Auggie attempts to communicate
I decided a while back that I might teach Auggie to speak. Part of me thought this was a terrible idea, for once I taught the dog to bark on cue, he might NEVER STOP. Another part of me thought, because he barks when he’s being bratty and playing, if I could get him to bark on command, I could also basically get him to be bratty on command. (I can hear you out there asking, but WHY would you want your dog to be bratty on command?? Well, the answer is because I’m crazy of course.)
Either way, I decided to just go ahead and do it. Tonight I sat down with the clicker, the dog, the big bucket of treats, and a plan… click any vocalization, no matter how quiet, that might be considered a bark. Whining, whimpering, grunting, wookie-noises, or various other attempts at talking were not to count… only what you might call a bark.
What happened next was so hilarious I had to actually stop and get out the video camera to record it and show people how absolutely ridiculous my dog is. So watch the video… and enjoy.
Agility today – Bloomington, May 29-31st 2010
I am having a hard time putting it into words.
First of all, we had a three day agility trial, Saturday-Monday. On Saturday, Auggie got the last Q for his OJP so I moved him up into Excellent A JWW. It was a surreal feeling to finally be able to move my dog into Excellent. I asked J if she could think of a good reason not to move him up, and she couldn’t think of one, and I couldn’t either… so up he went.
On Sunday, he got his first ever Excellent Q.
Today he also Q’d in Excellent Jumpers, so that’s TWO already down towards him AJP – but that’s not really the highlight of the day.
He had no Q’s in Open Standard all weekend. Saturday he didn’t even really run. He went back to the start twice because I’m 99% sure he thought I threw hot dog down on the ground and he wanted to go back and eat it (he saw me throw his leash down.) So I just pulled him and didn’t run.
Sunday he went past the table and then froze next to it and stood there smelling it for probably 30 seconds. He would NOT get on the table. So finally I passed it by and went on. The buzzer then sounded for max time, so I turned, yelled for him, and made a mad dash for the last obstacle, which happened to be a tire. Auggie took off with me. And it was beautiful. Top speed running and a gorgeous jump through the tire.
He gets a pass for Sunday, because it was REALLY hot all weekend and he tried, but it was too hot – and also because we suspect there was a bitch in heat being run out there and she got on the table, and that’s why all these dogs (including Auggie, of COURSE) kept smelling it obsessively.
But today.
Today, for one thing, I almost put him over the wrong jump. He wasn’t really coming with me, and finally I realized I was asking him to come over the wrong jump. Oops. LOL.
Then he came off the a-frame… and nearly off-coursed to the dog walk. I yelled “Auggie… Auggie… AUGGIE DON’T YOU DARE.” Everybody laughed hysterically (I think even the judge laughed) but he DID come back to me. Then he blew past the table and took his sweet time coming back to me.
So I had been thinking… if he was screwing around, if he knocked a bar, if he was off coursing… I was just going to kick it into high gear, run as fast as I could, and he either kept up or he didn’t. So he was sitting on the table and I was looking at him thinking there’s no way we had a Q going, what with the two delays as well as a refusal at the table, and I thought “Okay you bratface. Now you’re really gonna get it.”
The judge finished the table count and I flung him into the weaves. Through the weaves.
Then I ran.
This is, in theory, a bad thing to do to Auggie, because if I get too far out he panics, thinks he needs to catch up, jumps WAY early, and tends to crash jumps because he’s freaking out trying to catch up. I blew a Q one weekend because I started running fast to the end, and before he even took off I realized what I was doing and what it, in turn, would do to Auggie – and sure enough, he crashed the last jump on the course and I could kick myself for blowing that Q!
But it’s just what I decided to do today. I wasn’t worrying about the Q because he’d already blown it for me.
So we leave the weaves, and Auggie comes over the triple jump. I pretty much expected he’d crash it. Except he didn’t. And then he zips into the chute. And I was yelling for him to come out of the end of the chute and waiting a half-second to help him get over the next jump – his breeder was watching and says he beat me to the jump, he came zipping out of that chute so fast. Next was the dog walk and I am bellowing “WALK IT WALK IT GO GO GO GO GO” and I’m racing him to the end of the dog walk. I beat him to the bottom. He comes down the dog walk and I gave him just enough time to hit his down contact, then I turn, and it’s basically a straight line of three jumps to the finish line… and I’m sprinting it.
