POSING PUPS

A couple of weeks ago, our dog-walking group was asked to bring all our dogs to the bandshell in Sidney as one of the local choirs wanted to promote an upcoming concert with dogs posing with their soloist. The day before the photo shoot: bright sunshine and relatively warm. The day after the photo shoot: ditto. The day OF the photo-shoot: freezing cold, windy and raining. But...the show must go on, so they we all were, with dogs that were feeling a bit miserably cold and not really in the mood to pose. I'm not sure that the photographer got exactly what it was he wanted, but attached is a cropped version of the photo they intend to use. Abby and Gemma got to be held by the Heather, the soloist. It will be interesting to see the final poster.

The weather today was quite brisk as well. Bright sunshine, but quite nippy. So where were we? In a cold barn, running agility courses. We took frequent treks outside to stand around in the sunshine, so I guess we can't complain too much. It was a "fun trial" put on by the Scallywaggs gang, so a very relaxed day with everyone just having fun with their dogs and enjoying the opportunity to be able to do some on-course training without having to worry about whether a run would qualify or not. All three of the Silkies did well, with each of them improving on something in their repertoire. I've decided to move Abby and Zack up to the "Open" level at the next Scallywaggs official trial. They've pretty much proven their proficiency in most of the different classes at the Novice level, with lots of titles earned at that level. So now it's time to take the big leap forward and see how they do with a few more challenges.

ABBY GETS AGILE

Abby and I spent the weekend in the barn at AVID, taking a seminar with Stacy Goudy. The last time she was here giving a seminar, I audited the sessions. This time, we had a working spot. By the end of our two sessions with her, Abby had really picked up speed, and I was starting to get better at figuring out where it was best to be to give her the tightest lines on her runs. Lots to remember, but it was a great seminar, with just 6 dogs in the group—so if we had to run and re-run and re-run a section (until Stacy broke us of whatever bad habit we were employing at the time), there was plenty of time to do so. Loved her sense of humour, irony and excellent insights. Highly recommend taking part in her seminars the next time she's in town.

Stacy's the one in the Green Bay Packers parka; we kept giving her updated Super Bowl scores off of our IPhones all afternoon.

RETIREMENT, REDUX

Just when I thought that I had successfully eased into retirement with as little fuss as possible, I got surprised at our regular "Dinner and a Movie" potluck with the movie gang at Peni and Jim's on Saturday night. Once we were all happily stuffed with the main courses of the meal, dessert brought an unexpected offering: an enormous chocolate cake! And I DO mean enormous. I'm still working my way through the half of the cake (see below) that was not consumed that night! It was brightly decorated, with a park theme, and with lots of wonderful little do-dads that made it a true delight. There was one decoration that baffled me; I finally decided that it represented my "bucket list"! Thanks to everyone for making Saturday's get-together extra-special, and also particular thanks to Peni and the Horels for starting me down the road to a new obsession.

EASING INTO RETIREMENT

Well, I've now officially completed two weeks of retirement, but I don't think things have appreciably slowed down. It's true what they say. Once you've retired, you wonder how you ever got anything done while you were still in the ranks of those trotting off to work five days a week. Me, I have a few little side jobs that I'm in the process of finishing off, so those are keeping me busy at the computer at least part of each day. The rest of each day is spent doing something with dogs—be it walks, swims, classes, trials, whatever. And then there's just the on-going task of really starting to get to all those home-and-yard jobs that have been piling up over the years since I moved into this house. Yep...I'm gonna be busy!

On the first Saturday after I retired, my co-workers threw a very nice retirement party for me. It was hosted by my old friends Ron and Christine Hamilton, at their house up on Bear Mountain. Thank goodness the weather gods were on our side: no snow or other nasty bits of weather to hamper everyone's journeys up and down the mountain. My friends Frank, Gaileen and Carolyn did a wonderful job of organizing the event, and I think everyone had a pretty good time. Martha and Joe came along to help me celebrate. Below are some pix from the evening's festivities.

Frank presents me with a wonderful framed panel of pictures of all the parks I worked at.

