Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Are you gonna go my way?



I took Cody & Lola up to Powerpups in Windsor for a Fun Match on Sunday. Mostly I wanted to see how my foot would do running full courses and walking back & forth to the car to switch out dogs. The good news is my foot did great. Just look at me go in the video, I can run! I can run! I also wanted to see how the dogs' tables were doing and both did great, quick fast tables. Well, Cody got off the table early on his second run but it was likely because he'd thought I'd released him, not out of stress. Unfortunately that was about all that went well. Think of every possible mistake you can have in agility and we had it, all of them except one. Can you guess which one we escaped? No knocked bars. But we almost never have knocked bars. That will be Strummer's specialty. Missed contacts (up and down), teeter flyoffs (if I'd realized Cody had flown off so badly there's no way I would have continued on the course), off courses, run bys, refusals, startline stress, missed weave entries, popping out of the poles early (Cody Cody Cody), and general shenanigans (on her second run Lola decided that since the table earned such great treats, why follow me around the course, why not run straight to the table and the fabulous treats?). Cody was running around batshit crazy, I don't even know why, but he looked so happy and when your nearly 10 year old dog looks that happy running around like a crazy man it's hard to get upset about it. But still, where were the good dogs that ran so nicely for Sandy 2 weeks ago? I suppose the answer is that maybe my atrocious handling had something or 'nuther to do with it. It was a relatively easy course and I think Lola's first run was nice and possibly clean (of course I don't have that one on video) but somehow for the other runs I felt off and a bit out of control out there. Poor dogs, I'm so out of practice. But how pathetic is that? 2 months off and it's like I've completely forgotten what I'm doing.

I was pretty grumpy on the 50 minute drive home, took the scenic route to try to cheer me up. This practice was supposed to be a confidence booster for the trials coming up the next 2 weekends. Oh well, hopefully my brain will re-engage before the weekend. Not much I can do about it now. But the good news is I can run and that's the main thing. Crappy agility on a good foot is better than no agility and a crappy foot. Or something. My foot is still not healed. It's going to take another 4 months or so until it's completely healed but supposedly it's 80% of the way there according to the doc. I'm skeptical about that but for now I'm happy enough with where it's at. I'll have to be careful not to overdo it walking around. I'm going to take my bike so I can cut down on my walking and the P.T. said that sounded like a great idea so we'll see how that works. Obviously I'll still have to walk to warm-up/cool down the dogs and get them to & from the ring but hopefully I'll be able to manage that. I'm not getting my hopes too high for this weekend and honestly I'm thrilled just to be able to go and compete in whatever capacity I'm capable of at the moment. Sure beats sitting at home and moping on the couch.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:37 AM

    I've never been to that facility, but it always looks so pretty on video.

    I'm glad to see you running so well. Excellent work on the rehab.

    And, yes, that was quite a fly off. Wheee!

    P.S. I turned the sound on, and when Lilly heard you giving cues, she got all kissy.

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  2. Alan's facility is beautiful, nice grass, good quality equipment and he's a great teacher. We did a seminar with him last summer and it was a lot of fun, learned quite a bit. Might actually be a good place to consider for Lilly for a private lesson if you ever get to a point where you want to try her out at a different place.

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  3. Wow, three posts in 2 days! Wow, you ARE running! Look at you! As for dog insanity on course, running with you after a long absence is probably an exciting thing for the dogs; don't discount their excitement and probably nervousness on being back together on course after an enforced absence like yours.

    -ellen

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  4. You can run! You can run!

    I'm *so* happy for you that YOU CAN RUN!

    The rest is gravy or like you say.... something!

    YOU CAN RUN!

    Weeee!

    Congrats,

    Wishy

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  5. Cody, almost 10? Nah, I don't believe it, not after seeing that video.

    Ellen makes a good point about a possible reason for the runs being not as smooth as you would have liked. Hopefully now it's out of everyone's system and it will be all systems go this weekend.

    Good luck and congrats on being able to get back on the agility field.

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  6. I don't think Cody ever gets the shenanigans out of his system but I can live in hope. Cody will be 10 in July and I'm sure he's starting to go senile. Or maybe it's me that's going senile, hard to say sometimes.

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