Cody Baloney, July 1998-Sept. 2013

Had to let Cody go yesterday.  I was hoping he'd leave on his own terms when he was ready much as he lived his life but he stopped eating on Saturday and was barely drinking.  He started having breathing problems, probably a result of being dehydrated but who knows.  His life had turned into sleeping and pacing, sometimes anxious obsessive pacing, and nothing else and he'd gotten so weak.  Sunday night was terrible for him and I couldn't put him through another night of it so I had a vet come by on Monday.  It took me several hours to compose myself enough to even make the phone call.

He had a great life though and lived a couple months past his 15th birthday.  He was an awesome dog, crazy, one of a kind.  He traveled all over the place with use, to dog agility trials and vacations hiking in the mountains.

Flagstaff, Arizona

Sedona, Arizona

Grand Canyon

Sourdough Trail, Indian Peaks Wilderness, Colorado

He loved agility.  His first classes were at the local humane society.  He loved them so much that after a few weeks he refused to leave at the end of class.  The instructor had to carry him to the car for me after one class and I had to borrow a handful of pot roast from a classmate after another class to lure him out.  He was nervous trialing though and had a lot of ring stress issues.  I never knew what he was going to do, sometimes he was fast and brilliant and focused, other times not so much.  Probably his biggest accomplishment was taking 4th place at USDAA Nationals in the Grand Prix Quarter Finals earning his way to Semi-Finals.  It was a blazingly hot day and he never did well in the heat and he had to run in the main arena with a crowd and the weird big wooden jumps and equipment he'd never seen before.  But he held it together and had a nice clean run on a technical, tricky course.

He loved the snow.  He would have sudden crazy hyper fits in the snow at random times while we were walking or hiking.

I could go on for pages, he had such a long and rich life and he taught me so much about dogs and training and myself.  But this is all I can manage for now.

Bye Good Buddy.  I'll miss you always.

Wordless Wednesday

Bull Genitalia Wednesday w/ Bonus Watering Can

Look - it's Wednesday and you can see my grass!  Spring is here.  Though not with enough vengeance that I was tempted to swim in the Rez yesterday at the inaugural workout for the summer.  60.3 degree water temp. in combo with a 45 degree air temp. did not sound like a happy way to wake up.  I'm iffy about tomorrow as well and with a big warm-up over the next few days it may be best to wait until next week.  I have Xterra Lory in a week and a half though and I really want to get in the open water before race day so we'll see if I gut it out.  Race day could be similar conditions so I should probably HTFU and get some practice in.

I'm convinced that it's impossible to have a sick dog get into a vet in Boulder.  Cody started having weird head twitching incidents - focal tremors or partial seizures, depending which vet you talk to.  I called last Friday and my regular vet refused to see him until the end of the month.  Someone I know through agility who's also a vet agreed to see him at her home on Sunday night but she wasn't set up to do a blood draw.  Nonetheless I was very grateful.  She did some acupuncture on him and prescribed a drug for neuropathic pain that is pretty benign in terms of side effects, harshness, etc.  She said he had a lot of pain and had very little muscle mass.  I felt bad but we've not been able to do much to build muscle.  He only makes it about 3-4 blocks on leash walks then it's a huge struggle to get him home.  He paces a lot though, in the house and out in the yard, sometimes for an hour or 2 at a time so I thought he was getting a reasonable amount of exercise but apparently not.  Or perhaps he has some kind of wasting disease.  None of the vets suggested that, I'm just guessing.

Anyway, he had another bout of tremors Monday morning so I got him in to Allpets for a blood draw to at least rule out that the tremors are a symptom of some underlying treatable disease.  They got me in for an appointment no problem and were quite happy to take my $288 but now it's almost Wednesday evening and no one has called me back.  They said they'd call yesterday and when I checked with them today they said the vet had a big back-up of patients.  Sigh.  Thankfully he's had no more tremors that I've noticed and he seems fine.  The All Pets vet was leaning towards brain tumor but of course she can't tell without an MRI.  And I'm not spending zillions on an MRI because there's no way I'm putting a nearly 15 year old dog through brain surgery.  His birthday is in July but maybe we should cheat a little and celebrate early.

