This morning we had a great game of tug which ended in a destroy the stuffie session.
Suitable activity for a rainy morning, non?
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Hard work
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This dog,
did a great job of running in the heat today. That, by the way, is a scoop of vanilla ice cream in his dish. Too much for him at one time really. Excuse me while I spirt some away from him lest we have an upset stomach on the way home.
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Mommy is boring
Annie spends too much time on the computer for somebody’s taste.
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Family fun and a fast dog
Chico and I spent a few days last week with my cousin Eva, her sons, the wife and kids of one of those sons (the married one), their cousin Jon, and Jon’s wife and their son. Six adults, three kids under age ten, and Chico; coordinating over four houses and several cars and lots of social events. It was, on the whole, happy, happy chaos.
All the kids love dogs, and wanted very much to force their attentions on Chico. Which he pretty much hates. So we got to do a lot of teaching them how to keep Chico from feeling cornered (which made him snap at young Alex – it is hard to be patient and wait for a shy dog to come to you when you are an almost eight year old boy who loves dogs and wants one more than words can describe- more than once). It was work. More than once Chico asked if it was time to go home yet. He slept all the way home when we did make the drive.
On Friday of that week we took a break from family and went to Hamden, CT to do some AKC agility. Chico is down a kilo, two point two pounds, and that made for a super fast dog in the ring. Check out the results from our Standard run:
Excellent Preferred Standard – 16 Inch – Judge: Christie Bowers
Distance: 181 yards SCT: 68 seconds
Eliminated Time: 61.47 seconds
Obstacle 3 was the dog walk and Chico aced it but launched off just before he got a foot into the yellow, the mandatory contact zone, so we were already eliminated. When he bobbled his weave entry for the third class in a row, I took him back through and he went SO fast and so perfect (except the judge made a happy noise and I reacted and that pulled him out between poles eleven and twelve, dang) I could have cried for joy, but he still cut the corner on the closing and I took him back around, and we did all the obstacles and we STILL were seven and a half seconds under standard course time.
Three runs with problems in all of them, mostly with the weave entry and slowing down enough to do all twelve poles (I’m sure it’s handler error), but in all of them we got the really tricky-handling bits. It was super fun to have such a fast dog, I just need to be able to give information a bit sooner and maybe a bit more precisely.
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Do you see?
Julie taught us a wonderful amp-up-the-dog game that she calls Do You See (DYS). Chico is not always super driven so it can help our performance a lot if I can get him a bit agitated at the start line.
The other night Julie recorded our DYS and shared it with me, so I now share it with you.
It’s so cute the way he looks at me not what I am pointing at, and Julie loves the little jump he gives at the end of my arm.
Full disclosure – he was so excited that he actually missed the correct entry to the weave poles that were right after the jump you see him going over.
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I went away,
and left Chico at home for two weeks, in the fine care of our young friend Megan. He wasn’t thrilled about it, and she couldn’t take him as many of the places she goes as I can, and he was pretty sure that if he left the door yard with her he might miss my return, so he didn’t have any long walks; still, all in all it was much better for him than a kennel, and there was no room for him at Julie’s during that period.
The only problem came one day when there were workmen coming and going from the house and we decided to leave Chico in my bedroom with the door shut so he wouldn’t get in their way or get out of the house on their watch and refuse to go back in.
Apparently, he got a little nervous:
The only damage I can find is to the laces of these brand new sneakers that were sitting on top of a box in the bedroom.
And me, I was innocently having fun in Hawai’i.
On Maui, where there are tropical fruits and flowers,
and strange plants like this sea grape,
and rainbows.
We saw a lot of them and mostly I just said “Ooohhhh,” but this one I image-captured.
I was already taking a trip to California and one of my long-time friends was on Maui, preparing his parents’ retirement home for sale so he can settle the estate, and he invited me to come for a visit since I was halfway there already once I got to the Bay Area. So I went.
We divided our time between cleaning out closets and sorting papers, and going for drives around the island. We saw some nice places and ate some crazy roadside food. Japanese influenced snacks from small markets; passion fruit jam, syrup, juice, butter, and more from roadside farm stands and the farmer’s market; we drank the water out of young coconuts and ate the soft “spoon meat” – the undeveloped flesh; we had a durian, we saw jackfruit growing,
almost right out of the trunk of the tree!
