A Puzzle

Set dog up in a sit in front of entrance to U-shaped tunnel.  Stand next to dog, release verbally, say 'tunnel', take a step toward tunnel entrance, indicate tunnel entrance with inside arm, shoulders and feet are pointed to tunnel entrance, eyes are on tunnel entrance.  Dog flies across your feet and sails into opposite tunnel entrance.  Repeatedly.  This is what happened at my lesson with Joy yesterday.  Repeatedly.  Even Joy couldn't figure it out and she's pretty clever.  Has a first place trophy from the FCI World Championships.  Been teaching for a billion zillion years.  Has a pretty good eye for this stuff.

I'm an enigma.

Thinking about it, it's not the first time he's dashed across my feet to the less obvious tunnel entrance.  I do not send my dog across my feet.  Ever.  I have no video from my lesson, will have to set it up at the practice field and get some video.

I was so very happy to have a lesson with Joy, it's been years.  She's overcome a multitude of tough health issues and it's amazing to see her out there again, running her dogs and teaching.  It's the only lesson I've had all year other than the seminar last February so it was long overdue.  I split the lesson with my training partner and I'm hoping we can do it once a month or so, at least until USDAA Nationals.  I have USDAA trials the next 2 weekends and would love to finish qualifying for Nationals so the timing for a lesson was perfect.

I had a few other issues - rushing the weave pole entry, spectating at places where I should have been moving, moving at places where I should have been holding up to cue collection, using a lateral send where I really needed a wrap (ie lots of collection) and not recognizing the scenario as a wrap on the initial walk through.

I did get some good practice with rear crosses and pulled off some nice front crosses.  Got a nice blind cross in too.  Some serps, a back side of a jump/serp thingy - fun and challenging stuff.  Was so good to have a savvy eye on me.  Not that my training partner isn't savvy or incredibly helpful but it's good to have a lesson now and again.

Strum was sky as a kite, excited to see all his dog and human friends and to be practicing in a brand new place.  He was so fast, seemed even crazy faster than normal, I had to run hard and we started at 7:30 a.m. and no caffeine.  I had to miss boot camp for my lesson but I felt like it was plenty of intervals so I took the rest of the day off of training despite the trial this weekend.

Went to Hills & Drills this morning to make up for it, stair intervals then a couple of 400's on the track then went to masters swimming and swam in the fastest lane because my normal lane was too crowded.  Don't ask me how I survived that.  Lots of food and caffeine after that busy morning so I can maybe get some work done the rest of the day.

What was that I was saying about spring again?

I think maybe I was hallucinating.

 

Was I really complaining about the 70 degree weather?  Really?

Cody sez let me the hell inside woman, this is madness out here.  And get me some hot cocoa.  Now.

I'm pretty sure if the snow comes up to your stomach it's o.k. to skip the weave pole practice for today.  We did manage a single practice yesterday with the poles at normal distance and it went well.

Somebody was an awesome boy at his agility lesson last night.

Somebody turned 5 this month and received the gift of a brain.  Maybe.  I hope.  We haven't had a lesson with Joy since I think last November or December but the little crazy man did some wonderful stuff out there.  Nice collection on his call to heels and even sent a good long distance to a tunnel with the entrance perpendicular to his line of sight which has always been challenging for him.  Lots of nice focus and control and not so much running amok.  I'm still rushing things at times when I need to hold back or hold my ground but I felt a lot calmer than I normally do.  I think that Mary Ellen Barry/Jenn Crank seminar helped so much as did that Stacy Peardot workshop.

Best of all though he was relatively calm while the other dogs ran and while I walked the courses and talked to Joy.  He even kept his sit-stay while another dog chased his ball right next to him.  He thought about breaking, I could tell, but he didn't and he got lotsa treats for that.  The guy I split my lesson with noticed a change in him too.  Or maybe he was just having a good day.  Today he was inside the house barking his fool head off while I was shoveling snow completely out of sight.  Such a noisy little dork.

Will I ever see my contact trainer again?

