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By W S Myles
Not far from home today, but a long day nevertheless.
I joked with Alan (the Jumping judge) after walking the course…
<looks up at the sun in a blue sky.> “Looks like a lovely sunny day with just a chance of title.”
Gemma was on top form today. She won her Excellent Jumping class and her Excellent Agility class. We didn’t do so well in Open Agility (she dropped the second bar) but she blitzed the Novice Snooker course, but get this – even with 50 points in Novice, she was 17th! (That’s only one less than the maximum available, and 30 more than her first SD quali)
So the upshot is that Gemma is now Clanheath Perfect Gem UD AD JDX, and only needs another two passes to get her ADX and one more for her SD (Snooker).
She weaved beautifully today, and was smooth and quick to respond; she had a great old time, despite hardly ever seeing me for most of the day. She barely made time (by two seconds) in Jumping, but was waaaaay under course time in Agility. It came as no surprise that only one other team made time in Jumping.
The Open problem was probably two cases of handler error; one, of doing a cross while she was in the air (the jump) and the second of not micro-managing the discrimination between the tunnel and dog-walk. She decided that in the absence of a clear cue in what she thought was enough time, she’d take the matter into her own paws and take the tunnel again.
Today marks another first: for once, I am starting to think at a Masters level. We may not be entirely ready for it, but with a tail wind we may just be able to qualify. Especially if Gem keeps up her current speed. She’s by no means a speed-demon in Agility, but nor is she sauntering around like the old days.
The sixteen(!) people ahead of us in snooker chose to do a maximum-points round of 51; in the early planning stages, I was going to do the same thing (use the “black” three times) but just before our turn, I decided which of the four strategies would be more fun for Gemma – and used the pink for the second colour – making a nice curving arc over three jumps.
Yes, there was plenty of time to do the black three times, and the reds were placed to make it possible – but it all looked just a little contrived and repetitive in my head.
It’s not often you’ll find yourself in 17th place with 50 out of 51 points in Novice Snooker!
Three quali’s out of four attempts (with two first places) isn’t a bad day out.
Scoring your Excellent Jumping title with your first run of the day is just gravy 
By W S Myles
Ang (Pepper’s new ‘mum’) kindly agreed to be Finn’s handler in the official ANKC “Endurance Test” next month.
Before inflicting him on an unsuspecting Angela on the day, we agreed it would be a good idea to have a practice run on the same grounds today.
I am very proud of my kids (and equally thankful to Ang!) that everything went exactly as expected. We even learned some things. Some, were really unexpected. We even ran into another pair of ET hopefuls (yes, I know who they were, but I won’t publish it) doing a dry run of their own.
The actual gaiting-with-the-bicycle part was as uneventful and easy for Gemma and Finn that they hardly even opened their mouths to breathe
The interesting part was the ‘willingness test’ (some basic heelwork and some recalls).
Finn surprised us both with his understanding of what ‘come’ means. It means ‘go and sit in front of daddy.’ No matter who says it! We both looked at each other and had a giggle about it as he ran to me instead. Finn also doesn’t seem to recognise vocal cues in a high (excited) female tone. When I suggested Ang drop her tone as deep as possible, he reacted right away
Ang can’t drop her voice nearly as low as mine, but he clearly understands the frequency as part of the cue. Fascinating. High-pitched cues (which I never make) had no effect on him whatever.
Afterwards we all retired to Angela’s place to go and visit Pepper and Rosie for a play in the park; a great time was had by all, make no mistake about it! After a few hours running around the local park, we finally called it quits when the sun started to drop too far and brought the temperature with it.
A great way to spend an afternoon. Thanks, Angela!
By W S Myles
Around 13 months, Gemma started to ‘get’ heeling. Around 13-14 months, Shadow did the same.
Heather’s brain arrived this evening, express post. A week early.
She’s still a little terror for the first 20-50 metres (because of the yapping dogs next door stirring her up) but after 100m or so, I unclipped the leash and off we went… and the next 500 metres or so was just me, Heather, a clicker and a rain of treats!
If she keeps this up, she may even get her CD in 2010! At least this little one will pick up balls and sticks, unlike her hedonist pater! If it ain’t food, why put it in your mouth?
Hmmm. On second thoughts, Heather seems to think that everything is food. Bones are to be swallowed whole, dirt is confectionery, muddy puddles taste better, Ethernet, speaker and power cords are fun to chop into little pieces…
Finn is finally losing interest in her, and not frantically sniffing everyone’s behind every 10.8 seconds.
