airport and dropped her off at her mom's. Then I went driving and photographing nature with another friend. We thought we were going on a wildflower hike but it turned out slightly differently. See photos with notes here. (Addition Sunday Feb 15: View the friend's take on the trip.)

Then I shuttled a friend around whose car is in the shop (see post from last weekend--), then finally got to work sorting through and editing today's photos. I'm wiped out, and I hardly took a step all day. And dogs were completely neglected.

Tomorrow it's a movie with another friend and then holiday/birthday celebrations with my secondary family. No wonder I never get anything done even when I'm not doing agility!

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Trial Statistics Because I Can

SUMMARY: I love it when trial secretaries extract interesting info from the trial database!

So I'll share the info for this weekend's Bay Team CPE trial with you again, because I know you care. (And, for the more studious of you, you can compare and contrast with my stats from our USDAA trial 2 weeks ago.)

Total dogs entered: 204 (but usually there's a small set each day that enters only one day, so Saturday has 179 dogs, sunday has 173).

Classes: We offer 6 classes a day of the 7 defined by CPE, although CPE restricts dogs to 5 runs a day. That way, we can more easily distribute the classes among 3 judges in 3 rings, plus people can choose what they really want to enter. This time, we're offering 2 Standard, 2 Snooker, 2 Jackpot (Gamblers), 2 Jumpers, 2 Wildcard, and one each Colors and Full House.

Experience Levels: The trial sec didn't pull out the number of dogs by level, but just f'rinstance, in Saturday's Standard (which tends to be the largest class):
* Level 1: 23 (complete beginner)
* Level 2: 26
* Level 3: 29
* Level 4: 18 (Boost's level)
* Level 5: 22
* Level C: 20 ((championship), Tika's level)

Number of runs: 1482 for the weekend. That's only about 240 per judge per day, a moderate level.

Weather: It's supposed to get up into the mid-80s. Yuck. But it could be worse. And dang all that smoke; wonder whether it's clearer 2 hours north of here?

Most common breeds:
* All American (39)
* Australian Shepherd (34)
* Border Collie (26)
* Sheltie (21)
* Golden Retriever (12)
* Welsh Corgi (Pembroke) (7) (Bonus #6 on list of top 5)
The other 65 are scattered among 37 other breeds.

Ages: There's one 14-year-old dog entered, two 13, two 12-yr-olds, then the count rises as they get younger to peak at 41 4-yr-olds, with about 25 each at 2, 3, 5, and 6 years. (Dogs can't compete until they're a year and a half.)

Names: The most common dog's name is Sadie, with 3. 16 names are duplicated once, including Izzy and Ceilidh, for interesting ones that you might not guess would be duplicates. Place-type names: Two each of Sydney, Dakota, and Alaska.

Dogs per handler: 117 people are running only one dog, 35 are running 2, three are running 3, and two totally insane folks are running 4 each.

Our competition: The number of dogs in direct competition (same level and same jump height) to Boost looks like about 8; in direct competition to Tika, about -- um -- 1 or 2. (But both can vary by day and by class.) But note--that I actually consider, being a competitive sort of personage, ALL 204 DOGS to be in direct competition to my dogs. If Tika can't beat everyone at the trial in at least one class, I'll be gloomy.

Predictions: Tika will take a lot of first places.

What I'd like to do: Earn a perfect weekend--10 Qs (qualifying scores) each--for both dogs. Chances--for Tika, decent: She's done it once before and missed by one several times.

What I need: Since it looks like I'm mostly dropping out of CPE--not enough time or money to do both CPE and USDAA--I'm not focusing much on CPE titles. However, Boost needs:
* 1 Jackpot (Gamblers) to move up to Level 5 Jackpot (2 chances!)
* 2 Snooker to move to L5 (2 chances!)
* 4 Standard to move to L5 (2 chances)
* 3 Wildcard to move to L5 (1 chance)
* 4 Colors to move to L5 (1 chance--and she has to keep her bars up to get it)

Tika needs a megatruckload'o'Qs in everything to earn her CATE, and we might never get there with only a couple of trials a year. She's only halfway there. Oh, well. Most legs she can earn in any class, but she must first finish earning:
* 5 more Colors (danged bars)
* 3 more Wildcard
* 1 more Jackpot
* 7 more Jumpers (2 chances)

In total, she must earn (approx) 250 Qs; so far, she has 126. It'll be a lonnnng time getting there with only a trial or two a year. Can you say "14-year-old dog"?

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Smallish USDAA Trial This Weekend

SUMMARY: Some stats for your browsing entertainment.

Our trial this weekend is on the smallish side, for our USDAA trials.

Total dogs and DAM Team: Friday is DAM Team only, and there are only 115 dogs entered, which makes 29 Championship teams and 14 Performance teams (translation: Ch = higher jump heights and tighter times). We'll be running it in only two rings. This means that, on average, probably only about 15 Ch teams and 7 Perf teams will qualify for the Nationals. Boost really needs that Q!

Classes and total dogs: Saturday and Sunday we've got Steeplechase, Grand Prix, 2 Standards, 2 Pair Relays, 2 Jumpers, plus Gamblers and Snooker. An average of 280 dogs per day, and for these two days we add a third ring for the Starters and Advanced (intermediate-level) rounds.

Experience levels: Of the dogs entered, 57% are Masters level dogs, 27% are Starters level, and 16% are Advanced. It's pretty typical for the distribution to be like this, because once a dog get to Masters, she remains at that level for the rest of her agility career, so of course that class would be larger. Starters would be the next largest because any dog starting in agility has to start here, and stays here until they earn enough Qs to move up. Some percentage of dogs never pursue an "agility career." And it also seems that, once a dog/handler team has gotten it together enough to get out of Starters, they (usually) get through Advanced fairly quickly and on into Masters.

Number of runs: Saturday has over 1200 runs! That's 400 per ring, which can be a long day depending on how efficiently things work. On Sunday, fewer than 300 runs per ring and maybe we'll be out of there a little early.

Weather: It's supposed to be unseasonably cool tomorrow, but working its way back up to Hot Hot Hot over the next three or four days, so Sunday could be toasty. At least we should have a breeze.

Breeds: The five most-common breeds this weekend are 115 Border Collies, 35 Shelties, 34 Australian Shepherds, 19 All-Americans, 11 Golden Retrievers. The rest are scattered among 25 other breeds.

Ages: There's one 14-year-old dog entered, one 13, four 12-yr-olds, then the count rises as they get younger to peak at 49 5-yr-olds, 48 4-yr-olds, and 49 3-yr-olds. The older dogs amaze me. Jake was still running in CPE at 15, but not in USDAA--I believe he was 13 when I retired him from that. Remington lived only to 9.

Names: The most common dog's name is Chase, of which there are 4 entered. 22 other names are duplicated once. The most common human's name is Nancy, of which there are 6 entered. My sisters' names are Ann, Linda, Susan (or Sue), and Sharon, all of which except Ann appear in the Top Ten human names for the trial.

Jump heights: 150 dogs jump in the 22" height category (Boost's height), 80 in Tika's 26" jump height, 61 in the 16" jump height, and 28 in the 12" jump height. I keep thinking maybe my next dog will be a 12-incher, but I don't know what kind of dog! But there are a couple of cute ones in this group--from Nike Animal Rescue Foundation, through which both Remington and Jake passed at some point. But my requirement is that my next dog must be 6 years younger than Boost, and she's only 3 1/2, so we've got a ways to go!

