First leg to Montreal. We’re spending the night with authentic Italian cuisine and to keep it multicultural in honour of the upcoming WAO, we added in a Sapporo beer We’re not flying out to Brussels until 7:45pm tomorrow, so planning on watching the final day of IFCS in Texas for the day (on the computer…no, I’m not flying to Texas for the day . Canada is doing great down there!! The Canadian contingent at WAO should be pumped to keep it going in Belgium
Ninja is the best traveling companion ever! He LOVES being the only one, and he’s done enough travelling with me to know, that fun is on the horizon
Yup, it must be, since USA WTTs just wrapped up today. LOVE watching that event on Agility Vision every year. Great courses and great teams!!!
Zoooommmm. Yup, the past 70 days have felt like 3 weeks! Training has moved outdoors – Hooray! April was spent acclimating people and dogs to running outdoors and adjusting to running on lush, green grass Without a doubt, agility is the BEST outside on the turf under the sun. Our Regionals are around the corner, so April was about getting student’s organized for homework projects while I’m away at the World Agility Open in Belgium!
I am reaaallllyyy looking forward to this event. Lots of runs (we’re slated to run it all: biathlon, pentathlon, games and some team stuff too….how glad is this team with all those runs, that Jennifer Webster and Carol Smorch body workers/chiro extraordinaire will be part of the team for both humans and canines! Ninja is running in the 400 division. I think there is a great turnout this year – about 42 dogs in that height. They can measure up to 16.1 inches and they jump 15 3/4s ! (vs 18″ at FCI the past two years).
We are Montreal bound this Saturday to break up the flight time, and off to Brussels Sunday morning. I’ll be packing the lap top and the video camera and am stoked to do an Expose on the best french fries in the world Wifi in the hotel so hopefully updates of it all will be posted here as the week unfolds.
Coverage of the WAO can be purchased (for $25) here:
Ninja’s final Jumpers fun at a local trial I was judging at. Challenging conditions with feather lite bars (vacuum pipes for built in vacuum systems apparently vs regular pvc!! Dogs with coat really brought these bars down easily AND the ground wasn’t even… this was definitely a Rear Cross course for front wheel drive Front Cross Ninja all great mental mgmt opportunities.
Many have heard the parallels between handling a dog and driving a car. The dog on course is relying on you giving timely communication about the road ahead – exactly like a navigator in a Rally Car. Those folks have to spew out coordinates and road conditions at a blistering speed keeping in mind the driver needs time to process the commands and react to them. Too soon isn’t helpful and too late is obviously fatal.
Even everyday driving scenarios mimic the Handler/Dog relationship on course. You can think of your dog as a driver in a strange city, without a clue where to turn, and relying on your timely delivery of cues/info because you have the map! ….
OR
as an innocent passenger up front who has no clue of the driver’s (that would be you in this case) intentions passing thru an intersection ….straight/left/right??? We’ve all been in those passenger seats when the driver approaches an intersection at a speed implying they are carrying on straight thru and at the last second without a verbal ‘hang on!!’ or a click-click-click of a turn signal, they jam on the brakes and make a sudden turn or lane change. Sometimes you even bump your head because the turn was so sudden and abrupt. How willing are you to climb into a vehicle and travel at hiway speeds with a driver that does this more than once??
So here’s a little Agility Public Service Announcement on ‘How to Use Turn Signals in Agility’….
An article came out recently in the AAC’s On Course magazine. On Course is now an e-publication which is great for saving paper, but I forget to check in on all the e-sources attempting to do the same thing and still reach their readership. Fortunately, this article was brought to my attention and did not just evaporate into the cyberspace around me!
Meet Daphne Tomblin, Agility Handler and great friend who epitomizes what life’s all about at 80. Daphne and I have known each other for about a decade and I’ve had the pleasure and honour of being her compadre and agility instructor for at least 7 of those years I think. As you’ll read below, she has experienced a great deal in her decade + of agility. She’s had lots of highs, more than her fair share of lows and through it all, she keeps on playing, keeps on learning and keeps on laughing. Daphne is what everyone in our fish pond of agility wants to be when they grow up.