Frank spills the beans about what it was like working with me.

Steve does the "official" stuff, presenting me with my public service certificate.

I cut into a huge retirement cake, at least half of which ended up making a trip to the office the following Monday to feed the huddled masses still slogging away working for the government.

BAD BLOGGER

OK, OK. I've been a BAD BLOGGER. Haven't posted since early November.

Well, now that I'm retired, maybe things will pick up some. To hold the fort until I get something more scintillating to post (unless you want to know that today I made granola, went to Costco, and took Abby to an obedience class), I'm posting a little video, with apologies to those readers from down east who are shivering in the deep freeze. I thought you might like to see what a winter walk with the dogs looks like in January in greater Victoria. ;-)

My apologies also, for the small size of the video -- it was taken on my Iphone.

HAPPY HOWL-A-WEEN!

Another great weekend with the ScallyWaggs crew at their 4th annual Halloween-themed NADAC agility trial (known, of course, as their "Howl-a-ween" trial). The Silkies rocked, with Abby scoring 11 Qs and Zack 8. Even little Miss Gemma got in on the act and pulled in her very first Q ever on Sunday morning. She almost had two of 'em, but was just 69/100ths of a second over the course time on one of her runs on Saturday. She finished off her Sunday runs with a spectacularly awful Tunnelers run, in which she decided after going through a few tunnels that she had had enough and went off galavanting around the ring, finally ending up in front of the in-coming dog, doing barrel-rolls in the dirt, much to the amusement of those watching from the stands. Gemma is certainly entertaining, to say the least. But all in all, a very good weekend for all of them.

Brianna worked her magic on a few pumpkins to really jazz up our crating area. They were the icing on the cake, topping off a bunch of our Halloween decorations from last year's crate-decorating competition. Brianna's artistic talents most certainly gave us the win this year. Our little crating area also boasted a small "bar" to "warm up" our coffees, which was freely shared with anyone else who needed a little extra "umphh" or a "relaxation aid" before venturing out on the agility course. A very pleasant and civilized approach to hanging out in a cold barn at the end of October, for hours on end.

The agility season is winding down for the year. One more AVID trial to go to in a couple of weeks, and then that's it for my little gang for the year. Then we'll see what 2011 holds for them!

The pet-cousins are about to arrive from next door, as Martha and Joe head off on their 10th wedding anniversary Caribbean cruise early tomorrow morning. Martha's pets undoubtedly think of my place as boot camp, but all in all, they seem to settle in quite well after the first day.

ROADSTERS, TAKE 2

Remember I mentioned that I would post some pictures of the Silky gang from the Roadsters agility trial back on the Labour Day weekend, once I got some from the official photographer (Jim Hockley)? Well, they finally arrived today. The Silkies aren't doing anything too spectacular in the pix, but what I get a kick out of some of them is that they show how windy it was that weekend. It may not make a lot of difference to dogs with short hair/fur, but you can see that it creates some wild coiffures for the Silkies! Abby has the definite wind-blown look, while Gemma models the stream-lined wind-tunnel effect.



Meanwhile, Zack shows off some fine form over a jump:

And looks very attentive while he waits through the five-count on the table.

Abby, on the other hand, looks quite serene (even as the wind continues to "ruffle her feathers") as she waits out the count—like the princess she is!

GEMMA'S FIRST NADAC TRIAL

A few pix from Don of the ScallyWaggs crew, from the August "Summer Meltathon". Apparently Gemma thinks you actually have to jump through the hoops!

OCTOBER ALREADY!

Well, this year seems to be just winging by at breakneck speed. September just went zipping by so fast, it's amazing. You would think, since it was such a soggy month this year, that it would have felt like it dragged on for ages, but no -- I guess there was just a lot going on so there was hardly time to think about time slipping by.

