Startline fun

Came upon this entertaining video while surfing today. Too bad it's only border collies, but fun to watch nonetheless. Ever seen a dog back up on the start line? Me neither until now!

Out practice

With the limited time left before the agility fields close for the winter, "out" is the focus again. We worked on it earlier in the summer and made some progress -- it even got Walter his first MG Q -- but we haven't maintained it and being a new skill it's kind of gone by the wayside.

Anyway, worked on outs today using side by side jump/teeter and jump/jump. Tested him with some heres too and he does seem to be picking it back up but lots more work is needed.

2-day AARF trial (Kingston)

This was Walter's second time at AARF. While driving home from his first AARF trial on October 7th 2007, I swore I'd never ever EVER trial Walter there again. (Not because there was anything wrong with the facility or trial itself, which are great!) A few hours after coming home from that trial, the sting started to wear off; I tried to keep an open mind and opened up the possibility of going back. Then a year passes and the memories of that trial now get a "them's the blows" chuckle from me, so... After vowing never to return, what did I do but sign him up for not one, but TWO days at the very same trial one year later. If he would have the same sniffiness this time around, this had the potential to be a very long and depressing trial! But, I was curious to see how he'd be, and with the need to make the most of the cool-season trials, well there ya go.

Well, he was a different dog this year! None of the constant sniffing that he did inside and outside the rings last year, which he had never done anywhere else except for one run last summer when the dog before him had ripped a toenail on the second obstacle unbeknownst to all and bled allll over the course. Is his 180 turn-around because the weather was cooler than last year's trial? Is it because the rings have been moved down further towards the woods and for some counter-intuitive reason the track-laying critters don't come around anymore? Is it because Walter has matured and is more into the game now? Who knows but I sure did like what I saw this weekend.

FRIDAY (weather: nicely c-c-c-ool for much of the day, requiring warm coats and even mitts from time to time. Perfect agility weather for Walter and for many of the other dogs who were looking so peppy out there. 3 degrees in the morning, slowly warmup up to a partly cloudy 12 degrees)

Started with Jumpers #1. Whaddaya know, he was terrific and clean and got a Q! Last year's sniffyholic was nowhere to be seen.

Then it was Standard #1. Clean except for a wrong weave entry plus he popped out afterwards.

Standard #2: Woo hoo! A nice run with several crazy "TRUST YOUR DOG" moments and he got a Q! Weaves were on-side, "yesgogogo".

Gamblers #1: There are good things about having a dog who's not a tunnel suck, and there are bad things about having a dog who's not a tunnel suck. Walter, the Not Tunnel Suck, had a hard time being sent out quite a distance to the tunnel of the main gamble. He finally got it, but then instead of taking the out-teeter he took the here-6-weaves so it was an NQ. Brilliant job on the weaves though. We tried one of the mini gambles which was tunnel under dogwalk to layered jump on far side of dogwalk. I thought it would be no problem for him as he's done these before, but he came in instead of taking the jump.

After the trial we headed to our motel. I had brought along a kettle and some insta-noodles to supplement the cold but delicious fried tofu I had brought, but thought what the heck, I'll just have a quick peek at the yellow pages to see if maybe, just maybe Kingston has a vegetarian restaurant? Well what to my hungry eyes should appear on the last page of the restaurant listings but an ad for a veggie restaurant, yeah!! So off we went.

First though we stopped at the first place we could find for the dogs to get out and stretch their legs a bit.


Beautiful big tree on the banks of the Rideau Canal.


Another photo op on the banks of the Rideau Canal.


Memorial cross for the workers who died building the Rideau Canal.


Apparently even chimney thingies are in on the ribbon trend. No idea what this ribbon is for.


Lotus Heart Blossoms Vegetarian Restaurant. Associated with Ottawa's Perfection Satisfaction Promise Vegetarian Restaurant, but a completely different menu.


Not to play into the stereotypes, but there were a ton of Green Party signs in the neighbourhood of the restaurant. Of note, this election campaign was the first time that a Green Party leader was invited to participate in the televised leaders' debates.


Back at the hotel. It might not look like much, but the pasta was actually quite tasty. Garlic, salt, and pasta, what's not to love?


Lucy was not entered in this trial but happily came along to hang out with us and enjoy a feast on the cow patties in the pastures surrounding the agility fields.


SATURDAY (weather: coolish in the morning but quickly warmed up to sweater-only for much of the day. Too warm to be ideal agility temps for Walter but still not too bad. 5 degrees in the mornin, quickly warming up to a partly cloudy 14 degrees.)