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Boring Notes To Self From Weekend

SUMMARY: What we did well on, but mostly what we screwed up. (This is my third post of the day. You'll probably more enjoy my previous posts about Weekend Courses or Haute TRACS is Almost Done.

Boost

• Weaves: Hitting the correct entry and then skipping a pole. Several times. This cost us 14 points in Saturday's Snooker, time in the Steeplechase, I don't know where else as I didn't take good notes at the time. Popping out early. She did this almost 100% on Thursday, I think. I made her go back in and correct them on the theory that slowing her down is punishment enough. That didn't seem to help, so on Friday I made her lie down and THEN made her go back in and fix them. The next set of weaves she did the entry-skipping thing again; made her lie down, then go back in, and she finished them completely and I whooped and ran her quickly out of the ring over a couple of fast obstacles.
  
  That seems to have fixed it again, as she completed all of her weaves correctly on Saturday, I'm pretty sure, enough that I dared three sets in the gamble and she did great, made entries AND stayed in. Woo.
• Contacts: Oh, bad dog, left the first two early in team standard and I didn't want to mess around in Team events. So later I made her lie down when she left a contact or two early, and that seems to have fixed it again. You really do have to stay on top of this stuff, don't you!
• Start line stay: She is so good! Although in that same first team run, she left before I released her, and I let her get away with it because it was team. I feared for my life after that, but in fact she stuck all of her remaining start-line stays all weekend very nicely.
• Bars and refusals: I just didn't count them well this weekend. There were many, many, many on Thursday but seemed to be better on Friday and even better on Saturday. I wonder, if I had stayed through Sunday, whether we'd have actually had a run or two with no refusals or knocked bars? We just don't practice enough running and jumping, I guess. Not enough room for it in my yard; class is so much more focused on handling.
• Energy: So far she seems to maintain total drive and enthusiasm, although she was more easily distracted away from her tug toy while going to and from the ring. I hope that's just growing maturity and confidence, not a stress reaction. I'd hate to think that I'm slowing her down in the ring by my incompetent handling or stressing her out about doing well in the ring.

Tika

• Contacts: Barely getting toenails into the Aframe down contacts and flying over most of the dogwalk downs. I don't believe that we were called for any dogwalk ups this weekend. Maybe I'm concentrating on the wrong part of the contact and Rachel's right about that being trivial! I need to just decide how she's supposed to do her contacts and what I'm willing to accept in the ring and go about fixing it again. She never used to have so many flyoffs. I don't think so, anyway.
• Drive and enthusiasm: I've always had trouble getting her to play with a toy before a run, except the first run of the morning, where she really gets into it--until we get ringside, where she'd rather sniff the ground. Presumably that's mostly the chow-hound's food obsession, but the amount of time I spend dragging her around by the neck trying to do a little jogging to warm up or just to get from one side of the ring to the other is a little bit concerning. Is this a stress reaction more than mere food sniffing?
  
  She does seem to me to be tiring and flagging sooner and more often. Heat never seemed to matter to her, but this weekend she didn't leap immediately to her feet when I approached her crate saying, "Tika, you want to do some agility?" This is so unlike her. This just adds to the assorted things I have been noting about her getting tired so much faster than Boost, where not long ago she could completely keep up, or about being good for only a couple or three runs in class before her drive visibly drops.
  
  I mean, really, she's still a fast dog, but not drivey fast like she often used to be. Her Saturday Jumpers speed was 5.25 yards per second, which is good but not great (Boost's 5.96, winning dog 6.41).
  
  So I have all these questions running through my head: Is she sore? Is she getting old? Does she have something seriously wrong with her like Remington did that mystified me about his performance for so long? Is she out of condition, am I not doing enough with her? Should I be doing less with her? Argh, so hard to figure out.
• Weaves: I keep relying too much on her being a "good weaving dog" and then don't work the weave entries or exits at ALL and then get errors or pop-outs. But she did make a couple of really beautiful and very difficult weave entries all on her own this weekend. I'm not always certain where I need to give a bit more info and where she's fine on her own. Should probably experiment.
• Start-line stays: She has been so much better at staying since I started having her lie down at the start, which she wanted to do half the time anyway. She still sometimes gets up early and creeps up on the first obstacle, but I'll take it as long as she doesn't actually start doing the course on her own. It's not so much of a problem with electronic timing, so she's not creeping across the start line, but I have to make sure I give her plenty of room--just in case--for those classes (gamblers, snooker) where a traditional start line is still used.

Me

• Energy:I really felt droopy Thursday, which was not the hottest day, and all weekend I seemed to have trouble getting my feet to take me where I wanted to go. It might have been lack of sleep on Thursday. It might have been allergy drugs Thursday and Friday so I didn't take them Friday night, but didn't feel any better Saturday. I keep thinking I'm in reasonable condition. I sure wish I was in the right frame of mind to take these extra pounds off again! It's just not happening at the moment. I'm sure that contributes immensely to my perceived inability to move around the course.
• Handling: I made SO many mistakes this weekend that I SO know better. The kind where the instant you make it you know you've just screwed up, usually even before the dog goes off course/knocks a bar/gets a refusal/etc. Where is my brain? I realize that everyone makes mistakes, but this weekend felt particularly bad for me.
• Attitude: On the other hand, I felt less stress about any of my runs than I have in a long time. I enjoyed myself on course, I didn't feel like crawling into a corner and bawling when I messed up yet another course, I never felt the kind of self-pressure I feel for, say, the last leg for an ADCH or trying to get a needed Super-Q or such. Even though I wanted Tika's 2 jumpers for her ADCH-Bronze, I wasn't thinking about it at all during my runs, just concentrating on the runs themselves. So the question is--did I make more stupid errors because I *wasn't* stressed and running on adrenaline? My Q rate doesn't seem to be horribly different from other USDAA trials, so I'm not sure really what difference any of this really made.

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CPE Weekend Wrap-Up

SUMMARY: Mixed bag again. OK, it's almost always a mixed bag.

Tika ran nicely, for the most part. She really is my reliable agility dog. Finally! At age 7!