Mr. Awesome

Picked Over

After 3 weekends of agility in a row and a heavy training schedule this is about how I feel.

I know, ewwww.  Buzzards gross me out.  Yet I couldn't help stopping when I saw them at the side of the road.  At first I thought they were some ugly ass breed of chicken.  Then I realized they were awfully big and had entrails on their heads.

I was hoping for zillions of pictures of cute babies - buffaloes, goats, horses, I don't know, anything but gross vultures.

Still.  Kind of cool even if they do barf me out.

USDAA trial this past weekend was very very fun, perfect weather for an outdoor trial.  Only 1 Q in Advanced Snooker which I do need to move up but still very fun, very challenging courses.  It was our debut in Masters Standard and it felt so good to be able to sink our teeth into them.  I missed Sunday's Standard walk-through but still managed to figure it out by watching some other handlers and except for Strummer popping out of his weaves it was a beautiful run.  The course was so difficult that he still ended up in 3rd place even with the 5 faults and lost time for re-doing the weaves.  So I guess it means a maximum of 2 dogs Q'ed in the 22" Championship class.  This was the theme for the weekend, very low Q rates in almost everything.  I'll write a bigger report when I'm not feeling so dragged out. 

Dragged my butt to masters today for the 1st outdoor workout of the season.  It was fabulous to be outside but I was dragging ass.  No one else in my lane and it was 'real' masters with Jane rather than the skills/technique session I go to all winter.  Jane's workouts are notorious and I haven't been to one since last summer so it was a bit of a shock to my already worn out system.  Seems wrong to take a rest day after taking it easy before the trial last week then not training during the weekend but it was an outdoor trial with lots of walking and I had lots of runs and my quads are toast so I think I need to take tomorrow off if I'm to have any hope of a semblance of a training week ahead of me.

Okay, OKAY, I voted already

Sheesh.  You would think voting in a swing state would make you feel good, like for once your vote actually counted for something.  But the barrage of attack ads we've been drowning in since last spring has me numb.  I didn't do early voting this time around for no good reason other than I did the math and figured it would be easiest to wait until election day and simply go to the polling place that's a short walk from my house.  In theory this was a good plan.  I had a nice walk on a beautiful, sunny fall morning and there was no line at all when I got there.  Much easier than driving somewhere.  The problem is that the Democrats have been hounding my house for days to make sure I vote, yesterday they even came twice, and the dogs go off their heads every time they knock on the door.  They even came to my house today after I'd already voted.  Now I get it, and really I should be thankful that they're out there pounding the pavement, fighting the good fight, making sure, among other things, that we don't roll the country back to the 50's and I can continue to get birth control pills through my husband's employee health insurance.  Because endometriosis is a bitch people, and birth control pills aren't cheap.  But I'm oh so weary.  And so is Lola.

I beg of you, please to let it be over.

As for the dogs, Strummer is an anarchist and doesn't vote because, 'it only encourages them'.

Lola votes but always writes in her own name.

And good luck getting Cody to move.

I'm tempted to plaster signs all over the house that say, 'YES, I voted, please for the love of my sanity and my eardrums do not set my dogs off.'  Or I could take advantage of all the door knocking and actually do some training but probably I'll just stuff earplugs in and hunker down for one more day. 

I'd almost be relieved with less than a day to go but now I have to make it through the hell of Christmas which not so mercifully has started already.  Is it January yet?

Who Doesn't Love a Good Vet Drama?

You know you've reached the point of no return in your weirdo life when you find yourself in the reception area at the vet talking to a complete stranger about her cat's anal glands.  Poor cat, he was not in for a fun day at the vet.