Since I've been a bit remiss in updating the blog in September, I guess there's some catching up to do. First off: Abby got her AADC (Advanced Agility Dog of Canada title) at AVID's September trial. That means she now moves up into Masters for her Standard runs. She's still working away on her Advanced games, so it'll be a little while before she's running in Masters in everything. She's also running in the Veteran category now, which gives her a little more time to complete her runs, which is nice. She was consistently running clean but being just a fraction of a second or a second or two over the time allowed. Now she has that wee bit extra breathing room. Nonetheless, we're still working on speeding her up. The latest tactic in her training sessions is using sardines. She ran like a speeding bullet at her Thursday lesson when given this new incentive. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to translate into speed at the ScallyWaggs fun trial this past weekend. I think she was bogged down a bit by the deep sand that we were running in. Or maybe she was just having an off-day.

However, the footing didn't seem to bother Zack, who ran like a speed demon at the fun trial (but not at the AVID trial). If he carries that speed through to next Saturday's runs at the Capital Comets trial, then he just might pull in some Qs. Running him yesterday at the fun trial was like running him a year ago. He just went hell-bent for leather. I was so happy for him. In the intervening year, he's also gotten better at his obstacle performance, so put the two together, and hopefully he'll be back in the groove again.

Gemma is improving week to week. At the AVID trial, I entered her in three runs. In her first run, she finished about 5 obstacles (and visited a couple of ring crew) before exiting the ring. In her second run, she finished about half of the obstacles (and visited the judge). And in her third run, she completed the course -- her only fault being an off-course she incurred by running by the very last jump. She was only two seconds over time (most of that lost navigating the teeter). All very good. At the fun trial, she improved with each run, staying pretty well focused the entire time. She's getting better at ignoring the judge and ring crew and sticking to the business of running the course. She had a very good tunnelers run to finish the day. All in all, she made me very proud on Saturday.

I'm still waiting for some pix to share on the blog...of the August ScallyWaggs trial, and from the September Roadsters trial. Stay tuned!

On the human side of things, I handed in my notification of the date I've chosen as my retirement date. That would be January 18, 2011. Now it's getting real. Wow. Lots of adjustments coming up in my life. I'll be looking for part-time work, of course. I'd go start raving bananas not doing something. But part-time is a much better approach at this point. Plus, some extra cash beyond the pension is needed...to support my dog habit.

UP-ISLAND

We're back from our trip up-island to Courtenay to take part in the Roadsters' agility trial that was held over the Labour Day weekend. Lorri, Peni and I headed out mid-afternoon on Friday, with the van packed to the roof with 6 dogs, 3 people and a whole lot of human and canine paraphenalia. We arrived at the local exhibition grounds and set up our tent so we wouldn't be in a panic to do it all in the morning when we were trying to get everything else done and getting our dogs ready to run.

We were all very proud of our dogs for accomplishing what they did over the weekend. We didn't have many Qs (Abby had 2, Betty and Switch (!) each had one; I don't think Mylo got a Q, but he did get a second place in one of his runs, and he's finally getting the hang of actually putting his butt down when he does the table obstacle. Switch's Jumpers run was a joy to watch. Peni just kept him moving, and at the end, I don't know which of the two was more surprised by their accomplishment!

Abby's Qs came in Advanced Standard (just one more to go before she's into the Masters level!), and in Starters Snooker -- which had been her one remaining Starters level class. With that Q, she got her Starters Snooker title and her Starters Game Dog of Canada (SGDC) title, the latter requiring a certain number of Qs in three games (Jumpers, Snooker, Gamblers) at the Starters level.

Zack got skunked in the Qs, but had some good runs nonetheless. Despite no Qs, he did finish first in three of his runs, so that was his big accomplishment for the weekend. Gemma's big accomplishment? She actually completed TWO runs, no mean feat considering that the rings had no fences around them -- something that pretty much guaranteed that a dog who is still lacking a lot of focus is going to exit the ring at some point in their runs. Gemma's first complete run was her last one on Saturday, an accomplishment made all the more amazing as there were high winds throughout her run, and a jump blew over just as she was about to take it. She kept her cool and her focus and kept on going. Nobody was more surprised than me! Except maybe the judge who had watched her scamper out of the ring on her previous two runs. He was grinning very broadly when we finished. In the two runs she completed, she chalked up two second places; you can bet that I picked up her second-place ribbons for her!

