Scoop and I did about a hundred low teeters this morning. After the rain started my training was limited to some heel work in the house. Ace helps. He heels on one side and Scoop on the other. In my quest to combine lots of dog training with very few human steps, I thought what better way than to do both dogs heelwork at the same time.  My new podiatrist has been consulted and I have my instructions. The doc says stay off it, and my foot yells loudly no running. The fascia is strained or sprained or pulled a little or a lot, sometimes it feels like a lot, like after teaching, and when I am sitting at my desk, it feels like little.

Back to teeters though.The latest on my training is running a lowered teeter like a flat board. Scoop has gotten his feet all tangled under the teeter a few times while playing bang games, and that made him a bit cautious.  I don’t want to play board games or do back chaining right now, so I am just letting him run the board. If he does not run straight through, I call him off the toy without playing and just start again. The next rep has always been great, so I think he is understanding the process. I am going to do a few more days or a week  of this and then build his 2o2o back in to the full height training.

The results of me spending an inordinate amount of time at my desk and entertaining myself with things other than real work or dog training is really appreciating my favorite internet stuff. These are some of the things I can’t live without on my desktop.

Pandora internet free radio, where you make your own stations. http://www.pandora.com/. My favorite station today is Jakob Dylan radio, Pandora plays his songs and other artists with similar tendencies. I can’t work without Pandora in the background and I have all my special stations I can switch to in a heartbeat depending on my mood.

Picassa, Google’s free photo organizing system that keeps all the thousands of photos and faxes and pdf’s all accessable in one place. Get it for free at picasa.google.com. I don’t know how I managed all my stuff before Picassa.

And my new favorite  software is Microsoft’s Windows Live Movie Maker, it is so easy, I finally feel like I know what I am doing with simple video editing.

Last night while browsing  hundreds of channels on the real boob tube I found LINK TV, a very great find indeed. Documentaries and other great programming like World Music which you can also get on the web at  http://www.linktv.org/.

After watching World Music on Link TV I found the Link tv website and got to listen to a great song from a Swedish band named Tummel. I am going to go into overdose on this song, so I thought I had better spread round the joy, and I found their music video on YOU TUBE of course.

After I did the Tummel search I remembered I hadn’t been to TED for a while, so I went and browesed through some great presentations and good music. I wish I had time to spend a few hours on this site every week!

http://www.ted.com/

After falling over with laughter at Ze Franks’s presentation, I went to his site and blog and I know if this foot keeps me sitting a lot this month, I will be a constant visitor.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/ze_frank.html

And while I am trying to find the blessings in sitting and taking some down time, I will share my latest read with you.  Greg Mortenson’s, Stones Into Schools, his second book about building schools for girls in Pakistan. His first one, Three Cups of Tea is one of the most important books I have ever read and I totally enjoy this second one. A perfect book for a good dose of reality and how not to feel sorry for yourself is to remember all the privileges we are accorded in the USA. Greg is the ultimate get ‘er done guy, but on a global scale and he is making more difference in creating world peace than all the politicians put together.

If you are having a break from training or at least running, I hope you’ll explore some of the places that help me run my life or at least enjoy it a bit more.

NJG

Agility training takes on a new aspect when the handler can’t run and walks at turtle speed. I haven’t seen a foot doctor yet to diagnose my inability to properly use my right foot, but suspect I have torn something at least slightly important in the business of locomotion. I was hoping I would be better after some days of icing, nsaids, and not running. I see  the local agility podiatrist on Thursday, hopefully she will give me some shortcut to recovery! I haven’t stopped training but the focus on how I am training has certainly changed.

The e-frame training is pretty easy as over the last week Scoop has gotten much more enthusiastic at being able to send independently  to a jump or tunnel 30 feet away so I can have a different e-frame approach, while walking or standing still in a perfect position to see Scoop hit the contact. In fact Scoop’s independence at sending to obstacles was getting a little TOO easy, so I am also reinforcing lots of lineups at my side and perfect stays before I send. I don’t want him to anticipate that each time he returns with the toy he is going to get to tear away from me to a distant obstacle.

I don’t really want him to anticipate anything other than that he should be waiting nicely for my directions at my side. I decided I needed to add more obstacles to send him to, so now I have a table, a couple jumps and 2 tunnels. Scoop gets rewarded for frame performance with a toy, then he returns to me to tug. I ask for the toy and line him up straightly on whichever side will facilitate a straight send to an obstacle. I walk  a step forward while sending him, so I have a little bit of forward motion on each send. If he does not line up straight on my side and wait for a release I just start over, ask again for CLOSE (line up on my left) or SIDE (line up on my right) and either release him to tug, give him a cookie, or send him out to the obstacle and on to the e-frame. This of course works for any kind of independent obstacle performance I might want to work on with a moving approach to an obstacle from another obstacle. I have also been doing a bit of teeter and weave work this way as well using the stationed obstacles. Since I want an independent performance on all my contacts and weaves, this is valuable training. However I like to mix it all up and move around as well when I am training these obstacles. Right now I can walk slowly to a new position, but I can’t get there fast.