And oh my God, here comes Auggie, right with me. Like a bolt of lightning, he is FLYING, and he’s jumping, and it’s awesome.
We didn’t Q.
But he didn’t drop a single bar.
And it was amazing. I keep thinking about it and I want to cry. Auggie used to run like that. The first time we ever ran, I staggered out of the ring with him in my arms and I heard some person say “One day, that dog is going to be awesome.” But he has had so many roadblocks and has taken so many confidence hits that he doesn’t run like that anymore, and I’m left trying to figure out how to restore my dog’s confidence so I can try to regain some of what he used to have. And today, I saw it, right next to me. My little dog broke free and for just a moment he was the dog he used to be. And he was awesome, and I am so proud of him and I don’t CARE that we didn’t Q.
Because now I know that the little dog who will be awesome some day is still MY little Auggie. That dog is still inside of him. I just have to figure out how to unleash it and unleash it all the time.
And today I really, honestly believe it again… that one day, my little dog is going to be awesome.
Here’s the video.
Susan Salo Jumping 1
I haven’t totally abandoned all thought of the Natural Jumping program, but I got both the beginning and advanced jumping DVD’s by Susan Salo for Christmas. So right now I’m learning another method and exploring it. So far I can say that the Natural Jumping program is a very clear regiment of “do this on this day; do this on that day,” and so on and so forth. Susan Salo gives you the tools for your toolbox and you are sort of left to decide which tool you should use when. The disadvantage of this is that somebody who doesn’t know (like me) could easily end up using the screwdriver when they should still be drilling holes.
Obviously there are probably people who would prefer just being given the tools and left to their own devices; personally I liked being able to look at the book and know exactly what to work on with my dog and which point. My plan is to actually try and write up a schedule for myself to try to keep us on track.
Today is the first day I have begun to put into practice training with Susan Salo’s methods (not counting the set-point exercises I’ve been doing since last week and do not have video of.) Today I set up a straight line equal distance grid and worked Auggie through it a few times. It consists of five jumps, set 5′ apart, with the bars at 8″. It went… well… it went I guess.
Here’s video:
Watching these, I think I’m setting him up way too close to the jump. He’s supposed to take one step and then jump… I’m setting him up so close that he’s basically popping out of his sit and over the jump. Ouch. So that is my fault. I’m pretty sure his one-stride on the second and third runs there is a result of that. Not really sure what happened towards the end there where he strides on jump three.
I took a LOT of notes while watching the Beginning Jumping DVD and I need to go back to them to remind myself about troubleshooting and see what I might do here. I think the first thing to do is to drop the bars down to 4″ and work him for a few days at that height… see how he reacts.
Obviously Auggie has major jumping problems and it’s going to take a ton of work to help him one way or another.
I will say that Auggie was REALLY EXCITED to see a jump chute set up again. He kept blowing his sit-stays because he was so super excited to get through these. I don’t know. It’s weird. His confidence isn’t 100% even in the jump chutes but he seems to LOVE jumping. My mom would tell me about times last year when he would go to the back of the yard where I set up the jump chutes and he’d pace around crying and whining at her, because he wanted her to set up the chute so he could go work it.
The Journey
I was poking around on YouTube and stumbled across this video again, and I thought I should share it.
This video makes me cry every time I watch it. Sort of ridiculously so, but I am a big baby who sometimes cries just watching commercials on TV, so it’s okay.
Funny enough, about an hour ago I was cleaning up the house because family was due to come over. I moved Auggie’s ribbon displays into my bedroom while I cleaned the office (right now they are all framed but just sitting on the floor) and then wasn’t sure if I should move them back into the office. In the office, they’re sitting out in plain sight, and I thought about how some of my family might make remarks about competing with my dog. I sort of didn’t want to deal with the snide comments about what kind of person I must be since we compete and get ribbons and toy prizes and Q’s and titles.