There was an event photographer on hand, so I hopefully will have some pix of the Silkies to post sometime later. But here are a few of Mylo, Betty and Switch in action (you can see more by clicking on the Flickr photostream on the right-hand side of the blog):

Switch heads for the chute.

Betty rounds the corner.

Mylo shows perfect form on the table.

And here are the Silkies, with their booty from the weekend:

Gemma looks amazed at her two second-place ribbons.

Zack rests on his laurels.

Abby is overwhelmed by her ribbon collection from the weekend.

MELT-A-THON POSTSCRIPTS

As everyone gets their score summary from the weekend, I'm able to update the Q-COUNT for our little gang. Pia reports that Swift piled up a nice little purple-and-black stack of ribbons that reflected her 6 qualifying runs. Emma one-upped her sister by chasing down 7 Qs and, if I recall correctly, two titles! Pecos nailed 6 Qs!

JUMPING FOR JOY

I didn't take many pictures or videos this past weekend...things were just too busy! But here are the jumpers runs on Friday evening for our little gang.

EVEN BETTER

Abby is swaggering ever so slightly more since she read the results summary that just arrived from the ScallyWaggs crew. Apparently her Mom (me) forgot to count Abby's Hoopers run from Friday night when she was tallying up the Qs. Abby will have you know that she actually had NINE Qs at the Melt-a-thon.

ABBY THE AGILITY PRINCESS

Well, I still don't think I have the definitive Abby-with-trophy picture, but this appears to be the best I can do at the moment. I tried some indoor shots; those didn't work. So I took her outside and set her and the trophy on top of the storage bin. Still not the best approach, and her fur is so light-coloured that it always throws the metering off in the camera. Not to mention that she needs a good grooming. Nonetheless, here she is in her very blonde, very messy glory, hanging out with her Novice High in Trial award from the ScallyWaggs NADAC Summer Melt-athon agililty trial this past weekend.

Things are a bit topsy-turvy in the back yard, with the new patio cover going up. This was an unexpected occurrence today; the installer phoned at about 7:30 this morning, saying "oh, I meant to call you on Friday, but forgot...but we'll be there in a few minutes to begin the installation." This commotion of course put the dogs into a big frenzy, with Zack eventually having to be taken next door to my sister's place as he got absolutely totally frantic at strangers being in his driveway and his backyard and making a ton of noise. The girls, surprisingly enough, didn't get too disturbed by it, and calmed down as soon as Zack went next door. Poor Zack. He got totally freaked out by the "flying tents" incident at the trial on Saturday, and then today, there's a major (and noisy) invasion of his home turf. What's a boy to do!

OUR P.A.L.

We have a new acronym in our vocabulary: PAL. What does it mean? According to our NADAC agility judge this past weekend, it stands for Personal Assistant for Leashing. And we have a PAL extraordinaire in George, as can be evidenced from the picture above. Whenever we had to walk an agility course prior to running it, we would all hand our dogs' leashes to George to hold, George currently being the odd-man-out in not having a dog running in agility these days. From left to right, the crew is Emma, Betty, Swift, Switch, George, Pecos, Abby, Zack and Gemma.

There were some stellar performances put in by our gang...some pretty impressive Q totals as well as some "personal bests" for a number of the dogs. Zack got motivated (some of the time, anyway) by hot dogs. Who knew??? He chalked up 5 Qs. Pecos "broke out" and Q'ed in a bunch of classes where he hadn't had very much success in the past. Abby and Joe battled it out in the 4" division, with each of them tallying 8 Qs. Betty shone: she too made her mom proud by notching 8 Qs. Switch triumphed! He got 2 Qs, I think—an absolutely wonderful outcome for him and Peni. Swift didn't knock down any entry or exit jumps. Mylo did his best on Saturday, and we missed him and Lorri on Sunday. Emma reeled in a couple more titles (I'm not sure what her final Q tally was). Gemma gets the "social butterfly" award for never once finishing a run but rather making a grand tour of each course to visit the ring crew and judge. But then again, this was her very first NADAC trial, and her very first outdoor trial—so lots of distractions for a puppy brain to pursue (she's only 20 months old, so has lots of time to nail down her agility skills and to learn the fine art of focusing).