I filmed some of Scoop’s frames yesterday, and I almost look like I was trotting, though I thought I was barely walking. I didn’t film the stays and lineups, makes for too long of a video. I have the beep turned off for the moment, and I have a stride regulator in the middle. The bump is at the edge of the contact zone, and if Scoop hits it instead of the zone, it applies pressure and he gets a beep which I don’t want. So no sound right now.

I have been playing around with placing the toy 15 to 20 feet from the bottom of the frame, or tossing a toy as Scoop comes over the top of the frame.  Today I liked the toy tossing better than stationary placement. I felt like it made him dig in and drive over the top better. The bump is on the frame in all these reps, I am going to do some more tomorrow with the bump placed on the frame randomly and the beep on the E-frame on. I only recently added the bump to the middle. When Scoop did his flatwork it was without a bump. I felt like I needed a visual aid for both of us after I put the frame to 5.6, hence the little bump.

Today I am pretty happy with where the frame training is going.  Hope you are as happy with your pups A-frame training as I am with mine.

NJG

World Championships are over and I am effectively home now for a month. The event was exciting and exhausting. Come Sunday evening after Worlds I get punchy tired, and nothing fixes it except a few days rest which I rarely take. So I am limping along with a head cold that passed like a epidemic through the team while we were in Germany. And now the virtual limp is a real limp after I strained or tore some facia in my foot on Saturday. I need to get in shape so I can get in shape. Chicken/egg syndrome or just catch 22? I recently read that it is scientifically proven now that the chicken came first.  A protein created inside the chicken creates the egg. So without that, no egg. So many life questions could be asked using chicken/egg philospohy.

The star of the USA  World Team this year was John Nys, running Paulette Swatzendruber’s  sheltie “Rush”. It is rare for a newbie to have a couple clean runs their first time at Worlds, John was 4/4 with Rush and he took home the Silver Medal for Individual Medium. A huge unmeasurable feat! Where did he get the confidence, the determination and the focus? It often comes with experience paired with training. Where did John find the “egg protein” to put it all together? And he isn’t running a slower push button dog. Rush is fast and exciting and you gotta hang onto the turns like driving a race car 100 miles an hour on mountain roads. Rush’s owner Paulette was happily there to cheer them on. A bittersweet memory for her and all of us, as the reason Paulette did not try out for team was heath related, and we are sure glad it did not keep her from the event.

The USA Team was incredible. So many great runs. Here is a little bit of what we accomplished:

Silver medalist- John & Rush, Individual  (Combined score of Medium Individual jumping and Standard Agility)

2nd place Small Dog Team Jumping (all three team members scores combined) Marcy & Wave, Dee Anna & Kelsi, and Heidi and Ice

2nd place Large dog Team Agility, Channan & Icon, Ann Braue & Scream & Terry Smorch & Presto

2nd Place, John & Rush, Team Medium Jumping

2nd place Marcy & Wave, Team Small Jumping

2nd place Marcy & Wave, Team Small Agility

3rd place Channan & Icon, Team Agility Large dog

3rd place John & Rush, Medium Agility Individual

3rd place Daisy Peel and Sola,r Large Dog Agility

4th place Dee Anna  & Kelsi , Team Small Agility

4th place medium team jumping, John & Rush, Karen Holik & Sizzle, Maureen Waldron & Mickle

5th place John & Rush, Medium Individual Jumping

6th place Daisy & Solar, Large Dog Combined

7th place Marcy & Wave, Small Individual Jumping

Congratulations to all the team and thanks to all the supporters and partners and spouses and trainers who helped get us to the podiums this year!

I dragged my un-recovered self to a USDAA trial last weekend. Ace and I had a great start on Saturday with Q’s in pairs, gamblers,  and a win in round one steeplechase. Ace was especially good in Steeplechase because between obstacle 18 & 20 I pulled something in my foot and sent him to the finish ahead of me while I hopped out of the ring on one foot. Luckily I had already run Scoop  earlier in gamblers. We even got a Q, though I was certainly not trying; and he did his weaves in the ring two times!, in a pretty darn nice fashion. I had to scratch him the rest of the weekend while my husband Jim went on to run Ace for me, winning some more classes and racking up the Q’s.

I can’t run but I can stand around and train so Scoop and I trained Sunday night, yesterday and this morning on my new electronic A-frame. I was hoping for some training shortcuts with the “E-Frame”, but I don’t think I will find any. The entire yellow contact is active, and if Scoop leaves out a stride but still hits yellow, he gets beeped and so marked for an incorrect performance per my criteria. If he hits a half inch into the yellow he also gets the beep and I don’t want that behavior either. So while I love the E-frame, it is only going to do part of my training job of watching and marking Scoop’s correct frame performance.

I will try to get some video of where we are at up soon so you can see the progress.

I hope you find your chicken proteins while training  today, I am going out again to look for mine:)

NJG