Unexpected Vacation

Ended up not heading over to Idaho, my car had other plans, unfortunately. So instead we have an unexpected Staycation, which I really didn’t need, but can’t complain about. It’s been a whirlwind around here … for a long time, so some enforced relaxation is probably due. Haku and Navarre are much happier about this plan anyway, though I’m sure Asher and Bryn would be pretty annoyed if they knew about what they’re missing out on.

So, yeah, I’m now planning for 2022 – hard to believe this year is almost over. ‘Making it up as we go along’ seems to be the name of the game for so many things for quite a few years now, and things are still in such limbo. I remain feeling incredibly fortunate for my students and dog community, I think having that outlet during the pandemic has made it so much easier. Knock on wood, agility seems to have remained a safe activity during that time, no outbreaks or spread. I have a couple students that aren’t vaccinated, but almost all of them are, and that makes me feel so much better. I read on the internet that Oregon ‘herd immunity’ is supposed to be December/January, so we’ll see if that’s true.

What will 2022 bring? Hard to say, and it will be interesting to see how the pandemic changes agility and competitions. There is already drama about how AKC wants to bring back paper coursemaps – which just seems so backwards. I don’t think much will change in our area, AKC and CPE are the main trialing venues and I don’t see that changing. Planning to do a few more trials with Asher and Navarre before the end of the year, and then in 2022 I’ll have THREE agility dogs – yikes! Good thing I don’t trial too much …

Jealous of the UKI Open, which sounds bigger and bigger every year – I heard 8 rings this year. As the UKI national will stay in Florida indefinitely, I just don’t see anything happening over here either in the way of UKI trials or any particular push for more international course design. There is a still a need for another venue …

I did enter one day of an AKC trial in Eugene, drove all the way down there and the surface was rock hard with a slippery coating of sand/pebbles on top. Sigh. I tried Asher, but after it took him five tries to get into the weavepoles, and then almost killed himself once he got in, we scratched the rest of the runs and went home. Eugene is off the list of trial locations again. Funny enough, this is what the surface USED to be like, and it had improved, but I hadn’t been down in quite some time. Disappointing, though for most AKC dogs surface doesn’t really matter and they don’t see anything wrong with it. We’ll try a couple more trials up in Ridgefield this winter though, which hasn’t been bad (knock on wood). Would love to have better spacing and more interesting courses, but it is what it is.

We did go up to Fidos for herding on my break, which is such a ridiculously far distance from my place – three hours is a long drive, and then back again – especially with Friday traffic. It was a LOVELY Fall day though, and we got to both practice and have a lesson with Ron, so it did seem worth it … until the drive home. I am just not a fan of driving, I don’t know how people travel to trials and things constantly, I just hate traveling.

Fidos sheep are a good match for what I’m looking at with both Bryn and Asher right now. Asher’s outruns are perfect on those sheep, and we just worked on those little things that mean a lot – like lie down when I ASKED, not five steps later. Sloppy things. But it was fun to just go and do things without him being all weird and doing the obnoxious things he has been doing. He may just be panicking with more challenging sheep, but with these guys – no problem. And let it be said, his driving does look really good these days. He DOES have skills … if not all the time. Still need to work on slowing down on his lifts and those small flanks. He was a good herding dog again, which is always refreshing. Good refreshers with Ron, stop trying over manage on the drives, just lie him down and let the sheep settle rather than getting so annoyingly flanky-flanky.

Bryn did really well too, she’s growing up and making some very good decisions. And some bad ones, but way more good decisions than bad – only one break her stay and blast into the sheep exploding them everywhere. She is calling off, lying down, waiting and showing so much more self control. It shows in her work as well, she’s thinking (sometimes) and changing her behavior when asked (sometimes). Little outruns were MUCH better than the last time we looked at them, and doing some good settling behind the sheep too – sometimes. Still has a habit of not coming to balance on the come-bye side, but better than she was. She could be really sloppy with the Fidos sheep as they stay with you pretty much no matter what, but I think it helped her relax and stop being so reactive when they weren’t trying to get away from her all the time.

Really pleased that she’s being so willing to team up, to be thoughtful about what she’s doing, to start giving the sheep some space and trying really hard. Love that little girl, so different than Asher, but so much fun. Though really all she has to do is be cute, and, good lord, is she good at that. Adorably tiny Bryn makes me so happy.

