I don’t like making decisions in general. I usually spend ridiculous amounts of time trying to weigh all the possibilities to each scenario. It’s a huge waste of time and energy, but that doesn’t seem to ever stop me. I wish that the latest decision that I was pondering was whether to buy a rackmount computer or not. Instead, I’m debating what to do with Zoe.

It’s not a big decision really. I just have been debating whether it is time to move her into Veterans. She’s 10 now, so she’s been eligible to run in Veteran’s in most venues for quite a while. I kept thinking that she would slow down and maybe I’d see signs that I should jump her at a lower height. Honestly though, she still can give me a run for my money on a course. LOL

Here’s my thoughts on the matter. On one hand, I think she’s doing fine and I shouldn’t worry about making this decision yet. But on the other hand, I think, she’s 10. Why wait till a dog is showing signs of slowing down?

I think that I’ve pretty much made up my mind that after this next ASCA trial, in a week or so…Zoe’s going to move to Veteran’s. I really don’t know why this is such a difficult decision for me other than that it means that I’m admitting Zoe is getting older. I don’t like it. I want her to live forever. Is that too much to ask? LOL

We didn’t have much time to take pictures, I tried to work a lot of the classes this year that we weren’t running in, so we really didn’t get around to taking pictures till the last day, other than the first day when we took pictures of all the Utah Teams in our Utah unleashed shirts. I don’t have any of those pictures though, they were on someone else’s camera, and so were the ones for Trigility. So, on the last day it was a rush to get them done because they needed to get all the set up of rocks and flowers back to wherever they brought them by 1:00. I didn’t dare wait till they announced Finals Awards for Jumpers and Standard, so these pictures don’t have all of Zoe’s ribbons, but most of them.

Today were the finals, and one run of Strategic Time Gamble. Zoe and I have never qualified in Strategic Time Gamble before. I just really have a hard time gauging my time when I’m out there running. LOL But this year, we got it! Here’s the video…

Next was Jumpers. I was so excited. Especially since last year I was such a total dork and on Rd. 2 I had forgotten a whole loop of the course and so we didn’t get to run in the Finals. This year I redeemed myself. Well, almost. LOL I did remember the course for Rd. 1 and Rd. 2 and had high hopes for today. However, when Zoe started off running slower than I expected, I tried to speed her up, and I took my eyes off her for just long enough that she skipped a jump. I didn’t even realize what happened. Hehe. Since the Finals are a culmination of the 3 rounds, we still ended up in 2nd place after that bobble. Here’s the run…

Last run of the day was Standard Finals. I really worried that Zoe was tired out after the way she ran Jumpers, but she was back to normal for Standard, so who knows! Anyway, she did a very nice job and finished off the weekend beautifully. This run secured the 1st place in the Standard Finals.

We had a great time at DOCNA Championships! There is just nothing like getting to run with Zoe. She’s an amazing partner. She’s always been just enough of a challenge to keep things interesting, but at the same time consistent to the point of spoiling me rotten. I hope for many more years of running together! The icing to an already wonderful weekend was that we won a tunnel in the workers raffle!

So, Zoe was 5 for 5 runs today! We had Rd. 2 of both Standard and Jumpers, and North American Challenge, and then we had Trigility and Zoe filled in for a second team that needed a third dog, so we ran Trigility twice.

Jumpers and both of the Trigility runs were really nice. Her standard run was not so smooth, although we did run clean and ended up in first place. I just couldn’t seem to get in the right place at the right time from about #3-4 through the weaves. After that everything went well.

In the North American Challenge Zoe missed one of her dogwalk contacts. Even with that fault, we ended up in 3rd place in the West, in the 16″ Competition Division. I really didn’t expect to place when they combined East and West, for National results, but the West swept that class, and all our placements held. So, here’s the NAC video.

So, headed into tomorrow, Zoe is in first place for both the 16″ Competition Intern Jumpers Finals and the 16″ Competition Intern Standard Finals. Can’t wait to run tomorrow, although I think it’s a good thing that we only have those two classes and the Strategic Time Gamble to run tomorrow, cause I’m out of shape and tired. LOL

Day one was great! We started off with a ring conflict between Jumpers and Snakes and Ladders, but we managed to get our Jumpers run in first and then get to the Snakes and Ladders ring right before we needed to run there. Good thing we’d had a chance to walk both beforehand.

Anyway, Jumpers was fun and fast. Zoe’s time was 18.25, but another dog was 18.18 so it was good enough for second place, and hopefully enough to get us into the finals on Sunday if we do well tomorrow. Here’s the video.

Next we ran Snakes and Ladders. We blew it. LOL I tried to send her into the tunnel after the dogwalk, and she decided that it would be better idea to head back up the dogwalk. So, that was that. Here’s the video of that run.

Then we had Traditional Gamblers. Zoe had some really nice pieces and some where she just had a mind of her own and went in the direction she thought was best, but with Gamblers, it’s fine and she got the Gamble, and had enough points for another First place. Here’s that run.

Last of all was Standard Rd. 1. It was pretty hot and I think honestly, Zoe and I aren’t in the best shape. I think we were both slowing down a bit for this run. LOL She had a weird turn out of the tunnel at one point, but all in all, she was clean and fast enough for first place.

Anyway, we had a really fun first day of Championships and after we got all done running we got all the teams from Utah together and we did a group picture with all of us in our Utah Unleashed T-shirts. We’ll have to see if we get a can get a copy of it to share with everybody.

