Paytongility 2014
I had no idea this photo was being taken until long after the fact.
It has not been a very good year for us in agility. In an entire year of trialing, Payton has only gotten three Qs. Two are in Novice FAST so they don’t even really count. One Open JWW Q. So many near misses in JWW; most of the time it’s just no weave poles, but if we have weave poles, I get so excited he got his poles I blow it for us, gaining us extra refusals from poor cues or doing something that results in a dropped bar. Standard has just been an overall disaster between the weave poles and contacts.
And yet we train. I sign us up. We go.
And we play.
Everybody loves Payton. Even after a horrible run the peanut gallery always tells me he’s a beautiful dog, he has great structure, he looks amazing. His speed is highly desirable if nothing else is. He loves the game, he is happy, he is excited (yes I know.) Over Halloween a friend who last saw Payton when he was a tiny 14 week old puppy finally got to see him run and came up to me after our run and said “I think you should know, that dog is going to be really good really soon. He’s fast, he’s really incredible. He’s going to be great. He really is.” Many many people who have given me a lot of votes of confidence with him, which helps when we have a bad run and all I want to do is sit down and cry.
But this past weekend is when I actually got the best comment of all.
After a run, which didn’t go as planned, we came back to our crate and Payton was sitting in his chair getting cookies for his stay and whatever else he did that was clever (I always tell him exactly what his cookies are for. One cookie for a stay. One cookie for the weaves. One cookie for that obstacle discrimination. Et cetera.) And the lady crated in front of me said “I really like how you handle your dog.”
Thinking she meant “handle” as in handling on the course, I said “oh, thank you.”
But then she continued.
“He has a lot of drive. And you do a really good job of trying to channel that drive instead of trying to just squash it.”
“Oh,” I said, realizing what she meant. “Well thank you. That actually means a lot, because it honestly doesn’t feel like it.”
“Well, it might not feel like it,” she says, “but I can tell by watching you together. You’re doing a really good job with him. You seem like you really know your dog and you really know your breed. I love watching you with him.”
That is probably the best compliment I have gotten with my dogs. And of all the awesome photos I’ve gotten of Payton doing agility this year, I really do think this one is my favorite.
I would much prefer to be posting brags of his Qs, his ribbons, his placements, his MACH points, how close we are to a championship. Instead we are limping along just trying to get some Open Qs, never mind getting OUT of Open. He is not an easy dog, but he is mine, he’s kinda cute, and I kinda like him. I know in other hands he would be treated an entirely different way. It is a balancing act with him and will probably forever be one. But he is mine and I’m glad he is.
I guess I’ll keep him.
At least until we see how next year goes.
Meanwhile Georgie is over here like HEY GUYS GUESS WHAT I THINK I MIGHT GET A MACH IN A YEAR OR SO
This Is What Happens At Trials
Payton went under the tire today in his standard run – twice. He did this once in Indy too, but at least that time I got him back and he actually jumped the tire. Today he was like NOPE NOT GOING THROUGH IT MUST GO UNDER NOPE NOPE.
On our way to get dinner, we pulled in and I discovered we were next to a Menards Hardware Store.
So what is happening right now? I bought a ten foot piece of irrigation tubing, scissors, and a roll of yellow duct tape, and I made a tire, and we’re practicing it in the hotel room.
I sent a photo to our trainer and she texted me back “Ha! You’re drunk and you made your own tire!”
And I said THAT IS PRECISELY WHAT IS HAPPENING because I’m totally drinking.
The tubing fit in the trunk of my car. I had to get it up and into the hotel room. I went down to get it out of the trunk and OF COURSE there was somebody sitting in their car idling when I went down there. And I’m like “Ahhhhh no, go away, I don’t want anybody to see this because it’s going to look crazy and ridiculous! Go away!” I fiddled around in the trunk for a little bit and they STILL were sitting there. Okay. Look. I know I’m crazy. But I don’t care. So I pulled the ten feet of irrigation tubing out of the trunk of my car and walked right past this person sitting in their car and took it up the stairs of the Red Roof Inn and into my hotel room.