For me it all started as most of these things do at 1:30 in the morning.  I don't know why these dogs can't keep business hours.  Anyway, I woke up Tuesday night to the sound of Cody reverse sneezing and gasping for breath.  The reverse sneezing is something he does on occasion so I wasn't too concerned about that but the gasping for breath?  Kind of scary.  I noticed a strong smell of smoke so I went outside to see if a new fire had started nearby.  Ash was falling but no sign of a new fire.  Weird because the winds were calm, temps. cool and it was even a bit humid.  If anything the High Park Fire should have been calmer than normal and so far we hadn't experienced smoke that bad in Boulder, at least not in my neighborhood.  I turned on the swamp cooler and stuck it near his bed and once I finally got him to settle in front of it he was fine.  Until the vomiting started a couple hours later.  I figured he was just sick from the smoke and didn't think much of it but in the morning his back legs were so weak, he could barely support himself.  He's got weakness and arthritis in his rear legs/back but this was a huge downturn.  I called the vet to see if she could take a look at him and maybe prescribe some Rimadyl or something.  I'm not a big fan of drugs but he looked so bad and I didn't like the idea of him being in that kind of pain.  Couldn't get in until Friday night and even then I'd have to see a different vet than his regular one.

I'll spare you the rest of the details but the next day and night there was vomit.  Too much.  So I called the vet first thing this morning and pleaded my case and thankfully she squeezed me in.  Who could refuse sweet old Cody?

I'd already been to the Rez for crack of dawn masters and swum 2000 meters and walked Lola all without having very much food but I didn't have time to make breakfast before scrambling off to the vet.   I was feeling a bit light headed, stomach achy already and I had barely sat down in the vet's exam room when Cody starts to squat.  Normally he's such a good dog, I don't think he's ever had an accident in the house in the 13 years we've had him.  He's mortified at the very thought of it.  So I knew he must really be sick.  The vet tech seemed quite pleased.  'Can't get a sample much fresher than this,' and she cheerily scooped up a bit in a plastic container then mopped up the mess.  I'm remembering my incident of passing out in the Chipotle and hoping I don't have a repeat performance.  The smell, people.  We opened all the doors in the exam room and I somehow managed to stay conscious.

Well Cody is just too smart for his own good because it turned out he did have a bacterial infection and the sample he provided was perfectly timed to diagnose his case.  He got some fluids, an antibiotic shot, an anti-nausea shot and some take-home drugs as well as a detailed recipe for a bland diet that he's supposed to have.  I stopped on the way home for his white rice, cottage cheese and chicken because while normal people probably have these staples, I do not.

When I got home I set about cooking food for both of us because it was nearly noon and remember I've expended way more calories than have gone in and who knows when I may finally pass out?  Cody is clever but like me he can't work a cell phone very well.  I don't do so well in the kitchen and trying to cook 4 things at once is usually how I end up starting fires but miraculously I got all the food prepared without setting off the fire alarms.  However the rice was a horrible mess of mush.  I felt bad about making Cody eat it until I realized that the reason he got into this mess in the first place was from eating some disgusting, inedible thing.  He had a bit of a hard time eating the sticky mess so I had to fluff it with a fork for him while he ate it.  Seriously.  Even I can see how this is maybe a little much.

But he looked so much better after he got some food and water into him.  His back legs were back to normal and so far we've been vomit free for 2 hours.  Phew.  Cody turns 14 next month and I was going to be pissed if he wasn't going to make it.

Boot Camp, ASCA, Photo Shoots, it's all a blur

I've been busier than a mosquito at a nudist colony lately and I lost the plot with my training last week.  I went to enter Monday's workout into my training log and realized I hadn't logged a single workout last week.  Though I suppose this could be because I don't think there were any workouts after Wednesday's Hills & Drills Boot Camp due to not being able to move.  I'm pretty sure it was the 'step ups and downs' on the bench that did it.  Too many reps, too high of a step, I don't know.  This was after running up and down the bleacher stairs the full length of the high school football stadium.  For warm up.  Then we did a timed mile on the track.  My time of 8:58 was sort of depressing but maybe sort of not as bad as I thought it would be considering my mile pace on the trails has been in the double digits.  I never was very fast, even when I was on the track team.  I think my fastest mile ever was around 6:18 or something.  Oh yeah, and then we did some sprints up and down the football field with 'burpees' at each end zone.  After 3 or 4 sprints I was calling them 'pukees'.