• She knocked 2 bars --one in full house that didn't matter, one in Jumpers that prevented a Perfect Weekend of 10 Qs. Back to bar-knocking drills.
• Contacts: Got all of her contacts--barely--but there were almost no contacts all weekend on course! Aframe/teeter/dogwalk in Standard on Saturday (she wasn't entered on Sunday), Aframe in Jackpot on Sunday 3 times, and that's it.
• Most of the weekend, the only dog in her same height and level (24" Level C) was Annie the very fast & experienced rescue BC, who debuted about the same time that Tika did.
• But in CPE, levels 4/5/C run the same course, and sometimes Level 3, too, and even sometimes everyone competing at the trial, all levels. So I can compare against more than just my group.
• Sat Jumpers/no Q: Very fast and smooth, that one dang bar. 6th fastest of 56 4/5/C dogs (faster: Cody the Aussie, Reilly the spotted mixed-breed, Vixen, and Cory the super Sheltie, but not Annie for a change).
• Sat Wildcard/Q and 1st: Really smooth-looking on a twisty course. The fastest of all 44 4/5/C dogs--but Annie wasn't entered.
• Sat Colors/Q and 2nd: Nice but I forgot to call her coming out of a tunnel so she way overshot and had to come back. Still, 6th fastest of 57 3/4/5/C dogs (Annie beat us by 3.5 seconds! Jeez! Also faster: Sydney the Aussie, Cody the Aussie again, Steamer the zippy BC, and some dog named Boost.)
• Sat Full House/Q and 2nd:That's the one where she was a stride away from exiting a tunnel for 3 more points. I thought she had made it, she was moving so fast; had to review the video to assure myself that the scribe hadn't made a mistake. Still, she was 5th-highest of all 114 dogs, with 46 points; Annie had 49 and three had 47 (Django the 24" Border Collie, Sydney again, and Sooner the Papillon, who is fast but also had 5 more seconds than the rest of us).
• Sat Standard/Q and 2nd: One big turn where she headed the wrong way after the dogwalk so wasted time. Still, she was 4th fastest of 49 4/5/C dogs (faster: Annie of course, and Steamer again, and that Boost critter also).
• Sun Jackpot/Q and 2nd: I chickened out when the whistle blew and didn't take one more 5-point obstacle. Turns out that I had 7 seconds left, so I could've easily done it, it was right next to me. I remember that when I ran Boost. So, with 59 points instead of 64, she was only 9th-highest scoring of 114 dogs (all levels same course). (Scoring higher: Annie, naturally, with 61, Boost with 61 (would've had that 64 except she popped out one pole early on her last weaves), Cory the Sheltie again with 63, Chaps the Aussie (who wasn't there Saturday) with 64, Steamer again with 62, and three little dogs who got 7 more seconds--Porsche the Corgi with 66, MeiMei the Corgi with 62, and Beau the mini poodle with 61.)
• Sun Full House/Q and 1st: I thought I had a clever course that would get me 52 points, but it involved lots of tight turns and I didn't call/manage Tika tightly enough. We ended up with 46 points (she knocked one 1-point bar and the wide turns didn't allow time for the one final 5-pointer). (For a change, Annie had only 44--they missed 4 more points on a misdirected jump--but Chaps once again had more with 48, and that Steamer zipped with 49.) So Tika was "only" the 3rd highest of all 101 dogs.
• Sun Jumpers/Q and 1st: A clean, smooth run. Annie knocked a bar and bobbled a jump, so we took 1st again, but there were two other dogs faster among the 55 4/5/C (Chaps 0.4 secs faster, Sydney 2 secs faster).
• Sun Wildcard/Q and 1st: Pretty smooth if you ask me. Don't know that it could've been faster. Annie was over 2 seconds faster but knocked the last bar, so we eked out another 1st. (Others faster in the 64 3/4/5/C dogs: Cory again by 1.1, Steamer again by almost 2.)
• Sun Snooker/Q and 1st: The 7-pointer was a combo of a 20-foot tunnel and 12-pole weaves, but I really pushed her and we made it through the last weave just before the whistle blew, for a perfect 51-point round and a 1st place. Only 3 other dogs out of 68 3/4/5/C dogs got 51 (Chaps again, Cory again, and Ouzo), but Annie didn't run this one, or Steamer, or Sydney--and Boost and I blew it.

Boost had her moments. She's very fast--even sometimes having to repeat obstacles or recover from repeated refusals, she still had some of the fastest course times.

• Weaves: Problems again. She's running past them completely again, or ducking in somewhere in the middle, or popping out. Can't they just stay fixed? If I can be there near the beginning and end to manage her a teensy bit, she's good. But I want independent weaves like Tika's! Out of 16 sets of poles, 7 had problems. Back to the drawing board.
• Refusals: Only maybe 3 really bad ones, one of which cost us Snooker on Saturday when I had to run out of position to get her to take the danged thing. I think rear crosses are the worst. Back to the drawing board.
• Go on: At the end of the courses, where judges like to put several jumps in a run for a really fast fun race to the finish, Boost keeps stopping and looking back at me, while I'm running as fast as I can yelling "go hup! Go! Hup! Go! Hup!" and my arm is up and then half the time we end up with a refusal or two because she's too close to the jump to take it comfortably. Known issue. Work harder.
• Contacts and start line: Lovely lovely lovely.
• Bars: Well, she knocked fewer this weekend than last weekend jumping 20" instead of 24", but still knocked enough to make me go back to my thinking that it's a bar-knocking issue, not a height issue.
• Sat Jumpers/Q and 3rd: Ran past 2nd jump on a lead-out so I reset her to get into position, wasting beaucoup time.
• Sat Wildcard/Q and 1st: Missed weave entry so had to come back for it.
• Sat Colors/Q and 2nd: Yay! Kept bars up! Finished Level C! But looking back at me instead of running to end.
• Sat Snooker/no Q: Started very nicely with 3 sets of weaves but in the closing, that stubborn refusal on a rear cross, leading to a juicy tunnel offcourse.
• Sat Standard/Q and 1st: A really really nice run.
• Sun Jackpot/Q and 2nd: I got into the wrong position so we bobbled some things, leading into a refusal, and she popped out of one set of weaves, but our score was 2nd highest of all 112 dogs, so I shouldn't complain too much. Except that the only dog with more points--that lovely Steamer--was in our height/level again, keeping us from a first place.
• Sun Full House/Q and 2nd: Missed weave entry twice, so couldn't pick up the rest of our planned points. Not a bad score, and also, too bad that fast Steamer is in her height and level!
• Sun Standard/No Q: Bars bars bars, missed weaves twice, looking back at me at the end.
• Sun Wildcard/No Q: Missed weaves, and when I pulled her around to try again, took a juicy tunnel offcourse.
• Sun Snooker/No Q: Lovely two sets of weaves, then she didn't go where I wanted after the 3rd red, and I fell flat on my back trying to call her to me. She came over to tell me to GET UP COME ON! and I petted her, stood up, then just took her straight to the table to stop the clock instead of it occurring to me until the next day that what she did was LEGAL and I could've just stood up and gone on and maybe gotten the Q. But I don't think that fast. Dang. You'd think that after hundreds of snooker runs--this was my 305th, if you'd like to know--I'd have that idea embedded in my brain. But no.

But I had a good time, weather was great, judges were nice, friends were fun, dogs were fast and a joy to be on the course with.

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CPE Weekend Photos

SUMMARY: Today, some photos. Later or maybe tomorrow, some narrative results info and post-game analysis.