Yep. DEAL WITH IT.
Auggie’s Retirement Video
I keep trying to put things into words and just… can’t. We finished our last run and I walked out laughing and smiling, then I took a breath, it sunk in, and I started to cry. It wasn’t a sobbing ugly cry like I thought it might be. Just tears rolling down my face and a bit of not able to say anything. He is just such a great dog and I love him so much. I know our journey together isn’t over, but this part of the story is, and it hurts a little. This is not how I ever pictured it ending.
I am now looking around to find somewhere he can play flyball, because I really think he would love it. We’re going to get back into getting him on sheep too. His breeder gave him a big kiss yesterday and said “You can still come to my house and play.” I know it’s not over. Stuff will be set up in my yard for the baby dogs and we will play on it. Just because we aren’t competing doesn’t mean he won’t play agility anymore. It just means I’m no longer throwing money at it, and we can just… have 100% fun without the pressure of trying to “fix” issues anymore. It’s all about fun from here on out and that’s how it should be.
until we start playing flyball.
Master Auggie
So this is the result of this weekend. Well, not just this weekend. The result of a long time, a lot of work, and more money than I care to even try calculating.
It takes 10 Excellent B Q’s to get Master’s titles. Auggie got his MJP on Friday afternoon and his MXP this morning.
And with that he is more than likely all done. I doubt if we’ll ever get his speed up to where it needs to be to ever get a PACH, so there’s no point in continuing to shovel money at it when he has just as much, if not more, fun playing in the backyard. I’m already entered in another trial and there’s one here locally that I might enter depending on the judge, and I’ll be getting Auggie a pirate ship cake that says BON VOYAGE AUGGIE and we can have him a little party. I may bring him back out of retirement one day if his speed issues ever get resolved and let him play again… but I’m really not counting on anything. I feel like this is it.
I wish I had gotten today’s run on camera. It was so totally an Auggie run. He was a little snot in the rally ring so I was hoping he would be on fire and run fast in agility and he was definitely revved up. We have been having rear cross into tunnel issues but he took off for the tunnel today like nobody’s business. He came wide around a jump and headed for an off course tire and I ended up yelling “Auggie Auggie AUUUUGGIIEEEEE” – and he stopped RIGHT in front of the tire and looked at me and came over to take the dog walk like he was supposed to. He flew through the weaves so fast he slipped but kept in them and tore it up. The triple jump was the last obstacle and he was running so wild I thought he might knock it. He took off and I thought “oh God, he’s not going to clear it.” He clipped the last bar. It went CLANG…
but it didn’t fall.
There were people outside the ring watching and they all let out a “WHEW” when the bar didn’t fall. I looked up and mocked wiping sweat off my face, hahaha. One of the agility people I know was scribing and she yelled “Boy, you had to work for that one, didn’t you?!”
It didn’t even occur to me until we were out of the ring that that was it, that was #10. We were done. I was just laughing so hard. What a snot.
I really wish I had it on camera because it was just… it felt like a defining run for us, LOL.
I’m so proud of him and even though I’m sad that we will never get a PACH and never get to run a victory lap or anything like that, we have done so much in our time together. At more than one point I thought he was done and I would have to quit, but he never quit on me. After our very first run in agility together, I heard someone outside the ring – and to this day I don’t even know who it was that said it – say “One day, that dog is going to be awesome.”
In some ways that was more of a curse than anything else because I have always felt like I was giving up on him whenever things happened. Dropping him to preferred felt like I was giving up on him, because one day that dog is going to be awesome. Even this sort of feels like I am giving up on him, because one day that dog is going to be awesome.
