I wonder which crook is going to win?

That's what my grandmother asked me rhetorically when I called her today.  She's very big on voting, used to be an election judge.  When she picked up the phone the first thing she wanted to know was had I voted (yes, of course).  Then she went into a short diatribe about how they're all crooks.  Which is exactly how I felt when I came out of the polling place except I had much more colorful expressions than 'crooks' in mind.  I feel like my 'choice' these days is the Right or the Far Right and I consider myself somewhat moderate.  The Senate race was particularly disturbing.  You cannot imagine how happy I am that Michael Bennett will no longer be calling my house day and night.  I was sick of those calls before the primaries you can imagine how last week went.  I stopped answering the phone altogether about a month ago.  I voted for him but only because the alternative was so unfathomable.  And it scares me that some of those amendments got enough support to get on the ballot in the first place.  Oh well, I got a sticker and I scored some poop bags (yes, empty ones) on the walk back from the polling place so I guess that's something.

Some red, white and blue for Election Day, courtesy of my grandmother's awesome 70's basement bathroom

Where's my cash? A rebuttal

Sorry for those who missed the original, it's been removed from You Tube, but I couldn't resist.

More dogwalk training, more fire

Was driving to the training field this morning at around 9 am and smelled smoke.  There was some smoke visible in the air but I couldn't see where it was coming from.  Until I got to the training field.  Then the source of the fire was  a little hard to miss as you can see from the video.  It didn't look to be close to my house so I wasn't too worried but as I drove home the smoke got thicker, the light turning that apocalyptic orange.  Again.  This fire is much closer to town and in fact parts of town are evacuated.  Unfortunately the winds are blowing the fire towards me and they just moved the evacuation boundary closer to me so it's now less than 2 miles away (the fire is probably 3 miles away).  I'm not to the point of worrying or packing up the car because the winds have died down a bit.  There's still a high wind warning and it is windy but not enough that I'm going to start tearing the house apart and packing up.  I think they expanded the evacuation zone because the firefighters are doing a back burn and not because the fire spread of it's own accord.  But that's only a guess.  I'm about a mile from the line where the power is being intentionally cut so I'm planning on the possibility of losing power at any time.  The smoke is bad, no biking or dog walking for me today.  Went out for not even 1/2 an hour to take some photos and my shirt smelled like a fireplace when I got home, had to take it off it was so bad.  So many people out there running and biking in the muck because it's otherwise a beautiful warm day in the 70's.  I won't do it though, my throat is sore enough with just sitting at my desk and the short photo ride I took.

As for the dog training:


7/9 hits, 78%, same as the trail a few weeks ago.  I shot some video on Weds. as well but it was hard to see the contact zone and I had a frustrating session of rewarding all 3 of his misses (7/10, 70%).  The misses were so subtle, even with the video I had to slow it way down to see them.  No obvious leaping like he did at the start of the video I posted, more like he simply strided right over even though he was doing what looked like the same gait he does when he hits.  I was hoping to get better footage of the slight misses to post to Silvia's forum but of course this time around he didn't do it.  The one rewarded miss was a tunnel/turn and I was standing back at the tunnel exit and couldn't see the contact properly but somehow I thought he had gotten it.  Because I'm psychic or something.  Don't know what I was thinking.  No subtle misses though, I'll try again this weekend if the smoke ever clears.

I'm also not thrilled with the stress on his ACL's when he does those tight turns to the tunnel.  Seeing those in slow motion made me cringe and kept me from my sleep last night.  I won't let him chase balls because I hate that screeching to a stop then turning tightly and here I am intentionally training it.  I'll have to figure out a better end performance but right now I can't quite picture it.  Today's performances weren't as bad as those on Weds. but still, yikes!  I only asked him to do it so I had an example to send to Silvia, maybe she's got a way she handles that challenge.

Some photos of the fire taken from my neighborhood.

Views from Wonderland Lake

Slurry bomber

Silly dogs

Big Mouth Strikes Again

Hard to get any kind of photo of Cody.  As soon as the camera comes out he either starts acting weird or comes right up to the camera so that all you can get is a good shot of his nose hair.

I think he loves that squeaky red rubber devil ball a little too much.

All sorts of mayhem ensues whenever I break it out.

At least it's a distraction from his watering can obsession.  Jonny had to take it off him the other day because he was flying around the yard like such a maniac with it in his mouth that somebody was going to lose an eye.