Strummer's last winter class

Mr. 'I Was Born Ready' at your service


Strum had his last class for the winter at Boulder County Fairgrounds last night and it went better than expected. After his craziness at the fun match which was also at BCF I decided to break out his Gentle Leader. It's been a year or 2 since he's used it and it felt like a bit of a backslide having to use it since he's been doing so well without it but his barking and lunging at dogs in the ring have been on the increase despite my best efforts so I needed to do something. This turned out to be a great decision-he was a completely different dog. Oh he tried to lunge but as soon as he figured out he couldn't get anywhere he knocked it off for the most part and tried other things like lying down and offering his tricks to get attention when he felt himself getting out of control. Hurray for that, I was much more relaxed in class and able to focus on the lesson plus I had a lot more instances where I could reward him for watching the other dogs calmly. Hopefully this will turn him around and send his behavior back in the right direction. I'm going to bring the Gentle Leader with to his trial this weekend just in case but I won't use it unless I think he absolutely needs it. I think the distractions at the trial won't be nearly as bad as what he endures in class and he was fine without it at his first trial.

His jumping was much improved, he was collecting at long last though not as much as I would have liked in some places. He had trouble collecting for one handling manuever that he was doing no problem on Sat. and I believe it was mostly because he was distracted by the other dogs and the other ring and a dog even wandered onto our course right where he landed after a jump at one point. But I had him keep trying until he finally got it right. The distractions are Strum's biggest challenge right now so I was happy for the opportunity to work through them. He even did weaves consistently and got his entries at speed for me in class which was a first though the entries were easy.

Our instructor promised us a surprise for the last half of class and when I saw the Snooker flags come out I got all excited. I love Snooker, I know, it's not right but I do. I was the only one happy to see them though. Only one other person even knew how to play and she wasn't all that excited by the prospect though she's amazing at it. The only bad part was that just like regular Snooker we got whistled off the course at the first screw up and of course Strummy's very first ever Snooker run turned out to be a zero as he took a colored jump on the way to the first red. We got another shot at it after a rotation through the class and that time he made it through to the end though it wasn't pretty and I wished I could have gone back and worked through the rough patches. Technically we should have been whistled off about halfway through when Strum ran through the middle of the weave poles but my instructor must have felt bad for me and let me finish. He's going to be a USDAA judge and our class course will be one of his Snooker courses. If you happen to show under him and you get this course, woe to you because it was hard, one of the hardest I've seen for a while. We tried to convince him to make it easier by making the #7 threadle bidirectional in the opening but he didn't seem for it.

Dogwalk Practice
This morning I started working Strum on turns on the backyard set-up (4' table w/ plank). Silvia Trkman has a section on her website on turns but unfortunately I can't link directly to it. You can go here then click on 'our training' then click on the running contacts link then sift through the article. Anyway, she uses a jump and rotates it around the clock at the end of the dogwalk like you would for weave pole entries. She also puts a vertical piece of PVC pipe at the side of the end of the dogwalk so the dog has something to turn around. I don't have room in my yard for a jump so instead I moved the treat gizmo in an arc around the end of the dogwalk. Also I couldn't get a piece of PVC into the solid ground so I used a piece of 4x4 I had laying around and propped it up with a flower pot. This is probably harder to fade than the PVC but it's the best compromise at the moment. I hate using props in general but in this case I thought I'd give it a try because I don't want to lose the running contact. He ended up 10/10, no problem. The farthest I moved the gizmo was maybe 2:00 along the arc and it was 10' or so off the end of the plank so the worst case turn was not extreme at all. In the next few days I'll step it up a bit. Trouble is that my yard is too small, I'm going to have to get creative with the set-up and maybe only practice turns in one direction for a few days then move the set-up and switch directions. Once he's more solid on the full dogwalk at the practice field I'll start with turns out there and use a jump. I'm also going to start with distractions in the yard and fading the gizmo. Fun fun fun.

Will I never get this dog in the ring?

After much heated debate between the many loud and varied voices in my head I decided to pull Strummer from his Standard runs in the DOCNA trial that is coming up in just 2 weeks. Part of me feels like 'don't be such a chicken, he's going to be crazy in his first few trials no matter how hard you prepare. Suck it up and get it over with'. The other part of me is still nervous about his dogwalk and A-frame and doesn't want to overface him. Both will be perfect by the April USDAA trial, I promise, and then he can have his big Standard debut. I wanted his Standard debut to be in DOCNA and at this particular trial for a number of reasons but none were good enough to override the fact that I don't feel his contacts are well trained enough for trialing. I hate going to the line feeling unprepared. Sure he's probably going to have his share of baby dog craziness but that's different from not being reasonably proficient on an obstacle. This is the first time I've had such a disparity between levels of training between the different obstacles. Strum's well ahead of the game with handling/jumping, can run masters level courses. Weaves, table, teeter are good, at least good enough for Novice, but those contacts are lagging behind because I switched horses mid-stream. I don't regret the decision but I have to live with the consequences. I'll still run him in Gamblers and Jumpers and hey now I have $40 extra to go towards the April entry.