Anyway, I could barely walk the dogs on Thursday and Friday and the agility trial on Saturday was looking iffy.  I was still a little sore when I woke up Saturday morning but thankfully I could walk and run for the most part so it turned out o.k.  While everybody and their Border Collie was at USDAA Regionals in New Mexico and everybody else who wasn't there was at an AKC trial, we were at an ASCA trial which I've never done before but the courses were identical to the sort of wide open courses you see in DOCNA.  In fact the Jumpers course was yet another monotonous run of pinwheel to pinwheel to pinwheel.

One of the nice things about ASCA is that they let you run without having to register with them.  They don't track your runs or give you titles but I could care less about titles so I was happy to save the $30 in registration fees.  They also let you run whatever level you want so I was able to run in the highest level and not have to suffer through novice.   We were only registered for Saturday but I had such a good time I decided to come back on Sunday since they were taking day of entries.

Another funny thing about ASCA is that if you have a Border Collie, you are the marker dog.  There were only 2 BC's at the trial both days and I was the only BC in Elite on Saturday.

We started off Saturday with Jumpers and I decided I'd throw in some rear crosses in places where I normally wouldn't just to practice and see what would happen.  It wasn't pretty and the run sort of went up in flames.  The next run was Standard and handling-wise it went much better but Strum missed his dogwalk contact and I think his A-frame as well.  I didn't realize ASCA uses a 5' tall A-frame, probably a holdover from the NADAC days, and I think this might have effected his striding.  The next Standard run was beautiful though, hit all his contacts, my timing felt good, one of those wonderful, smooth, connected, wheee! runs that gets the adrenaline flowing and puts a smile on your face.  That was the end of our day and part of me wanted to not come back on Sunday and end on a good note but it was just too much fun to not come back for more.  And we had 1st place and the fastest time of the entire Elite class.

On Sunday we did Gamblers and 2 more rounds of Standard.  Gamblers went o.k., it was mostly for practice.  The first round of Standard went really well again except I turned and left him too quickly at a jump and he knocked the bar but he got all his contacts and weaves and it was another fast, smooth run.  I experimented with some more rear crosses on the second Standard run and I ended up with some wider turns than I would have liked but no off courses.  Was another good run except for the wretched dogwalk contact again.  Sigh.

Final score was 2/5 good dogwalks, 100% weave poles on entries and staying in (SO happy for that), 4/5 A-frames, 4/5 teeters, only 1 knocked bar, no off courses and lots of running and fun.

I had more boot camp this week - weights on Monday, more track intervals yesterday and masters swimming after both boot camp workouts.  Exhausting.  But I feel good today, tired but good, no lingering, debilitating soreness so I guess my body is adjusting.  Felt almost fast-ish for the first time in a while at the trial too.  At the very least this training is great for agility.  I think it's going to help me with my triathlons as well.

I finally had a photographer take some photos for my website.  She was great by the way and charged a fraction of the cost that the foo foo photographers in Boulder were asking.  The website photos didn't take that long so she offered to take some photos of the dogs.  She didn't process them or anything, just sent me the raw images so don't judge her work by them but it was fun to have some extra photos of them, even if they refused to cooperate and face the camera.  It was pretty chaotic.

Somebody was awfully excited.

Somebody else couldn't keep her mouth shut.

And somebody else was fascinated by the fancy camera lens.

Actually he's fascinated by all cameras, that's why there are so few pictures of him on the blog.  Once he spots the camera and wanders over to it it's impossible to get him to step away.