But the reality is that “one day” is today, yesterday, last Tuesday, tomorrow, next Wednesday – every single day since the very first day I brought Auggie home and every single day until our time together on this earth has ended. It doesn’t matter if Auggie will never have letters before his name. It wouldn’t matter if he never had any letters on his name at all.
My dog IS awesome. And he always has been. He is an amazing dog, and I could not have asked for a better partner in our journey together through this ridiculous game called agility life.
Um… uh-oh!
I entered an agility trial, but I sent my entry in pretty late… with the holidays and all, I kept forgetting. I ended up on the wait list, and then the trial closed, but they were keeping a post-closing wait list. I didn’t specifically ask to be on the post-close wait list, so I figured I just didn’t get in and kind of forgot about it.
Well, I just got an e-mail – and we ARE in. OMG. It’s not this coming weekend, but the next one. I don’t even have a hotel booked. I need to find somebody to cover the football game at work if I’m going. OMG OMG OMG. And besides one day last week when we had a really nice warm-up and everything melted and thawed, I haven’t hardly done ANYTHING agility-wise with Auggie.
$&@*%)@%@**@)(@)$@!!!!
(In all seriousness though, I’m EXCITED that we can go trial again. And I asked Auggie if he wanted to “go agility” and he flipped out.)
It’s real now…
I just filled out some entry forms putting Auggie into Novice Preferred.
I’m not really sure how I feel, but I just don’t feel very good right now. I know this is the right thing to do but I have a serious case of the bummers all of a sudden. I guess part of it is the feeling of starting over back in Novice… the other part is still the tiny niggling in the back of my head, no matter how silly it might have been to hope for with my first ever agility dog, is the giving up on the MACH dream.
I’ll get over it. I’m also feeling excited to get back out there and hopefully have Auggie enjoying agility again. I’m sure once we have a nice run things will feel differently.
It just doesn’t feel so great right now.
Taking a break
Today was a really not-great agility day. It is far better than my worst agility day ever, when I spent half the day in tears, but it wasn’t that great.
Auggie did fantastic, he really did. The problems we had weren’t his fault – they weren’t even really mine.
But his course times were horrible. Ridiculously slow. We finished JWW and my mom said “What time did he have to beat?? He got 60.”
“SIXTY? He had to beat Forty-FOUR.”
Honestly, he was practically walking the courses. I do think it was mostly the matting inside the club (we are indoors – this is only our second indoor trial ever) because he went into a tunnel, and when I saw him coming out the other end he was running like a rocket. He was up on the side of the tunnel he was coming through it so fast. But once he hit the mats again, he was like “oh.” and the switch turned back off.
I sent a very very long e-mail to J because she asked me to e-mail her and tell me how today went. I told her everything that happened and all the possibilities, what I thought went wrong, and what I was wondering and afraid of… that is, that Auggie is no longer enjoying agility. And after some feedback from other agility folks, I asked her if she thought we should maybe take a break or something… just for a while.
Her response is that we have plenty of other things to play in, maybe we will switch to herding for a while… and she thinks we should start running him in preferred. That will drop his jump height down back to where it should be and also give him more time in the SCTs.
And now I agree. In May, when the judge measured us high, I cried all the way home. I didn’t want to drop my dog to preferred. I felt like it was giving up on him. I wanted him to run regular agility. I wanted to MACH him! I knew he could do it, because he has – he got his NAJ, he got that running 16, so he CAN do it! I decided that as long as I still felt that way, dropping him to preferred wasn’t a good idea. I knew that, if it ever became the right thing to do, I would know it, and I wouldn’t feel that hesitation anymore.
Today I no longer have that hesitation… today I know that dropping him into preferred is the right thing to do. I am still very sad at the idea of giving up on MACH Auggie… but, as J reminded me, he is my FIRST agility dog. And he has so many things against him right now.
Sometimes I’m gonna have to lose.
