Limbo

It's that time of year - Shoulder Season - winter leaving, spring not quite here. Feels even more so for me since we're hoping to find a house this spring and move. Maybe we'll find a place, maybe we won't. Which means I can't sign up for races since I don't know where I'll be this summer. Jonny wants to wait to get a new dog until we're moved but I've convinced him to at least consider taking on a new dog if the right one comes along. We're planning on going to a herding trial in a couple of weeks and hopefully I can find some folks who can point me in the direction of a good working breeder.

For a moment we thought we had a perfect situation - one of Jonny's co-workers is looking to re-home his Border Collie from a top working breeder. One of my agility friends just got a pup from this breeder and has 2 others from him and he's a true working breeder, not an agility breeder. At first it sounded like the dog was simply too much dog for his owner who is 70 and looking to retire and wanted a pet, not a busy working dog. Dog is 2 years old. But it turns out the dog sounds really messed up, the owner was using a shock collar on it to train basic obedience/house manners, ugh. They were using a spray bottle too and now the poor thing is so terrified of them that he runs away when the wife waters her plants with one. Also the dog is super inbred, grandparents are half siblings. And now he's not sure he wants to give the dog up. Would love to rescue this dog from this unfortunate situation but also don't want a 'project' and a dog with such serious inbreeding and if he won't give it up anyway there's nothing I can do.

And I would really love a puppy. It would be fun to do all the training. One Mind Dogs had a 1/2 off special deal for a 6 month premium membership and I pulled the trigger on it. SO much information. Watching all the videos of people training their puppies makes me want a puppy all the more. So we'll see. There's no hurry.

Ruby is happy to be an only dog and life is so easy with her. She's the easiest dog ever. It's so easy to train with only one dog as well. I've had multiple dogs for so long, I forgot how easy it can be with only one. So for now we enjoy the ease of one dog life and wait patiently for the right second dog to come along.

I've been doing a lot of walking and hiking, taking a break from running.

Rugged Mountain Dog rockin' the Benjamin Trail

 Went to Golden Gate Canyon State Park last weekend with the intention of snow shoeing but the snow was packed and shallow enough that Yax Trax were fine.  Every one else there had snow shoes, poles, big packs, it was kind of funny.  We blazed right past them because snow shoes slow you down and are a nuisance unless you have deeper, unpacked snow.  I don't use poles because I want to maintain my balance and all those muscles needed for balancing as I age.  Use it or lose it.

Panorama Point, Golden Gate Cnayon State Park

I twisted my left ankle again and landed funny on my right knee on that Betasso hike which leads me to believe that that's what happened last January when I jacked up my knee.  At the time I thought that the ankle twisted first but thinking about it afterwards I assumed it was the knee that had gone out first.  But now that I've twisted that left ankle a couple more times I'm convinced it's the ankle.  I've had a little niggle with it for a while but it's barely been noticeable but now is turning into a problem.  So this week I'm taking it easy, just walks with Ruby, no running except maybe some short agility stuff with her.  But no RUNNING running.  It feels fine today, back to just a niggle here and there so hopefully nothing major going on but something to watch out for.  I see balance/ankle strengthening exercises in my future.  And more weight training.  Been slacking on that, 30 minutes a week, it's not enough.  They're starting a parkour class in a park near my house where I walk Ruby all the time so I'm going to start going there when class is going on to see if I can get ideas.  I think the class will be too hard for me or I'd sign up.  I'll see how hard it looks and maybe change my mind.

I did get a couple few bike rides in in the past few weeks.  Finally made it to Hall Ranch, think it's been 8 months or so since I last went riding there.  One of the disadvantages of coached bike workouts, some trails are hard to use for training and Hall is one of them though maybe I had a few rides this summer that I don't remember.

Longs and Meeker from Hall Ranch

February was so mild, days in the 60's and 70's and barely any snow.  Crazy.  It's nice but climate change is scary and there were some fires though thankfully they were put out quickly.  At least the snowpack is well over normal, mountains have been getting slammed so reservoirs should be good this summer.

I'll work on getting some more Ruby training video.  I shoot it and then get too busy to process it.  Getting ready to take her out to the training field for the first time.  Curious to see how that will go.  Took her to my training partner's yard and she was super distracted but I have an idea for keeping her focused at the training field.  More on that later.

Golden Gate and Fire

This is a photo of the start of the High Park Fire (west of Fort Collins) taken from Hall Ranch in Lyons at around 10:30 Saturday morning.  It's about 50 acres at this point and about 30 miles away as the crow flies.

Now, 2 days later, the fire is 37,000 acres and the smoke plume is several hundred miles long and can be seen from space.  I can see it from the end of my street in Boulder about 15 miles even further away from where the photo was taken though today it's a bit hazy due to the smoke hanging around so I won't bother trying to get a picture.  Air quality didn't seem too bad at 6:30 this morning when I took the dogs out but this afternoon it's not so great-smoky smell, itchy eyes-and I decided today would be a rest day.  I'm not complaining, the folks in the path of the smoke have got it a zillion times worse never mind the 2,000 folks who had to evacuate and those who have lost their homes as well as those who will have to evacuate as the fire progresses.  Over 100 structures have been burned so far and sadly it looks like the fire is bearing down on Lory State Park.  When it started I figured Lory would be safe but this is a bad, angry fire, impossible to contain so far and it's grown a lot quicker than I thought it would.  No rain or improvement in conditions are in sight so there's a possibility Lory and maybe even the Blue Sky Trail could get hit.

Yesterday we went hiking in Golden Gate Canyon State Park where we couldn't see or smell the fire.  The air quality was decent enough and we had a great day.

Yes this is a trail.  The skinny brown sign even says so.

Having a break in the shade.

We took a little break in the shade for a snack and to let a German Shepherd waddle by.  Poor dog had such a roached back and frog legs that it looked crippled, hobbling along up the steep hill.  I felt bad for the dog and angry at the conformation breeders that do this on purpose.  And puzzled as to why someone who likes hiking would get a dog that's so physically debilitated by design.  My good friend and next door neighbor had a German Shepherd when we were kids growing up and it was such an awesome dog, great temperament especially with all the neighborhood kids, physically sound, could run around with us forever.  Looked nothing like the poor hunchback waddling up the hill.  Such a shame what has happened to that breed.

O.k., enough of that.  Time to go.

The bike ride at Hall the day before went well.  I rode almost the whole trail including things I had to walk last time.  In fact I was looking for rocks to ride over and taking the rockier line in places.  Jonny showed me how to ride something I've always had to walk.  Some of the terrain is similar to Curt Gowdy, some granite drops offs and such, but not nearly as many challenges.  Nonetheless good practice and I was feeling a good bit more confident about my technical skills at the end.  And was barely even tired after 2 hours so that was good.

My latest plan is to go ahead with my race in 2 weeks.  I don't know if there's a cut-off time but my plan is to finish the race even if I have to walk part of the run as long as the race organizers will let me.  I may very well be DFL for the first time ever in my life but I'm determined to finish the thing.  Was going to go to the Valmont Bike Park today to work on skills but this will have to wait until the smoke dies down.  In the meantime the dogs and I are doing our best rain dance for those folks up in the hills west of Fort Collins.

Edited to add:
Ugh, just after I posted this I found out an agility person I know lost her home in the fire.  Thankfully her dog was with her and at least no one was physically hurt.  The emotional scars are often as bad or worse than the physical ones though.