Nationals video coverage

There's going to be live streaming video of the challengers and final round (and hopefully more)this year.
http://www.agilityvision.com/akcnationals09/live-video-streams

and if you're wondering, no we're not going. I kept going back and forth, should we, shouldn't we and in the end I just couldn't justify the trip at this time. Kittie's bar knocking just gets worse and worse all the time. It's getting to the point where I may need to re-evaluate some goals this coming Fall, and consider partial retirement, or possibly moving her to preferred. Jumping her at 4" just isn't real exciting to me though, and I'm struggling with the point of it. She has the points for her MACh 2 but only 1 double Q....and I'm just not sure she's going to be able to rack up the doubles anytime soon. We're still pretty out of sync right now, so I need to give the both us some time to come back together before making any major decisions. Abby on the other hand seems to coming into her own lately. It's funny, she's 1/4 of an inch taller than Kittie, but jumps 4" higher and knocks significantly less bars.

Abby's dance class

Abby and I went to a musical freestyle class on Saturday.....muscial freestyle, also known as dancing with your dog. I love watching it, but I'll admit it's defintely on the fringe of dog sports, anything that involves you, a dog and costumes kind of has to be somewhat on the fringe....don't you think??

We had a lot of fun though. Abby really needed some time just with her mom (although the little monster known as Indy did come along for the ride). It was a lot of heeling, both on the left and right, cute little spins, spins while heeling, lifting each foot on cue, weaving between your legs, backing up in heel position, backing up in front of you and we're getting started on weaving backwards and having the dogs back up around us....it's really good for body awareness and I love teaching all sorts of tricks to the dogs and Abby's always been my little "clickster trickster" dog!

We're going back next month......supposedly with music picked out! Any ideas? Abby needs something quick and peppy.

Happy Birthday Abby!

Abby turned the big 03 yesterday ! What better way to celebrate than with some cupcakes from our favorite bakery.
Really? Cupcakes for me?!!!!!

I have to act civilized, I *am* 3 now. Patiently waiting.....

Cupcake? What cupcake? I can wait all day.

I didn't even notice, there was a cupcake on my paw, really....

Mmmmmm, being 3 sure tastes good.

Everyone had cupcakes. The pugs all had peanutbutter and we had smores.

AX Abby!!

Woohoo!! Abby earned her AX (excellent agility) title this weekend, doing it in style taking 1st place too! She had a great time too, actually beat out some world team contenders...who knew!?

Abby's a tough little cookie to figure out. When she's really there, not too over the top or worried about something in the environment at a trial she's amazing, but it's tough to get and keep her at the right arousal level. So often, she's literally shaking before she can get in the ring. I can always tell when she's way past her ideal arousal level because she stops blinking. I do think she gets worried about the environment around her, especially at trials where it's crowded near the rings, so I had anyone and everyone feed Abby throughout the day on Sunday and I'm working my way through the exercises in "Control Unleashed" and marking her looking at other dogs (calmly of course) it seemed to really help. I also decided to ditch a lead out with her. I'm not sure if that's going to be a permanent change, or just something to play around with, I'm thinking about it and plan to write more about lead outs in the near future. Anway, I'm just thrilled with this little girl!

CLANG, CLANG!!! aaaawwwww. That was the sound of Kittie's runs this weekend. All beautiful, every single one of them would have been 1st place finishes, but every single one had at least one bar down. Ugh, the points we lost this weekend! I'm not sure I'm going to run Kittie anymore at this particular building, the floor is a bit slick and there are big colums in the building and the course is set around those colums, so in just about every course there are jumps, where I disappear from her sight for a split second behind the colums, and every single time the bar came down and then she starts to worry, and she stutter steps and flings herself at the jumps becuase she's really trying to keep the bars up, but doesn't know how to fix it. Poor kid! This building isn't good for her mental health, but I'm not sure if not running her there, if I take Abby to run would be good for her either.

Assistance Cow cow?

Abby and I were chatting last night, mostly talking about how she's *not* going to do this ever again. It scares everyone way too much ! Abby had a suggestion though, maybe she could keep her favorite cow toy, "cow cow" (the toy she goes crazy over, but will kill in mere minutes and then try to eat) with her all the time.....he could be her seizure alert cow, maybe get him his own service cow vest, he could come shopping with her, to the park, agility even fly on airplanes with Abby.

What do you think?

Abby

OK, I'm starting to calm down a bit. Something happened this morning, I'm not sure what.

Abby had been hanging out in our bed this morning while I was showering, getting ready to leave for the day and what not, like she does most mornings. I walked into the bedroom to find her laying on her side on the floor, stiff, eyes huge and filled with terror. Her body was warm and clammy feeling. I picked her up and she stayed in the same position she was in on the floor, her front legs held straight out in front of her. Gradually she started to look a bit more normal, so I placed her on the ground and she took a couple of steps, but everything was completely uncoordinated, each leg was moving on it's own.

It's been about a half an hour and she seems pretty much herself. she's always kind of quiet in the morning, (she's not a morning dog), she had breakfast, sat on my lap a while and is hanging out in the big dog bed with the others right now.

She's had two similar spells, but I chalked them up to extreme over excitement/fear. One was just after a really good agility run. Just as she crossed the finish she stiffened up and her eyes glazed over just a split second and then she was back to normal. I though she either may have had a slight cramp (had her massaged that day) or was just *way* over stimulated. A second time this happened after Kittie attacked her in the park totally out of nowhere. She stiffened up for a second and took a couple of very uncoordinated steps. I carried her for a minute and then she was fine. I thought Kittie may have hurt her or caused her to strain her back or she was just very frightened. I was pretty upset with Kittie and Abby hates when I shout.