We could still get a PAX. We could still go to nationals (they allow Preferred dogs to run at nationals since last year.) Same goals… just different. This will drop his jump height back down and give us more time if he doesn’t rev up. If he DOES rev up… or if we CAN fix the jump card issue… we can always make the decision later to move him back out of preferred and pick up right where we left off.
In the meantime… looks like for our next trial, we are going to be starting totally fresh in novice. Chasing a NAP and NJP now. Well, I guess when I sat at today’s trial thinking “Golly, I wish I were in Novice Jumpers again! That course looks so EASY!” little did I know.
Agility Update
The weather has gotten a little better, and last week we managed to get out to J’s house twice and work outside – practice we desperately needed since our first trial is coming up in a few weeks here.
First, the jumping is going pretty well. His confidence is pretty good and he was taking the 12 inch jumps outside nicely, better judging his take off points. This week in our jumping program we are entering the Problem Solving phase, which may prove pretty challenging. I’m nervous about it, because I don’t want to really shake Auggie’s confidence right before a trial, but I feel like we need to just keep pushing forward and hope for the best. What else can we do?
There will be a VMO present at our trial at the end of this month, and I’m desperately hoping Auggie is thinking short that day… nothing to do but hope for the best.
Second, we got to put the target on the full height a-frame for the first time and it went SPLENDID. He really gets the idea of driving to the bottom now rather than hopping off halfway down. I’m hoping we continue to have success with that in the weeks that come and his bad habits don’t return.
J informed me that this spring we’ll be focusing on obstacle discrimination when it comes to things like a tunnel under an a-frame or dogwalk. “You’ll see that in open,” she tells me, as though she thinks we’ll soon be competing in open standard…
Let’s just get a SINGLE NA leg first, and then I can start worrying about open standard!
Anyway, I have many many many videos to edit and upload, and I will get on that soon, but finals are creeping up and I have been working on some large-ish projects that need to be completed… uh… well, Friday. So until I get a chance to really sit down and edit the videos, then post them all on YouTube, then write about it here… you’ll just have to believe me that Auggie did AMAZING on his last day of the series of five oxers!! Nice, even pacing, sailing over the jumps – just gorgeous!
Agility Goals
I’m revising our agility goals.
1) Work with Auggie so he becomes a smart jumper. Jane Simmons-Moake briefly talks about using a ground bar to help flat jumpers learn how to adjust their takeoff. Auggie stutter-steps up to the bar almost as much as he jumps flat, so I’m not positive if that method will work. Instead, I ordered myself a copy of Suzanne Clothier’s book “The Clothier Natural Jumping Method.” Once the snow melts (SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER) I’ll be outside with Auggie working my way through her book. I think I have enough room if I run the entire length of the back fence to set up a jump chute, and I think I have enough jumps. If not, well – I’ve got some more PVC layin’ around here, and it’s like $5 to make a brand new jump even if I had to go get all-new pipe and fittings.
2) Target training. I started this last week when I was home sick from work one day. Funny enough, I had basically lost my voice, so I trained the entire thing essentially mute. I took out one of those little plastic can covers, held it, and got Auggie to paw it. Moved it down to the floor – reward for paw touch. Moved it away from me, reward for a “go touch.” This weekend I purchased one of the big puppy Kong frisbees to use as a bigger target, because when he would get a distance away from me I had trouble seeing if he actually got his paw on the little can cover.
So far this is working out great. He’ll go touch with no problems. I’m starting to use it on other things, like putting it up on the steps and having him get up on something to touch it. I have a big flat plank that I bought to make into a teeter and am currently running him across that and having him 2o2o at the end. It’s got a coating on it that I need to sand down, then paint it with some of that gripping texture stuff I used on my mini a-frame before I can start doing any sort of lifting it to simulate a dogwalk. (Believe me, I tried. It was pretty funny because Auggie basically slid straight down it like a slide, with me holding him so he didn’t fall, to 2o2o at the bottom. Yet more proof that this dog trusts me absolutely – he lets me put him on, in effect, a slide.)