	There is always a workers appreciation gift (WAG--isn't that clever? I made it up back in, uh, gosh, when we were still doing trials up on the lawn between the buildings at Hayward) raffle, and you can get tickets only by working. This is what I really want and why I work a lot each trial. Free-entry certificates. I put in many tickets. Did I win many free entries? Not this time.
	But this looked like it would be a useful thing to have around the house, so I put a ticket in here, too. I also didn't win this. I'm guessing that's a good thing.
	This is what most of the raffle offerings look like. It's exciting until you realize that I already have 60,000 toys, rawhides, and leashes lying around the house, many of them never used ever for anything.
	In the Easter spirit, the pens for filling out your raffle tickets are decorated all flowery. Or maybe that's all the time, to prevent the miracle of the pens rising and walking away under their own power.
	This keychain looked pretty cool but as we saw earlier, my keychain is plenty crowded with useless gewgaws already, so I did not put in a ticket.
	Instead, let's look at some entertaining results for ouir runs on Saturday. The darker horizontal lines separate dogs who are competing directly against each other.
	Compare and contrast Tika's results with other dogs. All the dogs on the sheet are at the same level of competition, just different heights.
	If only she had been one stride further to exit the tunnel, we'd have gotten those 3 points, too!
	This is the only thing that kept Tika from having a perfect weekend (10 Qs out of 10 runs)--that danged knocked bar for 5 faults. Dang dang dang.
	This was Boost's really lovely Standard run Saturday. We went downhill considerably on Sunday.
	Ribbon for Boost finishing her last Level 3 requirement, so now she's earned "CL3".
	Our ribbons for Saturday. They don't fit on Boost's crate, so Tika's crate is kindly holding all of them. On Sunday, Tika had 5 ribbons and more firsts, and Boost had fewer ribbons and fewer firsts. It's nice to have two dogs.
	When I'm eating lunch, I have the crates open to toss them orts (there's that crossword puzzle word again) from my plate. The rule is that you can't exit the crate. Tika isn't big on rules. But it took me about 20 shots to catch her, because every time I raised my camera, she ducked back inside.
	The neighboring Little Black Dogs, Sparkle and Scully, get watermelon cut up specially for them.
	Scully enjoys and Sparkle drools. My dogs get Zukes or maybe cut-up Rollover served from my slobbered fingers. As also previously recently discussed. Not watermelon tenderly and loving cut into LBD-sized pieces and served with a fork.
	Wear sunscreen. Wear sunscreen. Wear sunscreen.

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Busy CPE Day 1

SUMMARY: Each dog Qed 4 out of 5; filmed for TV!

A day of mixed success, although the goods outweighed the bads.

The weather was lovely; started out with frost on everything, but warmed up to a short-sleeves kind of sunny day. Should be more of the same tomorrow.

Tika, who has been keeping her bars up most of the time in CPE, has started knocking them again--only one today, in Jumpers, putting us even farther behind in Jumpers than everything else towards our (far-distant) C-ATE award. She had some very nice runs but one of the fastest dogs at the trial this weekend was the only other dog competing in our class and level. So, instead of a given 1st place in everything, we had to work at it:
*In Jumpers, Tika had the fastest time on an otherwise smooth run but knocked a bar, so no Q and no 1st.
*In Wildcard, she had a beautiful run that made it look easy and the fastest time of all dogs all heights in levels 4/5/C (about 55 dogs) by a couple of seconds, so she had a well-earned Q and first.
*In Colors, I neglected to call her for a turn after a straight tunnel, so she blasted straight out and away from where she needed to be, easily wasting 2 seconds or more, which is how much we ended up behind the first-place dog (Annie).
*In Full House, Annie had a lovely run but ran a slightly different course than we did. I thought we had her on points, but in reviewing the videotape, I discovered that in fact Tika wasn't quite out of the last 3-point tunnel when the whistle blew, so we were 3 points behind Annie. (But were were still among the top few out of all dogs all heights all levels.)
*In Standard, she had a very fast run except where she ran through (at least not jumping over) the dogwalk down contact and veered off towards the wrong obstacle before I could call her back, putting her I think about a second behind the first place dog (Annie). But again, our speed was among the fastest of all 55ish dogs all heights all levels on that course.


Boost did much better about bars jumping 20" this week instead of 24" two weeks ago. At least I have that option in CPE. She knocked only one bar...
* ... in Wildcard, which at Level 4 is still a Q, but not a first place, especially since she also ran past the first set of weaves and I had to bring her back around to restart them.
* Her Jumpers started with her running past the second jump on a lead-out pivot, so I reset her before it and walked back out to position to make her take the jump. So it was a Q but with a really slow time. But that also moves her up to Level 5 in Jumpers for tomorrow.
* Her Colors was nice, I believe a first place, and that last Q we needed to get completely out of Level 3! W00t! That's our level 3 title!
* Her Standard run was drop-dead gorgeous, beating even the super Steamer (who for example won Steeplechase last weekend) and she earned a 1st on that, although Annie (at a higher level) still beat her by a tenth of a second or so. But we're in the range! Woo hoo!
* Her 7-7-7 12-pole weaves snooker opening, covering 6 jumps as well (#7 a 2-part obstacle of jump plus weaves) was also drop-dead gorgeous--fast, driven, tight turns, bars up, driving out ahead of me. But then in the closing when I tried to do a rear cross--our bugaboo these days--she just kept refusing and refusing and refusing the #3 jump and I had to run past it to get her over it--at which point she saw a lovely juicy off-course tunnel and took it. Sigh.

Meanwhile, a graduate student in Broadcasting at San Francisco State came down for the day to film for a class project that will also probably air on the college station eventually. Our main club contact turned her loose on me, and she focused on my dogs and their runs for the day, although I tried to direct her towards people with small dogs, more rescue dogs, someone who earned her championship that day, dogs who also do therapy, dogs of less common breeds, dogs who do tricks (well-that's almost all of us, right?), and the trial chair and secretary and so on. She got tons of film and was there almost all day, got most of my dogs' runs, too.

I'm eager to see what she turns it into. Probably a 5-minute segment on their sports show.

I'm tired. Should go to bed.

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A Busy Weekend

SUMMARY: Good thing I had a weekend off from dog agility so I could relax and catch up around the house. Not.

But I had fun.

Saturday Morning: Hiking

Got up to the alarm at 7 a.m. (This is a free weekend, right? No alarm? Argh. Remember: I'm doing this because I WANT to.) Left the house at 8:00 with Friend #1 for an hour's drive up into the hills to Henry Coe State Park, where we hiked leisurely for about 3 hours and took photos. Home about 1:30.

	A trail sign partway along our route; more trails visible just beyond. "Flat Frog" trail? Not a pretty image...
	Cool fungus, with the "pitcher" on the left maybe 8 inches tall, at the base of a tree. No clue what it is yet.

Saturday Afternoon: Kooza

Brief hello to dogs, quick shower, change clothes, and dashed off to meet Friend #2 (from agility) and her spouse for Cirque de Soleil's Kooza at 4:00. An amazing show of humor, skill, daredeviltry, and contortion (my favorites: the juggler and the contortionists). Afterwards, dinner at Elephant Bar, which I'd never heard of, but had good meals at reasonable prices and an interesting ambiance.

	For a temporary structure, the Cirque tents are HUGE! And their stripes stand out in the urban landscape. Friend and her spouse turn back to see what's keeping me.
	Elephant Bar: There's a life-sized African elephant emerging from the wall above the diners, and various pachydermous artifacts everywhere.

Sunday Morning: Practice

Home by maybe 9:30, and it's right to bed because I have to get up Sunday morning at 7:00 to the alarm (this IS a weekend off, right?) to bake brownies for the SMART agility club practice/meeting/potluck. Friend #3 meets up with me at 9:00 a.m. with her two dogs, and the six of us drive an hour down to Hollister for a couple of hours of practice, a lovely potluck, and a reasonably short meeting, then more practice, then home.

