Next class of the day on Friday was Standard. We had great start until an off course, which might have been forgiven at this level if Chico hadn’t taken the tire from the wrong side before he took it from the correct side.
Then he wasn’t weaving. I tried twice, and didn’t get correct weave poles and didn’t want to pressure him. Weave poles in competition have been a problem all summer and the last thing I want to do is dwell on them and turn them into something he hates. Chico likes to keep going, and I like to keep that drive.
I was just checking this blog’s stats, and there are seventy-one folks following the blog.
That is a greater number of people than is in my immediate friends and family, so I’m guessing that some people who don’t know me, or Chico, personally, are reading this.
Thanks! I’m so gratified that my writing and pictures, and Chico’s adventures, are of interest to you. I promise to do my very best to keep you engaged and entertained.
The weekend after my fall, we went to Shelburne, Vermont for an AKC trial. My classmate Alice had told me how nice a facility it was, and how much fun she had there, so I decided to go. The trial is indoors, in a big sports hall with a nice footing. There’s plenty of room for dog crates, so we could be inside in the shade, and Alice and Donna invited us to crate near them, so it was quite cozy.
We had no qualifying runs, all weekend, but the hosting club ran a special raffle that you enter by dropping your score sheet from an NQ run into a box. I didn’t win anything, but it’s a nice gesture.
On Friday, we had three runs, Time to Beat, Jumpers, and Standard. Here’s the Time to Beat run:
Off course several times, but he did great on his weave poles, which have presented a challenge in competition (though not at home, of course), and he made contact with the yellow zone on the A-Frame, also a problem in competition because we get going too fast and he launches off as soon as the ground looks close. So, I’m quite pleased with this.
Note: I seem not to have scheduled this to post, you ought to have seen it before you saw me fall.
In the middle of last month, Chico and I went to All Dogs Gym, in Manchester, NH, for a USDAA agility trial organized by BARK. We had two runs, a qualifying run in Gamblers and an NQ in Standard.
Gamblers is a game where different obstacles are assigned varying point values. The handler has 25 or 30 seconds to run a course that they make up and that accumulates the required number of points. Then after a buzzer goes off, you have X number of seconds to get your dog to do three or four specified obstacles in the order the judge has predetermined, without the handler crossing a certain line. The “gamble” is handling your dog from a distance.
And here’s the run:
Despite a slightly rocky start, we ended up doing just fine. If you look closely, you can see that my little sports skirt is not the right garment for the job, or doesn’t fit, or something, as I had to hitch it up a couple times during the run. Very distracting.
and I lost the pictures, learning to use my new camera. Sigh.
So, if I’m able, I will paint a picture with words.
Back up the hill, behind my house, are two dwellings that are only used in the summer. In July, Will and Claire and their three kids, and their two dogs, were in residence. For a couple weeks, another family was there as well, with THEIR two dogs. So many people, dogs, and cars up and down the driveway kind of made Chico crazy. One day, just as we were leaving on a walk, he went charging around the corner of the barn ahead of me, barking like a maniac. “Oh, calm down,” I said, “it’s nothing.”
Actually, it wasn’t nothing. It was both families and all the dogs, going for a walk to the farm at the end of the road. That’s just where we were headed.
Will’s a good guy, sensible and calm. Their dog Jenny has Chico’s one of Chico’s same issues – she’s scared of dogs bigger than she, and can go aggressive on them – and Will and I have the same attitude about being willing to try and see what the dogs can do; so Chico and I joined in the walk. It was awesome. Chico, Jenny (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel), Max (Fox Terrier), and Sam (German Shepherd), and a little 15 year old Cocker who got carried half way, all went for about a one mile walk with no issues or conflicts. No baring of Chico’s teeth. No guarding of “my puddle” or acting like he owned the whole road.
I attribute the success to calm humans, lots of room, continued forward motion, and Chico’s developing social skills.
Feeling confident after our qualifying run, we headed into the Standard class.
Things didn’t go quite as well.
I’m still not quite sure what caused me to take such a tumble, I was running as hard as I could and suddenly my leg just didn’t support me and I went down. But nothing was broken, and we finished the run, I could walk off the course, and I was able to compete again the following weekend.
OK, this is pretty boring video, but it shows how far Chico has come. Ben Cook is about 150 feet away from the house, running a high-power weed wacker, and Chico is able to ignore it.
The old Chico, the pre-agility Chico, could never have done that. It’s so gratifying to see him grow and develop self control and confidence.
Chico and I went to Shelburne, Vermont for an AKC agility trial organized by the Green Mountain Golden Retriever Club. We had lots of fun, we had good runs, but we didn’t get Q’s. After my Standard run on Sunday, a very nice man came and asked me why I didn’t repeat obstacle 4 because if I had, I would have had a qualifying run. “Oh,” I said, “I guess I didn’t know that my dog missed number 4.” So, now I’m faced with learning how to look ahead of me so I go the right way while keeping an eye on my dog behind me. Lots of people do it, how hard can it be?
I have, right now, the beginning of our Jumpers run on Friday. Chico misses an obstacle at the start and I’m not looking at him, so I don’t realize it. And this video also shows Chico doing the slowest weave poles I’ve ever seen him do. But he did ’em for me, so I told him he won the class and got him an ice cream.
The other day Chico and I made a whirlwind trip to my cousin Eva’s to meet my new baby cousin Alexa who was in town with family from California. It really was quick, only eighteen hours there, but so rewarding. First of all, babies are magic, they just are. Second of all, in the short time we were there, because Eva is the opposite of me, a total extrovert with a thousand friends and social interactions, Chico had not one, not two, but three chances to interact with other dogs.
Moments after I arrived, we left again to go to dinner at the home of some family friends. There Chico had a chance to interact successfully with two West Highland Terriers and a little maybe terrier/poodle mix named Peso who had been rescued from the street in Mexico, covered with grease and stick-thin. Well, OK, when Chico and Peso were on the screen porch at the end of the evening there was a scuffle. But other than that it was great.
The next morning some neighbors came by for a walk, and there were a couple dogs along too. A Pointer-ish mixed breed, taller than Chico and about twice as heavy, and a good sized Portuguese Water Dog. Everyone was off leash, the other dogs were polite and largely uninterested in Chico, and he was a perfect gentleman.
And THEN, when we got back from the walk and were puttering around the gardens, Dogger showed up. Dogger belongs to one of the workers at Eva’s Garden, and he runs around the place on his own terms.
He’s the right size for Chico, with a square head and a lovely doggie smile.
And he was determined to get Chico to be friends.
He was a social genius, giving Chico plenty of space at first.
Before coming a little closer.
Dogger politely followed Chico around.
After a bit of this, I was ready to go back to the house with the produce I had picked, so we did, with Dogger’s person holding on to him lest he follow.
But in a few minutes, he was at the door of the house, looking for Chico.
So we went back outside for a few minutes. In these pictures, you can see Chico lose his tolerance for Dogger’s friendly attentions. By the end, he’s just starting to curl his lip.
See the way Chico’s upper lip is tightening, making the start of some wrinkles on his nose? He’s a fraction of a second from snarling at Dogger to say “Hey Bud, that’s enough!”
About then Dogger’s person showed to find him, and take him away. She remarked that he was totally uninterested in the two Boxers that are living on the property this summer, but obsessed with Chico.
And he was, because in a few minutes, he was back again, asking if Chico could come out and play:
And here’s a sort of awesome thing about Dogger – he’s not neutered. He’s got all the testosterone, or doggie equivalent, he could have. But we won’t get into the spay/neuter discussion today.
Can I Bring the Dog? 