Im home.

I drove home yesterday. It took us an hour longer because there was an accident on the hwy in Virginia Beach and then they opened the bridge for a ship. You have to cross the bridge to go through the tunnel. So that backed things up a lot. It was a long trip home. Also Stephanie wasn't feeling good and didn't talk all the way home. That's very unusual for her. She likes to talk a lot. But we finally got home. It is warm and sunny here, yea! We took the dogs to the park this afternoon. Here are some pictures.

O, yea, Stephanie is feeling better today.

I think Im going to teach a nose touch for her 2o/2o.

Virginia Beach

Monday I drove up to Virginia Beach to watch my sister's kids while my sister and her husband went to Las Vegas. Its about a 400 mile drive, so not to bad. Yesterday the weather was sunny and warm. Today its cloudy and cold. Stephanie, my daughter, came with me. We are on Spring Break, my sister's kids are not. We did manage to walk the beach even with it being cold. Then we went to this pet supply place that I like. Its called "Cares-a-lot". I actually got their catalog back home first and noticed it had a Virginia Beach address. As you can see from the picture above, I bought some items. Its much cheaper than what I would pay in South Carolina. The bag of Wellness treats cost 10.00 in S.C., here they were 7.00. Three dollars a bag cheaper. Why do you think that is? That's a huge savings. The everlasting treat ball treats were one to two dollars cheaper. The other stuff I haven't bought before so I have no idea if that was a deal. But I felt like a kid in a candy store. WooHoo!

Addicted to agility

How do you know you are addicted to agility?


As soon as you open your eyes at 5 am, how to fix your contacts is going through your head.

AKC trial , 2nd day

This was the jumpers course for today. It seemed really hard to me. I should have just run it like I normally would have but I was worried about her going off course like yesterday. ( sorry the course map is weird and a little blurry, but I was to lazy to scan it in and just to a picture of it. The judge's name is C. Kean) Now also remember that sometimes things look different when you actually walk the course. So I was worried about her after jump 3, that she would take the double in front of her( which would be the back side of #16) To prevent this I was planning a front cross between 3 and 4. It didn't seem that hard when I walked it as long as I was in the correct place doing the cross.(normally I would have just post turned 3 to 4 ) Well here is what happened. I put Miley in the tunnel and the ran to blind cross the tunnel to get out in front of her so that I could make the front cross in time. Well, when she came out of the tunnel , she must have saw me taking off down the line. I'm not sure if she was just trying to speed up or if she was looking at me and not really looking at the triple that was in front of her. But she crashed the triple The person who ran after me, said she took off way to early to clear the jump. And because I was so flustered that she crashed the jump ( she seemed ok, she got up and started running again) that I lost my concentration and was in the wrong place to cross. When I crossed , the jump was right in front of me and I had to jump it. There was nothing I could do. After I got myself back together , the rest of the run was beautiful. I will post the edited run here. I cut out the beginning because I hate seeing it and feel it is all my fault. Someone was wearing a shirt today that said, "great dog, slap the handler". I should have been wearing that. The judge did tell me she probably wouldnt put a triple after the tunnel again. Another dog slammed into the side post of the triple. I watched a lot of the excellent group, which had to same begining, I didnt see any prolbems. So it was my fault.

Someone came and talked to me about my contacts. She said that sometimes when you put pressure on the dog, to try and make them stop, it actually makes them jump the contact. So maybe that is why she jumped even higher up yesterday. When I looked at the standard course for today, it started tire to the dogwalk. I started thinking that I never put pressure on her to stop at home. We practice with me running by. So I thought I would give it a try. My plan was to do just the tire to the dogwalk and then leave the course no matter what happens. If she stopped, have a party. If she doesn't stop, well we are leaving the ring anyway. ( not in a bad way, just run out of the ring. ) When it was our turn, I did just that. Tire to the dogwalk. I didn't feel like I slowed down on the dogwalk. Miley took a huge jump of the dogwalk. So we ran out of the ring. She did go over the A-frame when we left ( oops) . I didn't see what she did. But I was told she had a nice running a-frame. Go figure. It must be me , huh? Karen Holik was at the trial this weekend. She said, I slowed while miley was going over the dogwalk. But after seeing her, she feels Miley still doesn't understand her job. So lots of training.

GCOC trial

Well, we had lots of problems. First ,lets go with the good. She didn't break any start line stays, thought about it, but didn't. She didn't start running her own course. She did get on the table and did the weaves correctly except once when we were off course and she backed a jump which made the entry into the weaves impossible. And at the end of the runs, she came to my side when called. The bad, she jumped her contacts big time. By the end of the day, she took flying leaps off the dog walk.



Novice Standard

So after this run, I decided to work a 2o/2o on the bleachers. We practiced several times during the day, running across and stopping. I had planned to do Novice fast, which had a dogwalk in it.

Our next run was Open JWW. I'm not sure what happened but there was a dummy jump next to the jump she was suppose to take. She took the dummy jump. It looks like she didnt read the cue, and instead of coming with me to the right, she went straight ahead. So then she realized that I was going right and she took the back side of the right jump. But since she took the jump the wrong way, she couldn't get into the weaves right and had to go in at the 2nd pole. I could have fixed it, but I just left it. Then I didn't get my front cross in and had to rear cross. Then she dropped a bar after a rear cross a little later. So you can see things just fell apart.

Open JWW

The last run was Novice fast. I really didn't care about this run except to try and make her do a 2o/2o. I was not successful. She really took a flying leap. Twice. The funny part is we Q ed and took 2nd place with 61 points in 27 seconds. That just struck me as funny.

Novice Fast

I didn't hear the judge say, "nice run" after my dog ran. Hmmm, wonder why? LOL

So what is my plan. I don't know, but I'm not letting her run standard tomorrow. She will just run JWW.

I survived!

Well , I survived the field trip. It was a looong day. Nothing terrible happened. Just one sick kid with vomiting. One thing I'm learning about 6th grades is they over react. I'm not sure why. Ive taken care of all age level kids but Im just not prepared for kids acting this way. On Monday , I get a call over the walkie that a kid is having stomach pain at recess and I need to come get her with a wheel chair. You can hear over the radio the kid screaming bloody murder. So I go out there expecting something bad, and when I get there she is walking around. I still take her to the health room in the wheel chair. I have her lie down, press all over her stomach. Nothing seems wrong. Stomach not tender and its soft and flat. No fever and no vomiting. So I let her rest. Twenty minutes later she says, "I feel better now, I'm going to class". You could have knocked me off my chair. How can you be screaming bloody murder one minute and fine the next. I don't know, but you can if your a 6th grader.

Last night I worked Miley in the back yard. We did some pinwheels and 2o/2o. I was so excited. She nailed her 2o/2o every time. I could just say "touch" and she would jump onto the board in the right place. It was awesome. I could stay behind her and not move and she would drive down the board into the 2o/2o position. I was thinking, By George, I think shes got it". But guess what happened today? Someone took my dog and gave a different one. This one doesn't know the 2o/2o position from Adam. She couldn't do anything that the dog I had yesterday did.

Our trial is tomorrow. I don't have great expectations, especially after tonight. I would even be going, except its my club trial and I have to work all day anyway. So I'm hoping for just some small successes.

Im dreading tomorrow

Tomorrow I have to go on a field trip with the entire school. Over 800 6th graders and 70 staff members and one nurse(me). It just feel over whelming to me. I know that I'm with these people everyday at school but going on a field trip 3 hours away , just feels different. I will be the happiest person in the world when tomorrow is over.