Pool time - May 20th, 2013

Quasi-vacation time for the dogs - quasi-work overload for Erica this week, but I made time for the boys to swim this evening after work. Kip was *a little* excited...

Providence and Middlesex - May 11-12, 2013

Kippie snuggles. oh-dark thirty.

Off to Rhode Island this weekend - a long drive but a really nice venue and good footing. Complications due to life meant that we didn't get to head out until well after 6pm putting us at the hotel at 10:30pm. LONG freakin' day for the team, some bad news about a friend's dog and three dogs who had spent a good chunk of their day either sleeping or in crates made settling in tough - I don't think we got more than a couple hours sleep Friday night.

Just before heading to bed I asked Kip (snuggled into the small of my back) if he could pretty-please get 50 points this weekend. That would be super-swell baby dawg and would put us over the half way mark to his qualification for the 2014 NAC. Please Kippie Doo?

I'm too exhausted for suspense, so the summary of the weekend is as follows:
Kip came through the weekend with a perfect four for four weekend: TWO QQ's (#5 and #6) and 61 MACH points - oh and a placement in Masters Standard.




Teller not to be outdone had a credible three for four weekend, running amok in his JWW run on Saturday.Teller's tally: one QQ, 45 points.

TMAC - May 4-5, 2013

We're back from our weekend in Conneticut. Perhaps our greatest accomplishment was that all four of us made it through the weekend without getting any ticks. I freakin' hate ticks, hate em, hate em, hate em!! I kept the boys on the short grass, away from tree lines and kept them liberally coated with Sirius in Vermont's No Flies on Me. It worked!

It's 5am, time to get up!!!

Teller had a 50% weekend - two 13 point JWW runs. Saturday's standard NQ was all me, I tried to serp a line after the a-frame (you can see it on Kip's video): Tunnel, call over a-frame, to non-wing. The weaves were the next obstacle. Teller didn't get the weave cue, curved towards me, bounced off the table and completely missed his weave entry. My bad. Sorry Woo. We didn't get this run on video - flip the coin there - see your mistake or just let it go? I know it was my fault, Teller yelled at me (rightfully so) and he got plenty of chicken.

We came back together for a pretty JWW Q Saturday afternoon.


Kip also missed the same weave entry in standard - though I handled it MUCH better for him after flunking Teller. It was an entry he typically gets in his sleep and he missed it. Oh well!


Kip's JWW run on saturday was equally pretty - I pushed a line and a bar came down out of the tunnel. Take a look at the speed he turns on afterwards though - triple, jump (blind cross) tunnel - holy shitake!


Sunday is a new day, Kip got to go first in both runs. A gorgeous standard run, but an extra #17 tunnel cost us the Q.


Kip came back strong for a JWW Q in the afternoon. I mis-handled a pinwheel (I was watching my dog and not moving my feet!) and ended up having to rear-cross a sequence - and I had to wait for him to do the rear. I probably cost us 2 seconds there (and cost us a placement to boot).


Teller NQ'ed his A-frame on Sunday morning. I had pushed that line with Kip and did the same thing with Teller and it just didn't work. Oh well. the rest was training!


JWW Q for Teller Sunday afternoon:

Kip's A-Frame - 04/28/13

Whew what a weekend!  Lots of chores to get done this weekend, a pager on my hip - with several hours a day of work as a result of said pager and a bit of fun for the canines as well. Van-Essa got new sneakers this afternoon - a super chic set of Bridgestone Duelers which are supposed to be good for MPG and also quiet. I was SOOOOOO ready to get those winter tires off. On a not so super note, when they took my snow tires off today it was pretty apparent that they too need to be replaced. So I left eight tires at costco this afternoon...no tires to store for the summer, but that also means that come November cutting over to winter tires will be (ahem) expensive.