And I thought to myself, I could just tell them, “It doesn’t really matter. Even if we had no ribbons, he would still be Auggie. And at the end of his life I will not think ‘If only we had gotten a few more ribbons!'” I’m sure they would smirk and snidely say “oh of COURSE.” And I could just smile knowingly, because they will never realize the real reward of competing with my dog is not the ribbons we come away with… it’s just that feeling of working with him.
We returned to agility practice this week, doing some indoor work on Tuesday. I do need to get him conditioned to get back into it, since our first trial is March 17th, but I mostly just took the opportunity to play with my dog. And we played and played and played. I did work on a few things, like calling him into or pushing him into a tunnel opening that was “wrong” – that is, not directly facing him – but mostly, the idea was to just have some fun. And boy was it fun. Even more fun was how FAST Auggie was, and how much delight I felt because of how much fun HE was having. It’s not fun at all when he’s not having fun, after all.
I loved it. And I love the game. Not because of the ribbons… but because we get to play the game together.
Natural Jumping Method – Week 10
Week 10 is the beginning of the Problem Solving stage of the jumping program. This stage introduces one stride lengths, bounce distances, long and short strides, and higher verticals and bigger oxers throughout the different weeks. This is where a dog really starts to learn to look ahead and THINK about what is ahead of him rather than just rely on muscle memory to jump the same way every time. During the problem solving weeks, the setup changes each lesson whereas previously all three lessons in a week were the same. However, Clothier doesn’t want you to move on until a dog has basically mastered each lesson. Some dogs might need additional practice rather than just one day/series of six jumps to master a lesson. Auggie needed more practice on lesson 3 in this series… unfortunately, I forgot and moved on to week 11 without really allowing him to master that lesson.
This video shows lesson one, lesson two, and lesson three of week 10. The patterns are different every day and can be found in the book. Week 10 is about teaching one stride lengths, which for Auggie is 45 inches. You’ll see there are still oxers and verticals mixed in, and that jump distances change between two stride lengths and one stride lengths.
As you can see, day three (I should have changed my terminology to lesson three – sorry) is a hot mess more than once. The good news is that Auggie seems to be getting a real kick out of the jumping program anyway, even though the distances between jumps keep changing! And having fun is what it’s all about.
Natural Jumping Method – Week 9
So week 9 is five oxers. No more single bar jumps… every jump in the chute is an oxer.
He does really well navigating smoothly over all five oxers, getting a nice arc over them. Unfortunately he also keeps up with that pattern of stutter-stepping the last jump a majority of the time. Still not sure why he does that. I experimented some with putting a target after the last jump, hoping it might drive him over the jump and remove that stutter-step… didn’t work. So I’m still not sure on the “why” of how he reacts with that final jump.
Return to Natural Jumping
Well, I’m cheating it. I know, I know – I have the book, I have read it, I KNOW it says not to cheat and move any faster than she recommends. And I’m cheating it anyway.
As part of our effort to start over in Preferred, I have made a return to the Clothier Natural Jumping Method. Now that I know Auggie’s height (in preferred, for now, anyway) is 12, and I know that we really need to stick with that, I made a plan of how to continue.
And that is to just move the bars up to 12 for the rest of the method.
I DID back up some. I went to the final week of the rhythm lessons, where you have five regular jumps, evenly spaced, and did that for two days.
So here are your videos!
Jumps 4 and 5 are call throughs rather than run bys. On Jump 6, I cut out the less than spectacular shot of my butt running away from the camera, but I ran him through the chute going away from the camera, then turned him around at the end and ran him back up. He was nice and smooth, both ways!
So far, so good!
Natural Jumping Method – Week 8
For week 8, we move up to four oxers. The pattern is vertical, oxer, oxer, oxer, oxer. Jump heights are still set at 10 inches and distances are still 90 inches for Auggie’s two-stride length per the calculations in the book.