Both Finn and Gemma did a near perfect round of their respective obedience classes this morning; a tough judge might have found more than 10 points between them, and Gemma’s faults were limited to a single sit-in-front that was 10 degrees off straight, plus a running commentary (I’m allowing 5 points for that )
By W S Myles
It’s been a thrill-a-minute here for the last couple of weeks.
Shadow did her utmost to convince everyone that she could come into season too; she still has me a little worried that she did, even though it is very unlikely that the bleeding was internal – it was just one symptom of a whole collection of things that should happen at once. I guess we’ll find out in a few weeks whether she had a silent season and fooled me completely. I believe the blood came from an ‘injury’ sustained during ’sustained sex play.’ If you get my drift It would be one hell of a short heat at four days with no swelling!
Heather, on the other hand, exhibited all the signs: behaviour shift, clinging, swelling (and how!), a normal progression of ‘colour’ and a peak of interest from Finn at around the right time (whereas Shadow was interesting throughout, probably because she was putting on such an act.)
Now it remains to be seen how long it takes for Shadow’s cycle to actually turn, not to mention Heather’s next – which could even be around the same time as Gemma’s (early 2011).
What’s that they said about Eternal Vigilance?
By W S Myles
A lovely day today – good for long walks. Apart from the pocket JATO attached to my waist, that is. (JATO: Jet Assisted Take-Off booster rocket, used to get planes airborne)
It does indeed look like the blood from Shadow was nothing to do with her fertility. If she’d been in season, I would have expected swelling before and after, and at least 14 days of red hankies – not four.
I’ve just arrived home again with Heather, after a remedial heeling lesson. Just two responses: if she runs or stretches the lead, I stop. When she gets in the correct heeling position, she gets a click and treat. After a kilometre or so, she was walking 10-15 metres with me without a bribe. She clearly understood the rules, because she was trying very hard to repeat the behaviour that caused the reward last time (even if that means walking straight, looking straight, looking up at the clicker, looking straight…)
I do believe her attention span has now exceeded that of a concussed bee. Perhaps even 3-8 seconds now. The world is just too slow for Heather.
On the other hand, I took Finn and Gemma to the lame excuse for an ‘oval’ nearby. Just walking on it makes them limp.
I tried to get Finn interested in the ‘fetch’ game by showing how much fun and reward Gemma get when she does it – except that he was usually looking anywhere else at the time!
Far from being keen to learn and earn rewards, he was positively stubborn most of the time. I did get him up to about 8-10 seconds a couple of times with the dumbbell in his mouth before dropping it, but we still have a long way to go. He didn’t understand the whole “go and get the white thing” part. Once or twice, he did (after much hand-waving!) prance out in his own unique way, and nose the dumbbell – a major step forward – but it was more fluke than anything. He just doesn’t want it in his mouth.
A house of contrasts, indeed.
By W S Myles
Just home from the Obedience trial at Queanbeyan (just around the corner.)
The grounds were sodden; like a peat bog, but brown and lifeless.
Gemma gave a performance I never want to see the like of, ever again. Consistently very wide turns, wide rotations, forging ahead, and being way out of position generally. She even flubbed the metal scent discrimination for the first time in ages – she brought back a leather instead. There was plenty of scent on it, so I’m not sure why she didn’t get it.
Every time she went around me and faced down to the other rings (and the crowds of people and dogs) she rubber-necked and had a good long tourist look before coming around. In the Directed Retrieve, she showed everyone the payoff for having discrete signals for every glove: she was a metre in front of me and facing almost across me, but still managed to go to the right glove and retrieve it.
Somehow, when we got to presentations, she won anyway! Half-jokingly, as I made my perplexed way from the back to accept the ribbon, I called out “I demand a recount!”
All I can say is that if we won with that performance, I can’t imagine how bad everyone else did!
I dare not ask what points she actually did collect 
Finn was on after Gemma again.
Someone said before we went in that a dog in CCD had peed in the ring; I fully expected Finn to trump that pee (and thus incur a 10 point penalty) because that’s just the way he is. He MUST be the latest and the strongest scent.
Somehow or other, he managed to restrain himself to simply lagging a few metres behind me and giving it a really good sniffing. Other than that, his heelwork was pretty good. He managed to only lose 9 points there. Stand for examination, he was a little tentative but sailed through. The recall, he didn’t sit at first and needed to be told to sit, then did the recall and finish perfectly – 5 points off for that lapse.
However, those were the only points he lost; he looked a bit concerned during the stays, but was rock solid. He was much more comfortable and relaxed today than last week, so we converted it into a qualification. He placed fourth, with the top three clustered around 196-198. A tough field!