The icing on the cake from this weekend? Abby currently holds the household bragging rights by having brought home the Novice High in Trial award—the award that Zack won last October at the Howl-aween trial. I tried to rouse her up a little while ago to take a picture with her trophy but she was having none of it...she just wanted to snooze. So when she's feeling a little less exhausted, we'll snap a photo and post it here on the blog a little later. There may be some pictures taken by other folks at the trial which we'll have access to a little later as well, so stay tuned for perhaps a couple of action shots from this past weekend in the weeks to come.

DOG PADDLING in the DOG DAYS of SUMMER

The Dog Paddlers have notched up another Victoria Dragon Boat Festival...their seventh year in a row at this event, held in their own back yard. The Dawgs put in another great effort, once again finishing in the Diamond division. Over all, they finished 19th, chalking up a fourth place finish in the Diamond consolation final (finishing just a whisker over one second behind the winners of the race).

It was a sweltering weekend. I went down late Sunday morning, fully expecting to have missed the Dog Paddlers' semi-final, but arrived just in time to wish them luck as they exited the Paddlers' Village...two hours behind schedule. There had been some mistakes made in the race grid the night before, and so there was some mass confusion on Sunday morning as a result—which put everything in disarray in regards to when the races were actually run. See the video below for a glimpse of the the Dawgs' semi-final. If you want to see it larger, just go directly to YouTube. It's in HD, so you can also click it on full-screen once you're at YouTube, so will be able to see things a bit more up-close. I shot this video with my still camera as opposed to my video camera, so my apologies for not being able to zoom in a little bit closer.

There were quite a few of us ex-Dawgs (me, Brianna, Pia, Lynne) and some Dawg-fans (Lorri, Randy and others) who came down to cheer on the team at various times throughout the day. I finally had to pack it in before the finals were run...it was just too darn hot for me. Then I had to wait in suspense for the results to be posted on the VDBF website...something that didn't happen until well into the evening. So this blog post had to wait for the news before "going to press". Mind you, that also gave me time to quickly cobble together the little video above.

The Dog Paddlers also made it onto the front page of the Times Colonist this morning, albeit in a fuzzy fashion. They were the team in the background of the photo showing Seattle-based Hot Sake in the water clinging to their dragon boat after it was swamped by the Victoria Fire Department's fire boat headed off to an emergency—apparently without much thought as to the effect that their wake would have on other boats. Some negative PR for the FD, I would guess, and a few questions to be asked bright and early Monday morning about that particular incident, I would imagine.

Hot Sake, by the way, went on to win that race, once everything got under way again.

SATURDAY IN CENTRAL SAANICH

A small band of us spent a nice relaxing day at Centennial Park last Saturday, doing an agility demo for Central Saanich Days. We did two shows, one at 11 a.m. and one at 1 p.m. Most folks were there to either participate in or watch the ball tournament that was going on, so we didn't have a large audience for our shows. The Lions Club told us that their marketing guy had let them down in this regard, in that our presence I gather had not been publicized at all. Nonetheless, the small crowds that we did attract for the demos were very appreciative. If we do this next year, hopefully things will be better advertised; it's always much more fun to do these demos when there's a big audience to play to.

The other attraction that was there were the radio-controlled racing cars that were running on a miniature race track in the lacross box. Man, those things could move. It was like watching Formula 1 racing. I would be a total loss operating one of those cars...as you have to be able to translate in your mind where you car is on the track to the remote control in your hands. Way too much spatial concept conversion for my brain. But the guys were drawn to the whine of the tiny engines like moths to a flame. I found Kevin over there with his nose pressed against the chain link fence, and Lynn Watt told me that Brian was glued to the sidelines for quite a while as well.