Last weekend I had my judge’s hat on and was watching Daphne nail my courses. It made me so proud watching her run Meg around that ring, smoothly navigating it all, run after run. I had flash backs to the devastating news of Meg’s horrific injury a few years ago and was just amazed watching the two of them float along in front of me. Daphne inspires all of us, and if there were a poster child for attitude, courage and dedication in dogs it would definitely be Miss Meg – both icons of agility.
Snazzy new harness arrived last week as part of the WAO uniform The new design is great…more boomerang shaped, I think it fits Ninja better than our original one. He loves his harness. Harness = Agility. He was a bit confused it was just for pictures for the sponsor today! Cookies made up for it.
Trial bag cleaned out, car packed, dogs brushed (well, some of them) …. after 3 months off we hit the road to Vancouver on Fri for a night and a day of trial action. Got in 23 runs with the 4 dogs: that’s enough at one sitting for me – lol!
The first trial of the year, is pretty exciting for the dogs, and pretty humbling for me . A few extra pounds always creep up over winter holidays and my desire to exercise correlates with the diminishing daylight of winter. I get rather sloth like It probably didn’t help the situation by creating a recipe group on Facebook!! Of course, I feel obligated to pretty much try all of the recipes! So this year I got on the scale a week BEFORE the first trial to ambush that whole self loathing thing if I was letting my dogs down due to my extra helpings of banana bread and sticky wings. I started the battle plan to get rid of the 8 pounds that snuck up on me a week BEFORE the trial which helped the mental aspect of having the extra 8 pounds in the first place
Ninja Gold Award of Merit
This year’s first trial was pleasantly different from the last few. I think teaching more thru the winter in a cozy, heated indoor facility helped me stay task oriented. The dimensions are pretty good in the facility for working handling skills, so that’s been our (mine and my students) emphasis for the past 3 months… breaking it down and gettin’ picky. So the mind set going over to the trial was hoping to try out Iceman’s new found Rear Cross confidence and ever-increasing obstacle focus vs handler obsession, Breezy’s awareness of decel in the face of adrenaline, to see if Ninj’s teeter held up over winter and to try and get his last leg to his Gold Award (which we did ) and the biggest goal was to get FedX out to a trial with all that entails and hope it wouldn’t trigger a seizure in the evening. Mission accomplished! He did AWESOME!!!!!
I haven’t posted about FedX, because I had to absorb our situation and research potential paths for a solution. He started having Grand Mal seizures in November at the age of 2 yrs 10 months. To date he has had five. The good news is that NONE have occurred during activity. 80% have been around sleep. I am consulting with a DVM/homeopath and we are treating FedX with natural remedies. The changes I’ve noticed are encouraging that we are on the path to success. These small changes I trust will lead to bigger changes, but it takes time. I am a bit of an impulsive thing so FedX is teaching me how to be more observant, more patient, more aware of what I put in his body and mine, how I maintain his body and mine, and I feel a bit more resilient than I did before all this started. And these tools of observation and patience will certainly help me be a better teammate for my dogs and and a better instructor for my students too
This whole epilepsy thing is interesting to me on lots of levels. The scientist in me wants to know as much of the why/how as I can. It is a horrible disease. It has such a range of impact…from barely noticeable to life threatening. The unknown is scary to all of us, and prior to epilepsy afflicting one of my own, I was scared crapless about it when I saw it affecting those I knew. I take comfort in learning as much as I can by reading about and talking about the success stories of those afflicted with seizures. I think it’s important to remember that every dog is unique. There are many options/paths for treatment. There are MANY variables determining which path is feasible/practical for the owners too. Every dog is unique and what works for one may not work for another.