	Workin' Paws is in the back yard of these people's home. They've got TWO competition-sized fields! (Wouldn't that be grand? Twenty feet from your back door?) Here's field 1 with Friend #3 in the background. Look at the wide-open spaces!
	Here's field 2 complete with Team Small Dog leaving the practice field. What a lovely mountainous view to wake up to every day!
	Here I am, posing. The slightly-less-posed shot was blurry. Technology! Pah!
	This guy came in 2nd in a poker tournament and decided to spend his winnings on something that would help him to remember his victory and make him very happy: Meet Tex[as Hold'em]. Now there's a man with his priorities straight!

Sunday evening:Party

Then an hour's drive home, play with all the dogs in yard a bit (Hey! I'm already getting pretty tired! How come they want to play again? Dang herding dog endurance!), quick shower and change and head over to my parent's house for a family birthday celebration.

	Parents went to town decorating for the birthday party. We even got personalized Welcome letters.
	Eight of us have birthdays within a 2-month period, so they baked two cakes and put our initials on them. (I'm "ELF".)
	Plus we got Mardi Gras beads. In my fave colors.
	AND I got a cool new baseball cap from my sister that combines Disney with dogs (why do people think I like dogs?). I love how Pluto looks as if he's got a really clever, sneaky trick up his sleeve. Reminds me of a truth about dog agility--youth and enthusiasm will always be beaten by age and treachery. Or something like that.

Sunday Late Evening: Photos and Blog

Then...sighhhhhh...two hours transferring photos to the computer, doing a quick search and edit for a few that I can use on my blog (deal with the rest later. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows.) then upload them for the blog and type in some notes...

Sorry, K.A., it'll be yet another day at least for the rest of Rachel's seminar!

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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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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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More Weekend Notes and A Course

SUMMARY: I'm discouraged about Nationals. And an interesting Standard Course on Saturday.

• Of the 52 dogs entered in Saturday's 22" Masters Standard class, there were 6 Aussies, one Aussie cross, one Australian Cattle Dog, and one over-the-top Tervuren. The rest were Border Collies. Somehow this depresses me, even though one of them is my own sweetie, The Booster herself.
• Of the 23 in 26", a "mere" half were Border Collies. More variety here: Three Aussies, a Rough Collie, a Whippet, a Terv, a Catahoula Leopard Dog, a German Shepherd, a Golden Retriever, and three mixed breeds.
• If Tika's Top Ten Standard points were on the USDAA standings page right now, she'd be tied for 21st (with 25 points). But the stats are a month behind at the moment, and I know for a fact that at least 3 of the people on that list have had at least 3 more weekends of placements (including this weekend's Sunday Standard). So we're still soooo not there.
• Why am I bothering with Grand Prix at Nationals? Tika almost never runs clean. When she does, the gap between her time and the winning times is getting slowly wider and wider. I don't think that she's slowing down much--her times are still fairly consistently in the 4.5 to 4.9 yards per second range. But her time--while excited--on this weekend's course was 5 and a half seconds slower than the fastest dog. That's nearly 20% slower. Twenty percent! I think that the younger, faster dogs keep coming in faster and faster. The only reason that we earned a 1st in Standard was because all the other 26" dogs knocked bars or crapped out. Sure, running clean on that course was a good thing. But she was still 6 seconds slower than the fastest dogs. Six! That's an eternity.
• On the other hand, we can do Team. Because, in team, bar-knocking matters so much less than off-coursing, and we're pretty good about staying on course. And because we can usually rack up points in gambles by picking good strategies and executing smoothly. Still, I think that last year's Finals appearance was a fluke--that, once again, we lucked out that the fast teams happened to hit courses where they crapped out, and we just kept plugging along and got lucky that none of us had a bad run. Seems SO unlikely that that will happen again this year.
• So why the heck am I going and spending all that time and money? This weekend has only discouraged me. That, plus the fact of having been unable to qualify Tika in Steeplechase, and of having only one dog to run for the first time out of my assorted 8 Nationals appearances. Instead of looking forward to a relaxed week, I'm feeling like I'm slipping, my dogs are slipping, my expectations are too high.
• Maybe I'm just tired. Exhausted. It was SO hard to drag out of bed and do Boot Camp this morning, but I did it.
• Are local people NUTS? While I (and I'm not the only one I've heard say so) am burning out on so much agility and time and money, local clubs, including mine, are working FOUR more USDAA trials into the yearly schedule! One argument was that there will be "only" three DAM team events in the Bay Area next year, so a fourth would be good. Jeez--I remember when there used to be one every other year in the Bay Area. One of the usual September trials hereabouts actually LOST money this time--it was the last qualifier of the year, and I suspect that people (like me) had either qualified already or just wanted a break between the Labor Day regionals and the other 3 USDAA trials running alternate weekends from now through Nationals. Can this area really support that many USDAA trials, on top of the CPE, AKC, and ASCA? And now a couple of clubs are doing DOCNA, too!

Saturday's Standard

So, what was Saturday's Master Standard that wiped out so many dogs? Here ya go.

• There were some problems with bars, offcourses, and refusals from 3 to 4 because of the sharp turn. Some people pulled and rear crossed 4 or ran behind the tunnel, others got ahead on the teeter and front crossed between 3 and 4. That worked nicely for both of my dogs; I think that was the better option if you could do it.
• Some offcourses shooting out of #4 and getting a paw onto the dogwalk before the handler could get to the end of #4 or call the dog off.
• A lot of dogs coming off the dogwalk headed for the tunnel instead of the tire. I don't think that anyone expected that, but probably because of the extreme angle of the tire, dogs coming of the dogwalk, with the handler running behind trying to catch up, really didn't see any obstacles except the tunnel. After watching a bunch of those, I ran on the left side of the dogwalk, figuring that then she'd be erring toward looking at me. Instead, when she didn't stick her contact or wait for me (argh, she *also* took a couple of steps towards the tunnel, but at least I was in a position to call her off instead of trying to handle it from behind.
• The 8-9-10 seqence vexed many people; quite a few popped weaves because the handler hung back to make a break for #9; knocked bars or runouts on #9; offcourses after 9 or around 9 onto the Aframe (yes!) or into the wrong side of #10.
• There were quite a few knocked bars in the 11-13 sequence, particularly 11, I believe (it wasn't a straight line from 10 to 12).
• Problems of many varieties in the 16-19 sequence. It was mu subjective opinion that people who could put a front cross between the chute and #17 and therefore push out to #18 had a better chance of avoiding knocking 17 or having a runout when the dog pulled inside #18.
• Seems to me that there were issues in the 18-19-20, as well, but I don't recall anything sticking out in particular. Some people got a front cross in before 19 (I did) and I thought it worked more smoothly than sending to #18 and running on the chute side of 19, because if you were behind your dog there, you risked a bar down when trying to push or pull from behind--unless the dog is really accustomed to working like that.

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Notes from the Weekend

SUMMARY: A rare Tika 1st place; Boost's first Masters Q; lovely weather; low Q rate overall.