Now, usually I take pictures at our demos, so I always end up posting some pictures here on the blog of everyone else's dogs, and rarely of my own (because it's impossible for me to run my dogs and take pictures of them at the same time). Kathy has finally solved this dilemma for me. Herewith a few pictures from her of my gang (thank you for sharing, Kathy!). Abby on the teeter. Zack exiting the tunnel. And Gemma on the table. Which is about all she did, as she apparently wasn't feeling well and I finally had to take her off the course (bottom photo). She was having a bit of an intestinal upset, it turned out, so I didn't run her in the second show.




At the end of it all, Peni, Barry, France and I repaired to the beer garden for a little liquid refreshment, before toddling off to relax for the rest of the day.

CHRISTMAS IN JULY

OK. Not quite Christmas in July. But "Summer Santa" brought the Silkies a brand-new set of 24" spacing weave poles to play agility with in the back yard. It took them a few runs to figure out the new rhythm that the wider spacing between the poles requires, but once they got it, they were off to the races! Now if only they can transfer their at-home weave speed to competition, they'll be all set!

ZIPPING

We were out to Adrenaline again today. The ziplining place. I had mentioned this place to my cousin Laurie when I saw her in Ottawa in June, and since she was out visiting us this week, we decided to take a run out there and have a go at it. Peni also thought it was time for another zip for her, so all of us headed out there on Sunday afternoon.

Lots of glorious sunshine, not too hot, a little breeze. Perfect day. Laurie had done some ziplining before, back east, but it was a bit different set-up out here, and the runs much higher and longer here. Laurie said she had jelly knees the entire time, but she looked cool as a cucumber to me. And she had a big smile on her face all the while...so I think she had a pretty great time, all told (although she confessed to uttering some four-letter words now and again as she zipped along; we'll just consider those entreaties and/or thanks to a higher power for the the day's adventure).

AGILITY TIMES THREE

Well, I now have a trio of dogs competing in agility. It used to be a duo. Gemma finally made her official competitive debut at AVID's July trial. She didn't bring home any ribbons, but then again I didn't expect her to. She still has the attention span of a gnat, so a good run for her was to make it most of the way around the course before time ran out. On her first run, she completed a grand total of one piece of equipment—but she notched visits to just about every member of the ring crew on her way around the course. On her second run, she did much better, and on her third run, she almost managed to complete the course before the buzzer sounded. On her last run, late in the day, she ran by more obstacles than she completed, but at least we kept the forward momentum going for most of the time. All in all, I was pretty proud of Gemma at her first agility trail.

Zack is still stuck in first gear, but at least doesn't seem to be backsliding any additional amount. We just still haven't found the right motivator to bring the enjoyment back to agility for him. He's happy, happy, happy and raring to go before I get him in the ring, but once there, it's like he's running through molasses. Patience. We'll figure this out, all in good time.

Abby was our agility star of the household, bringing home two Q ribbons today. It would have been three, but in her enthusiasm to complete her second Standard course, she missed her down contact on the dogwalk...a fate that has befallen her before at the second-to-last obstacle and one that I thought I had in hand as she came down the ramp. Apparently not. She also just missed a Q in her Jumpers round, missing the course time by just 98/100ths of a second. A whisker. I think that after this summer, I may drop her in to the Veterans category, to give her that little bit more time. She's had a number of those squeaker kinds of course times. She puts her little heart into her runs, and it's a shame when she misses by just that little bit.

We got to meet Carolyn Kool and her two Silkies at the trial. She hails from up Nanaimo way, and she brought KC down to compete at the trial, as well as her new puppy Bailey, who got to watch from the sidelines. Bailey is Gemma's brother (same parents, but Bailey is from the litter after Gemma's) and their faces are quite strikingly similar. Bailey, however, looks like he's headed towards silver colouring as opposed to Gemma's more golden tones. If there had been a safe place to let the two youngsters off leash to play, they would have had a blast. As it was, they did their best to be absolutely silly about each other whenever they met on-leash or through the x-pen wire. We'll undoubtedly be seeing more of Carolyn and company at other trials.