A stubbed toe

Well Foster just has a stubbed toe, nothing broken. That's good I guess. I just wish I hadn't taken him to the vet now! Oh well, at least I feel better about his toe. Now I know I did the wrong thing, otherwise I would have wondered... An interesting thing the vet saw on his x-ray is that he has really bad arthrisits around the first joint of his toes. Before the x-ray she only manipulated the toe (he showed pain). After the x-ray she came in all sure of herself. She showed me the x-ray and said she suspected that the toe wasn't REALLY the problem, that it was the arthritis bothering him! So she manipulated his foot a bit higher up where she saw it and, voila! Nothing. No pain at all. Then she moved down about an inch to the tip again and he yelped. So much for that theory. But she said she'll have the radiologist look at it anyway.

But it's odd because every time I have Foster or Apollo x-rayed the vets see something abnormal. For Foster he was x-rayed when he had a GI blockage and he didn't present like a GI blockage at all, although both vets (we went to our regular vet and then a specialist) said it looked "odd". When Apollo was x-rayed for what turned out eventually to be pneumonia, the vet (who was admittedly very young and probably inexperienced - and rather cute) said it looked like bloat. He had nothing like bloat!

Anyway, Foster isn't limping too much anymore and hopefully by Friday or so Jay will be able to take him to the park. I just hope he doesn't let him do too much.

I only have one day left of work before leaving for tryouts and I had soooo much work to do. I should really be getting ready for work now but I'm avoiding it. I still have a lot of work to do at home to get ready for the trip, not to mention getting ready for Nancy's visit. But I'm trying not to think about that. I'll worry about it when I get back from minnesota.

Anyway, I'm starting to look forward to tryouts. I'm a little nervous but not so much. I feel relatively prepared, or at least as prepared as I can get! Sandy gave me some good advice last night that I've been telling myself lately, but it's definitely good to hear it from someone else to reinforce how important it is. When I'm at tryouts I have to handle Icon like he's not quite as trained as I like. It's not the place to assume that he knows his weave entries so leave him to it. It's better to overhandle than underhandle! I also have to remember that I can't really move laterally from him in the 24" poles since he can tend to pop out of those.

Sandy set up a hansen course for class last night and we ran it brilliantly, if I do say so myself! (I know, modesty at it's best). I was able to successfully overhandle the weave entry with a front cross after the jump followed by rear-crossing the poles. It worked nice though!



Last weekend I went to PP to practice some courses. Lena with Fia the boxer came to help me set courses, which was really nice of them! It was really hot and they had to make it to a conformation show by noon (and they were almost late for it!).

We were able to set up a std course and 2 jumpers courses. Lena taped two of my runs.

WT Tryouts, here we come!

We leave for WT tryouts on Thursday. If my life wasn't so crazy right now I might start being nervous about it! But, alas, work has managed to exhaust all of my worrying and nervous capabilities. Both of my projects are starting to spiral out of control. If I wasn't taking time off work for agility, I could probably get things back together, but thinking about the time I'm taking off this week and in the 3rd week of May just makes me want to crawl into a hole and not come out until the fall. All of our issues are on the development side of things, I have SQAs pretty much twiddling their thumbs waiting for something to do and I'm scrambling to keep them occupied.

The ounce of worrying ability left over from work has been taken up by the fact that Nancy is coming to visit me next week and my house isn't ready (I don't even know if the new bed will arrive before she does!), not to mention I won't even be able to work late while she's here so there I will be getting further behind. And of course I will be drunk whenever I'm not at work so I probably won't feel the greatest either! I have tonight and Wednesday to pack for tryouts and clean my house for the ex (who is watching Foster and Apollo while I'm gone)

AND, to make matters worse I think Foster might have broken his toe on Saturday at the park. Everything was fine but as we were leaving I looked down and there was blood covering his foot (and some of my shoe too!). He walked home fine and then I washed the blood off in the back yard and it looked like he came close to ripping his nail off. The blood was oozing out from around the entire nailbed. It seemed firmly attached though so I thought I'd just let it heal. But as of Saturday afternoon he started limping. He has been limping since so this morning I called to make a vet appointment for him. I'm taking him in at 6:40 (oops, I guess I can't pack or work tonight either!) and I have a sinking feeling that he broke his toe :(

What's so great about being Canadian?

On my way in to target today I was accosted by a highschool student who asked me if I was registered to vote.

"No? Do you want to be?" He asked with a sudden light in his eye.

"Well yeah, but I'm Canadian! I can't vote!"

As I walked through the automated sliding doors he shouted after me, "Cool!"

Cool? What's so cool? I guess I should have asked.

On my way OUT of Target a totally DIFFERNT highschool student accosted me and asked, "Are you registered to vote?"

"No," I replied as I kept walking towards my car.

"Do you want to be??" he asked as I walked past him, trying to prevent the unregistered fish from slipping his net.

"I can't! I'm Canadian!" I shouted over my shoulder.

"Cool! I want to be Canadian!"

Ok, a couple of things are odd here. One is the fact that highschool kids still use the word "cool". I used that word when *I* was in highschool and I'm pretty sure I wasn't ahead of my time. The second thing that is wrong has to be the fact that they both of those teens thought it was "cool" to be Canadian and at least one of them wanted to BE canadian. WHY??

As a Canadian I can tell you it's not so different than being american!

Van Nuys

Van Nuys ended up OK for Icon and not so OK for Polly.