With my car back we went up to practice and hike in Molalla this week, and Bryn continues to progress with her baby outruns, doing less panicking and more and more thoughtful behavior. New challenge is getting her to slow down when bringing them to me – not something she naturally wants to do. Gosh she’s a cute little thing. Asher continues to look good in controlled situations, and Heather continues to be unable to drive in a straight line. This is not a dog issue, well, not much anyway. Small flanks, snappier responses, better whistles will help. When he’s in the right frame of mind he’s looking better, but we haven’t pushed it to more difficult situations that require him to go into more pressure or with sheep he’s worried he’ll lose.

Made the mistake of telling Ron that I was happy with Bryn’s baby outruns, so apparently now it was time to teach her lift sheep off of someone else – ha! So that was a challenge, but I suppose no time like the present to start showing her that the job is the same no matter who else is around. She definitely tightens up when other people/dogs are around the sheep. And while Ron wasn’t impressed with Bryn’s now much less snappy recalls off of sheep when another dog was lifting them off of her, I was happy to see she COULD do it, even if it did take a lot of convincing. We keep working on that self control, around sheep and at home – and it’s getting better. Considering it wasn’t that long ago no one could even catch her when she was around sheep, I’m pleased with her progress! Our homework, besides that, is making sure she responds when I tell her to slow her ass down.

Asher’s outruns and driving look good, his lifts are still a work in progress. Left alone he rushes it like no tomorrow, and me ‘helping’ with the lie down will work, but it’s not fixing the issue. What does work, considering he has a very nice feel for sheep in OTHER places, is getting on his case on the outrun, so he’s actually being thoughtful when he finally gets to the lift, instead of running in there at 100 miles per hour. so that’s our homework.

And then the big news of the weekend, Carol actually agreed to come out and work with Navarre and take some lessons with Ron and see what he did when she actually tried to change some of problem behavior. Expectations all around were VERY low, I had tested him out earlier in the week and we were just as much of a shit show as ever – I quit after about two minutes. So it was just fascinating to see how different he was with Carol compared to with me, with Ian or with Dave. With me he’s just always spent the entire time trying herd past me. With Ian it’s an argument, but kind of an agreed upon argument. With Dave Navarre will get sulky, but will respond, but not happily. With Carol and trying to fix his normal issues of being way too tight and fast he started out his normal self, and by the time they stopped he had much improved. OMG, SO much shit eating though – the inner conflict was raging. But he got better as he went on, and it wasn’t really avoidance like it can be.

It was really rather fascinating to watch, Navarre and herding has been such a puzzle for me. Carol will hopefully try working with him again, and I actually think if they did work together some of his issues might actually improve and he could, amazingly enough, progress. But not really a project Carol is interested in, but we’ll see what the future holds. For once though, he got to play, which has not happened in quite a while.

Had some lovely hikes this week, I adore Fall – and we had missed several weeks. I’m glad for Oregon weather to act a little more like Oregon though – happy to see the water everywhere. I had planned to do more trick training with Bryn but we have been seriously struggling just getting her to EAT, and she had reached the point where I had given in and was catering to her to see if she’d reliably eat ANYTHING. We switched foods, added toppers, tried different set ups – no luck getting her to eat. Now, this is not exactly unusual with a young border collie, so I didn’t think TOO much of it, and she’s been super active and perk. Been going on for quite some time too, since her first heat cycle. Finally, this week after she wouldn’t touch ANYTHING I started her on antibiotics … and she started eating again. Hmmmmmm. Not like a whole new dog, but definitely better – so now I’m suspicious of maybe giardia. So all dogs are getting treated for giardia and I’ll go through a course of antibiotics with Bryn and we’ll see what happens.

Irrigation foundation is in with the arena, ready to be finished when the surface is done. Electricity starts next week, not sure about the interior details. Still looking for someone to handle drainage issues, but it seems like I can see the finish line and that’s very exciting.

Staycation has been good for many reasons, and one of those is that I realized I just hadn’t felt like I have the time/motivation to do things that I enjoy that are NOT dog related, so it’s been nice to reset and relax and realize that I haven’t been doing those things for almost a year. I love my dogs, and I very much enjoy my dog related hobbies – but they are not my whole life! Relax, Heather, relax. So working on that and very much enjoying my all adult, all well behaved dogs that really don’t NEED me so much. We are just one big happy family, and not one that requires any particular management – we can ALL relax.