I thought she was just very sensitive to fear, excitement etc....she's always been sort of like a little cartoon, every emotional response is way over the top and extremely animated, now I don't know what to do.....

Too much going on lately

So, here's a summary of my week.

August 31: Kittie gets her MACH!!! Finally!! Yippee, happy, happy, happy, me and Kittie dancing around on cloud 9 somewhere. Just the best feeling in the world!!

Abby's one mistake away from clean runs and mega points saga continues by running straight by the chute in an otherwise clean standard run, that just happens to be 22 seconds under time. What happened in JWW you ask? Abby flew through that course, hit a tough weave poles entry, ran the course 17 seconds under time (in EX JWW!!!) but knocked one bar : ( She's only 2 1/2, I just keep repeating that, again, again and again to myself. I am really happy with how she's working, but can we just get a Q, please?!

Sept 1: Kittie Qs in std, with another 1st place, bars down in JWW though.....Abby made one little mistake in std and then ran around like the 2 yr old she is in JWW....oh, well

Sept 2: Trip to the vet to have the weird mass on Kittie's leg checked out, hoping to hear "it's nothing to worry about" but instead was told, "there are some suspicious cells, we should remove it" yikes!! Talk about major highs and lows, Between her MACH and a possible mast cell tumor on her leg, I feel drunk.

Sept 3: Kittie has her surgery, goes well, but I'm told "oh, she has a fractured tooth that we couldn't get out since she was under light sedation, so we'll have to put her under again to remove that" oh, great. (had her teeth cleaned since she was going to be under anyway.

Sept 4: Just trying to return normal, running late as usual when I pull into a clients driveway, turn the key to shut car off and yank key out of ignition, but did this in the wrong order and the key is *out* of the ignition and the car is *still running*....drove it to the mechanics, without a key in it. When most people have car trouble, their car won't start, mine wouldn't stop.

Sept 5: should be packing for a trial, but we're skipping it, since Kittie still has stitches and Abby's not entered. Her incision is in a terrible place and they warned me it could take as little as 7-10 days to heal or as long as a month if it opens up. So far so good!!

Playing the waiting game to find out results for Kittie, it may take up to two weeks. Keep the little Miss MACH in your thoughts please.

Abby's totally awesome agilty weekend

Wow, it's like Abby went and grew up and turned into a real, genuine, pug in a border collie suit agility dog! all in the span of week! She was just great. The only mistakes were mine and she tried her best to cover for me too.

I'll post some video as soon as I get around to downloading it.

How did Kittie do?..........she's still an almost mach dog. Saturday, nothing. Today ran JWW first and she Qd with 2nd place. Standard had some tough spots, but they were no problem.....the little stinker popped out of the weaves!!

I think her mach may be my christmas present, I just hope I don't have to wait until Christmas to get it, you never know though.

Holy Toledo

Sorry, I just had to say it! Went to the Greater Toledo obedience training club's trial last weekend. We had a great time! Met up with Margie and her great young pug, Clancy. There were a total of six pugs running and a baby 15 month old pug who's about to start her agility career.

Kittie ran better than I expected her to, away from home and indoors aren't really her thing, but she Qd in 3 out of 4 runs and got double Q #13! Way to go Kittie. She wasn't running full out, but with one exception she's running so precise that her times are really nice. She knocked two bars this weekend, at least they were both in one run. It was two jumps in a row, in a straight line. I wasn't too far ahead, or pulling up so I think she just took off early and there wasn't much that could have been done. She'll probably always knock bars to some extent, but I feel like I at least understand it better and can help her out in some situations.

Kittie's standard run, I think was a 3rd place

Abby did well too, still dealing with lots of baby dog issues and poor timing on my part, but I'm still really pleased with how she's doing. I have total confidence she'll get there in time. Unlike Kittie, Abby does run full out, but she's not precise at all, so even though when watching it looks like Abby's running so much faster, Kittie ends up with better times. If I could just combine the two of them.....

Abby's standard run, a nice run except she forgot the first jump! and then ran right past the A frame. I admit, I probably didn't cue the A frame much...I'm just not used to needing to specifially tell a dog to take the giant blue and yellow thing right in your path...this is what I mean by "baby dog stuff"

Margie and Clancy are going to be a great team. Clancy is so fast and so happy! Watch out for these two!

World team tryout courses

We had class at the barn last night and Donna set up two courses from world team tryouts, the round 2 large/med. JWW and round 2 small dog JWW. They were really fun! A nice combination of technical spots, but with plenty of areas where you really got to run.

I ran Abby first, she's so funny, she got all the hard stuff but I had the worst time getting her to take....or even see this one jump. We did figure out what was going on though. When she was taking the jump before the one she had trouble with, she was making her calculations to go *straight*, we had to veer to the right and with her bigger stride and commitment point she just couldn't get that jump. Once I got a bit further ahead and turned my hips a bit to the right she was just fine. I love when we can figure these things out!

Next was Kittie, she ran really well. The jump Abby had trouble with wasn't a problem at all for her, she has a shorter stride and can change her line much, much quicker. she had an awful crash at the last jump though, a double. It was pretty much a straight line and typical of her she took off way too early and practically landed on top of the jump. Poor thing, she tries so hard but I just don't think she can properly see to judge the best time to take off.

It's a problem we've been dealing for a while. I have a better understanding of why she does this, and how to help her out, but there's only so much I can do. I have to wait for her to land before turning, which technically is late, but it's helping to keep bars up and can't push for too much speed on straight lines....which is really hard for me, I'm a spaz and I love to run with my dogs, so the idea of occasionally slowing down isn't easy for me!