The water is an unbelievable color.
Volcanic valleys are steep and deep.
We drove around the west side of the island one day.
Facing west,
and here looking east from the same spot.
Another day, we drove around the west side of the island. We stopped at a botanical garden on the way to Hana. This is the bark of the painted gum,
at a distance,
and up close.
And there were these, and may other, tropical flowers.
We went to the I’ao Valley, site of a famous battle between different Hawai’ian peoples. While the whole site is majestic and powerful, I was enchanted by the water in one of the streams and the way it spilled perfectly over a certain rock. So I made a video because these days one can.
As I said, we ate lots of fun things, from unlikely places, but one of the best meals out (my pal Jim is a great cook) was just before I left for the airport. There’s something called TJ’s Warehouse, a Japanese market with everything from housewares to mochi to what the local entertainment rag said was the best bento on the island. The market is housed at a chemical company in an industrial park, they don’t even have their own phone number, and the food was delicious.
Miso-glazed butterfish on cabbage, a shrimp cake, some salty pickles, and rice with a sprinkle of furikake – sesame seeds and seaweed. Oh, my, yum.
Still, home is the best place and life with Chico at my side is fuller than life without him close by, even if a bit less colorful and exotic.
On Stuffies
For the last couple years Chico has had a series of stuffed children’s toys, usually a doggie, to amuse him. They are all called “Stuffie.” He’s quite fond of them, literally loving them to death. Chico sleeps with Stuffie, he licks Stuffie, he tosses Stuffie in the air and then tries to dismember it – eventually he does and a new one comes, and sometimes, he takes Stuffie places with us.
Last week, Stuffie came on our walk.
Like this.
Chico carried Stuffie waaay down the road, and then all the way back home too.
This little video sows him saying that we have gone far enough and it is time to go home again.
It’s interesting to me because he doesn’t do it with any of his other toys. I want it to mean something, but it probably doesn’t, and if I think it does, it’s probably just my brain being too busy. Right?
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Busy
Two weekends without agility competitions, and Chico has been a prisoner of my work on the house, and, sometimes, of the heat. When it’s hot and sticky outside, Annie is a wimp and spends rather too much time hiding in the dark*, cool house. It’s a perfect excuse to spend hours, sigh, looking at lighting fixtures on line.
Weekend before last we spent some time over at the family house on Kezar Lake, and walked up through my woodlot to see what the beavers had been up to. They had been busy. Busy as those proverbial beavers.
For a good 150 yards, the road is soggy-boggy wet.
The dam now goes across the road and the culvert under the road is redundant.
Chico can wade, he likes it. Me, not so much.
So, I engaged a strong young man to chop through the dam and insert some PVC pipe to continuously drain the pond. Or that’s what my forester says will work.
Run-throughs tonight, class on Thursday night, a few runs at an AKC trial this Sunday – that’s the plan for agility this week. Maybe a happy-dog visit to Dr Amanda (Chico is now actively seeking treats from her at class, big progress from a few months ago when the sight of her made him hide behind me), a trip to the coast to pick up a rug I had repaired. That’s what Chico and I will do while the insulation subcontractor’s team does their work. After that, wallboard goes up and the interior spaces will really become spaces. I’ve enjoyed being able to walk through the walls of my house, but imagine being quite happy and relieved to see walls appear. As will my builder I’m sure, we’re rather behind their original schedule. That had me moving in right about now. Not happening. Look for moving madness in September or October.
*In summer, this house gets opened wide, with fans blowing out upstairs and in downstairs at the late-afternoon moment it is cooler outside than in. Then in the morning it’s “lock the doors and bar the windows” time – shut windows and doors, draw shades. It can stay almost 10 degrees cooler than outside if I act at the right moment.
4th of July weekend at Sugar Bush Farm
This going camping at a place where they are having an agility trial is really working for us. I did backpack camping as a girl, and having a car and an air mattress (hey, I actually like the camping pad better, but Chico prefers the air bed because there’s room for both of us on it), and a cooler makes it feel pretty luxurious. The people who tent camp are nice, and relaxed. They share food and advice about dogs and handling and the best way around a Snooker course.
The 4th of July weekend was a big deal. Made my jaw drop when I drove in and saw two big rings and all those tents and cars. A well attended Canine Performance Events (CPE) trial and the USDAA trial Chico and I entered were both taking place. It was a big old barky party for three days.