• The weather was lovely for October. I've been to many miserable rainy October trials (and, in contrast, that horrific Oakland fire was on a hot October weekend). Cold at night, but warmed up during the day. Almost hot for an hour or two Sunday afternoon, but still cool in the shade.
• I could hardly wait to get Boost into masters to cut down on my ring conflicts. Instead, it was worse now than before. Running 2 rings simultaneously with Masters classes and my dogs in different heights, I missed so many walkthroughs (took them late) and had to run out of order so many times that people were beginning to talk. Or maybe that was just the voices in my head.
• Wear sunscreen! Wear sunscreen! Wear sunscreen!
• On Saturday, in 26" Standard, only 2 dogs of 22 ran clean and Tika was the faster of the two, for a first place; only her third Masters 1st (all of them this year) out of 245 lifetime Masters runs.
• Boost earned her first Masters Q on that same Standard course, her first time in Masters Standard.
• Out of 10 runs per dog this weekend, Tika got only 3 Qs and Boost only 1. This is two weekends in a row that Tika's been quite a bit below her 50% average. My only Q all day sunday was Tika's Jumpers run and only because the scribe didn't record (or judge didn't call) a knocked bar.
• Agility trials are hard places to watch what you eat. Muffins (high calories, if you've never checked) available in the morning. "Score table goodies" for workers all weekend--I tried to restrain myself but had one red vine, half a dozen peanut M&Ms, two Reese's peanut butter cups, and a couple handfuls of roasted nuts. Friends had a burrito feed Saturday night, which wasn't too bad because we could make our own, but there were also hot-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies, yummy Trader Joe's ginger snaps, and a chocolate cake that couldn't be beat.
• On a typical agility weekend, my pedometer tells me I cover a tremendous amount of ground. Just under 10 miles each day this weekend. Doubt that it made up for all those desserts!
• Bars, bars, bars. Tika missed a Q in Snooker by only one bar (#5 in the closing), a Q in Saturday's Jumpers by 2 bars, a Q in Steeplechase by 1 bar, a Q in Grand Prix by 2 bars (knocked 3(!) total), and that mysterious vanishing bar fault in Sunday's Jumpers. Boost missed a Q in Steeplechase by a bar (although we had other problems also, she'd still have Qed without the bar), she missed a Pairs leg by a bar (although also had other problems...ditto), a Grand Prix by 1 bar (knocking 2 total), and Sunday's Jumpers by 3(!) bars.
• Tika's contacts: Missed 5 points in Saturday's Gambler's opening by popping the A-frame, dropping her from 4th to 7th place out of 23 dogs. She got called on the A-frame in Sunday's Standard. She barely got toenails in it most of the weekend.
• Supersize me? On the way home this evening, I decided that I needed caffeine and something more substantial than an energy bar and fruit. Stopped at (speaking of watching one's eats) Carl's Jr. Wanted something more than a minuscule Coke, so ordered medium. Decided I was in the mood for fries, not teeny weeny, so ordered medium. I almost never do fast-food sodas or fries, so my eyes bulged when I saw what mediums have grown into. Today's medium soda, a few years back would've been a super-size. Medium fries had more potatoes than Idaho! (Of course I had to eat them all, anyway, because they were there. And tasty. And I was very hungry. I'm guessing 400 calories just for that.) (Nope, just checked their web site: 460! Argh.)
• Boost's weaves: They've been SO fixed...for just a fraction over 2 weeks only??! First run of the weekend, Gambler's, she did the first set of weaves perfectly, then popped out early on the second set. A warning I didn't heed (not that I could've done anything differently). They were lovely in Standard, Snooker, Steeplechase, Sunday's relay, Sunday's Grand Prix... and then in Sunday's Gamblers, she popped out early 5 times in a row despite various attempts on my part to get her to realize the error of her ways, including the 5th time when we walked off the course. That didn't seem to do it, either; in Standard, she popped out early again. Curses!
• On the other hand, her Saturday Jumpers run was almost perfect. I got a chance to walk it only twice (once to check the lay of the land and once more to start a handling strategy), so, near the end, I looked away from her to see where I needed to be, and she pulled around a jump for a runout. But no bars, no refusals! That felt pretty good.
• Sunday's Gamble was send over a jump to a tunnel, then go parallel to the gamble line over a teeter and a jump. Easy peasy and lots of dogs got it. For some reason I can't explain, Tika turned back to look at me right before going into the tunnel--for a refusal, negating the gamble-- and then did the whole thing beautifully, and had more opening points than the first-place dog. Crap. It was exactly the same scenario that kept us from a perfect weekend (and probably high in trial) at the CPE nationals last year. So I must be doing something, just not sure what.
• Boost's start line stay remained perfect all weekend. She left maybe 3 contacts before getting the "break" command, but at least she ran fast to 2on-2off and stopped each time. Unlike certain Tika animal's.
• Driving home into the west at twilight is a favorite time. Orange glow of the sunset fading over the dark silhouettes of rolling hills, the sky a velvety royal blue, the (usually annoying) lights and signs of civilization turned into magical illuminations against the hills' black background. Ahhhh--(sigh of contentment).

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No Trialee, No Workee

SUMMARY: Ellen's taking the summer off, apparently.

With no agility competitions looming, I'm finding that my motivation for working on specific training issues has taken a summer vacation. I could be working on fixing Tika's dogwalk up contact (which, remember, I vowed I'd work on during winter breaks--but noooo--), or Boost's serpentines, or Tika's bar knocking, or Boost's rear crosses, or nuthin'.

Well--I do keep practicing weave entries and exits because they're so easy to work on. And a little bit on keeping on driving into fast 2-on/2-off contacts. And just running 'em through tunnels, practicing an assortment of pushes, pulls, crosses, and so on, because it gives them exercise. And it's easy.

While world-class competitors are taking their time off to hone their skills, I'm picking up thousands of plums plummeting suicidally from my tree, watering my potted flowers, doing photography, giving agility training a rest.

Feels kind of nice, actually.

Although I wonder whether, when the next trial rolls around, I'll be kicking myself for simple things that I *coulda* *shoulda* been working on!

Meanwhile, here's some of what I did this last weekend:

Hunky men in skirts throwing heavy objects around a big grassy field. At the 27th annual Campbell Scottish Games. Waiiiiit-- big grassy field-- Competition-- Ring roped off-- Easy-ups set up around the outside for the competitors-- Judges on the field watching the current competitor-- Uh-oh, having agility flashbacks...
	Over the river and through the woods--starting out at the Sunol Regional Wilderness.
	My sister & her spouse set the pace through California's golden hills and scrub oak. And poison oak. And all that.
	Me (in teal) and sister contemplating our next move.
	The scenery from the Canyon View trail. Wayyy in the distance you can see the end of the parking lot whence we came. It was supposedly only a mile and a third to our outward destination, but it sure looks like more than that! And my pedometer said almost 5 miles when we got back.
	Some of the "canyon views" were awfully close to straight down off the trail. My sister said, "did I mention that I'm afraid of heights?" But we did fine. We met no one at all on the hiking trail that we took on the outward trip, all 2 (?) miles of it, maybe an hour and a half out with lots of stops on the steepish uphill parts.
	"Little Yosemite". A small rocky canyon with small waterfalls and pools. Dogs are allowed off-leash in the entire Regional Wilderness. I didn't take mine because I didn't want them chasing cattle and deer and running up to strange dogs in an overly enthused way all day, plus the following hours of combing out foxtails and ticks. But there were plenty of dogs on the main fire-road trail, like this one swimming in the creek.