He learns a lot faster in this video than he has in previous weeks. By the last jump in day 1 he’s running smooth and fast – save the last jump, which he still stuttersteps up to. On day 2 he drops a few bars, but notably, during jump 5 he actually doesn’t stutterstep up to the last jump! I have no idea what the difference is, because he goes back to doing it in the next jump and during all of day 3. WEIRD DOG.
Hopefully time will even out the issue here. I’m the kind of person who likes to know the “why” behind stuff though so I’d really like to know WHY he is still stutterstepping the final jump and only the final jump. I may never know, but I would LIKE to know, haha.
Auggie and a sheep
Forgive my baby talk. We were having a really good time outside today, just hangin’ out, bonding… enjoying my day off together. (And DANGIT I’m sunburned.)
This is the sheep. It was $5. It’s about the same size as Auggie.
Hmmm…
Auggie isn’t really impressed by it now. When I first brought it home I set it outside his crate and he just sat there, staring at it until I finally gave in and opened the crate to let him out.
Okay now he’s laughing at me.
And the rest of the pics from today (not all that exciting):
BLEEEARGH
Natural Jumping Method – Week 7
Week 7 is a series of five jumps with three oxers. The pattern is vertical, oxer, oxer, vertical, oxer.
LOTS of stutter-stepping as he tries to navigate this series. About halfway through day 2 he starts to even out as he figures out how to adjust, though during his fifth run he ends up stutterstepping WAY too close up to the bar and has to pop up over it… and if you pause it at just the right moment he’s making a hilarious face as a result. Day 3 goes pretty well, but I notice that he’s consistently stutterstepping up the last bar. I’m not really sure why that is – if it’s a matter of him not seeing another obstacle beyond the final jump, so he makes some kind of weird adjustment for some reason? I honestly can’t figure out why he would do this. It’s interesting, anyway.
Natural Jumping Method – Week 6
In week 6, you add another oxer. The pattern is jump, jump, oxer, jump, oxer. Since I had the pattern as jump, jump, oxer, jump, jump during week 5, I simple added my second oxer to the end of the chute. Hopefully that means my pattern during week 5 was correct!
Hey, check it out! My new fencing is up!
Let me explain exactly what is occurring during day one – the jumps are secondary to the other lesson that is going on here. Earlier that day, I learned some bad news and ended up having an anxiety attack (in the middle of work, to boot!) I came home that evening practically in pieces, stressed out, not sure how to deal with the situation I’d been handed.
I didn’t think about this when we went out to do our jumps.
Auggie completely and totally picked up on me being an emotional mess, and did not want to disconnect and go jump out away from me. I had to make a change in my emotional state to get him to go ahead (it helped that it was pretty funny that he pulled off the jumps like that to come back to me…) Clothier has you do two sets of three jumps with a fifteen minute break in the middle, so after the first three jumps and out break, I basically had to pull myself together and knock it off, or it was going to affect my dog and his performance.
This video really shows something about the relationship we have with our dogs, and how they can pick up on things and it changes their demeanor, their performance. Imagine if this were at an agility trial and we were working on a full course instead of just through a jump chute… he would NOT have been a happy Auggie if I were trying to put any kind of distance between us!
I ran out of SD card space on day 3 again so another clip is missing. During day 2 and 3, we have what looks like a serious setback here, because Auggie’s back to stutterstepping – a LOT. But at this point in my working relationship with Auggie, I know what’s going on here: the rules have changed so he has to figure it out again, and when the rules change, Auggie decides it’s better to resort to stutterstepping. That’s how we got to this problem in the first place.
I’m running with him or constantly moving in just about all of these runs because I’m watching his footing really closely. If you watch the day 2 video, you can see how his jumping changes even within the one video, within six runs. It’s kind of impressive, but again, I’m really hoping this is just a part of the learning process rather than being something where he’s not going to actually have confidence when it actually comes to an agility course where all you have is one shot to get it right. This is only week 6, we still have lots to learn, so no sense worrying about it yet.
(Oh yeah, and check out all my newly striped jumps in the day 3 video! I spent all Saturday afternoon with several rolls of multi-coloured tape, striping my standards and jump bars.)