Turf wars. Dug up a the 'race track', replaced the stones at 

the bottom of the stairs, leveled, pulled out all the damaged

turf, seeded, fertilized and roped off. Hopefully we'll have 

rapid growth of something green!!!

The remainder of the afternoon was spent fixing some turf in the backyard - digging up the boys' racetrack around the pool, pulling up damaged sod, leveling, fixing the stones at the bottom of the stairs and then putting down a grass seed composite. I also had to back-fill around the garage with stone, the previous owners built the garage on level - which does nothing for a wood-frame structure. When we resided the garage last fall we dug a trench around the outside getting the earth away from the structure. Since I fell in the trench yesterday while running a-frames with Kip, I decided it was time to get stone! It doesn't look like much, but the grass there will prevent the boys from tracking sand into the pool off their wet feet.

That left just a little bit of time to work a-frame with Kip tonight, a-frame has been at 4' and I added pool noodles yesterday morning. I'm not really looking to change his striding, he's a big boy, I don't want to require him to pound his shoulders into the ground. But, I need him to stop the pause at the top in trial. If I can build in muscle memory to leap the apex, we'll get rid of the pause. I moved the a-frame up to 5' tonight - here are a few of them:




And here we are yesterday on a 4' a-frame. Tomorrow night we'll go up to 5'4" and we'll start fading targets/noodles.

Stepping up conditioning (for all of us)

The boys have gotten a little soft lately - OK we all have. Prior to heading out west the dogs were very used to getting an hours worth of romping 3-4 nights a week as the days got incrementally longer. Since we came back though I haven't gotten them out nearly as much. 

Work has kept me busier than usual, the epic effort to undo the ravages of winter (and the dogs' output) on our landscaping, unpacking our agility equipment from the bowels of our garage...and then we've had a few trial weekends, taxes, company at the house and the inevitability of mud season has kept us home more than it should. I know - mud is fine, and golden coats will drop the mud as soon as they dry - but the thought of taking the boys out for an hour to come home to an hours worth of bathing (because it's otherwise nearly impossible to control where the dirt drops off them) and then another 20 minutes of cleaning the bathroom, washing 10 towels was just too much for my sleep-deprived body and brain to handle. 

 Now that we're (hopefully) on the other side of mud (hopefully) and the grass is getting a bit of a foothold in the dryer earth it's possible again to 'just' take the boys out for a quick romp for an hour or so, throw the frisbee, ball or bumper for a while, get everyone nice and tired out and head back home again. So last night - after a long (12 hour) work day I managed to coordinate a meet-up with a friend and two thirds of the golden pack out for a run. 

Murph stayed home yesterday - tis the season of sharing the fields with soccer kids and it's easier for me to wrangle two dogs onto the middle field with soccer balls on either side of us, than it is for me to have three - Kip and Teller need the conditioning more than Murphy does at the moment too so there you have it. Mr Murphy stayed home with a container of frozen yogurt, super unhappy that it was going to be a late dinner night again.   

I'm REALLY hoping to have the pool opened this weekend, with the first couple of swims happening around the first of May when chemicals get balanced and the water is suitable for occupation. This will make conditioning go easier for everyone and it's (honestly) the only activity I don't have to really work to get Murphy to engage ("you want me to go pick that up again? I just brought it to you, if you want it so badly, stop throwing it!"). 

 Some shots of the boys and their friend Gusto: 

Reunited and it feels so good.

Kip at two years old, not looking so teenager-like this week.

'Paw' de Deux?

Dude, please don't kill yourself. (or your crutiate)

Speed up those contacts Kipper!

Sometime in early winter Kip came off the side of his A-Frame in trial. I marked it with an 'ut-oh' and moved on. Kip being the sensitive lad that he is internalized this to mean "go really slow on the a-frame to make sure you get that yellow thing or it makes mom unhappy". This proved to be a super-hard thing to fix over the winter with limited access to equipment and other things that also needed work during the same sessions. So I lived with it a bit - releasing him early in trials and supporting the a-frame, praising when he got out of the pause and into his contact behavior, then releasing and running like heck.