The major factor driving this decision is the A-frame. I've been taking it for granted that the A-frame will come along with the dog walk, don't need to train that separately. That's what Sylvia says, anyway. Well, Strum is hardly one to follow the crowd and as it happens the A-frame is turning out to not be such a gimmee. Sylvia recommends running them over the low frame for just a short time then raising it up fairly quickly because the lower heights supposedly encourage jumping. Strum did fine with the lowered frame (nearly flat) but when I raised it to a decent height his chosen method of performance was to leap over the apex of the A-frame and then off the frame from the top third. After I recovered from my heart attack I thought, 'Oh, that was just a fluke' so brains here had him do it again and of course he gleefully leapt off the top of the A-frame again. So that was the end of that and that was on Friday so you can see why I'm skeptical that I'll have a decent A-frame in 2 weeks. On Sunday I lowered the frame again to flat and after a few repeat performances of leaping as far as he could he finally settled back to running. But who knows how long this will take. That A-frame isn't light either, I nearly put my back out and gave myself a hernia trying to lift it while it was flat.

The good news is that I'm finally seeing a bit of success on the 4', full length dogwalk at the practice field. On Sunday I back-chained it a bit then set him up at one end and let him run the full thing. It was a thing of beauty and a nice solid hit. Gave him boatloads of treats and ended there, no need pressing my luck. Thought I'd at least enjoy a couple of days of thinking I'm a dog training genius before that fantasy gets shattered by another session. I'll try again tomorrow, hopefully something will have stuck in his fuzzy little brain and we'll have nothing but perfection from now on.

Class last night was something else. Poor Strum was crawling out of his skin with excitement and poor me had to deal with him for an hour and a half. It's important for him to learn to work in a class situation with all the distractions but an hour and a half is way too long for him to have to be exposed to other dogs running. Or rather it's too long for me to have to deal with him. I'm thinking the strong winds last night had set him more on edge than usual because he seemed to be backsliding in his ability to control himself from previous classes. He was great during our runs though but 3 runs in 1 1/2 hours is not enough for a dog like Strummer. We had to wait 40 minutes in between 2 of our turns and at this point in his training that's way too long. We have one more class and then there aren't any more offered anyway so I'll be on my own until Joy gets back and starts lessons up again. When you figure out how much instruction in minutes I get per dollar for regular classes with 8 teams per class vs privates with Joy there is no comparison, those regular classes are a false economy plus all that standing around trying to entertain an overstimulated Border Collie drives me crazy. Then there is the issue of handling systems/consistency which did come up last night. This teacher is easy going and lets me do what I want but who knows how another might respond when I say I don't want to do something a certain way. Will be interesting to see how this pans out in the agility world in general but I suppose that's a topic for another day.

Running dogwalk, weaves and class

DOGWALK
Been a while since I've posted on our dogwalk progress. I had a bit of a setback in my backyard practice when I moved the plank up to 4'. On the 3rd or 4th rep the plank came off the table and smashed to the ground, hitting an 8" CMU block that I was using to hold the table frame down. The plank split apart and it took me a week to get the materials and find time to mend it. That 4' table is not as stable as I'd like. I've been working on ways to brace it with stuff lying around the house but nothing is doing a great job so far. I put a sawhorse under the plank so that if it comes off the table it can't fall all the way to the ground.

We've had 2 attempts at the mended 4' plank-yesterday was 16/20 (80%) and today was 9/10 ((90%). I'm still using the treat gizmo for reward. Unfortunately it's starting to not work again. I've cleaned it out really well several times too. I click the remote over and over and the stupid thing won't dispense. It's still under warranty but I don't want to part with it because he's got his first trial in a month and I still need it. So I've been running up to it and putting kibble in from my pocket when it doesn't dispense.

We're still struggling a bit with the dogwalk out at the practice field. I'm still backchaining the full length 2' high dogwalk with success rates all over the place. Some days he's brilliant, other days I want to tear my hair out. Yesterday he was at 70% with a mixture of backchaining and running the full length of the walk. I've found that I have to put him either at the top of the down ramp or the top of the up ramp or somewhere on the up ramp to get the most success. If I put him anywhere else on the flat middle ramp he almost always misses. Ideally he should be able to adjust his stride to hit the bottom no matter his striding on the flat ramp but for now he can't seem to get his brain around it so I'm not pushing the point. We may go back to this later once he's more solid and do it as a proofing exercise.

