Salt City Cluster

Two weekends ago the dogs and I went to three days of agility trials at the New York State Fair grounds. We had a great time and did pretty well!

Flash was WIRED and on the first day was out of control even for her (at 12 years of age she still burns up the course and screams and quivers at the startline). We didn't pull off any qualifying runs, but had some really nice runs, especially in Excellent Jumpers with Weaves. In Excellent FAST, which has a distance challenge where your dog has to work a certain distance away from you (it is marked on the ground with tape), she had two "almosts." The first day she ran back over the line and was going fast enough to make it move, which caused the judge to think I stepped over the line. Oh well. On the third day *I* pulled her off a jump - with fast dogs the slightest motion can change everything!

Tia had a dynamite weekend. She was undertime in all of her runs, which is saying something for Tia. She qualified twice in Excellent Jumpers, which means she now has three MJP legs (she needs 10), and also finished her AXP in Excellent Standard. This means that she is now going for her PAX, which is the agility champion title for dogs running in preferred (this enables them to jump 4" lower than their actual height). I'm not planning to seriously pursue it, but we'll keep trialing and if it happens, it happens. For the PAX she will need 20 double Q's, which means she has to qualify in both Jumpers and Standard on the same day, 20 times. The photo is of her a couple summers ago, taken by Mike Weir.

Like Flash, Queezle started off the weekend a bit out of hand. In Open Standard the first day she tried to make it a longjump competition, taking off up to 10 feet before the jumps. It didn't work. Over the next two days she calmed down, and we had some decent runs. On Sunday she came through and qualified in Excellent Jumpers to finish her AXJ! She ahd me a little nervous, as there was a big loop around the outside of the ring where she started to take off early, but she corrected herself and kept all of the bars up.

All in all it was a good weekend!

Happy April Fools' Day!

It was a gorgeous day here in Ithaca, with temperatures in the low 70s and bright sun. The kind of day when I wish I had a dog with me to just wander around campus - all the college dogs were out enjoying the weather with their people. To make the day even better, marching band has started up again! For anyone in town, we'll be having our Spring Concert on April 17th, starting at Barton Hall and then marching and playing to various locations on campus and in Collegetown - if you can't see us, you'll hear us!

I also got an excited call from my mom to say that she and Tia almost qualified in Open A obedience! If you remember the last time Tia showed (January), it wasn't pretty. Today she was great, working with spunk and animation and overall putting on a great performance. I'm beginning to think the best way to get obedience titles on my dogs is to train them and then hand them over to my mom for polish and the show. Luckily obedience isn't my favorite sport, or this trend of my dogs doing better for her would be quite vexing! Her only error was that she needed a second command on the broadjump, which she has only gotten the hang of within the past few months. I am very proud of the Bean.

Starting tomorrow, I get to go to the dog show too. All three of my girls are entered in agility, so it will be a long three days. It should be a lot of fun though, and for the most part all of my runs are in the same ring. Tia was just entered in obedience today. I must say I'm a little surprised she didn't qualify, as my best day of agility trials ever was on April Fools' Day a couple years ago when I had three runs, three Qs (qualifying runs) and finished three titles! It was fitting, because the norm is for my dogs to make me look like a fool, so on April Fools' Day they reversed it. I guess the magic only works every once in a while though. Now we'll see how the rest of this weekend plays out!

Happy Birthday Tia!

Today is Tia's 7th birthday! She is now officially a veteran. Tia loves birthdays, and feels that she should be treated specially every day. According to tradition, she will get to choose a toy - as you can see from the photo, Tia takes her toys very seriously!

This past Saturday Mom drove down and we both attended the Breeders' Symposium held at the Baker Institute by Cornell. It was an enjoyable and informative day, with talks covering all things canine health and reproduction. I had to laugh during the Canine Health Information Center presentation when the speaker mentioned how many hits their website has gotten recently - their data is probably inflated from me looking up potential stud dogs! Mom had brought Queezle along. She was perfectly happy hanging out in the car during the talks and was thrilled to see me. Her undercoat is starting to come back, but we don't have any conformation shows planned for a while.

Happy Birthday Queezle!

On March 4th, Queezle celebrated her 5th birthday. She has come a long way from the little ball of fluff I brought home from Oregon in a Sherpa bag! On their birthdays, our dogs always get a special treat of some sort (a turkey melt this time) and then get to choose a new toy. Needless to say they think birthdays are pretty cool!

