The Blue Toy Showdown

Below I narrate a recent interaction captured on photo between Kendall and West. Enjoy!

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Kendall: "Hey West, I'll trade you a ring for your blue toy!"

West: "Well, rings are cool, especially red ones, but I really want to play with my blue toy"

K: "Look, just trust me, this is a good trade. Red rings are the best rings. Now let me just try the blue toy..."

W: "Um, well, like I said, red rings are great, but I really like chewing on my blue toy right now"

K: "Here, you have my red ring and I'll just take the blue toy now"

W: "Thanks, but actually I'd like to keep my blue toy"

K: "Fine. I'll just innocently rest my head right here. No rush. No pressure."

K: "Oh West! Have I mentioned how cute you are with your face?! And your fur??!"

W: "Um, actually you haven't. But it's nice to hear. And I like being petted. Babies are fun!"

K: "We're the best of friends, you can totally trust me!"

W: "I love you, little Kendall. Here's a kiss just for you to seal our trusting bond"

K: "Look how cute and smiley we are! Smile for the photo, West!"

K: "Oh look at this blue toy I found that no one is playing with! I love the blue toy!"

W: "Oh wait, what? I thought..."

W: "What about all that trust talk?"

K: "Huh?"

K: "Mine!"

K: "Nom nom nom!"

W: "Humphf... Where's that ring?"

USDAA Trial in Turlock

Crystal and I took the dogs to Turlock, CA for a USDAA agility trial this past weekend. Both West and Sonoma competed, and if you're wondering, yes they do compete against each other. The concept behind many of the agility organizations is that the dog starts at level 1, then moves to 2 when a certain set of criteria is met, then on to level 3 when that same criteria is met at the second level. Once in level 3, the dog competes to get its agility champion title of that organization by accomplishing a rigorous set of criteria. So for example, in AKC, the dog starts at Novice (level 1), then moves to Open (level 2), and finally competes in Excellent (level 3). Once you're in Excellent, you work towards your Master Agility Champion (or MACH). Sonoma started her agility "career" in AKC, and has achieved an Excellent title, and is currently working towards her MACH. We had heard that USDAA trials were a bit of a younger, more competitive crowd, so when West started competing, we decided to give them a try. So even though Sonoma is in Excellent in AKC, she has to start over again in Starters (USDAA level 1), alongside West, who has no titles in any organization.

So, this weekend we competed with both dogs in Starters. There are a lot of different "games" in USDAA agility, which means about 5 runs a day for each dog. In AKC agility, the dog typically only runs 3 different events. So if you think about it, we were used to sharing Sonoma's three runs per day in AKC, and now we have two dogs, running about 5 runs per day each in USDAA - a much different ballgame!! Overall, we had a lot of success (and a few learning opportunities). We walked away with a bunch of qualifying runs, and a few 1st and 2nd places. Both dogs are just one run away from their Starters title, and will hopefully be competing soon in Advanced (USDAA level 2). Here are a few pictures from the weekend. I must say, we have some really good looking dogs - but not that I'm biased...

West and Crystal competing. He doesn't knock this bar over, believe it or not, but he's taking a very short path around the course by jumping on the inside of each jump. Ideal placement for the dog over the jump in this circumstance :-)

You can see on the same jump, that Sonoma isn't hugging that inside of the jump as much as West. While she successfully completed the jump and made a nice turn, she probably lost a split second of time by taking a slightly longer path. And those split seconds add up. We'll work on our rear crosses (where the handler crosses behind the path of the dog to signal a turn) to tighten up that behavior.



Here's West and Sonoma each getting ready to launch! The "Sit, Stay" at the beginning of the course is probably the hardest behavior we ask of them out there. They get out on the course, the leash taken off (see it in the grass there??) and we lead out into the course somewhere. They are ready to RUN! West loads his legs up, and just wants to explode......... but he has to stay until we say the magical release word, "OKAY!"

At this point, Sonoma's "Sit, Stay" is much more reliable than West's... but rest assured, her heart is beating a million times a minute right now and her brain is firing like crazy! She's one step away from just letting her adrenaline take over...



Sonoma and me somewhere along the course. She's pretty serious.