I'm going to have a setback next week because I'll likely have to go to Chicago. My grandfather had a second heart attack in the space of a week and I doubt he's going to last much longer so as soon as I can get the dogs' bordatella vaccinations this weekend so I can board them I'll probably try to get a flight out there. My family is not planning a funeral or memorial service for him which makes my head want to explode and is a big huge ugly rant for another day but it means I have some flexibility in when I can go. I'll pull Strum from his standard runs if I feel he's not ready on trial day but for now I want to keep the entry. It's good motivation for me to get out there and train and be focused and think about what I'm doing.

WEAVES
His weaves are coming along nicely. After much debate I ponied up the money for Susan Garrett's 2x2 weave video (more on that another time) and I tried starting him out on Day 1 with just the 2 poles and he did great at first but then got horribly confused. He's to a point where he can confidently weave 12 poles and he's almost got the nearly straight on, on side entry down so I think we're going to continue on my original plan and revisit the 2x2's after the trial. He's easily got the skills to handle weaves in a novice DOCNA class. Whether he can do them under the stress of a trial remains to be seen.

CLASS
He had class the other night for the first time in 3 weeks so he was a bit more wound up at the start than he was when he was going weekly but after half an hour or so he calmed down considerably. It helped a lot that the course run throughs in the adjacent ring were lightly attended.

I'm finding a regular class to be frustrating after taking privates/semi-privates all summer. I truly believe I get way more for my money that way. If the class runs small to tall I end up waiting half an hour or so for my first turn and I may get only 3 turns total, maybe 4. On the other hand it's excellent distraction training for Strummer. On the other hand it's a long time to try to keep his brain from jumping out of his head. We have only 2 more classes then the club can no longer use the fairgrounds so I'll be S.O.L. until Joy comes back to town and starts lessons again in late spring. And I'm assuming she's going to do lessons. I've been thinking lately that I need to spend more time practising anyway but I do like having a class to go to. Maybe something else will crop up in the meantime, you never know.

Class #3

We survived yet another Monday night class, this time without a single hysterical fit. I won't say Strum was ever calm per se but at least no lunging or screaming. Now I had to manage him the whole class which is super fun let me tell you but at least he managed to control himself for the most part. I had a little angry barking from him when I tied him up to walk the courses but he stopped after a few seconds when he realized it wasn't getting him anything. I tried going over to him and rewarding when he was quiet but then he'd start up with the barking again when I left him and he didn't bark after the initial outburst so I decided I could live with a brief tantrum right when I left him and not worry about trying to teach him to shut up for now. I think he'll soon grow out of it (at least I hope so) and his fit doesn't last very long. The one mistake of the night was taking him outside for a break and playing reverse tug/fetch with him. This only got him more riled up and he seemed twice as jeeped when I brought him back inside. After that I took him outside for calming walk breaks rather than rousing play breaks.

He did great with the exercises except some of the weave pole stuff which was way over his head. This week I begged off of the weave stuff I knew he couldn't handle. He needs a boatload more training and I've got a whole plan worked out and it needs to be done away from class.

The exercises were from a Nancy Gyes seminar that my instructor Rob had just attended. We did them one way, then another. Thankfully Rob let us substitute and off-arm cue for an RFP and we had our choice of lead-outs, didn't have to do a lead-out pivot. The rest of the handling was all front crosses, no rears for some reason, probably not intentional, just the way it worked out. I had trouble with one exercise because there I was, running backwards on a front cross again. Rob pointed out that this was o.k. for a few steps but loses it's effectiveness when you do it for 3/4 the distance between 2 jumps and he was right. I had a terrible time working out the footwork on that one but had a bit of progress after trying it a few (zillion) times. The rest of the exercises and front crosses were mostly fine. Some turns were wide and Rob had me tighten them up but otherwise the Strum man did great. Only two bars down the whole night and at least one was likely a handling mistake. He might have been a bit wound up for that second one though.

One more class in this session but I'm going to sign up for the next session since I think these classes are helping Strum a lot. I also signed him up for a 4 hour seminar on handling/timing up at Stacy Peardot's place next month. Hopefully the little monkey brains will behave himself. Maybe I should start stocking up on Valium now.