Icon got a qq on Sunday and ran really nicely for me on Saturday, but I missed a part of the course :(. I don't know what I was thinking! Oh well. The courses were really nice, I recommend both judges (Peter Liu and Something Mildbrand). They both complimented me on Icon's runs this weekend, which I thought was nice. Polly only got one Q last weekend, the last JWW run on Sunday. On Saturday he dropped 2 bars in Std and then I totally messed him up in JWW. On Sunday he dropped a bar in Std and then I pulled him offcourse for not stopping on the a-frame. Our Sun JWW was nice though! He came 3rd to 2 border collies.

The bad part is that my back started hurting again. It kind of twinged on my way down. I could tell it was pretty bad because my hamstrings were sore during my runs on the weekend (same this as at fiesta cluster!) and on the way back... OUCH. It was a pretty uncomforable trip. I guess I need to reconsider my sabbatical plans if my back isn't feeling better.

Back to Van Nuys

I'm heading down to Van Nuys for an agility trial this weekend and I have NO desire to go at all. My yard is a mess, my house is a mess, I'm behind at work and I'm tired tired tired. The thought of driving 5 hrs after work, being away from 2 days and coming back straight for work makes me even more tire tire tired. I'd probably be better off staying in the area because there are a couple of practices at PP for WT tryouts that I was invited to. I've been thinking about skipping it, but probably won't.

Haute Tracs day 2-4

The remainder of the HT weekend went really well for me and my boys.

I'm trying to remember exactly, but I *think* Apollo Q'd in everything except the last std (where I pulled him off a jump) which gave him 2 std, 2 jumpers, 2 snooker and 2 gamblers a GP Q and 2nd in SC (for $28!). But the big news is that Apollo got his APD on Friday with his Snooker Q! Yay Polly!

I have video of him but haven't uploaded it yet. I willshare it once uploaded.

Icon also had a really good weekend, Qing in everything except for Friday Std (where I messed up his weave entry). On Saturday Std he got his MAD title with a first place. He ended up with 2 std (1st places!), 2 jumpers (a 1st and a 3rd), 2 snooker (super q's but no placement), 2 gamblers (a 1st and a non-placer) and 2 pairs. He came 1st in Grand Prix for his 3rd voucher and we got through to SC round 2 but it wasn't pretty either time! Every mistake I made with Icon last weekend was related to weave entries. I think that's something we need to work on! But it appears to be more my fault than his. I either overhandle him or underhandle him.

I have video of Icon on my photobucket account and also had Eric tape him

Icon is now only 1 std/jumpers/pairs and 2 gamblers/snooker away from his ADCH. His next USDAA trial isn't until the end of June though, so it'll be a while still!

Haute TRACS day 1

Well today didn't start well at all for me.  As I arrived people were walking so I was way behind.  Thankfully I got the special parking privileges where all you had to do was pay out your ass.  

The running order for our group was Snooker, Gamblers, Standard, Jumpers.  Not bad in the grand scheme of things, although it would have been best to have gamblers first.  

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But regardless, Icon was one of the first dogs up for snooker and I was really discombobulated for this run.  Snooker was 4 rings away from where I was set up.  I had thought Apollo was first and got him to the ring as the first 26" dogs started.  When I realized I had the wrong dog I had to run back to my setup to get Icon and then run back.  So, that's my excuse for screwing up the run.  But screw up I did!  We got 8 points!  Yay!

But the bright side of getting 8 points in snooker is that there's nowhere to go but up, right?  WRONG!

Our next run Icon and I managed to get 0 points in gamblers!  It was pretty impressive.  The only way you could get 0 points in gamblers (aside from not doing any obstacles at all) was to be on the aframe when the whistle blew.  And guess where we were?  Right on the a-frame!

But wait, I know you're wondering, "but what about Apollo??"  You need to know how he fared after his bingeing session yesterday!  Well he did pretty well actually!  We did a conservative run in snooker with 3 reds and a 5-7-4 but we got through the close.  In gamblers we also had a pretty nice but conservative run.  I need to check the scores for both of those, but I don't think we placed.  

In Standard Polly was really good, but I messed him up for an E. :(  In JWW we had a nice run aside from a refusal when I pulled away from him too soon.

In Standard Icon had a pretty nice run and I think he won it.  But I wasn't too happy with his contacts, they were pretty slow.

In Jumpers Icon had a pretty nice run as well!  And he won again!  We had a wide turn at the beginning, but otherwise I was pretty happy with it.

So how did it end?  Both teams were in the Q's going into the relay (no thanks to me!)  Boxer's (d)Rule with Apollo and Cammi were the second last team in the Q list.  Icon's team was a bit better off, about 3/4 of the way down.  For the relay Icon't wait to see Jace win the Derby went first.  Icon ran clean and then Jace ran clean.  Sadly, Derby had an E but it was on the first jump so our time was pretty good since she went over the finish jump right away.  Next Polly's team went.  Polly had a bar down and Cammi was clean!

So we ended up with a q for each team :)  That was Icon's 2nd for 2008 and Polly's first for natioanls!  This means when I go up to Canby (or should I say 'if') I won't enter Polly in team.  It's a lot for him!

So tomorrow starts the regular classes and GP.   Our main goals for the rest of the weekend are to get Polly's last Snooker Q for his APD and Icon's last Standard Q for his MAD.  Of course any other Q's are appreciated :)