Standard #3: I was maybe feeling a bit cranky from getting hardly any sleep due to the @#$%^&* motel doors that kept opening and slamming shut and opening and slamming shut and people making no effort to speak quietly in the hallways even past midnight. So I wasn't going into the run on the best of notes. Then, I came this close to forgetting to remove Walter's collar for the run. Scratch that -- actually I *did* forget to remove his collar but someone kindly alerted me about it just as I was starting to lead out. He ran past a jump and probably got a refusal at another messy point, but his weaves were perfect. (offside, "yesgogogo")

Standard #4: Walter had a loopy moment at one point, then at the weaves he got the entry but then immediately popped, doing his best imitation of a dog who's never seen weaves before. Took him back to restart and he entered on the wrong side but what the heck he kept weaving so I let him and we just kept going. On the bright side however, he had a brilliant startline stay while I led out to the far side of the second jump to be able to overhandle the #3 tunnel/frame discrimination to make up for our lack of skills in the discrimination department.

Gamblers #2: Bummer, this gamble was very much like yesterday's, with the exact same sendout to the tunnel, same direction and end of the tunnel and everything. So we never got to the rest of the gamble which included an out-over with two side by side jumps which he likely wouldn't have gotten anyway. One of the mini-gambles was identical to yesterday's: tunnel to layered jump behind dogwalk and he got it fine this time.

Snooker: Ok, would be really nice to get a Q today and running out of chances... No weaves in this course, just jumps, tunnels, frame, and a ton of combinations. We played it safe and did the #5 tunnel three times; not our prettiest run ever but not terrible either and he picked up his 6th MS Q.

Jumpers: Last run of the day. Walter was surprisingly perky and animated despite it being close to the end of a long couple of days. He ran beautifully and picked up his 5th MJ Q.

So yeah, the two-hour drive home was quite a bit more enjoyable this time than it was last year. Yay Walter for being so much fun to run!

Dreamfields trial

I wasn't overly optimistic about coming home with any Qs today since three of Walter's five classes have mandatory weaves and the other two classes are Gamblers where ya never know what you're gonna get. Walter has however been practicing his weaves at home almost every day for the past few weeks -- a quick pass or two before breakfast and supper.

First up were Gamblers 1 and 2 and the main gambles were potentially something Walter could have gotten. The first gamble was a tunnel passing under the dogwalk, layered tire, far side of a c-shaped tunnel, dogwalk, jump. Walter checked in with me after the tire and while I was trying to redirect him out to the tunnel he stepped on the dogwalk. Tweet. The second gamble was a teeter heading at a sharp angle away from the line, then a lateral jump, turn left towards the line for a jump and then two more jumps close to the line. He did the teeter but crept in towards me while in 2o2o so didn't have a hope of seeing the far jump. Tweet.

Standard 1, Standard 2, and Team: In Standard 1, the weaves were the #4 obstacle in. Well, lo and behold he didn't pop! So then the pressure was on for the rest of the course since we now had a chance at a Q. Walter got the job done, pretty slow but still well under time so he got his first Masters Standard Q after three almost-clean MS runs save for popped weaves. Standard 2, yes! another clean set of weaves! But we had already goofed earlier in the course with a refusal at a tunnel and taking the frame instead of tunnel at a discrimination. Our Team partner was Tucker, a debonair sheltie. Walter ran according to plan (and yes! another clean set of weaves!) but I had walked the course wrong and included a bonus jump. Our partner got an offcourse, so it's just as well.

I was so glad and surprised that Walter did three sets of flawless 12-weaves, especially since it was warm and humid. For all the weaves I hung back to let him get the entry which was marked with 'yes', then followed along at his side saying a steady 'gogogo' through to the end. I never used to do anything like clapping or tongue-trilling or saying anthing while he weaved, but given his popping issues I've been open to trying anything. We've been using the 'gogogo' in practice recently too. I wonder if it helps him know that yes he's doing the right thing, so just keep going. Anyway it seemed to help today. Oh and for all three sets of weaves today he was on my left side in case that has anything to do with it.

Weave practice at field

12 straight weaves, nice coolish and cloudy evening. Said "yesgogogogo" every time. Popped halfway through on first try. Then, it was hit or miss as to whether he'd pop towards the end or not. Seemed to do better with me on right side which is the opposite of how he used to be.

Only did the one session because it was getting dark.

Walter has a WORLD-CLASS startline stay!

Got a kick out of seeing a dog competing at the FCI agility worlds who has the same scootchy-butt startline stay as Walter, only minus the barking.

Here's Walter's startline stay:


And here's the world-class dog's startline stay (the first dog in the video): fciagility2008.cleanrun.com/usa-large-team-standard.

;-D

Practice

Weaves: Took a different approach this time. Put two sets of six weaves and a set of 12 slightly angled wams at different spots in the field. Included one or two sets as part of a few different 6-8 obstacle sequences. The idea is that the weaves are just part of sequences, not a big deal, so just do them, darn it! ;-) He did just great on all attempts, no popping, woo hoo!