Strummer Rock Star

Strum was an awesome boy at his second ever group class last night, such a huge improvement over his first class. He made it a whole hour and 10 minutes without losing it then after his last turn he was a bit wound up and the next dog was a super fast BC and the noise of that dog flying through the tunnel was too much for him and he had his first fit of the night. This was the tail end of class though and he'd been so good up until then that I couldn't get too upset about it. He required a lot of treats and management but at least I was able to keep him occupied and under control, no screaming or barking or up on his hind legs lunging expcept for that one little fit at the end of the night. He had a few little lunges where he either stopped himself or I called his name and he snapped out of it before he got crazy.

He also rocked most of the exercises but this was because they happened to be stuff that played to his strengths and things I've been working on with Joy, in particular cues for front crosses and collecting for turns. We had a bit of trouble with the serpentines and it was an exercise I'd worked on with Joy before and had worked on on my own for homework over the summer. Strum was not collecting as he should and as we've practiced but this was a newish place with big time distractions and by the time we got to the serpentines it was the end of the night so he was a combination of fried and sky as kite. He got it in the end though I know if Joy had been there she'd have insisted on it being better and broken it down until he was collecting properly. Something for me to continue to work on at the practice field.

Only one bar down the whole night at class and not a single bar down at our practice session yesterday. I've not been doing jump drills either. I think he's finally settling down a bit and thinking more about what he's doing.

His weave poles are coming along nicely. I finally have him easily weaving 12 poles in practice and he's starting to understand how to collect for entries. He missed his weave entry in class though several times and in the end I had to guide him in with more assistance than I would have liked. In retrospect I should have let it go, I'd rather work on this away from class and not use my body language to help him find entries. I want independence in the weaves right from the start rather than having to fade my body cues later.

He was rock solid on his start line stays and never even thought about leaving me to join the dogs running a standard course in the big ring adjacent to our class. Overall lots of nice progress, hopefully he'll keep it up next week.

Strummer's got class

Well I survived Strummy's first group class, just. It started out a bit crazy because I didn't realize they would be running dogs in a ring right next to our class. I knew they would start about 45 minutes into class with run throughs with the general public but I didn't know the club members would be running right at the start of class. While I walked the course for class I had tied Strum up with a full view of the other ring and first he started barking his head off because he didn't like being tied up then he completely lost it when a dog started running in the other ring. Poor guy. I moved him away from the other ring but he kept barking and a couple of people in the class expressed their displeasure (geez, do you know how many classes and seminars I've sat through with barking dogs? You'd think they could cut me a little slack and he shut up pretty quickly when I ignored him. Sheesh, it's a baby dog class.). After that I walked the course with him on leash next to me and he was fine. I'd bring a crate for him but I think he'd pitch a fit in it. He's o.k. in a crate at a trial but not with the types of distractions at class, we need to work up to that.

Anyway, the class is all handling with just jumps, tunnels and a set of 6 weaves. We handle a sequence first one way then another to see what works best. For me though the main point of the class is to get Strummer to be able to work around other dogs. His first run was crazy, he held his stay but had huge wide turns and then caught sight of a dog running in the other ring and ran over. I called him back though and the first 2 times he was so good, came right back but the 3rd time he made it onto the other course and I was very lucky that the other dog didn't care. Strum didn't cause any trouble and came when I called then never ran off again for the rest of the class. So a rocky start but some good success in the end as far as his focus while running. He held all his start lines and aside from that very first crazy run he handled like a dream. He got his weaves more than he missed them and had only one bar down the whole night I think and that one was right at the start during that first crazy run.

It took a little troubleshooting to work out how to handle his crazy lunging at the dog that was working. He would be o.k. for a bit then lose it. I settled on keeping him in the equipment trailer which divided the run-through ring from our class ring. That way he could hear all the commotion and hopefully get used to the chaos without having to watch. I gave him treats while dogs were running but nothing when they weren't unless I sensed him getting ready to lose it then I asked for something like attention or a down first. He never truly relaxed but he didn't bark or lunge while in the trailer and I let him look now and then when I felt he was calm enough to handle it. Another dog and handler were sitting next to us and he was fine with it. He got much better as the evening wore on and his last runs were really nice.