I keep looking at that course map in the post below and thinking I can run fast enough to get past that #4 tunnel opening to cue that #5 jump.  I wasn't trying hard enough during practice, surely that's the problem.  I'm always wanting to run when I shouldn't and not running hard enough when I should.  I feel the same way about the dogwalk, I can totally run faster than I do.  Probably holding back because I'm afraid I'll be out of breath and unable to handle the rest of the course or I can't think and run that hard at the same time.  Maybe it's time to revisit those Tabata sprints once I'm done rehabbing from that stupid car crash and can start running again.  I do sort of remember starting to dread them several hours before doing them but feeling good afterwards.  Not sure if it helped the agility running though because I'm not ever going that hard on a course.  Maybe the fartlek running is better.  It's more fun anyway and I don't want to cry at the very thought of it like I do with the Tabata sprints.  For now I'm stuck on my mountain bike on the road and easy trails per the chiropractor until the stiffness and pain in my neck and back go away.  Can't even swim right now, haven't been swimming in weeks.  Masters is going to be ugly when I finally go back.  I probably shouldn't have opened that bag of Halloween Reeses peanut butter cups either.

Handling Dilemma

That darn 'Out' verbal cue, I never was able to teach it to Cody and Lola.  To be honest I never tried all that hard.  Teaching a dog to defy your motion is difficult and tedious and I gave up the task without putting sufficient effort into it.  Cost Lola quite a few gambles but oh well.  It was never a big problem for us on regular courses, seems I could always find some other way.  Didn't even try to teach it to Strummer, trying to keep consistent with the notion of not training him to ignore my motion on the turning obstacles.  But yesterday a handling conundrum came up for the second time and I couldn't find a way to deal with it.

The problem occurs at #4 to #5.  Without an 'Out' cue (or a 'Left' directional) it's nigh on impossible to get there to cue that #5 jump.  I couldn't lead out at the table past the offset jump or he'd take the offset jump and I think that's a handling system violation anyway, ie putting an obstacle between you and the dog that you don't want the dog to take.  I tried a rear cross between 3 and 4 so that he'd be on my right coming out of the tunnel but I was still too far behind and ended up with a spin in front of 5 and when I tried it a second time we almost had a collision in front of the tunnel.  Even with a decent send from 3 to 4 with him on my left I couldn't get past the tunnel entrance before Strum came barreling out.  I don't ever recall encountering this issue on a course but it seems like I could.  Maybe it doesn't happen often enough to make training the verbal worth it.  Or maybe it happened more often than I remember and it wasn't a problem in Lola's vet years when she slowed down quite a bit.

I also discovered a training hole that I knew I had but kept forgetting about and that's the rear cross at a tunnel.  Strum doesn't read them at all as far as coming out of the tunnel on the correct side.  So if I did a rear between 9 and 10 he still came out of the tunnel turning left.  If I put him in with him on my left then he came out and did the right turn to 11 no problem.  No amount of calling while he was in the tunnel made a difference.  So this week we'll practice those rears in the yard.  Can't believe I left out such a basic skill but I remember at some point in his training I reached Information Overload and apparently some stuff fell through the cracks.  It's no matter, I've been looking for some fun little thing to train in my little yard and now the perfect thing has fallen in my lap.

Handling video

I shot some video of our last practice session since I had a nice overhead view from a deck above the practice area.  I like to get some video of my handling and Strum's jumping every once in  a while to see where we're at.  The exercise is a Backyard Dogs thing from Clean Run but I have no idea what issue.  I can find out if anyone's interested but I think you get the basic idea of the layout from the video.  Tried doing the exercises different ways to see what worked best.

The good-almost no bars down.  He had one or two hard knocks that didn't bring the bar down but would have with a regular jump standard (a few of those bars were very tight in the standards).  I think his jumping looks good for the most part.  He's taking off where he should, collecting when I cue him to.  I put a couple of exercises into slow motion so I could compare my cues to his reactions and I think it mostly looks o.k.

The bad-I'm still flinging my arm way up in the air over my head.  Seemed like I was getting a handle on that but for this practice session I was back to my old habits.  Glad I shot the video, I realize now I still have to watch out for that.  My other problem was with supporting jumps.  He still needs me to hold up for a bit until he's committed or go up to a jump with him.  I had a couple of run-bys at the trial last weekend because I took off running somewhere before he was committed.  I'm hoping with time and practice he'll get more independent.  He's way better than when we started but still needs a fair amount of support.



