Autumn Fast CATs!

Sunday was Fast CAT day!   I really enjoyed my first Fast CAT with the girls in the spring and was looking forwards to another day of it.  While this sport is not something that I could enjoy more frequently than a few times a year, I think doing it on occasion and allowing my dogs to be total barbarians is sort of liberating.   Ha.

There was an AM and a PM trial, so each dog got two tries each.   We were very fortunate to be on the top half of the run order, Perri was #26 and Molly #31.   Perri got to go first and clocked in at 9.76seconds (so, 20.95 MPH.)  Quite a bit slower than her personal best, but honestly...I can't say how much I enjoy watching Perri going all in and just enjoying something!  On Perri's second round in the PM trial though, she pulled up short and refused to go through the cones and timers at the ending.   She ran back to me!   Perri had returned to me in the AM trial, but she had gone through the timers first.

I was very upset about this at first.   Perri can't even chase the bag without freaking out about something.   This. Just. Sucks.   So tired of my dog having her life ruined by fear.   Upon further reflection I thought about what happens at the ending: the delightful chase ends abruptly.   Strangers converge upon the dog and come at her with slip leads to hold until the owner gets down to the other end.   Does that sound like something Perri would like?    While Perri does love people, the abrupt shift in activity as well as people coming to put things over her head....it is no wonder she returned to me the first time and unsurprising she refused to go in there at all the second time.  I actually think that she slowed down towards the end of the first trial as she came into the finish line.   The timer handed us our time slip and said, "We can't believe she got a time this fast, it looked like she was barely moving!"   At the time I just laughed and said "Poodles float!" because they do cover a lot of ground with seemingly no effort, but I have to wonder if Perri slowed down her sprint significantly because of people at the ending.    As usual, things are a bit complicated with Perri!   I have three choices: no more CAT activities.   Coursing ability test only (600 yards, ending where she starts so I am the one to catch her.)  Or, get somebody else to hold her at the start of the Fast CAT and I can go down to the end line to catch her.   I already suspect there could be some issues with an unfamiliar person holding her at the start so I would need to bring a friend along or find somebody familiar to her at the trial who would be willing to build rapport with her before her run.    Or.   God forbid, Vince could join us and release her!   Oh heavens no, Vince coming to a dog show!

Molly was much less complicated!   7.88 and 7.99 in the AM and PM, 25.95MPH and 25.60MPH!   Not beating her personal best but still very respectable!   I was told down at the finish that Molly released the lure, allowed the leash to be placed on her and was very polite.   Good little barbarian!   I am proud of her manners down at the finish with strangers.

We will return in the Spring for more Fast CATs and I am hoping to finish Molly's BCAT title then.   The titling system for Fast CATs is to use your MPH and convert it into points.   At this time with all three of Molly's scores she has 80.77 points.   If she continues to average at least 25 mph, she would need to run three more Fast CATs to earn her title.   

BCAT is 150 points, DCAT is 500 points and FCAT is 1000 points.   I think a BCAT is a fun goal for Molly and I!   My main focus in on a day of fun and barbaric behavior and foolish bag chasing, but hey if they want to give us a pretty ribbon for that I can't say I wouldn't enjoy it!

And at last, a compilation of the lunacy of Bag Brain Day!

Since the trial site was only about 20-25 minutes from the coast, I treated all three of us to a drive out there to the Asbury Park Dog Beach.   We did not stay long but the girls enjoyed some off leash time and ball chasing.   Unfortunately when I got home, Molly was quite lame on her bad left foot.   She was moving well when we got to the beach so I don't feel the Fast CATs were to blame but they certainly didn't help.  (add in the day before's agility runs and the 2-3 hour hike.)  The beach was not a great shore line.   It was all fluffy sand with a sharp slope down into the waves, which were fairly rough.   I did not want to keep throwing Molly's ball into the surf because she drinks so much water when she swims, and drinking that much salt water would be disastrous for her bowels.   Considering a few weeks ago I had her in the ER for GI issues, I did not want to push it!    This resulted in a lot of throwing her ball into the loose dry sand, which meant a lot of power sliding on poor footing. 

So, next Spring we will play more Fast CATs but no beach trip afterwards!   Molly has never had issues with lameness on our beach vacations in the past, but the beach that we go to has a different layout.  I have no regrets!   Molly is my rock, she plays agility with me whenever she can, no matter what.   I owe her so much.   A day of self destructive favorite activities is the least I can do for her.   Molly is already walking well again and her pain responses to toe massage have stopped. (the most painful area was actually her "outside toe", the toe on the opposite side from her arthritic area.   Compensation most likely.)   From the start her shoulder was stretching well (whereas last time this happened, she was resistant to extension.)    As a precaution I scratched Molly from this Saturday's CPE Agility trial, I want her foot to have a proper amount of rest. 

Beach Trip 2016

Vince and I took our annual trip to the beach earlier this week.   Last year, Perri was freshly placed on restriction due to her medial shoulder instability injury.   She could not run on the beach, she could not take walks longer than ten minutes, and she had to do her regime of exercises twice a day - and I had no intention of breaking any of those rules.   Truly, I would have loved to cancel our trip last year but that would have been unfair to V.   I remember having to bring a crate, and chewies, and listening to Perri scream in our camper while we left without her to run the other two dogs on the beach.  I remember that Perri refused to do any of her exercises, refused to eat a thing - until I threw a fit and demanded that Vince got and buy the holy grail ham for Perri.   Only then would she do her exercises.   I refused to make exceptions - we did those exercises every day.