That's it for now, I suppose I'd better stop stalling and go argue with my website about letting me post my nice new photos and my radio interview podcast.  If only my website were as easy as Blogger.

Monkey Dogs

I had a little bit of excitement in the kitchen this afternoon and while I was distracted with the flames, Strummer took the opportunity to steal half a banana off the counter.  He looked pretty hilarious eating the thing and jealousy guarding it from Lola but of course by the time I got the camera out he was done with it.

Enter the second opportunist, who decided banana skins are edible.

I've left bananas on the counter for years, guess I'll have to start hiding those as well.  Or stop setting fires in the kitchen.  I'd been doing so well too.  I need one of those signs, 'X' days accident free.

Mother Nature was pissed off the last few days.  90 mile an hour winds caused 4 broken power poles in my neighborhood, several semi's turned over on the roads, 2 wildfires and, I kid you not, a Chihuahua with a broken leg caused from flying 10 feet through the air and smacking into a tree.  Poor thing was on the news sporting her shiny new purple cast.  I lost power for about 2 hours then soon after I got power back the internet/cable went kaput for about 17 hours which I don't understand because aren't those cables buried?  Then when the winds finally died down during the night it started snowing of all things and I woke up to an inch or so in my yard.  But the sun is finally back today and it looks to be a nice weekend.  Hopefully Mother Nature got it all out of her system for a while and I can get out on my bike.

Wordless Wednesday

Oh I've Got Some Words for your Wednesday

 Namely, 'One to two inches my ass!'.  That's what we were supposed to get.  And it wasn't supposed to happen until this evening so I was planning on squeezing in a practice this morning before our trial this weekend.  But by the time the practice field opened at 8:30 it was coming down good.  Heck by 6:00 a.m. I had a good idea practice wasn't going to happen.

Lola is a big fan of sticks.  Even stationary sticks.

 

Sadly Hermes lost his head last year in a wind storm so I know longer have a good snow gauge.  You'll just have to trust me that this stuff is never going to melt off the practice field by Friday.

 

I think the weather folks should have to come shovel my driveway.

Last Post of 2011

A rare photo of all 3 hooligans.  Lola hoarding all the toys of course and Strummer looking sad about it.

SO glad the holidays are over.  I'll spare you my ranting but in general, not my favorite time of year and because the retailers and my grandmother started in on the season extra early (she started hassling me the first week of October) I had my first holiday induced breakdown before Thanksgiving and usually I can make it until the first week of December.  We had friends over to our house for X-mas and that was fun but otherwise kind of a rough holiday season.  And aside from my grandmother I don't even exchange gifts anymore.  But it's finally, finally, mercifully over and my brain can relax and heave a sigh of relief. 

I suppose I should go over the year's stats for agility and triathlon and post a wrap up for the year as well as list of goals for the future but, meh, I don't feel like it and I've already posted next year's goals back at the beginning of October.  In short as a recap, USDAA Nationals and Xterra Nationals.  Short and sweet.  And if one or both of those fall through, DOCNA Champs.  We've already qualified for that though so it's not so much of a goal as a safety school. 

I'm also teaching myself to speed read.  I've always thought I was a painfully slow reader but it turns out I'm average.  So far after a few days I'm about 50% faster but still not reading super fast.  Supposedly should take a month or so of practice to shift my brain to read without sub-vocalizing.  In the meantime I've got a ridiculous amount of books checked out from the library.  At least I had the sense to read the speed reading ones first.

The agility field is finally free of snow.  Too windy to go today, strap your chihauhaus down windy, so no agility today but starting tomorrow I've got a bunch of exercises lined up to work on our weaknesses and some that simply look fun.  My training partner is out with a broken elbow so I'll be flying solo for a while but Joy is back teaching lessons and I've got a seminar with Mary Ellen Barry and Jennifer Crank in February  so I'm not completely on my own.