Week 7 is three oxers. Ai yi!
Naturally Jumping Method – Week 5
Week 5 is the first week with oxers. An oxer is as wide as it is tall – in Auggie’s case, since we are still using 10 inch jump heights, this means I have two 10 inch jumps that span 10 inches. The book doesn’t tell you where to put the first oxer, so I guessed and put it as the third jump. All of the jumps are still spaced 90 inches apart; in this instance, jump 2 is 90 inches to the first bar for jump 3, there’s the 10 inch spacing between jump 3’s bars, and then from the second bar of jump 3 to jump 4 it’s another 90 inches. For the oxer stage of the program, that 90 inch spacing will stay constant.
It’s a bit hard for him to nagivate that oxer at first. I started putting our broad jump/spread jump word to it (“big jump”) after the first crash into it and he did better after that. This might be cheating because it requires me to be there cueing him to adjust for a larger jump, so he’s not really learning to look at the jump and just adjust on his own. But it makes sense for agility to me – competitors I know all use a word like “big jump” or “go big” for spread jumps, doubles, and triples to cue the dog “There’s a longer than usual jump coming up – adjust!”
During the second day, he crashes into the oxer the first time, but on jumps 2-6 he doesn’t make the same mistake again.
I don’t have day 3 videos because I screwed up with the camera. As the video says, the day went pretty much the same as the other two videos here, though.
Naturally Jumping Method – Week 4
Week 4 went pretty good! Moving the jump heights up to 10 inches didn’t seem to throw Auggie off much at all, so I’m glad. All of the jumps are still set at 90 inches apart.
During day 1, I ran with him on all of the jumps. Every now and then he does knock a bar… but Clothier says not to worry about dropped bars. She says it is a natural part of the process of re-learning how to jump and that every time they knock a bar it helps them think stuff over. I’m not sure why I don’t have all 6 jumps recorded – I must have had another issue with my memory card.
Day 2 was REALLY windy – apologies for my camera wrist strap blowing into the shot during one jump! I was worried the wind might throw Auggie off a little, but he did fine.
For day three… there is a reason I only have five jumps shown here and it’s not a memory card problem. But I’ll talk about the video itself first! My mom was operating the camera and she made a few observations. Auggie still stutter-steps up to the very first jump before he gets into the rhythm of the last four jumps. The first jump is the bar he usually knocks, as well – probably because of the inefficient jumping.
I tried a few other things with these jumps, including sending him ahead (wasn’t sure if he’d do that, but he did!) and standing right at the end to call him through. Usually when I call him through I’m standing back several feet and sometimes even run backwards as he approaches to build up his drive, so that was a little different for him – but he’s pretty much unphased by it, which is great!
Another thing I’ve been noticing is that he hugs the standard pretty tight. Clothier wants the dogs to run and jump in the middle of the jump, but because Auggie has done agility training for so long he has learned how to hug the standards and try to make things a little more efficient when it comes to turning, crossing, and so on. When I run with him or am behind him, he always takes the last jump right over the middle because he’s in the process of turning to me – if I’m right ahead of him, he doesn’t make that change and stays to the side, hugging the standard. I’m not exactly sure if I should be concerned with this or not. My instinct is to not be worried about it…
NOW… why there are only five jumps shown in the third day. My mom was working the camera for me that day because it was raining – just a light drizzle, but still raining, so I asked her if she would come out and stand over the camera with an umbrella so my camera wouldn’t get wet.
Right before we did our sixth jump, it started POURING down rain. I’m standing there going “Oh holy crap – hurry Auggie, hurry, go through the jumps!” I’m flailing around with training treats in my hand, trying to get him back into the channel to run through the chute, and for a split second Auggie stands there, tries to blink the rain out of his eyes… gives me a Look, and proceeds to run back to the house – leaving me standing out in the pouring (did I mention it was COLD RAIN?!) rain, yelling “YOU GET BACK HERE YOU LITTLE BRAT AND DO THOSE JUMPS!!!”
Thus, there are only five jumps in the video… because Auggie was standing up on the deck wanting to go inside and refused to come out and jump one last time.