(View the rest of my Sunol hike photos.)

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Calm Before the Storm Before the REAL Calm--

SUMMARY: My agility life for the next 4 months

This weekend	No agility!
Next weekend:	4-hour weave seminar with Boost (no competition)
Three weeks out:	4-day Haute TRACS USDAA
Four weeks:	4-day Power Paws agility camp
Five weeks:	My alternate club (SMART)'s USDAA trial
Six weeks:	My main club (Bay Team)'s USDAA trial
7/8/9 weeks:	No competitions (although there is a USDAA and two CPEs--I'd really like to recover from all those preceding agility weekends)
10 weeks:	Last USDAA of the spring season
The next 6(!) weekends in a row:	No agility! Not even any available if I wanted to! Aughhhh!

Boost's Weaves

And, BTW, I gave Boost 2 days break from doing weaves, and yesterday both morning and evening she didn't miss a single entrance or skip a single pole no matter what I did. Where was that skill set this last weekend?! We'll see whether it translates to class this afternoon.

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CPE Trial This Weekend

SUMMARY: Local CPE trial in Sunnyvale.

Both dogs are in 5 runs each both days at Twin Creeks in Sunnyvale. The nice thing is that it's only 20 minutes from home. The other side to that is that it's my club's trial (The Bay Team) and I'm the über score table czar. Revised all our score-table cheat sheets for the newest scoring rules, stuffed the score-table binders with the latest rulebooks, schedules for this trial, judges' SCT calculation worksheets, handicapped handler timing instructions, and so on.

Normally I'd be setting up on Friday afternoon, but the site has just raised its prices so much that we can't afford Friday afternoon any more and they're charging us $800 or something like that to allow us access after 8 p.m. after a soccer game finishes to start setting up. It's outrageous and we won't be able to afford this site except for our September super-regional any more. Our May USDAA has already moved elsewhere. Anyway, I'm also working away from home this week and have more things to print (printer was jamming last night), so with all that, I think I'll probably just have to plan on getting there at 6 a.m. and setting up then, bagging any assistance with site set-up this evening.

Any my knee has been bothering me this week. It should be interesting. But the weather should be lovely. Supposed to be sunny to partly cloudy, temps in the low 70s. There's usually at least a breeze (sometimes quite a wind, which can be bad) up that close to the Bay, which helps keep the temperature down, too. They're currently saying a possibility of showers Sunday night, but with any luck it really will wait until night.

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And We Were Having Such A Good Weekend, Too!

I carpooled with Arlene and her two Little Black Dog(tm)s to Madera. This time, we left Friday evening. It was a mix of good and bad. The whole (shortened) weekend, in fact, was the same way.

Friday evening

I originally thought I'd have to work late Friday to finish some things for work, so we were thinking that Arlene would get here at 7:30 and we'd then load up the car and be on the road by 8, which would mean a late arrival at the motel in Madera. However, it was apparent by midday that some moderate reorganization and research for part of my document was just not going to get done and it would have to wait for the next go-around, so we decided to meet at 6:30 instead.

Well--Arlene didn't expect the southbound traffic to be as thick as it was, and she arrived a bit later than expected (which was good because I was able to finish up work stuff without her sitting and waiting for me, but bad because it delayed our start a bit). We loaded everything into the car--yes, like a jigsaw puzzle or more accurately like those 3-dimensional puzzles shaped like eggs or cubes where every piece wedges into one place exactly.

Then she pulled out of the driveway to get out of my way...and my van wouldn't start. Best guess: battery is reaching the end of its useful life and I had the interior lights on most of the day. That was bad news because my jumper cables were now buried under dozens of heavy, exactly fitting jigsaw pieces. But Arlene cleverly had her own jumper cables (surprising to me how many people do NOT carry them), and we were able to successfully jump the battery. All of that plus handwashing and such probably delayed us another 10 minutes, maybe a bit more.

We had already agreed that we needed to stop at the local shopping center to (a) drop off my bills at Postal Annex and (b) pick up ice at Safeway. Well, the double bad news was that (i) we missed Postal Annex's closing by about 10 minutes, and (ii) because we didn't want to turn off the car while it continued to charge, one person had to attempt both errands.

We were finally on the road--about 8:00! So the good news was that we had tried to start earlier but if we had gone with the original plan, who knows how late we'd have actually been on the road! The other good news was that Arlene's sweetie of a spouse made us sandwiches to eat on the road, so we wouldn't have to make an extra stop for dinner. This turned out to be good news shortly--

Because the good news was that we got past the 152/156 nightmare backup because there *was* no backup at that time of the evening (a bonus for leaving later), but the bad news was that slightly after Casa da Fruta, traffic came to a near standstill. We turned on the radio and KCBS conveniently told us that there was a major injury accident in the clearing stages near Dinosaur Point (wayyyy at the top of the ridge, and we were still at the bottom), but apparently it had been closed completely for a while and now traffic was starting to get through. So, if we had gotten there earlier, we'd have simply been sitting, not moving, instead of creeping along at 5 mph. So the good news was that we hadn't eaten our sandwiches earlier, and this turned out to be an excellent and safe time to consume them. It took us almost half an hour to get to the accident site--I think it's about a 5-mile drive--and the rest of the trip passed without incident.

Saturday morning

Arlene took her dogs out for a quick potty and reported that the weather was cool (not cold) but quite nice, actually. So I stepped outside with 3 wild things on leashes, and it was raining! The nice thing was that there was a complete rainbow (I don't often see complete ones), and I managed to grab my cheap digital camera and get the whole thing in 2 photos. Not great photos, but it's there--by the time Arlene came out again a couple of minutes later, it had already faded to just a partial. I left my bill payments in stamped envelopes on the unoccupied Motel 6 (used to be Liberty Inn) desk, hoping they'd figure out to mail them, and we headed to the trial site.

Rainbow Saturday morning

At The Races

It stopped drizzling long enough for us to set up, and since it was quite a small trial for a USDAA event, we were able to set up near the middle of activity but in an out-of-the-way spot. The BAD news was that, as I was unpacking and setting up, I realized that I had completely forgotten that the zipper on Boost's crate had given up the entire ghost last weekend--totally damaged enough (after failing slowly for the last 4 months or so) that I simply could not zip the bottom closed at all. I had meant to get it replaced last week. But--out of sight, out of mind. The GOOD news was that, at this particular trial on this particular day, my van was parked three feet behind our canopy, with boost's and tika's crates easily available facing out the back. So I turned off all the interior lights and just used those crates for them. Next week's trial I won't be able to park anywhere near, so I'd better remember to get that crate cover replaced.

If I'm lucky, Doggone Good will have it in stock (they're just up the road a piece) and I can pick it up immediately.

Tika's first run of the day was Pairs Relay, and she was teamed with The Booster's mom (Tala). It was a gnarly course, particuarly the first part. I thought that we could handle both, but the first part had a dogwalk, so I suggested that Tala do that part. Turns out that Tala had an offcourse early on, so then it didn't matter that Tika knocked *two* bars on her part of the course, but we moved around the course itself very nicely.