The first USDAA trial of the year is in 2 weeks and the entry was so big that they changed it from 1 ring to 2.  I didn't think USDAA Nationals would be that much of a draw for the AKC-only crowd but boy was I wrong about that.  At first I was twitchy at the thought of such a busy, cramped trial.  I'm not a fan of crowds and the arena area is tight for 2 rings .  But on the other hand it will be great practice for Strummer and me for the chaotic atmosphere of USDAA Nationals and there will be snow fencing between the rings so he should be fine.  Plus they'll have crating in another building so he won't have to listen dogs doing agility all day and hopefully will be able to relax a bit more than if he was crated in the arena.

Our first USDAA trial with a Team event is in March and I've got a good team lined up for that so I'm looking forward to it.  Everybody on the team wants to go to Nationals and if we qualify we'll stay together as a team.  Of course September is a long way off but it's nice to have a plan lined up so soon.  The best part though is that we're all on the same page of it's supposed to be fun and nobody is going to get bent out of shape if we don't qualify.

Triathlon training is chugging along as well.  Swimming and running are going well but I've been slacking on the bike due to all the snow.  I finally went out on the road bike after swim practice yesterday and I won't sugar coat it, it wasn't pretty.  An average speed of 12 mph or something for only a 14 mile ride.  All I can hope for is that my cyclometer was on the fritz.  Or maybe I was overly tired from swim practice and a hike with the dogs in the morning.  The trails should be dry by next week and predicted warm temps. of 50's-60's and sunny so I'll get back to the bike.

I'm also working on a little movie with the dogs that requires training some simple little tricks.  At least I thought they were simple.  Turns out I had my casting all wrong as they each learned each other's tricks more easily than their own.  It's coming along slowly though since it's a for fun thing with little point to it and on the back burner to everything else.  Plus I need to buy some props to progress any further.

Hope everyone has a Happy New Year!

Wordless Tuesday

Wordless Wednesday

Ride Em In, Rawhide!

Slowtime Monday

The outside world was a skating rink today, a layer of ice then an inch or so of snow, just enough to be annoying and make a mess of things.  Add to that the 10 degree F temps and 1 degree wind chill and I decided it was a good day for reading and Scooby slippers and the Cocteau Twins on the stereo.

Cody is my couch buddy

Strummer not so much

 

Lola also not so fond of snow days

Neither of them are particularly good at relaxing

What is this 'off switch' you speak of?

Cody putting in a plea for an end to their shenanigans.  And some hot chocolate.

I did manage to get Strummer out for a 2 mile walk around the lake after bundling him up in coat and booties.  Neither of us had a problem with the cold and we had the trail to ourselves but I didn't want to go any further because I was worried about one or both of us slipping.  We have a 4 day seminar at the end of the week that I've been looking forward to for forever and all I need is for one of us to pull something.  At least we dodged the bullet of the apocalyptic snow storm that the rest of the country is supposed to get.  A couple more days of arctic cold and maybe another inch of snow then we should be fine but I don't think my friends and family in Chicago will be so lucky.  Warm thoughts and Scooby slippers to the rest of you.  I suspect you'll soon be joining me on the couch.

Up and running-sort of

I've got a power saw and I'm not afraid to use it.

O.k., actually I'm terrified to use it but I tried sawing a 2x4 by hand and decided I'd take my chances with the modern technology.  I'm happy to report that I still have all my phalanges.   It still took for freaking ever to saw all the wood though.  And the painting...  I can't believe I wasted two gorgeous days of mid-60's on painting giant toys for dogs.  I thought that painting and sawhorse assembling and hinge attaching would take a day and a bit but it took 3 days.  Plus the day for sawing.  This was a big job for someone who is not handy and doesn't have the slightest idea what she's doing.

Then there's the not so small problem of this only barely fits in my yard.  Now I knew that, really I did.  But one day I decided that the only way Strum was going to learn this dogwalk was if I could go out a few times a day for some short sessions rather than going out to the training field once or twice a week if I'm lucky.  So I busted out the tape measure and with some creative math and a heavy dose of denial I convinced myself this could somehow work.