My tent is behind me. We’re at the far, far end of the whole gig, the USDAA ring is just visible, and there’s a whole ‘nother tent village past there. And to the left of that, down the hill behind the white SUV on the left, is the ring where the CPE trial was held.
Chico and I teamed with Katie Todd and her inconsistent dog Jonah in the PVP tournament. No expectations, no goal besides fun with our dogs on hard courses that contained interesting handling challenges.
We did SO much better than I could have hoped. Chico got a couple of Qs out of the five runs, our team made it into the qualifier group for a brief time over night Saturday into Sunday (to qualify your team score needs to be 75% of the average of the top three teams’ scores); then when both of us were eliminated from both the last two classes, we dropped right back down “below the [cutoff] line.” But here’s the delightful part, instead of ten or fifteen teams (or more at a really big trial), there were only six teams in PVP at this trial so we were in the ribbons.
Katie, and Jonah and Chico with their ribbons. Doesn’t that Jonah have a sweet face?
Me and the pups.
We must be the happiest bunch ever to take last place in something.
Chico and I do so much better when I make sure to keep us in situations where I don’t put pressure on myself. It’s very interesting to me to pay attention to the things about myself that can be improved or changed and to see how those effect Chico. What’s going on in my head transfers so quickly and strongly to the way he feels. There’s some lesson for me here and the only parallel I can find is when parents learn that if they don’t make a fuss when a toddler has a gravity accident, the toddler is much less likely to burst into tears from said fall.
So, I’m not just here to teach Chico things, but he’s here to teach me things too?
52 seconds of great teamwork
On Sunday, Chico and I went to an AKC trial and we were on fire. Chico was confident and happy, Annie was running well, we stayed connected. Our Jumpers run was fast and wildly inaccurate, with numerous off-courses, we earned an elimination, but I told Chico he did a perfect job of running the course we made up.
Our Standard run earned us our first Q at the Excellent level in Standard. We’ve gotten three Qs at Excellent in Jumpers, and have been working at Standard for just about as long, and we finally managed to do the course that the judge designed. It isn’t that we haven’t had fun, and done some really strong work on Standard courses, it’s just that we couldn’t put it all together in one run until this weekend.
Watch and see how happy and confident Chico is on the start line. Maybe because there’s no Annie trying to lead out here. Oh, no. My dog, when on this start line, is facing the peanut gallery. I’m going to engage him and touch him and get him all rilled up and then I am going to take off running with him.
And son of a gun, it worked. Twenty seconds under the standard course time for dogs his size. Clean, qualifying, class-winning. When we run like this, I can see places where my handling can be improved, but for so long life has been about project “happy dog in the ring,” I have made myself satisfied with runs like the Jumpers run where I at least had a dog when I got into the ring. Sometimes lately Chico has been like a bunch of wildflowers clutched in a child’s sweaty palm for an hour or so – wilted. Not on this past Sunday.
Next weekend we’re going to Sugar Bush Farms trying the Team games in USDAA again, this time with a partner who is interested in the freedom to try the risky moves that she wouldn’t do if her teammate was working for Qs. Since I am working first for fast and happy, and after that for accurate, it seems like a match made in heaven. Both the human and the dog that comprise the other half of our team are aardig* and it feels like it is going to be fun. I’m going to not care if we Q**, I am going to get my dog pissed off and rilled up on the start line, and we’re going to do our very best every run. To inspire our devil-may-care antics, we have named our team “We Don’t Give a Flying …” I don’t think, however, that we’re going for matching t-shirts like some teams do.
And I’ll try to do a house project post this week because the house has actually been taking up most of my brain space the last couple or three weeks. Where do the outlets go? How big is the pantry? What tile? What light fittings? What decking material? Will the shingles meet in a basket weave at the corners of the house or do you want them to end at corner boards? What about trim around the windows? They told me it would be one decision for every dollar I am spending, and right now it sure does feel like that.
*Aardig is a Dutch word, hard to translate, but some of the words given as a translation are affable, deft, funny, good-natured, and likable.
**After Sunday’s Jumpers run, I said, “Oh, it’s OK, we’re never going to Q again, my dog had fun and ran well, that’s what matters.” Then, of course, we were on fire and tore up the course in Standard. My brain is a funny place.
Can I Bring the Dog? 