Here, have a picture of my dog, after I came in and toweled off my hair and had to change my clothes because I was soaked through.
Look how proud he is of himself. Brat brat brat BRAT! He later asked to go outside, and when I opened the door and informed him it was still raining, he proceeded to go out in the still pouring rain and prance around going “La la la, I’m playing in the rain, la la la~” BRAAAAAAT!
Oh yeah – I bought a ton of PVC and spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon in the garage, listening to it thunderstorm outside and cutting pipes down. The two jumps at the beginning are my “Junior AKC” jumps from Toys R Us, and are now four feet wide, so they match the rest of my jumps (finally!) and I am now all set to add additional bar jumps to create an oxer for the coming weeks of the jumping series. I need to break out my coloured tape and start striping stuff again!
Sadly, it is quite cold again today. The beautiful spring weather has been replaced by… well, icky spring weather.
Naturally Jumping Method – Week 3
We’re into week 3 now, which leaves the jump heights the same, so we’re still at 8 inch jump heights.
He does VERY well the first day! Jump 5 is gorgeous! I’m starting to see real improvement. During day 2, I realized I forgot to put my memory card in, so I didn’t catch every jump we did. I also decided to try running with him to see what that did… I’m running funny because I’m in my snow boots and they aren’t exactly the best thing to run in, so it seemed to throw him off just slightly at the beginning. Then he kind of decided to ignore me and focus on the jump, and he did a lot better! During day 3, I started just running with him to watch his strides more than really running to run with him, so I’m getting a really good look at just how his strides are. Runs 5 and 6 are really great!
During Week 4, we will move the jump heights up. My jump cups for the two jumps I built (the final two you see in the chute) only go every two inches, so I’m going to have to move up to 10 inches instead of gradually moving to 9, then 10… I hope it’s not going to throw things off too much.
Next week is also the final week in our 8-week long agility classes, and I think I will stop for just a bit… give Auggie a few weeks to work on his jumping and nothing else. Once he starts to improve and the weather warms up, we’ll pick up again, probably going to private lessons back out at his breeder’s place! Gotta work on those contacts, too.
Natural Jumping Method – Round 1
I meant to start last week but things kept coming up. So as of yesterday we are in week 2. Week 1 is getting dogs used to jumps/jumping multiple jumps; Clothier gives people who have dogs used to that sort of thing, IE flyball, permission to go straight to week 2. We don’t do flyball but Auggie IS used to jumping a ton of jumps in a row, so I went ahead and skipped to week 2.
Please forgive my very ghetto jump chute… I am in the process of trying to decide on some kind of fencing to build the other side, and until then I’m using my two ex-pens and the plastic playpen I’ve had since Auggie was a wee puppy. Also please forgive some of the camera angles… I know it’s hard to see a lot of the jumps. I was still trying to figure out the best way to shoot the videos.
Some details: per the measurements and formula in the book, our distance between jumps is 90 inches. I had a lot of trouble deciding on what height to start working at, and ultimately I decided to start at 10 inches (Auggie normally jumps 12), and if it seemed that was too high to move down to 8. The jump heights were all set at 10 inches during day 1. During day 2, I went ahead and moved the jump heights down to 8 inches after the third jump. They will remain at 8 inches for a while.
During day one, he basically stutter-steps the ENTIRE length of the chute. I apologize for not having all six jumps filmed, but my mom was helping me and by “helping” I mean she was putting her terrible camerawork to use. Only four of the videos she shot were any good, so those are the four jumps I show.
By the sixth jump on day 2, he actually appears to run the length between the jumps (it’s supposed to be two stride lengths) instead of stutter-stepping the entire length between jumps. He’s still not taking normal stride-lengths; he still stutter-stepped just about the whole length of the chute. But he is smoothing out a little.
Day 3 gives us some better results and he really begins to smooth out more. There were multiple times that I could count the two strides between jumps. Day three was encouraging to start seeing progress already!
Trial #2, Day 2
Our haul from today…
Wait a second!! Are you SURE you saw that right?? Maybe you should look closer.