FedX and I are new to this ‘World of the Wigglies’ as we call it (seizures) but having a great support system has made the difference between freaking out and keeping a grip. I’m so grateful for those friends in my life that have helped guide me in the right direction to resolving this for FedX. I ADORE this dog. He is such a ham, such a snuggler, such a character and a great companion. FedX puts alot of life in perspective. I take nothing for granted. I enjoy every single practice/run I have with him. I want to remember them all…and I am optimistic there WILL be many, many to remember Thank God for video, cuz we all know what MY memory is like….LOL!!
Here’s the Hilites ‘reel’ from the first trial of 2012.
Is this an awesome logo or is THIS an aweseome logo??!!! Designed by Jennifer McCaffrey I think this is gonna be the best uniform ever….Ninja and I are Belgium bound next May as part of Team Canada for the World Agility Open (WAO). I’m really looking forward to competing against dogs not exceeding 16.1″ vs the 17″ ‘giants’ LOL at FCI
Also our jump height is actually a bit less than 16″ … around 15.75″ I think….so finally apples to apples for Ninja in this group of dogs We have a great team, full of fun people and personalities so it should make for a terrific time! Chocolate, French Fries, Beer….the list is growing of things I need to research before May! Guess I should include the judges in that list
When I was in Kentucky at the USDAA World Cynosport Games, I came across a product called Energy Edge. Three simple ingredients: multidextrans (for carbs), whey (for protein) and Vanilla (for flavour). Designed by a veterinarian for her own herding dog, it is specially formulated for Dogs to absorb quickly to keep physical and mental focus sharp throughout a working session or weekend. Well, Ninja seemed like a pretty good candidate, as he’d been on the road about 15 days by that point…straight to KY via France and the FCI World Championships. The KY days were long ones. It was a five day event and on a few of those days he only had one run. He was crated in a very large/loud crating area so I was sure the whole scene was bound to be taking a toll…not to mention the time difference! So I gave him a dose of the Energy Edge about 30 minutes before his jumpers run…..well, I don’t know if it was just a great course for us, or the Energy Edge bone he’d gobbled up a half hour before, but he nailed the course and came 2nd, missing first place by 4/100ths of a second!! When I let him out of his crate he was READY TO ROLL. And I don’t mean hyper, I just mean he was keen – as keen as he usually is day 1 run 1. So I was pretty impressed. I followed the directions and gave him another dose after that run….and I was just as pleased with his energy/mental focus for the last 2 runs of the event.
When I got home, I tested it out on the rest of my crew. They all like it We use it as part of our trial routine, each dog gets a dose after I’ve run all 4, so I only have to prepare it at one time for all four. It is easy to whip up, a 1:1 ratio of powder to water. The dog bones are super convenient too. They’re pretty hard, so not every dog’s cup of tea
To learn more about it, or to try some out, I am now selling it in Canada! You can order it online (paypal)
Finally, we nabbed leg 3 of Advanced Jumpers in AAC !! And it hasn’t been the jumping…it’s been silly stuff like the wrong end of an obvious tunnel TO be taken as the last obstacle….
…then this is what it would look like! Six feet and NONE of them on the ground! Running with a purpose…we had somewhere to ‘be’ … as in ‘Run Nicki Run!!” for a Front cross on the flat – and yes I got there, nearly fell on my face, but I got there AND remained upright :)
My friend/brilliant photographer Vince Maidens got in touch with Jukka Koirakuvat, a photographer at FCI and he was super awesome to forward me 4 pics he took of Ninja & I. Great photos that capture the feeling. It was so colourful this year…the bright pink of the Eukanuba sponsors and lots of bright green turf, set off with a back splash of 36 Nations’ colours….was like a Saturday morning TV cartoon!
First leg to Montreal. We’re spending the night with authentic Italian cuisine and to keep it multicultural in honour of the upcoming WAO, we added in a Sapporo beer 
We’re not flying out to Brussels until 7:45pm tomorrow, so planning on watching the final day of IFCS in Texas for the day (on the computer…no, I’m not flying to Texas for the day 
all great mental mgmt opportunities.