Anyway, if I can remember to do so I’ll update here as our training advances. I think I’ll definitely be doing updates when we start the jumping method training, because there are “lessons” to advance through so I should be able to remember to update along with each lesson.
On the plus side, our rear crossing seems to be going wonderfully.
Contact Obstacles
Alternatively, “count your blessings.”
I’ve been sick for over a week at this point and am rather doped up on cold meds, so please forgive anything random, weird, or horribly misspelled in this post.
Contact obstacles have always presented a challenge. Not for Auggie, oh no. For me. Auggie, you see, just loves contact obstacles. He loves jumps too, and tunnels, but there is little else in this world so rewarding to him as charging up an a-frame, the teeter, or the dogwalk. When it comes to the a-frame, there is also little else so rewarding as springing OFF it about halfway down the other side, completely blowing the contact area. This has never been as much of a problem with the dogwalk or the teeter. They are thin enough that he is usually watching his step and moving at just enough speed that his brain can catch up and remind him that there is a behaviour he needs to do to correctly complete this obstacle down at the bottom.
The a-frame, however, is so big and wide, and he gets SUCH a kick out of it, that his brain apparently flies out the window. Have you ever seen those dogs that LEAP over the top of the a-frame like it’s a jump or something? It’s pretty scary, right? Yeah, Auggie likes to do that sometimes. Scares the crap out of me. See, on the a-frame, all he cares about is the “WHEEEEE!” of running up it full speed, hopping over the top, and flying off it as soon as he thinks he can safely land on the ground and less about the “whee” involved with scooting his little butt down to the bottom of the a-frame and doing the obstacle correctly.
Now, I will reiterate here that Auggie is not the best judge of what is safe for him. This is the dog who ate a poisonous amaryllis bulb; the dog who ate a poisonous mushroom with gusto, and then, as I was trying to keep him away from it while I scooped up the remaining mushrooms, tried to gobble the rest as though I had spilled dog treats all over the floor and he was trying to thief them before I could pick them all up. OBVIOUSLY he is no judge of “what is safe for Auggie” and “what can kill Auggie.” Similarly, he is not the best judge of “what is safe for Auggie to leap from” and “what can break Auggie.” This has always been a big pain for me as I’m SURE he is going to hurt himself, or at least will suffer joint pain later in life from the constant shock he MUST be feeling when he jumps off that a-frame completely clear of the 42″ long contact zone.
So it is for two reasons that it is agonizing that Auggie enjoys blowing is a-frame contact. It’s agonizing because we’ve never Q’d in standard because of it and sometimes I think we never will, hahaha. But it’s also terrible to think of him hurting himself.
We had a fun run yesterday, and given Auggie hasn’t been on a full-height a-frame since October or so he was like “OMG YAAAAAY!” and off-courses onto it (it was actually set up right behind the first jump we took, and he broke his sit-stay to go check out the a-frame before we even got started – snot!). Since it was a fun run and we were allowed to re-do things if we wanted, I ended up putting him over it about five times (when it was ACTUALLY time to do it) before he remembered what I was expecting while I was screaming “YOU TOUCH YOU TOUCH YOU TOUCH” at him, and it still was a less than perfect 2o2o. By that I mean I stationed myself right at the bottom of the a-frame and screamed “TOUCH TOUCH” at him and he pretty much crashed into me because I was body-blocking him. *facepalm*
To his credit, in the next course he managed a FAR better 2o2o… that is, I still body-blocked him but he didn’t crash into me, he hit the brakes early enough.
I can hardly call this entirely his fault. He got out there and was like “OMG OMG OMG THIS IS AWESOME” because we’ve been working indoors for ages and don’t have nearly the amount of space the club has, so not as much stuff set up. Not to mention I’ve been sick for a week so we haven’t even been able to play together much. This was the most exciting thing in the world for Auggie and part of why I dragged myself out to the run, despite being sick.