I am now the proud owner of Sentinel’s The Flash NAJ CGC. That’s right… we got our novice jumpers title this weekend!! And all three of his qualifying scores – we got running 16! Snazzy!
Today’s runs:
Standard run!
He got buggy on the table and that’s what screwed us, but J is almost positive he just didn’t “see” the table as a table. She thinks he saw it like a jump, since it’s so thin and the walls around it are plain white, not to mention the top is pale purple. So we got 1 table fault (two points) and a refusal for that, but it was the time more than anything else that really put us over. I then failed to pull him in enough to get him a straight shot into the tunnel, so he didn’t go into that right away – another refusal! Also, notice that he doesn’t come OUT of the tunnel. I notice he’s not coming, I can’t see the tunnel moving – where is Auggie? I lean over and look into the tunnel… and he’s standing there at the bend, nose to the ground, sniffing something interesting! He sees me, goes “Oh – HI!” and comes running out. What a goofball!
Regardless of the NQ, I watched this a billion times because of how wonderful his weaves are!
JWW – the run that got us our title!
Would have been clean, but he changed my plan on me! I was going to front cross before that blue tunnel, but when he spotted the tunnel he suddenly sped up so I couldn’t get in front. I KNEW he would hate me trying to rear cross him into the tunnel, and sure enough, when he got to the tunnel entrance and I started to try and cross, he suddenly hit the brakes. Refusal! The time it took for me to back him up and put him into the tunnel put us over time. You can’t see them as well here, but he did flawless weaves again here… so beautiful.
Anyway, I came around that last jump and everybody was clapping and going “THAT WAS GREAT!” and the VMO says to me “That was a Q!!” and my mom goes “YOU DID IT” and J goes “YOU DID IT!”
And I say, because I saw the time on the clock as I picked Auggie up at the exit, “But we went over time.”
“It’s okay,” J says. “You’re allowed time faults in Novice.”
I stare at her.
“You get a point off for every second over time, but you weren’t over by that much, even with the refusal. You did it.”
I stare.
“YOU DID IT.”
“Wh…??”
Seriously… it didn’t sink in. It didn’t sink in until I looked at the scores posted and saw, yes, he really did Q. And then I stammered out to the trial secretary that we get a new title ribbon. And even now…
we’re in Open. My dog can run in Open.
I’m in shock. Seriously.
Trial #2, Day 1
His prize, a “Q” cookie for qualifying, and his 1st place & qualifying score ribbons.
These are for JWW – no Q in standard (again!) Not really his fault, though!
I couldn’t get him to relax enough to measure under 14 inches – he was 14 3/8ths (an improvement from 15.5 like he measured last trial!) So we ran 16 instead of 12 again. He didn’t make it all the way over the broad jump, I’m not sure if he misjudged the length of the jump or if I just didn’t give him enough “push” to get him over it. But still… no dropped bars, not a single one, and I JUST managed to call him off an off-course up the a-frame (holy crap did I just!!) Besides his landing on the final section of the broad jump, it was a great run. Not his fastest – we are going to have to retrain contact obstacles, I think – but accuracy > speed, my friends.
JWW was beautiful, even though he missed his first attempt at entry on the weave poles (allowed in novice.) 100 points, and the time was… 39.76 or something? I wrote it down, I do not remember it off the top of my head.
Here’s the video of our Standard run – apologies for my annoying yapping of “AUGGIE AUGGIE HERE HERE AUGGIE HERE!”
Couldn’t be happier, particularly because after they measured him over 14 I honestly was ready to just write the entire day off as a wash. I figured we would totally blow it, because it was indoors and he was in the “wrong” height class… and he had to go and prove me wrong.
Because my awesome Auggie is bad to the bone!
A few agility videos
Took these videos for a friend of mine to show her some things. So now, I share them with the rest of the internets!
Auggie on the weave poles!
And, the far more amazing (trust me, it really is) 2o2o contact on the mini a-frame! This is not at the full incline and, being “mini,” it is not full height, but this is HUGE HUGE HUGE for us.
