It’s been warm and humid, or just hot, the last couple days and Chico and I both think the wisest thing is to hide inside in front of the fan during the hottest parts of the day. I might be spending too much time on the internet and not thinking of a new trick to teach (always a great way to occupy a dog), but my wanderings did lead me to this weather-appropriate video:
Last weekend Chico and I went to an AARF-organized USDAA trial in Westford, Massachusetts, and boy did we have fun, and do well. The site is a 4H fairgrounds. Parking is in the shade, with lots of room, and the possibility to camp. We didn’t but we could have. I settled for a Motel 6 about 20 minutes away.
The weather on Saturday was beautiful. I had spent days rehearsing with myself to give Chico’s correct-entry marker (Ja!”) when he went into the weave poles, then turn off my voice and add a smile to my face, do my funny little fake running thing or really run as needed, and leave him the heck alone while he did the poles. And it worked both times I asked him to weave. His poles were slow, and took a second try to enter at all, but he did complete them for me. In Jumpers, there are no poles, but we were not quite awake, I know I wasn’t, and Chico dropped a couple bars. In Gamblers, Chico did the weave poles, and we got the gamble part, but Word Girl here didn’t put together a course in the opening that accumulated enough points to make it a qualifying run. But I was looking for weave poles in competition, and thrilled to get the part where we have to work at a distance, so ribbons-schmibbons.We got a qualifying run in Standard, our third, which puts us into the middle level in all the USDAA games we play.* And we had a Q in Pairs, our first at the middle level, and- I learned Sunday afternoon- the only Q all weekend for our pairs partner. Later in the afternoon, I won TWO prizes in the worker raffle. That’s always so fun for me because, I think, for years I was always thinking, “Oh, I’ll enter the raffle, but I never win anything.” It seems that was a mistaken belief, maybe because never is a VERY long time.
Here’s Chico posing for a picture of our haul.
He’s actually looking at me because I jiggled the treat bag, but in prior exposures he looked pretty awful, so I cheated.
The next day we did pretty well while it was cool, with a qualifying run in Jumpers to start the day. In Pairs our team went over time. In Gamblers, I put together the points in the opening, but missed the gamble. By the time we ran Standard, in retrospect, it was really too hot and humid for either me or Chico to be anywhere but in the shade, so we were again over allowed time, but he gave me his best, including a full set of weave poles, so it was jackpot of treats, a few minutes in the car with the A/C on full blast (I don’t usually do that, but my face was so red it seemed like a good-if-drastic move), and a stop on the way home for ice cream**.
This agility stuff is addictive, and we’re all a bunch of enablers, helping novices enjoy their experiences. USDAA has even added introductory classes, easier and more forgiving than the starters level courses. I watched a number of people who were in their first trial, and at one point a nice run went wrong and the handler just collapsed. Not on the ground, but she went from running tall and smiling, with a body that said “you’re doing great, keep following my directions,” to stopped, with slumped shoulders and a sad face. Before I knew what I was doing, I yelled “Don’t quit on your dog.” And, bless her heart, this “it’s my first trial” handler pulled herself together, smiled, clapped, and started to run again. Of course her dog came right along, happy to be moving again, and they finished nicely. As I blurted out, someone, who might be that novice handler’s teacher, looked at me and said, “Good advice.” Someone appreciated it.
* That’s a new title, a reason for celebration. We’ll be taking cake to our classmates Monday night.
**Permission to rant? It is really hard to find a small portion of ice cream. A half-single, the smallest size they sell where I stopped that evening, was two scoops. Huh?
I’m lucky enough to own a piece of land that is in tree growth. The logging road through the property was recently mowed, so Chico and I went to have a look at the work. The property is right across the street from a boat launch.
A few hundred acres of trees nearby and Chico wants to pee on the sign post. I guess that’s what all the other dogs do…
But ’twas just a momentary break in the action.
The road looks nice, and neither dog nor human needs anylonger to push through ferns and briars. And the work of some beavers is even more apparent.
Those trees are past their knees in water, which is getting closer and closer to the road.
It’s not good for the road to be covered in water.
It does make a nice place for a dog to have a dip…
and watch frogs.
The forester says the pond isn’t deep enough for the beavers to over winter. I don’t know why they want to live on top of the hill; maybe it’s full-up down at lake level. It’s the devil’s own work to get beavers to move on before they are ready, so for now, I guess I’ll just keep an eye on it.
In North Conway, where I often go for errands, dentist appointments and the like, there’s a couple really nice walks. The towns of Conway and North Conway are connected by the Saco River, and the flood plain is declared unsuitable for building, so it is public land, with trails and river access.