One of Sonoma's best obstacles are the weave poles. To do the weaves successfully, the dogs must enter in between the first and second weave poles from the right to the left. They must alternate through each pair of poles, until they exit on the 12th on the left... Hmm, okay, I'll draw it out:

Sonoma having such reliable weave pole entries, allows us to be anywhere remotely close to the weaves and still have trust that she'll cleanly enter the poles and complete the entire set, without popping out somewhere a long the way.

And S coming out of the tunnel and making a nice tight right turn... Again, the tight turn out of the tunnel shortens the dog's path and keeps them from exploding out of the tunnel, adding distance (and ultimately time), and then finally turning yards away from the tunnel exit.

S jumping over the same jump (as before) a second time in the run, but this time heading straight instead of turning.

Before each event starts, the judge responsible for the ring will hold a "briefing". They will quickly review the rules of the game, answer competitors questions, and those types of things. In this particular briefing, our agility friends Matt and Penni, who both run border collies (Buzz and Einstein), are listening too. They are both in our Monday night class with West because their BCs are young, beginner dogs as well. Actually, their two dogs are siblings from the same litter and they just happen to train agility at the same place. It's fun to see the difference in the two dogs as they grow up with different handlers but are from the same pedigree.

Anyone know these dogs??

Saw them at the beach the other day....

Long time, no update

It's been over a month (maybe two??) since I've last updated our blog. It seems like every night and weekend we have something going on that takes up a lot of our time and leaves none for sitting down with a laptop to type up a coherent blog post. Not that I'm complaining, I love our active lifestyle. But I guess it's more like if there's time to sit down and write a blog post, then I should be looking into wedding vendors or something instead...

But to that point, the wedding planning is going well. At this point we have decided on the venue, caterer, photographer, and wedding dress (which I have not seen). We are lucky to have such a dedicated family back East willing to help with the things that are basically impossible for us to do from California. Two weekends ago weekend Crystal's dad and step-mom were visiting us and we drew a mockup of the wedding layout on their property. We feel that an attention to detail will really help the event feel magical for everyone. Crystal and I know that regardless of the outcome, the wedding will be magical for both of us, but we want to convey that emotion to our guests as well.

I plan to write a post about our trip to Europe, if nothing else, to get pictures up online from the vacaion. But again, sitting down to write the post requires time which I hope to have this weekend or next...

In the meantime, I'd like to give a "shout out" to theotherrelativenews.blogspot.com. Sarah recently started her own blog, and titled it as a play on this blog. Now to be honest, I'm a little disappointed she didn't even give us a plug on the email she sent out, but she did at least make mention to the fact that we have one...

Tonight we're driving down to Turlock, CA for a Saturday USDAA trial. We're very excited because it will be West's first try at an offical agility trial. He's only running two events, Jumpers and Pairs. Jumpers is similiar to AKC, where it's all jumps and tunnels (but no weaves). Pairs is a game where you run half a course, and a a partner with another dog runs the other half. So we've signed up Sonoma and West to compete together in Pairs. All four of us will be out on the course at once - a first. We're very excited! Sonoma will be competing in four events. I'll let everyone know how we did after the weekend..........

Random pic from our last Costa Rica trip (2010)...

Easter Weekend Camping Trip

Crystal and I spent the weekend camping at Uvas Canyon Park in Morgan Hill with the dogs. We re-discovered this beautiful park last weekend while hiking with Tim and Becca. C and I took Sonoma there years ago when she was a puppy, and forgot about it ever since. Our hike last weekend was amazing - waterfalls, dense moss covered trees, redwoods, creeks and brooks - just great. So this weekend when we arrived for camping, we knew what to expect. And Uvas did not disappoint. It's only a 45 minute drive from our house, most of the time spent winding your way away from Hwy 101 into the deep woods just south of San Jose.

We arrive around 5:00 on Friday night, and spent that night drinking wine and eating dinner. Dinner was balsamic marinaded skirt steak and baked potatoes, both cooked over the campfire. The next day we played around the campsite and found a deserted path along Uvas Creek for the dogs to run around a bit. Tim and Becca arrived at the site Saturday night. We woke up on Easter morning and went for another walk along the creek and took a lot of photos. It seems like every single photo the dogs were in came out blurry - go figure. In the afternoon another couple (Kim and Jake) arrived at the site and we enjoyed an Easter feast. Each couple brought a portion of the dinner, and together had ham, BBQ chicken, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, cous cous, and rolls. Everything came out really delicious!