31 (-9) 30 25 (-5) 30 and 30/30 = 186, with four perfect scores.
Only one to go, and he reaches his limit; we might have to enter Open and skip the retrieving exercises. He’s well able to do the rest of them, having reached 5 minutes and 6 minutes respectively on his first attempt (yes!) at out-of-sight stays.
Gemma hasn’t had a decent performance since I started bringing Finn along to her trials. One of the reasons I let Finn qualify today is so we can knock over his title and concentrate on getting Gemma’s OC while he learns that a dumbbell won’t poison him.
By W S Myles
Ye gads.
I thought we were over this!
Over the last few weeks, the firewall machine has burned its way through four different hard disk drives. No sooner was it operational again, and almost fully serviceable… than it threw another hard drive. Not once, not twice, but four times in a row.
Needless to say, I ran out of hard drives last time. I sacrificed one of my “archiving” USB drives to feed the firewall’s insatiable appetite.
This morning, kablooie! again
Only this time (after much head scratching, testing, and a long walk) it seems that the motherboard is the problem this time! Luckily, I have four identical ones of those, too
There are a couple of machines with those boards that I rarely use, so one of those is now playing host to the firewall’s hard drive and ethernet cards while I scratch my head over this one.
It’s the most bizarre failure I’ve ever seen! The machine almost boots; it sees the drive, and starts booting but then chokes: it took a while, but I noticed that the drive only showed up as being 8.4G (strange size!) in the BIOS instead of 160G. Oh no! Another rebuild!
But wait… no. The drive is A-OK in the spare machine, and even boots. Shows up perfectly on the same cable, with the correct BIOS parameters.
This is a first – but at least I’m back on the ‘web now so I can try to find out what might have caused it. My guess is that the main chipset has failed (north/south bridge).
What a day!
Yesterday, I took Finn and Gemma out to the club to train. Despite expectations, they both did astoundingly well despite the heady aroma of pup-in-season they’ve been breathing all week.
So much so that the majority of points that Gemma would have lost would be for barking!
Oh well. It remains to be seen what happens in the real deal tomorrow; we took a flying visit to see the grounds at Queanbeyan yesterday, but all the gates were locked. From a distance, the grass looked brown and short-cropped. It’s anyone’s guess what the kids will make of it in the trial.
Yikes, I don’t need any more problems like today!
By W S Myles
It seems that Shadow has fallen for the old ‘converging cycles’ ploy.
I’ve been checking her routinely (especially now that Heather is ‘in’) but found nothing unusual, no sign whatever – and certainly no swelling.
Today, still no swelling, but Finn is all over her like, well… a bad smell.
There is, however, a slight trace of blood!
It is said that females who live together will ‘converge’ their reproductive cycles to the same date, but it’s pretty much hearsay without hard evidence. Mind you, Shadow has only had one prior season so we don’t really know what her timing should be. Her mother is 10.5 months (ie, six weeks earlier every year), so I expected 10-11 months for Shadow too, placing her around mid August.
It seems we have more than one impatient girl in this household!
I guess the more the merrier! This way, Finn and I only have to ‘deal’ with the one slightly longer event, rather than three separate events. He is certainly a randy boy right now!
I should have known better than to think Finn’s nose could be misled.
By W S Myles
Heather is still a few days out from the peak of her season, but she’s more swollen than Gemma or Shadow ever were.
Shadow has always been a bit of a nymphomaniac, so she’s been playing up to Finn and flirting with him mercilessly. This has been good for me and for Heather, because the misdirection has worked and Finn is now convinced it is Shadow, and not Heather, who is ripening.
The house must be saturated with fertility scents by now, but Shadow has spent the last week trying her darn-est to go, sleep, and rub whereever Heather has been. Just today, she has twigged to the fact that this may not have been such a Good Idea.
Up until now, it’s been fun playing and flirting, but now Finn is getting serious, following her everywhere and not leaving her alone She’s not a girl who growls, nor bares her teeth but I’ve seen both today as she tries to discourage the Randy devil.
If the three of us hadn’t been alone in the room, I would never have guessed it was Shadow having that (quiet) grumble.
The next week will be interesting, to say the least. Finn and Gemma have an obedience trial on Saturday, right when I’m expecting Heather to be fully ‘on song’ as it were.