On Saturday I drove up to Syracuse for the last weekend of the Syracuse Obedience Training Club's agility league, which Queezle and I have been participating in. We had some really nice runs on very tough and twisty courses, though I did have to make her re-do the a-frame once when she cheated and jumped over the contact zone. After the official festivities were over, I ran Flash through the course just for fun and we practiced some contact obstacles.

In other news, the Cornell women's hockey team won its first ever ECAC Championship this past Sunday! We have also had four straight days of sun and temperatures reaching 40 in Ithaca, which has many of us wondering if the world has ended and we've all gone to heaven. I am really looking forward to spring, though hopefully we can go straight from snow to grass, and skip the mud stage - even though in the dorm I don't have to worry about keeping dogs clean, I have a bad habit of going cross-country when the paved walkways aren't the most efficient path. The one sad thing about the coming spring is that it will be the end of the snow igloo in front of my building.

Lots of Good Things

I know, I know - I've been slacking again. But I've been busy! Firstoff, on February 25th Queezle's puppies turned one year old. They've come a long way from the little munchkins that could eat out of a muffin tin!

Second, this past weekend I met my mom in Syracuse for an agility trial after watching the Cornell hockey team beat Union 4-1 Friday night (Go Red!). I gave a couple other pep band members a ride to the game, which was good because the guys dug the car out a three foot drift that night as opposed to me doing it at 5:30 the next morning!

As always, I had a great time at the trial. Flash was her usual wild self, and although she didn't qualify in any of her runs, for the most part they were really nice. At this point in her career I'm just glad she's still active and having a good time - qualifying runs are icing on the cake. Tia started out with some very lackluster runs, but rose to the occasion for our last class of the weekend and had a nice run with only one error.

Queezle decided to celebrate her puppies' birthday and her own approaching birthday by earning her second Excellent Jumpers with Weaves leg with a first place! She was the only 20" Excellent A dog to qualify. Her weaving is really coming together, and she was very good about following my cues. She has also figured out that I often appear when Mom takes her to Syracuse - Mom said she went nuts as soon as they arrived Saturday. I'm sure right now she is mad at me for having disappeared again. That said, I know that she got a hamburger on the way home for her clean run, which must have made her very happy.

So Happy Belated Birthday to Lexi, Rebel, Joy, Mozart, Demi and Tenor and congrats to everyone else who did well at the trial!

Happy Valentine's Day

In many ways this is a bittersweet day for me, as this is the first Valentine's Day since 1998 that I haven't been able to celebrate Flash and my anniversary with her. We have both come a long way from that day 12 years ago when my little bundle of trouble came home, but I can honestly say she was the best Valentine's gift I ever got (and probably ever will!). She really is an awesome dog, and hopefully next year we'll be able to eat cookies and sit around together.

I was, however, able to go up to Syracuse for an agility seminar with Tracy Sklenar, where I met Mom and Queezle. The Q was very happy to see me, and we had a good time and learned some things we need to work on with her jumping style and confidence (Mom didn't bring Flash because it was too cold for her to be outside and she would have just barked like crazy the whole time if she was inside).

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

February Already?

Sigh... I've been slacking. In my defense, I was attending 3 extra classes on top of my actual 5, so the world will just have to forgive me. The good news is, after two weeks of going to four different Creative Writing classes, I got in three! I was then able to pick the time slot that made the most sense for me and politely declined the other two offers. So I am now down to 5 classes and 18 credits, and I'm even enrolled in all of the classes I'm going to!

In other news, I finally found a reason to be glad I don't have any dogs with me. Yesterday coming in after my last class I discovered that there was barbecue sauce all over my sneakers - by sticking my hand in it as I went to take them off. I washed most of it off but they still bring back memories of summer picnics, and would be very enticing to any canine companions.

I haven't seen my own beasts since January, but I did have a brief run-in with an elderly Border Collie near one of the dorms. When I first saw her she was moseying around in the open area between two buildings, and then she headed to one of the doorways. She looked kind of lost and there were no other people around, so I went up to her to see if she had contact information on her collar. She wagged her tail and smiled at me, and as I checked out her star-studded collar a man talking on his cell phone opened the door, said, "That's mine," called the dog in and shut the door. Granted, I was not going to steal his dog, but a college campus is NOT the place to leave your dog unattended! I haven't spotted them since, so I don't know if they live in that building or if they were just visiting.