One way in is at the edge of the LL Bean parking lot.
That’s the LL Bean parking lot out there past the trees.
So while Bean’s itself is “service dogs only,” they do provide access to this great network of trails. Between two appointments last week, Chico and I stopped for a walk.
Down a little hill…
to flood plain level. One Sumac is starting to turn.
At the bottom of the hill there are a couple choices of path, a loop we’re familiar with and another path we’ve never taken. So, that day, we took it.
It passes a little swampy area.
Chico was, as usual, stoked to be someplace he never smelled before.
So he trotted right along.
Unless there was something to sniff off the trail, then he disappeared for a moment and had to catch up.
Not thrilled to have me in his path taking a picture.
But that made me wonder what the trail looks like to a dog of Chico’s size.
There’s not a lot to see from down here. Acute hearing and smell can tell you a lot more from down here than your eyes can.
One of Chico’s gifts to me has been making me look at familiar things and places with new needs, thus new eyes. Finding this walk made me realize that I had never before looked beyond the parking lot of that store, even in dozens of visits over a number of years. Oh, Chico, what else have you got to show me?
Chico and I went to the Tamworth farmer’s market on Saturday to schmooze and shop.
I was quite taken with a cabbage the cheese man had purchased to take home.
Is that a lovely cabbage or what?
Next we had a stop at the store. We encountered a little pack of local kids, ages about seven to about ten, out on their own, ranging free in our little downtown, with some money to spend at the penny candy counter. A couple of them know Chico and asked if he’d do some tricks for their friends. “Do High Five, do High Five,” said Wesley. So we did. Then the kids wanted a turn doing High Five with Chico. And he was willing to do it with four of them. It’s always big when he’ll interact with kids, it’s always big when he’ll do tricks for someone else. Add the two together and you get about four times the degree of difficulty – Chico is a hero! And of course, I’m so busy managing the kids, supporting the dog, and staying out of the way of other customers, I got no time to take a picture of it. So take my word for it, OK? It really happened.
Quince and Simon live in San Francisco, with their people, Tammy and Elena. All four spend the summer nearby on Squam Lake. All last spring we tried to take a walk together in the Bay Area, and it just never quite happened. Yesterday we finally all made it to the same place at the same time. That place was my house, and we took a nice walk up the road. In one of those small-world stories, Tammy had spent the majority of one year’s school holidays with her close friend at that girl’s family home…which is about a mile up the road from my house.
Simon and Quince, like their people, are moderate in size, gentle in temperament, and happy to go someplace new. Chico knows them, they don’t play rough, he isn’t afraid of them, it was the perfect set up for all to have a good time and we did. As we got going, Chico came around the corner of his barn to find Simon right there sniffing. Chico stopped with such a surprised look that I broke out laughing because I hadn’t quite realized what he’d seen, just seen his reaction. Mercifully, Elena was looking at things from the other side of the barn, knew what had happened, and had the presence of mind to praise Chico for being good. Talk about being with the right people! We walked for about an hour and it was Chico’s usual pattern of being with us, but not really with the other dogs. Which is fine. When we are together and Chico ignores other dogs (instead of worrying about owning me in their presence), he is showing lots of self control, emotional maturity, and confidence. And that is what we’re working towards.
After the walk, we went to lunch at our village store. Dogs go in all the time – including Chico, there are dog cookies behind the counter, but Quince and Simon had never been to a “restaurant” before. When Bill came out from behind the counter to give all the dogs a cookie, you could see them thinking, “Wow, this is a cool place.” We had our lunch on the porch, and while Simon and Quince were confined to quarters with their leashes, I let Chico off. He explored the immediate area, and then came to lie by my side. His being able to wander off into the yard while I sat on the porch was, to me, a sign that his confidence is up.
I wanted a picture of all three dogs to show how much fun we all had.
Pretty nice, huh? OK, it’s not perfectly focused, Chico is ready to leap off the table as soon as I move another inch further from him, and Simon says, no thanks, to up on the table, but this is pretty organized, right?
Well, it took a minute or two to get there.
Simon is under the table, that’s why Elena is laughing, Tammy is explaining to Quince that, yes, she really is being asked to jump up on that table, I’m holding up my palm to Chico as I back away, reminding him to stay.
And here we’ve almost got it, then Simon hears something.
It was very good of the dogs to resist the river, to get so close to each other and far from us, so we let them have a wade before heading off to our respective errands.
I think we’ll be doing this again.
My niece Nell got Chico a trial subscription to something called Bark Box. It arrived today, a 6 x 3 x 12 inch box of dog things.