He's such a fun little boy to run, he truly loves playing agility.

Trial video and yet more dogwalk practice

Couldn't get the trial video but the person who filmed me was o.k. with me posting the link so here you have it, Strummer DOCNA Specialist Standard.  We had an off course at the A-frame just before the weaves that you can't see and he got called on his A-frame, the only A-frame miss the entire trial.

More dogwalk practice, this time with no flips to tunnels.  Had 7/9 (78%) success rate at the practice field on our own, some turns, some straight on to a jump that's off screen.  This is a similar success rate to the trial this past weekend.  One miss was rewarded the other was not.  I'm sort of at wit's end as to what to try next.  He's not exactly leaping on his misses, just taking too big of a stride.  I think he's still doing a rotary gallop even on the misses which is why I rewarded the one miss.  I may get desperate and post to Silvia Trkman's discussion group.  I don't mind putting in the training time but apart from plugging along with what we've been doing I'm out of ideas.  And maybe continuing to plug along is what I need to do.  Could be he simply needs more practice at how to adjust his stride and with time he'll get more accurate.  I hate to start messing with stride regulators, hopefully he'll figure it out himself.

Video is bigger if you watch from the link below.
DOGWALK 10-21-2010 from colliebrains on Vimeo.

Had some good handling practice last night with my training partner and I have video of that too but it'll be a day or two before I have it processed.

Ribbon Hoarder

I know, you've all got a similar pile, probably way bigger than mine because my Q rate is low and I stopped taking most ribbons years ago.  But still, look at that mess, they're piled up deeper than they look and that's not even all of them.  Every once in a while I decide I'm going to go through them and get rid of all but the most meaningful then I realize what a huge waste of time, easier to leave them in a pile in a cabinet and I put them all back.  This time I went so far as to buy a plastic bin and you can all have a good laugh at how that's going to work.  In the end I stuffed all but the most obvious special-ist ones in the bin and I'll go through them at night while I'm watching Netflix.  Yeah, I'll get right on that, along with my sock darning project.  And what do I do with the rejects that have been written on?  Will I go to the effort to find a place to donate the ones that aren't written on and are in good condition?  Can't give most of them back to the club because they're so old.  One club is defunct and many don't do NADAC any more or give out a different style of ribbon.

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Edited to add:
A reader sent in a link to a place you can send your ribbons to be re-used by therapeutic riding centers.  I'd heard of this place before, just didn't remember the link or the name.  My initial concern was that they wouldn't use the dog ribbons for horse events but I emailed the woman who runs it and she said she's happy to take dog ribbons.  Some of the riders don't care or know the difference and sometimes the ribbons can be modified.

As an aside I spent several years doing volunteer work for the Colorado Therapeutic Riding Center and it was a lot of fun.  I'd go before class and tack and groom horses then lead the horse around the ring if the rider needed it.  One of the classes I volunteered for had riders that were very independent and didn't need horse leaders for the whole class which is why I was initially concerned that the dog ribbons wouldn't be used.  Not all riders in the program are mentally impaired at all or to the point of not noticing such a thing and being offended by it.  But apparently there is enough of a market for them that they use them for some of the riders.

You don't have to know anything about horses to volunteer either, they also have people that walk at the side of the horse and help the rider with the various therapeutic exercises.  It's a great volunteer experience to consider if you have a program in your area.
 
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Not sure what to do with the special ones either.  I made a nice shadowbox for Lola's second place Grand Prix Regionals ribbons but that little project took about 2 years to get to and would have been abandoned altogether had I not bought the shadowbox right away when I was still excited about the accomplishment.

I already took photos of the dogs with their nice DOCNA Champs ribbons from 2 years ago but now what to do with the ribbons?  That stack alone takes up a lot of space but they seem too nice to get rid of.

Let this be a cautionary tale if you're just starting out in agility.  Think long and hard about whether that 3rd place non-Q Advanced Snooker ribbon is going to have any particular meaning 6 years down the line or whether it'll detract from the more meaningful accomplishments and clutter up your closet and your brain.  I did stop taking most ribbons some time ago but I wish I'd figured it out sooner.