"Out": Was going to set up a little sequence we saw at this weekend's trial, but it turns out a similar sequence was already set up. It's just a c-shaped tunnel with a few jumps along the outside of it. You take the jumps on the outside. It looked a little bit like this:
/
- C
\
At the trial, about half the people ran with their dogs between the jumps and tunnel (that's what I did). Others had cooler skills to rely on and layered the jumps behind the tunnel. So today we worked the "out over" skill. Ok we don't have that skill yet apparently! He kept wanting to take the tunnel, but once he took the first jump then the rest weren't a problem. Gotta keep working on our "out"s.

"Pip" (turn 180 away from me): Frame/dogwalk to tunnel/chute are coming along really well, but today he had trouble with frame to jump. He wasn't responding to the "pip" and instead went ahead to some non-obvious jump out in front of us. Tried pip on the flat and it was weak there too so we'll need to do more maintenance work.

All Dogs trial - day 2

First up was Gamblers, first thing in the morning. The main gamble included 12 weaves so I wasn't very optimistic. Well, even our opening was pathetic. We couldn't even get the very do-able mini-gamble of jump-tunnel-jump; he kept doing his best sheltie imitation and spinned in front of the tunnel. And overall we weren't in tune and had only 21 points in the opening. Yikes. We didn't try the other do-able mini gamble of jump to frame because it was raining and the frame was known to be slippery even when dry. On to the closing: the #1 was right at the exit gate and Walter could not be convinced that in fact the run was not yet over and demanded his end-of-run reward. So we didn't even get to the weaves! Ha!

Jumpers: About a 4 hour wait between Gamblers and Jumpers might be part of the reason that his usual crispness wasn't quite there. Not a terrible run, but an uncharacteristic knocked bar in the opening line; also took the far end of a c-shaped tunnel instead of the correct close end. Video below.

Standard: I hereby declare a new title which Walter has proudly earned: WlSMADC (Weaveless Special Masters Agility Dog of Canada). Haha! This was the third MS run in which our only glitch was the weaves. It was really hot and humid and the sun had just come out but I thought he had a chance of doing the weaves because they were only #3 in. Shortly before his run I hosed him down and pumped him up with his soccer ball that he gets in practice for doing clean weaves. I made sure to hang back and send him ahead to the weaves but he popped 5 or 6 poles through, then weaved between a few more poles of his own accord. "Good try" and we continued with the rest of the open and flowing course which he handled really well including sticking his teeter and dw.

Here's video of the only run that was filmed, today's Jumpers.

All Dogs trial - Day 1

Yay, the September two-day trial at one of our favourite venues!

After hearing earlier this week about the tragic, sudden, and unexpected loss of a local agility competitor's wonderful dog who should have had many, many more years of life, the concept of really enjoying the day regardless of the q situation or other "problems" was fresh in mind.

Jumpers: One glitch where I inadvertently pulled him off a jump in anticipation of a sharp turn to the tunnel to the left. Otherwise a good run in typical Walter style.

Snooker: With Walter's weave-popping issues and the 12-weaves being almost always #7, Snooker for Walter and me is becoming a simple game of how-to-do-the-#6-three-times-for-the-Q. (Ok, to add some spice maybe I should try for four #6s sometime.) This was a nice course with the teeter as #6 and the obstacles were all spread out so not a lot of offcourse potential. Walter is really a great dog for Snooker (when he hasn't got it in mind to pay his dues to the zero points club) so he made my job easy and yes we got our Q, as unexciting as it must have been to watch. :-D Didn't bother asking him to do the weaves in the closing -- if he's only got a finite number of clean weaves in him I'd rather save them for Standard and Team!

Standard: I had signed him up for this in the hopes that it would be a cool or even better, downright COLD weekend so that Walter would have a chance of doing some clean weaves. Bummer, it was a nice hot day so no surprise, weave issues. But the saving grace is at least it wasn't our THIRD MS run botched only by botched weaves: he had pulled a strange manoeuvre earlier in the run by exiting the tunnel from the same end from whence he had entered.

Gamblers: This was a totally doable gamble for us (a couple of jumps and a tunnel to a laterally distant teeter followed by an out-over with two side by side jumps -- exactly the sort of thing we've been working on), and in fact he actually did complete the main gamble, but a bit of a glitch between the jumps and tunnel ate up some time so he was over time. One of the mini gambles was right up our alley too: tunnel to dogwalk at lateral distance; he had no problems with that and sort-of held 2o2o so he did it twice so we had plenty of opening points. Certainly I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get the Q, but at the same time WOO HOO! he did the gamble, timer be darned. Plus at the end of a long day, for him to have any go/out oomph left in him was fantastic.

Another try at Gamblers, Jumpers, and Standard tomorrow.

Practice - weaves

Hoo boy, Walter's weaves were nowhere to be seen tonight. Popped towards the end every time we tried the 8-poles. To get any success I had to bring them down to 6 poles. Dang! Also played around with some miscellaneous distance stuff.