Well, ready or not, DOCNA Championships, here we come! We plan on getting to Grand Junction tomorrow afternoon and getting everything set up to run on Friday. I decided to skip the pre-trial on Thurs. I figure 3 days is plenty for Zoe and I right now. We just got an email today that one of our friends, also one of my teammates for Trigility has made up shirts for all of us that are going from Utah. How fun is that! I guess there are 9 teams.

So far, the dogs are bathed and brushed, I just need to dremmel Zoe’s nails. I have abut half of the dog’s stuff packed and my clothes ready to go. Just have to finish figuring out what food to pack for the human part of this trip, and a few other last minute items, and we should be ready. Thank goodness we’re just headed out for an agility trial, and not on the hunt for the treatment for eczema. I wouldn’t know where to start.

Anyway, I won’t post again till we are in CO…so, goodbye for now!

Well, we’re still dealing with a wildfire that started back at the end of July. The bad part of the fire isn’t that we are in any danger of being in it’s path or anything, but the fact that our valley has been pretty much saturated with smoke of varying amounts for 2 months now. I’m really grateful that I don’t have allergies or breathing problems, but I know it’s really been wearing on my husband and some of my friends. I know they have their reasons for letting these wildfires burn to get rid of dangerous dry undergrowth and stuff, but 2 months…come on already! Then on Sunday night another fire was started a couple hours north of us, so really no matter which direction the wind decides to blow right now, it’s blowing in smoke. On a good note, the sunsets are beautiful.

I figured I better get started on my packing list for DOCNA Championships. It’s getting pretty long, but I have added any dietary supplements to the list at this point. I can’t believe we’re leaving in just a day or so. It’s creeped up on me this time. Should be really fun though. I have a great travel partner, a really fun team for Trigility and the weather is supposed to be just gorgeous.

I’ll probably post once more before we leave on Thurs. Then hopefully we’ll have internet access over the weekend so we can update the blogs. Oh and Ricky….I won’t be able to do a training challenge this week. I’m just plain running out of time. Sorry!

This week found us at another new park training with our friends who were getting ready for both conformation and obedience this weekend. We did some heelwork, worked on our fronts, our go outs, directed jumping and stays.

The challenge this week though wasn’t so much obedience related as it was just a general training challenge that we haven’t addressed enough in the past. Dare and Twist both have terrible crate manners when waiting their turn. Twist’s version looks like he’s trying to participate in some safe fat burners training program. He spins and spins and barks. Dare’s version lacks all the spinning, but includes louder, more demanding barks. LOL

So, what we did is some open door crate work. It still baffles me why this works. But when that door is open and they are in charge of keeping themselves inside, it seems to give them something to think about and a job to do. It’s not a stay exercise, it’s just an exercise in self control. Just because the door is open, if you haven’t gotten your release to come out, your responsibility is to remain in the crate. I’m happy to say that it went pretty well. I need to keep it up though, I had gotten lazy about it for a while.

I do my very best with my boarders to follow their owners instructions as closely as possible. I really do. But tonight was a perfect example of communication gone wrong.

When the client dropped off their dog, she told me that she had gotten a new cup for the dog food. On the top of the bucket with the food, she had scratched out the previous directions and had written, 1 1/2 cups twice a day. Well, that’s just what I did. Today I used the last of the food.

When the client pickup up her dog tonight, she asked, “Didn’t I bring enough food?” I said, “Oh yes, I used the last of it today.” She just kept standing there, like she wanted to say more, but didn’t know what to say. So, I visited with her for a bit longer and eventually it came back to the dog food. Well, eventually we figured out the problem. I understood that the 1 1/2 cups meant a scoop and a half. After all there were no measurement lines on the cup, it wasn’t a measuring cup. I was wrong. She meant that one scoop had 1 1/2 cups. Bleh, I totally overfed the dog. Course the dog didn’t complain. LOL

Maybe I need to look into vitamin supplements that would improve my memory and cognition. Too bad prenatal vitamins would be of any help to me, or maybe I’d look into those.

I’m a day late in posting for Ricky’s Challenge. I thought that I was going to go to a ring set-up with a friend of mine in Salt Lake, but she decided not to go, and I have to say that I wasn’t at all disappointed to not have to make that drive. Good thing that we did something earlier in the week…

On Friday we went to a little town called Marysvale. We went to the school there and set up the ring gates for obedience and did a bit of training. We did a little of all the usual, but then we worked on our go outs and a bit of directed jumping. Directed jumping is a relatively new exercise for me since I haven’t trained any of my dogs to the Utility level for Obedience. The nice thing though is that my friend is having me work on this stuff with Dare even though we aren’t through Novice yet. Gives us different things to work on, rather than just the same old heeling and recalls and stuff.

So, we set up the panel jump and the bar jump and then set up a ring gate in between them as a barrier. We set the dog up on the one side in the middle behind the jumps and walk over one of the jumps and then turn and signal them to jump that jump. The ring gate in the middle prevents them from just coming straight to you. It was lots of fun. Dare did a great job and so did my friend’s Malinois puppies.

Anyway, it wasn’t really the training challenge that I had in mind for this week, but it was fun. I heard that we might have another decent sized group of atv enthusiasts in town, which means I might have a built in training challenge here at home keeping the dogs from being outside barking at the groups as they drive past on their way to the mountains around the house.