emmabcdog

So much going on, so little time to blog...

The past three weeks have been crazy busy.  Our club held its trial, S graduated from college with not just one, but two degrees (so proud of him), I went to agility camp (more about that in another post) and I got to spend an entire week with my mom up in Ohio.  Like I said...busy, busy...

So after all that, last night Emma and I returned to our usual Wednesday night practice.  Usual that is, except for this:



My very good and dear friend D had this really cool birthday cake for me.  Look at Emma going through the candle weave poles.  The tunnel and the chute were fondant, but I could save the miniature teeter and A-frame.  I would have liked to have saved the entire cake, but birthday candles are meant to be wished upon and blown out.



Can you guess what I wished for???

Happy Birthday to my best friend in the entire world -- Emma, I love you unbelievedly so!


And what would a birthday be without presents???  Now since Emma knows all her toys by name and dog toy manufacturers apparently are limited in the types of objects from which to design toys, one has to get creative when getting say, a second lizard:

Okay, so the one on the left, which Emma got for Christmas, is Gecko.  The birthday lizard on the right is Sally (Sally, salamander...get it?)

The same issue occurs with elephants:

On the left is Elephant (the archetype is usually named as such, but with a capital letter), which Emma got out of the prize bin at an agility trial.  The new one on the right is Babar.

And here is the Birthday Girl with Sally and Babar.......you know, Emma is really such a silly, fun-loving dog -- WHY does she always look so serious in all her photos???


And if you're thinking that getting TWO toys on the same day is spoiled-toy-overload,  well....it is.  That's why Emma got Sally on her birthday eve and Babar on her birthday.

Hmm...an empty basket.  WHAT has happened to all the toys???



Emma says she has been VERY busy today!!!

I have been SERIOUSLY delinquent in updating this journal -- too much is happening, and too much time is passing by too quickly. 

S is getting ready to graduate at the end of the month -- a B.A. in philosophy and another in music.  We made a road trip last week to where he'll be going to graduate school to look at the housing he's been guaranteed -- a nice little studio apartment on campus not too terribly far from the philosophy department and the library.  That's important -- he received an assistantship, so he'll be doing research and grading papers.  Big changes are in store, come August.

And with the semester coming to a close, there are the usual concerts.  Lots of concerts.  If S is performing, I'm there.  And this time, I'm nostalgic -- thinking, oh, this is the last orchestra performance....this is the last wind ensemble concert....this is the last time he'll play in the jazz ensemble.  You see, S is putting away his trumpet after he graduates to fully concentrate on philosophy.  Even though he's been principal trumpet throughout college, it was a means to an end -- the music scholarship helped pay for the undergraduate philosophy degree.  I always knew it was coming, but it's still kind of sad.

Okay, but this is an agility dog journal.

So our club has its trial in less than two weeks -- three days, up from two in previous years.  Stay tuned for videos.  Lots of work to be done between now and then.  It will be...interesting.

And speaking of trials, I took Emma to the Deep South agility trial last week.  No videos since my videographer had class that day (hmm...a preview of what it will be like after S moves out), but I do have the course maps.  First up was FAST, and as soon as I saw the course, I thought yeah, right -- the send was the left end of the dogwalk, flip into the no.7 tunnel and turn back into the no.3 tunnel.


I knew Emma wouldn't have a problem sending into the first tunnel, but I was standing too close to the jump on the send line and Emma took that instead of going into the second tunnel.  Just like I thought she would.  No dropped bars though.

Next up was standard:

Emma did a very good job and didn't drop any bars -- yay!  We did get a refusal at the no.13 tunnel though -- Emma had her head in the tunnel, but out of the corner of her eye saw me pulling away to the dogwalk and out she popped.  I'm going with YOU, Momma!