The canine majority of this household all seem to be in the grip of chemical madness
With luck, my older mountain bike will be serviceable again sometime today. I don’t mind servicing a bike now and then and keeping it in condition, or even adjusting the brakes and gearing – but this poor bike has been abandoned and languishing unloved in the garage ever since I got the Birdy Blue (folding bike). In all that time, the cables have stretched beyond the adjustment range available, so even with the full range of the adjustment screws the best I could do is get the front dérailleur to shift one chain-ring – the rear shifters are only there for show! Nothing happens when you flip them
A local bike shop is giving it an overhaul so that we can get back to training for the Endurance Test in August – with any luck, I won’t need it. If the weather is dry beforehand, the Birdy’s little wheels (16″) will have no problem riding over grass, but if we have rain in any quantity in the week before the ET, the Birdy’s little wheels will sink right in to the quagmire! The GT has full-sized wheels and wide grippy tyres that will make it a much more suitable mount for those conditions.
Not to mention kevlar armoured casing and puncture-proof inner tubes
It does present me with the original problem though: it won’t go in the car!
That’s why the Birdy replaced it: I could get two of them (if I had two!) in the boot alone
[UPDATE: it's back, and seems to be back to 100% again - though my wrists now remember the other reason I changed bikes - the riding position is very forward, putting much greater load on my wrists. My legs will easily do 20km on this bike. I'm not so sure about the injured wrists. Even after 15 years.]
By W S Myles
With Heather coming into season this week, and a general lack of form from Gemma in the last few weeks (she’s more interested in playing than working!) it came as no surprise today that she didn’t pass at our home club.
On the way, visibility was down to about three car-lengths in the pea-souper fog. Knowing that both kids were already a bit off-form I chose to keep them in the car and off the cold, wet grass until their turns. If you can’t set up the circumstances to have a good chance, then maximise the training/proofing opportunities that the situation presents. Both kids were on very early in their classes, so both were facing ’sits’ and ‘downs’ in near-freezing grass.
I’m still not sure whether the ‘probabilities’ go up or down if I leave them in the car vs bringing them out to ringside and getting cold and wet. Today’s experience suggests that it makes little difference! They fret if left in the car (though it’s comfortable) but lose focus if exposed to the elements when brought out.
In practice, earlier in the week, she did the same things on the first run-through, only to turn around and do a magnificent reprise about 20 minutes later. Unfortunately, in a real trial, you don’t get a do-over! I knew before we even left home that we’d be pushing the proverbial uphill to get a good pass today; not least because her scent discrimination articles all got soaked in yesterday afternoon’s rain.
Oh well. She hasn’t really done a good round since I’ve been bringing Finn along to trials. She just has to get used to it. He needs the confidence boost of performing the routine.
Which brings me to him: he started off quite well, but missed a few sits. Two sits in the heelwork, and one in the beginning of the Recall exercise. He was ‘on’ for a pass, but I elected to pull him out of the stays and let this one go – we only get three chances to collect a Quali card with him before he reaches a level he can’t compete at. Since the problem is confidence, scraping a pass just to rake in a title is counter-productive.
We are making progress though; sure, today’s hesitant performance was atypical, but he is finally starting to accept the dumbbell. This week, he reached almost five seconds before spitting it out on the floor. I even managed to get him to take half a step forward with it in his mouth!
To compete at open, he has to not only hold it in his mouth until I ask for it, but do the whole retrieve exercise ‘on the flat’ and over a jump – which is a long, long way from where he is right now. Why on earth should he pick up something that clearly isn’t food? Get real!
Next time will be only a week away, at Queanbeyan. Realistically, we aren’t going to do much there either. Heather will have completely frazzled Finn’s brain by then (she’s already reached the ‘Hannibal’ phase of her season) and I’m sure Gemma will be almost as wired. The grounds at Qbn may have improved markedly since the last time we were there, but I fully expect them to be as rough and spiky as last time: hard to walk a straight line on, and hard to do a ‘down’ on without getting poked.
It’s all practice. It’s all educational. It’s all about proofing. Some day, it’ll pay off when we really need a pass in similar conditions. There is no substitute for actually going to trials; no matter how hard you try, you can never completely replicate the situation.
On a positive note, Ang brought Rosie and Pepper along to the trial today, and my oh my, how Pepper is turning into a handsome lad! He has a full dose of the jumping gene that Heather and Finn also have in spades He loves to jump up and offer a hug and a kiss He clearly remembers me too.
Congratulations to Ang and Rosie – they scored their third pass at CCD today, and Rosie’s Title! Pepper was very well behaved as mum and big sis did their routine in the ring. A very creditable score and third place, no less! I’m sure Rosie doesn’t care about the nice sashes she earned
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