Between those 2 photos I think you can see how deluded I was.  Part of the problem is that all of this was hinging on the hinges being easy to detach so that I could take the dogwalk apart on my own and put it away from time to time.  Because if I run the dogwalk into the other part of the yard and across the concrete sidewalk it works a bit better.  But unfortunately those 'detachable' hinges are a bitch.  I could barely muscle the pin out before I even attached them to the planks.  Definitely a 2 person job with a wood dogwalk and one of those persons better be strong.  Stronger than me anyway.  And I've been hitting the pool up these days so I do have some sort of kind of visible arm muscles.  I'm not going to be kicking Madonna's ass anytime soon but I've probably got a little more upper body strength than your average middle age dog lady.  Anyway, since this dogwalk is now assembled for the duration I didn't want it in the main yard blocking our access from the house to the garage since this is our main path to the world beyond.  I suppose we'll get good at running into walls.  Hopefully not literally.

This was an exhausting job.  When I finally finished this afternoon I curled up into the fetal position on the couch and watched a documentary on the Minutemen from Netflix.    Because OMG people, the effing MINUTEMEN.  If you never got to see the Minutemen live I weep for you.  Actually what I weep for is D. Boon dying in his 20's when he had so much music left in him.

'Little Man with a Gun in his Hand'-we'll dedicate this one to the Arizona gunman


I went digging through my vinyl for my copy of 'Double Nickels on the Dime' and discovered oh horrors, I don't have a copy on vinyl, must have had it on cassette tape and I threw out 90% of my cassette tapes when I threw out all the Stuff because when was the last time I ever listened to a cassette tape?  Then I got a jolt realizing how long it must have been since I last listened to this album. Time flies scary fast these days.  Then I started getting depressed about D. Boon and decided to look at the video I shot from Strum's first encounter with his new dogwalk.  And this didn't help the depression.



He's never done well working with toys and add in a brand new dogwalk and running into a wall in a major way and how tired I was from Day 3 of manual labor and this practice was doomed before we started.  But I wanted to see how he would respond to the dogwalk and how the dogwalk would hold up to him.  Obviously the down ramp needs some reinforcing mostly because it's a bit warped.  The other ramp which is my old ramp is nice and stiff with good reinforcing but it's even worse running him the other way because the fence is even closer to the end of the dogwalk.  I also need to videotape the top ramp to see if it needs reinforcing.  The sawhorses could use some stabilizing members as well.  I also think I need to face reality and move the walk so I have a little more space even if it does take over the yard and block the sidewalk.  For now this set up is too challenging.  I could also think about moving it so that it heads into the walkway that goes to the front of the house.  There are pavers there though so he'd have to run over the pavers to get on the walk and then the walk would block access to the front of the house.  I am NOT moving to a house with a bigger yard to accommodate oversized dog toys.  I have to draw the line on this madness somewhere.  Funny to think we told the realtor we wanted a small yard when we were looking for this house.  I suppose I can always try selling the dang thing if this doesn't work out.  The dogwalk, not the house.

I do have one handy tip that I can pass on though.  If you put hand cream on before you paint then the paint or primer washes off no problem if it's latex.  However I don't have a tip for keeping the paint off the Border Collie.  Or getting it off.  Especially off the tail, it's all over his big goofy tail.

He was not so very helpful this weekend.  In fact more the opposite of helpful.  Had to be banished to the house while I used the power tools and stood at the window panting and obsessing with the occasional shrieking barking fit.  I mean he stood at the window panting and barking, not me, though I was tempted.

Showing off his new dye job.

Very punk rock

Cody says he managed to not get any paint on himself.  It's not rocket science.

The temps. are supposed to plunge to single digits for a couple of days next week so this experiment is on hold for a bit.  Maybe by then my yard will have magically expanded by 20'.