After dinner, we took down the tent and packed up the campsite and were home and unpacked by 5:30. All in all, it was a great weekend, extremely relaxing, and it's always refreshing to spend extended time outside. Enjoy the photos!

The four of us at the campsite.

This was right down the hill along side our campsite.  The walk down here was gorgeous.

Uvas Canyon Creek

Crystal, Tim, and Becca strollin' along.

How Easter-esque (minus the beer).

Documented evidence that Tim does, at infrequent times, act like a gentleman.

River monster.

C

More green lushy-ness.

Cool tree roots.  This is the background on my work computer for now.

C again.

I thought the water looked cool in this picture.  Taken with a slower shutter speed.

Our Easter egg coloring setup.  Well done, ladies.

Artistic genus at work.

Becca's first time coloring eggs.  Glad we were all there to watch the 'magic'.

The colorful outcome.  Even the puke colored ones look cool.

Our camping Easter feast!

Weekend Trial in Santa Rosa

It's been a while since the last update, but Crystal and I have been so busy "doing stuff" it's like there's no free time to write about it (except at work - obviously! - and that's where I'm writing this from.  Dad, are you still proud???)  Anyway, last weekend we spent the three days (Monday was off for Presidents' Day) in Santa Rosa at an AKC agility trial.  It was our first time participating in a three day trial and we had a lot of fun.  The first two days, Sonoma ran three events, and on the third she ran two.  We ended up the week with three qualifying runs out of the 8, and earned the first 24 points towards her Agility Champion title (out of 750 points!).  We have a long road ahead for sure!  Unfortunately, we forgot our camera this time, but I was at least able to get this picture with my iPhone.

We keep the dogs in their crates for a lot of the trial.  They definitely get taken out for frisbee and walks around on occasion, but spend the rest of the time relaxing in their crates.  It's especially good for West since he's just a puppy and still learning how to behave at trials.  It's also good for Sonoma since the agility dogs know they are there to perform, and can have a pretty high stress level as a result.  The crate helps them stay calm and relaxed, and not to mention warm!  It was pretty cold in the mornings - Crystal's windows were even frozen shut one morning!  I know it's nothing compared to the winter everyone's been having back East... but that's cold for us (apparently I've "lost my roots")...

This weekend our good friend Renee is in town from Seattle.  We'll be spending some time in SF, as well as wine tasting and hiking.  I'll do my best to remember the camera this weekend and hopefully we'll get some fun photos to share with everyone.

West's Agility

West has been doing very well in his puppy agility class.  He is definitely the star of the class, and is advancing through the skills faster than his "classmates".  We're really excited about his agility ability (thats fun to say!).  Here's a video of his class on Monday where he ran a sequence of jumps.  As you can see, there are no bars on the jumps, the puppies are still too young to be jumping on their joints.  Besides, at this point just getting the pups to run between the jump uprights is an accomplishment.  But watch the video and see little West run!

The video was taken at night, so it's dark, and Blogger compressed video and reduces quality, but you can see the fast puff ball running in loops at least.  Enjoy!

Also, during class our instructor Anne Kajava (who runs Jumpin' Java Agility which we train through) asked Crystal if she'd be interested in teaching private agility lessons to other students in the class.  So starting this week on Thursday, Crystal will be teaching two private lessons, one with one student and another with two students.  We think this is a really great opportunity for her to get some experience instructing and training, and will if nothing else, give her more exposure as we figure out how to make working with animals a part of her every day life!

iPad Drawings

One really fun element of the iPad are the drawing apps.  Theres this great one I've been playing around with recently and ended up with these pictures of the pets.

"West on the Water"

"Lion King"

"Sonoma Claus"

Funny Pictures of West from Vacation

Here's just a random assortment of funny photos we got of West during our trip back East.

Meeting/tasting Grandpa John.

"Can't catch me!  Whoa actually you're close!"

Batdogs.

Haha such a frantic photo.

Jumping up for the ball, flying squirrel style.