Overall it was a lot of work to keep him from losing it but I was encouraged that he improved as the night wore on. Gives me hope that with time he'll be able to handle himself. By the end of class I even caught him starting to lunge then controlling himself without me asking and that was really encouraging. Got to start somewhere. Gonna be a long road to haul. Geez, why can't I ever have a normal dog?

Driving Lessons

Do the Hustle


Strum had his second agility lesson on Weds. night. This time the whole hour went to him partly because storms were possible and Lola hates thunder but also because it's something of a challenge to have 2 dogs at work when one of those dogs is Strummer.

The Trouble Twins


They're not that bad but one is so much easier and of course on the very rare occasion that they do decide to misbehave at the same time it's in front of a client or my boss or, if I'm really lucky, both. I was really lucky last week so decided to keep it to one dog this week. An hour turned out to be too long of a lesson for him so I'll be back to twofers next week or maybe I'll find someone to split my lesson with. I think Strum's ready to start working with one other dog in the field.

We started out with what should have been a simple jumping lesson-a gentle arc of 5 or 6 jumps heading into a tunnel. The jumps started out with one slightly staggered then the amount of stagger would increase. The idea was to teach Strum to look for jumps. First off, Strum has never worked with more than 3 jumps at a time or more than 2 in a row so this was way more difficult than I thought it would be. We started off with just 2 or 3 jumps then increased by a jump each rep. First Strum didn't want to send to the tunnel, something I know about and have been working on. I have to run right up to the tunnel entrance. Joy gave me some good tips on how to work on this and we've been practising but not a whole lot. Then when we got up to 4 jumps or so he would jump then look at me and miss the next jump, running right by it. Or he'd take 2 jumps then run by the 3rd. Part of the problem was that I was running right next to the jump standards, crowding and confusing him and of course drawing even more attention to myself. I finally managed to convince mysslf to run a fair distance out from the jumps but he was still missing them. It took a lot of reps and a lot of running (oh poor knee) before we finally got it. Let us not even discuss how fast Strum is. I thought Lola was a little red rocket dog (she's slowed a lot now that she's older) but this guy needs a 20 year old with good reflexes to run him, not an old lady with bad feet and gimpy knees. I think maybe my next dog will be a Bassett Hound.

We worked a bit on the teeter. Strum can do a full height teeter now but I'm having trouble fading the liver paste at the end of the teeter. If there's nothing there then he does any number of things but none of which is correct, ie stop at the end with all 4 feet on and wait for release. After trying many things with a low teeter Joy had the idea of teaching him a verbal for his stop at the end and keep with the liver paste until he starts to learn the word because that's the best way to get him to stop in the perfect position. Once he's got a word it will be easier to fade the paste because I can tell him what he needs to do. Shaping this with a board on the ground would be too confusing for him because of the running contact work we're doing already with a board on the ground.

As far as the weaves go, Strum can easily weave 6 poles with the channels closed and we've been working on entries. I've been using 2-3 poles so I can click just the entries and also because he was having a problem with diving into the space between poles 2 & 3 and missing the entry. I showed it to Joy and her diagnosis was that he was not collecting at all, even with just a few feet to run before the entry. She suggested a wire guide on the 1st and 2nd poles which is easy enough since I have some at home. I was avoiding them because I'm trying not to have to fade props but we'll give it a try and see if it helps.

The last thing we worked on was the 'Turn' cue, which means turn away from me. I started out teaching this on the flat with a hand signal but decided I didn't want a hand signal with it so we've been working on getting just a verbal with no body language cues. I'm pretty close I think, I don't need an arm at all but it's possible he's still cueing off of some subtle motion like a slight deceleration when we're walking in anticipation of the turn. I tried running with him then saying 'turn' and he had no clue so we need more practice. I want to start working with a jump standard though and I was having some problems so I asked Joy for some help. She told me to approach the jump standard at an angle rather than straight on and it worked a charm. She also had me practice with a tunnel, walking parallel to it then verbally turning him into the entrance, like coming off a dogwalk and turning away into the tunnel. He got that straight away but I think I was cheating a bit and using slight arms/body cues to help. More homework for us.

I stopped for food & gas on the way home and by the time I got home it was after 8:00 pm. By the time we had dinner both Strum and I were flat out on the couch/floor. It's the first time I've ever seen him too tired to do anything else. And I overslept the next morning and missed my early morning swim practice out at the Reservoir. Plus we won't talk about the swelling in my knee. I wonder how many bags of ice I can fit in my freezer.