So obviously, training a target command and re-working his contacts are still on our Agility Goals list.
Now, you might remember that I said this could be alternatively titled “count your blessings.” I say that because I know a lot of people who have other real issues with contact obstacles… dogs that won’t go up them, dogs that don’t pick up enough speed to make it over the a-frame, dogs that are fearful on the teeter, dogs that bail on the UPside of the frame, so on and so forth. Besides one time that Auggie got teeter buggies for no apparent reason (and then got OVER his teeter buggies for no apparent reason… go figure) we have never had a problem getting him to take any obstacle at all. He loves them and has never been afraid of them. Yes, this love and sheer joy he gets out of performing them is the same that leads him to blow contacts with gusto – but I think I will still count it a blessing.
Oh yes, and the other major occurance in the fun run… we haven’t worked a heck of a lot on obstacle discrimination, particularly when it comes to the tunnel under the a-frame (or dog walk, even.) Given the choice, Auggie will want to take the contact obstacle 99% of the time. Well, in the second course they placed the tunnel under the a-frame. “Crapmuffins!” I thought. There is no problem getting him up the a-frame when it’s time for that, but getting him to take the TUNNEL rather than the frame is the challenge. There was a horseshoe of jumps set up before we got to the tunnel, and I decided my only hope was if I started to scream “TUNNEL TUNNEL TUNNEL TUNNEL” as SOON as he was in the air over that jump, in a desperate attempt to get him to really hear me and look for the tunnel. I kid you not, while walking the course I fiddled with that multiple times to try and remind myself to frantically start screaming “tunnel” with the proper timing. The other issue was that I wanted to be on the side of the a-frame, to try and physically block him if I had to, so I would need to rear cross. We have come leaps and bounds with our rear crosses into tunnels this winter, which was a big goal for me, but we’re certainly not perfect with them, so it was a toss up if he’d even allow the rear cross.
So let me walk you through what I went through. Auggie comes off the table, goes over jump 1, jump 2, here comes jump 3, okay he’s in the air TUNNEL TUNNEL TUNNEL TUNNEL!!!!
He looked at the tunnel. He saw it. Would he take it? Would he stay in once he realized I was rear crossing him, or go “HEY WAIT!!” and pop back out on me?
He went into the tunnel.
I crossed behind, and while crossing I could see his little butt vanishing away into the tunnel, unphased and undeterred by the fact that I had rear crossed him.
I pumped my fist and hissed “YESSSSSS!” to myself. If I had video I bet it would have looked hilarious, the victory celebrating I was having mid-course as I hustled to the other end of that tunnel.
But if I had dropped dead at that very second, I guarantee you that I would have died the happiest, proudest dog owner in the world.
Which is saying something since all the screaming basically destroyed my voice, and right after the fun run, I immediately went to the doctor to discover I had bronchitis. Whoop whoop!
Agility Practice Photos, starring other pups!
Dragged my Rebel out to J’s house for agility practice. After shooting the whole night, I realized I had it on the wrong setting. Bah! Some of these are just a teeny bit blurry and could have been clearer if I were shooting properly.
But, regardless… pics!
Mom took this one of Auggie on the a-frame. (Obviously, I was handling at the time!)
Kaia, a miniature schnauzer, comes over the a-frame. I LOVE this shot and hate that it’s just slightly blurry!
Up the a-frame she goes!
Neeko, related to Auggie in some way that I can’t recall at the moment!
This is Lucky, a rescue sheltie. A great little guy. Down the a-frame!
Agility Practice
Took Auggie out to his breeder’s house for some agility practice.
Jump, puppy, jump!
Wheeeeee!
His very first time on the dog walk!
He likes it.
On the teeter-totter… he likes this, too.
More dog walk.
Overall, a nice little fun bit of practice. We didn’t do a lot since we were exposing him to a full-height teeter for the first time, and of course the dog walk, but still had some good experiences!