Next class was Gamblers, with a send out over a jump to a set of weaves, then a slight push out over a jump and then in to a final jump. *I* thought it was going to be a piece of cake that I could mess up only by one of my usual stupid moves on "piece of cake" gambles and that everyone would be getting it. Well, turns out that (and of course I know this) (1) not everyone's dog has excellent weave pole entries, (2) not everyone's dog will send out, let alone to weave poles, (3) not everyone's dog will weave solidly through a set of 12 that's 15 feet away from the handler. And although in the opening we had one knocked bar (costing us a point) and a slight pause for disagreement and confusion when she didn't stick the Aframe contact (probably costing us a 3-point tunnel at the end that we didn't have time for), overall the opening was beautiful and we couldn't have been in a more perfect position for the gamble when the whistle blew and she did the whole gamble without a blink of doubt AND kept all 3 bars in the gamble up, and, wahoo, not only a Q, but we placed *3rd*--we hardly ever place in USDAA even when we Q.

Then came Standard. We don't have a lot of Masters Standard legs--only 3--because you must be completely clean and usually we have either a knocked bar, OR a missed up on the dogwalk, OR our other bugaboo, a refusal going to a table after a contact. Well, this course had a table after the dogwalk. I asked Arlene to videotape that portion in particular for us so I could see what the problem was. Tika kept all her bars up, but it looked like she blew over the up-contact on the dogwalk--although I couldn't see the judge's arm go up, I can't always see it when the judge is off to the side/behind like she was. So I really, really drove the entrance to the table from the dogwalk like I've never driven a table approach before--and she went right on and dropped to a down. Handling on the course overall was just lovely--she's running SO nicely!--and turns out that the judge didn't call the dogwalk up contact, so ANOTHER Q and ANOTHER 3rd place!

Steeplechase

The last event for the day was Steeplechase. We ran our standard run about noon and then we were done except for the Steeplechase. Now, the judge who was judging it had to finish the Novice ring first. Nowwwww, the judge who was judging the Novice ring for some reason didn't fly in on Friday night like she was supposed to (I never heard the story) but instead arrived in Fresno about 8:30 Saturday morning. So, instead of the novice ring starting at 8:00, it started about 10:00. Which meant that, instead of the Steeplechase starting at about 1:30, it didn't start until 3:30.

Which meant that the Steeplechase course was open for walk through for three and a half hours. Now, there were two potentially difficult places on the course (maybe more for others but overall I thought it would be a straightforward course for me and Tika). And there were two or three schools of thought on each of those two spots. The 3.5 hours were enough for many of us to rewalk and rewalk and rewalk and obsess endlessly and change our minds repeatedly. By the time the class began, I knew every inch of that course in and out and every possibility for handling every which was but Sunday.

Then I had the advantage of watching the entire 22" class and most of the 26" class run the course. The opening was one of the two problem areas. I had finally decided that we could get it no matter what we did and that I was obsessing needlessly--it was three jumps around a curve to the weave poles, and the choices were to push to the weaves or pull to the weaves. I had decided that the pull was what we were going to use, and it was interesting to see that by far most handlers used the push. Basically--it worked if you and your dog knew how to do it, and it didn't if you didn't. Seems obvious in retrospect, but this was just one of those places. I decided that Tika and I knew how to do it either way and she has great weave entrances, so I stopped worrying about it.

But I watched team after team blow the entrance or pop out of the weaves early. No faults, but lots of time wasted as they had to retreat to redo the poles. Now, remember, Steeplechase is time plus faults scoring. AND it's worth money! I became convinced that we'd beat most teams simply by having excellent weave poles. Our issue would be whether she could keep all her poles up, especially on that fast 3-pole lead-out curve.

The 2nd problem area was after the 2nd set of weave poles, when you had to pull the dog into a right-angle left turn, then go *between* the Aframe and a jump to get to a double (triple?) jump, which was the start of the final 5 jumps. Everyone was worried about the dog not making a sharp enough turn and losing the dog over the wrong jump. I had decided to weave away from my dog, veering close to the aframe while she completed the weaves,and just giving a quick mini-RFP to pull her my way.

So I watched handler after handler overpull their dogs *around* the double, which was another big time waster, and/or knock the bars on that jump. Maybe because the handlers were so worried about it. I decided that I knew what I was doing and stopped worrying about that, too. I was primed to go in and win the Steeplechase. (Well, you know what happens when you get cocky--or do you?)

I went to get Tika out of her crate--and she stood up all hunched over, her little nubber tail down, looking hang-dog. She came out of the crate looking miserable and yet eager. I tried to get her to move around a little to stretch out, and she yelped a couple of times. But then she looked mostly OK. She wasn't limping. She took goodies eagerly,but did Left and Right turns *extremely* slowly. I walked her out to potty and jogged her a bit, and she looked OK, but she absolutely would not under any circumstances grab a toy and play tug of war. I put her over a practice jump and she took it ok, but not really fast, and her nubber tail was down again. Yikes. I trotted her around again, and she looked OK, tail came up.

They were calling our names. So I took her to the line, set her in a sit, led out. She stayed like a good girl. I released her, and she went across all three jumps--not blazing, but smoothly--and they all stayed up. And she made her weave pole entrance perfectly--and stopped almost dead, took one slow step to the next pole, one very slow step to the next pole, giving me the most hangdog look, and I knew that I had a dog with a major problem. I pulled her out of the poles immediately and took her off course.

So much for the money

We checked her out on the sideline as much as possible, some massaging (which she seemed to enjoy) and trying to move her legs and so on. She's not one to let that be done (my fault--I should work at it more), but because she was getting lavish "good dog"s, she pretty much put up with it. Did yelp once and we couldn't figure out what caused it. Decided it wasn't obvious.

So after about 10 minutes I put her away again so I could watch the last of the steeplechase. Then I got her out, and she looked OK at first, but when I grabbed the goodies and she started to look eager, she yelped again.

The good news was that there was a vet onsite competing, and she hadn't left the grounds, and she was willing to check Tika out for me since I couldn't figure out the problem. Managed to narrow it down to her lower back more on the right side, but whether muscle or something worse like disk couldn't be determined mostly because Tika was so stressed and stiff about having someone play with her backside (and occasionally cause pain).

She suggested aspirin and no agility on Sunday and, if it didn't get better by Monday, take her in for x-rays.

Jake not competing

So was this good news or bad news: This was the first trial in which I hadn't entered Jake in anything. So my worst fears were fulfilled--down from 2 dogs competing to none. I had carpooled with Arlene, so I couldn't really go home, and I DO enjoy hanging out with my friends, and I could just work full time all day Sunday (like Karey did Saturday with her dog scratched due to injury). But Arlene kept asking are you sure you want to stay? And then she came up with a plan whereby she could stay and I could go home alone if I wanted.

I will leave out the long story in how we implemented it, but in fact I packed my bags and was home last night by 9:30.

(When I let the dogs out for one last run about 6:30, Tika blasted across the field full-steam with no sign of injury. Same thing when we got home in the evening--out onto the porch, bound down the stairs, across the yard just like normal. And this morning she was wiggling and twisting and turning like nothing had ever happened. So I'm SO hoping that was a fluke, maybe she pulled something a little bit overreaching for a bad frisbee throw earlier, I dunno. But I was SO scared and worried yesterday afternoon...)

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