Then we had jumpers:

No Q and it was all my fault (ain't it the truth).  As Emma was taking jump no.16, I ran too far into the box and caused Emma to wrong course -- she took jump no. 7 and then went racing into the tunnel (no tunnel refusal there!).  I should have layered the no. 8 jump as she took no.16 and then made the turn.  Nevertheless, I was happy because I got in all the rear crosses I'd planned, and I was able to run diagonally away from Emma while she was in the weaves to make up some distance and catch up with her.

The final run of the day was T2B:

This was hairy, and not because of the course.  I was sitting in the bleachers with Emma, not paying attention to the running order, when all of a sudden I heard the ring steward yell my name to tell me I was up NEXT.  I grabbed Emma, we ran to the ring and entered just before the GO sounded.  I don't know why, maybe it was because I was in the hurry-up mode, but for some reason I let Emma do running contacts -- she thought that was very exciting.  Heck, she thought the whole grab-and-go was GREAT FUN!  And we ended up with first place!  I had several people tell me afterward that I need to do that every run -- not having time to think, to worry, made for a Q.  It did, but it was way too exhausting. I'll  not do that again.

Okay, so we're updated.  It's nearly 2:30 in the morning, but we're updated.  Good night!

So today being Friday, Emma and I headed out to the practice field for our usual Friday morning competition class.  As always, there was a course to set up first -- move the tunnels, raise the teeter, attach the chute, position and set all the jumps, put the right legs on the table...you know, all the prep stuff.  It took a little longer to do today, though, since we were the only ones there. I suppose this is how it's gonna be, what with our instructor leaving and the club in a fractured state. 

Well.....I've always thought Emma was in a class all by herself......


Emma says, "Maybe YOU want to come next week???"

We went to the OVDTC trial this weekend and look what happened:

Emma got three Qs and placements in T2B, Excellent FAST and Excellent Standard -- but she's being very blase about it, isn't she...ehhh, no big deal.  I was very excited about it though.  If you've been reading my blog, you know we haven't seen a green ribbon in a looong time.  She was a fast little booger all weekend.

I like OVDTC's trials -- good people, nice facility, split walk-throughs so that you're not walking the course with hordes of people.  We always have a good time.  We did this time too, although there was this thing going on with the course maps that I've never had happen before. 

The course maps for the handlers were different than the course maps the judge had.  And we didn't always find out until AFTER we'd walked the course.  I'm sure you know which course we ran.

It didn't happen in every class, but it happened in at least one excellent class every day.  In Friday's JWW, the judge set an off course jump right before the first dog on the line -- and suddenly, it was a different course.  Oh, yeah, the sidelines were buzzing about that one.  Then there was the FAST course that on the map had a straight send line -- the course we ran had a major angle in it so that you couldn't run parallel to the obstacles.  No wonder a lot of dogs veered to the right and took the wrong course jump after the dogwalk instead of going straight ahead into the tunnel.

The whole thing was really strange.

I will say, however, that the times we didn't Q had nothing to do with the differences in course maps.  Those NQs -- that was all me and my snappy handling  

There was this strange light in the sky yesterday, and we were finally able to have a practice -- it's been cancelled the last several weeks because of rain.  This is the course we ran:

We split the white-numbered course into thirds, practicing each section before putting it all together.  The first third was obstacles 1-6, and I was surprised that I had a hard time getting Emma to turn without a spin to take jump 5 before the weave poles.  I did a short leadout between the tire and the tunnel with Emma on my left.  I kept her on my left over jumps 3 and 4, but I could not get her to turn to the right for the 270 to jump 5 without getting a spin -- she kept turning to the left to go to the weave poles even as I stood at jump 5 to do a front cross.  In competition, I don't think we would incur a fault since the spin was on the landing side of jump 4, and she did take jump 5.  Not pretty though.

The rest of the course ran very well, and I was very proud of Emma for not dropping bars on jumps 9 and 10.  Spread jumps -- the triple followed by the double, and with a front cross involved -- if that's not the perfect setup for knocking a bar or two, I don't know what is.  Anyway, I left Emma on the table and led out to the double jump with my arm straight out to the side and Emma on my right.  As soon as Emma committed to the triple, I did a front cross on the landing side of the double so that Emma was on my left for obstacles 10-15.  I wish I had it on video, because I think it must have looked nice.  After another front cross at the A-frame, it was a running contest to the end of the course.