Kip has been rather consistently placing in JWW - which thrills the snot out of me given the dogs we're running against at 24". But he's still 3-4 seconds out of the placements in standard - I'm figuring he's wasting at least that on his a-frame, so if we can fix the a-frame he's got a better shot at getting those three Double-Q/Double Placements he needs for his GRCA agility hall of fame.

So to fix I dropped the a-frame as low as I believe it's safe to do so without a center support, and I've been working sends and early releases to an easy-button on the ground. Note that I've picked an easy button for two reasons. The first is that it's heavy enough not to blow away and not super easy to pick up after he's been released(ahem, looking at you Kip). It was a real drag to release for a great nose touch and have the happy dog grab the target and view me taking away his target as an adversive. Leave-it, is all well and good, but he's a super happy retriever, I need to save the leave-its for things that matter.

Secondly, if I ask him to hold a touch he and I both get audible feedback for touching the object - that was easy. Good touch, good boy.

I didn't originally teach the 2o2o with a target, but switched to one to help break the hang-time at the top. I'll likely keep the a-frame low for a while even though he'll see full-height in competition, the trick for me is to keep the number of reps in the range of sane (without killing my dog) and extinguish the stop at the top behavior. There's a balance there and I think the lower a-frame will accomplish that.

Here's Kip on day 4 of a-frame work:

BTW, yes my lawn needs to be seeded. If I'm not careful all of that bare earth will end up IN the pool.

BOTC - April 19-21st, 2013 - Part Two

Father and Son Double-Q Cheezeburgers!
Don't worry, they shared with Murphy!

And here we're into the final stretch of the trial weekend. Day three - highs in the mid-40's, but the most brilliant sunshine we've had all springtime - just a gorgeous looking day - but COLD!








Also, today was apparently white stripe day!!!

So three quarters of these white-stripe girls are way too excited about wearing matchy-matchy.
One quarter of these girls wishes she'd picked a different color pant this morning.

Sunday
JWW
Kip in the top of the running order again today. Which was probably very lucky for me. I had walked the tunnel handling the same for both dogs, using a very strong pull to the left tunnel opening. When I ran Kip, it was messy to get there with a pull - especially off the a-frame. I changed my plan for Teller, which probably saved Teller's run. Oh, and standard Q for Kip - ALSO MX and 3rd place!!!

So here's where I ran things a little differently - adding the front cross at the bottom (downside) of the a-frame and then PUSHING to the left tunnel.

Standard
Kip came out of his crate ready to rock - and he did. He read a wrap as a rear which cost us quite a bit of time (and for sure a placement - he was out of 4th place by exactly 0.20 seconds) but it was 'good enough' for his 4th Masters QQ and some points.

Teller also brought his A game to his JWW run this afternoon. I got in his way at the weaves, but my seasoned competitor found his entry anyway (in spite of me perhaps). Note the strong 'telling off' I got from Teller at the #14 wrap (0:31) when he objected to my decel cue. Yes, I know Woo, sorry for smashing you into your front end, thank you for coming when called and not holding s grudge.

Also, we had our usual houseguests this weekend. Kip and Ali had a phenomenal time playing in the evenings while the humans decided to partake of adult beverages. I found this at the liquor store, it might be my new favorite drink - sub for Baileys over anything...I used 3 parts maple liquor to 1 part milk on the rocks. SUPER awesome!!! It's called Metcalfe's Vermont Maple Cream Liqueur and it's absolutely spectacular! I sent a few of the Canadian exhibitors home with directions to the liquor store that sold me this awesome bottle. Word on the street is that the weekend's awesome judge will also be receiving a sample in her thank you gift box from Vermont ;-)

Here's the distiller - perhaps we'll try the raspberry version this summer over ice cream!
http://vermontdistillers.com/distillery_005.htm