“Hey, what’s in there?”
“No, the good smell is all the way at the bottom.”
There are treats, a toy, an on-your-belt with a-built-in-dish water bottle – pretty cute idea for a gift.
I just spent three days at Julie’s, taking an instructor course. Chico was with me, though the first thing I learned about teaching agility (or any dog thing of course) is that it isn’t about my dog. Chico spent a lot of the weekend in a crate while we talked in a classroom setting, or worked with practice students.
I learned a LOT. My head is so full of new information that I can’t even process it enough to talk about it yet. I, for the first time, got to handle dogs besides Chico. And not easy dogs. And Chico got two chances to work with someone else. He didn’t think that was a great idea. One of my fellow students could get Chico’s attention, that was on Friday*. By Sunday when another tried, he was so intent on getting back to me that she was afraid for her rotator cuff and we put him back in a crate.
It was such a mentally tiring weekend that I decided to go for a quick ride at the end of the afternoon. Relaxing for me, Chico could run and run and sniff and roll. Wouldn’t you know it, Dakota spooked at another horse approaching through the woods, managing – for the first time in several years of trying** – to unseat me, and even though I had a death grip on the reins, he got away. I think I let go when he started to drag me. Poor Chico had been behind us, so when Dakota spun around and started for home at a gallop, he was chasing Chico.
I was OK, I pulled out my phone to call the barn owner and say the animals were on the way and I was following behind on foot (of course, she was out of state on a road trip and I didn’t have the number for her daughter who was AT the barn, but we managed). I went back, found Chico had put himself in his crate in the car and was fine. I took Dakota, got on him, and went to repeat and finish the ride. I HAD to get him past that spot that day. Chico was a sport, totally game to go again (thank heaven because I was afraid he’d never try a ride again) – I was happy-happy in my attitude and he didn’t seem to be anything but excited to go for a ride. Until we got into the woods and Dakota started to act up again. Chico was standing in the middle of the trail, looking at us quite dubiously, the last time I saw him on that ride. He must have decided, “No way am I going out there again. She clearly has no control over that thing today and I don’t want it to chase me again,” and he went back to the barn. Now what to do? I knew Chico’d just get back in his crate, the car door and crate door were open, so I went on. I had to get off and lead Dakota around the entire perimeter of the field where “the incident” had happened, he stood at the entrance to that field and stared and snorted and trembled and wouldn’t go forward. So, that accomplished, I was excused from any barn chores and sent home for arnica, ibuprofen, and ice. Which did wonders for me. A little stiffness, but not so bad. And when my neighbors saw me with the ice pack and heard the story, they invited me to share their dinner with them. How kind of them, no?
The next ride will be with someone else to make Dakota calmer, and I will have lots and lots of good treats for Chico and we might even take a different route for now. I need to make my dog happy and confident around the horse again.
And take some pictures for you.
* Working with Lynn on Friday was so hard for Chico that he passed out in the car on the way home, exhausted. He was tired in a way I haven’t seen him tired for a couple years. In the early days of learning at Julie’s, after a breakthrough session, he’d sometimes pass out like that, but it’s just been ages since the last time it happened.
** I say that he has been trying to unseat me for years because if there is ONE THING I can count on with this horse, it is that he WILL, at least once during every ride, shy violently at something. Usually something I can see, but not always. Thank goodness I had all those fancy lessons as a kid, my muscle memory for staying in the saddle is pretty darned good. Most of the time.
The fields around my house are being mowed, acres of them, and the warm air coming into my house in the evening smells deliciously of fresh cut hay. It’s such a treat to have open windows this time of year.
Chico and I walked down the hill to the wooded back road into the fields across the road. At the corner I encountered a lovely mushroom.
It looks so clean.
Since this field was just cut, the flowers were still fresh looking.
The freshly cut grass seemed to provide almost endless olfactory entertainment for a canine. Chico spent his time alternating between sniffing,
That’s Chico with his nose buried in the grass.
and running.
It was a great walk, in a place we don’t go often enough, that’s right close by. It’s where one of my favorite Chico pictures was taken, several years back, after an early snow.
The pro photographer at the Cape Cod Kennel Club trial in June made a collage of the images he got of me and Chico. I’m not sure I’ll order it, mostly because Chico doesn’t show up very well against the grass, but it’s kind of a fun shot.
Though it’s a proof at the photog’s site, and may not be there forever, here’s a link to it:
http://jeremykezer.com/agility/2014/2014-06-13-CCKC/20140615/ExJWW_16/source/20140615-comp-0113.htm
Can I Bring the Dog? 