The black-numbered course waits for next Friday, and it looks to have some challenging sequences.

In the meantime, it continues to rain.  We've had so much rain in the last month or so that we've missed a lot of practices.  When we do get to practice, Emma is way excited.  I hate to miss a practice, but Emma and I can usually make up the time in our own backyard.  Not lately though.  This is the yard today, but it could just as easily be yesterday or last week or the week before.




It's been raining like this once or twice a week for the past month, sometimes for more than a day at a time, and the yard isn't able to dry up between rains.  No yard, no practice. And hardly any Chuck-It time to speak of.   No wonder Emma is highly charged these days.

After posting earlier in my blog about how Emma tends to jump early when she's behind me and racing to catch me, I reached out to a few people for advice on how to handle this problem.   moodypdx was kind enough to respond and asked me to set up and video the following jump drills.  We finally had nice weather this past Friday, and I went to the practice field with this result:

You can especially see how Emma jumps early when I do a lead-out on the 15 ft. obstacle spacing drill.  I wrote before that I'm of the opinion that perhaps this is not early take-off syndrome because it seems to happen mostly in situations where Emma thinks she's losing the race -- she then begins to lose her focus on the jumps and instead puts her efforts into catching me.  That's when crazy bar-knocking can ensue -- the kind where she doesn't just drop the bar, she HURLS it. 

And here's another thought that just now occurred to me -- I don't really remember us having this problem when we were running/practicing at the novice level, and I think it's because I had not yet learned how to put some distance between me and Emma (I was an exhausted run-with-your-dog handler back then.)  Of course she still dropped some bars, but it wasn't an issue like it is now because I don't think we'd have gone from novice to excellent in the time span that we did when you consider our limited trialing opportunities.

Outdoor trial + 24 degrees = INSANITY

I can NOT run when I have on thick wool socks and toe warmers in my shoes.  I can NOT run when I'm wearing long undies.  I can NOT run when when I'm wearing a t-shirt, a thermal shirt, a jacket, a windbreaker and a winter coat (it's all about the layers, you know).  I can NOT run when.... well, you get the idea.

I entered a trial this past Friday for just one day, down and back, and I was miserably cold the entire time.   And you know who shows up to run in this trial?  Frisky Emma.  Who lurks just below the surface of Excited Emma who is always so OMG, OMG, I can't BUH-LIEVE we're at a trial, would you look at that ring. LOOK AT IT!!!

So you can imagine we racked up the Qs that day.  Not.  Although we did come close on our FAST run.  The send was jump, jump, tunnel with the last jump looking at the wrong entrance of the tunnel so that you had to pull the dog to the right.  The send line also veered fairly sharply after the last jump, and I ended up pulling Emma too much and got a tunnel refusal.  I have to say I was happy though, that Emma didn't take the wrong course tunnel entrance.


But the crowning achievement of the day was our last run where I had an enormous brain fart in Time 2 Beat.  Here is the course map:

It was a great course, so great that I tried to run parts of it twice -- coming off the A-frame the second time, I repeated the jump/tunnel sequence.  Roll the video tape, please.


Don't ask me why.  I was tired (up since 4:30 a.m.) and all I can do is plead weather-related temporary insanity.  Afterward, a couple of people told me Emma wasn't the only dog to take the wrong course, to which I said Emma did exactly what I told her to do -- I sent her to the tunnel.  Yep, sure did.  What a dummy.

But you know the really crazy thing about all this?  Today, only two days later, it got up to 62 degrees and tomorrow we're supposed to hit 70.  That's winter in Mississippi for you.  It's really cold, it warms up, then it rains, a cold front comes and the temps go back down to freezing again -- all in less than a week.  And it does this all winter long. 

Now if I could only time our trial entries for during the balmy parts...