A year later, so much gratitude to have three sound dogs.   We arrived, set up our camper and headed off to the bay.   I really wanted to leave Molly at home this year, but V would not hear of it.   Molly is a challenge on the beach.   If we have the opportunity to let all three dogs off lead, Molly does not entertain herself with personal pursuits.   She either wants to play with the ball, or body slam and/or bite at the necks of the other two.   Obviously, I can't let this happen!    And if Molly is playing ball, Perri orbits Molly - biting and shrieking.   So, if Molly is playing ball...Perri has to be leashed.   It took me a while to sort out this balance and figure out what works best. (other than separate beach trips, that is.)  This is also my second year taking my day-hiking pack on the beach with me and that's working well.  Freshwater, two dog bowls, but most importantly - a place to store the balls "out of sight, out of mind."

Molly and I have worked so hard on an "all done" cue.   She understands alldone with training, but the concept also applies for ball play.   If the ball and chuckit are in sight, Molly is out of control - biting snapping and body slamming me - it is not acceptable but it has been such a difficult behavior to progress away from. (Molly will sit or down when it is time for the ball to be thrown, but duration has been extremely challenging to increase.   She loses patience quickly.)   When I have the other two dogs to watch and play with (possibly attached to a leash!), it is not a good situation for training Molly to stop abusing me.   Putting the ball away is the best solution, and so that is what we do.  I say, "all done" and put the entire chuckit into the backpack.   Molly comes back to earth immediately these days (she used to snap at the bag and take out some frustration on me, but she has really grasped the concept now.)  And truly, I'm content with this.   Sometimes you just want to run your dogs on the beach and not be constantly in training mode.

One down side is that nobody can play ball while Molly is on the leash.   She just cannot deal with that.   But I do long ball throws for Molly and then shorter throws for Ein and Perri (unless Perri is leashed for excessive Molly-biting.)  I just loved seeing Ein rocking it on the beach, chasing the ball....peeing on All The Things.  Ein stayed quite sound for our entire trip.   He had some leg shaking at rest but that is to be expected.   I brought his Rimadyl and gave him one per day, though it was mostly as a preventative and not because he seemed terribly stiff or lame.   Old man has still got it goin' on.

One sacrifice I had to make was the SLR camera with the zoom lens on.  This is sad since one of my favorite things is taking a ton of photos.   On our second day I opted for taking the SLR with my shortest lens (the "Nifty Fifty", my cheapie 50mm prime lens.) and I decided to get what I could get with it.

Somebody was brave enough to stay in the water and ignore waves to get her ball.   Big step!

 

One thing that was new, that I did not love, was that after these two beach runs...the next morning, Molly was sore.   That's new.  Molly is never sore, merely lazy.   Or perhaps she has disguised her soreness in her laziness.   Regardless, when she got up to go outside and get her breakfast, she drug her hips up with some effort.   Just one of those little knife twist reminders that my girl is getting older.   No matter, I'm not freaking out.  I gave Molly half a tramadol and let her rest for our last day there.   All was good after that, she is moving nicely.

We also enjoyed a new type of fun.   V and I went for a beach walk after dark since it was a full moon - and there were plentiful crabs!   We think they were ghost crabs.  We were so wishing we had brought Perri the Pouncer Poodle and decided that we would bring her along on the second night and see how she would react to the crabs.   Perri did not disappoint, and for the entire mile round trip of our walk she never relented on chasing, pouncing, barking, shrieking, digging and air snapping at the crabs.   Our final evening we brought her out again, and this time I included Ein.   I did not think that Ein would care at all about the crabs - but he was antsy after a day of resting with Molly so I wanted to let him run the beach.   Well, Ein just joined right in with Perri!   Digging and dodging in and out and dancing all around the crabs - he was all for it!  It was really fun to see Ein enjoy a new "game", and I rejoice seeing how youthful he acted.   

We finished our trip with some shopping and we always make time to stop at "the dog store", as I call it, and buy the dogs ridiculously expensive baked treats.   We waited until tonight to hand them out.   Molly has a great down stay but you just can't get that tail to stay still!

Poodle Club of America 2016!

Last Sunday Perri and I hit the road for the Poodle Club of America National Specialty!  There really are not words for how proud and joyful I am that Perri and I were able to attend this year.  I had accepted that it wasn't going to happen, because I refused to push Perri's recovery from her injury to get her back to full jump height in time.  But Perri recovered very nicely with time to spare and allow me to take it slow and easy with returning her to normal activity at our pace.

After last year's PCA, I decided to let Perri's ears grow long.  Last year we had naked ears.   I remember scissoring all around the ear leather, painstakingly so that I did not cut Perri and making her little triangle ears just perfect.  But this year, we had full grown ears.   I'm not crazy about ears on Perri!   Her hair is so thick and it makes her ears look enormous!  She also had a decent amount of length on her overall coat.   Saturday night I gave Perri a bath and took at least a full hour to blow out her coat - I have never done this before.   I usually do about 20 minutes of drying just to get most of the moisture out of the coat so she isn't cold.  I blew the coat out so that she had those beautiful smooth legs like all the fancy poodles do.   I clipped her face tight and short again.   I brushed those ears out.   Perri's no fancy show poodle, and I'm no fancy groomer.   I'm still learning, but I'm doing my best.   I felt like Billy Coleman in Where the Red Fern Grows, when he cleans up his hound dog Little Anne for the beauty contest at the coonhound competition that he attends.   Out of his league, but so full of love.   (That will forever be my favorite book, by the way.)  Perri was absolutely gorgeous, I almost had tears in my eyes.   I knew my poodle was going to be the best poodle at that show!

She looks kinda silly and poufy in the pictures, but in person...she was just so pretty!

Sunday we started our drive.   We stopped at a rest area and found a geocache.   As soon as she hopped out of her car crate, someone gasped at how pretty she was.  We continued on, slightly out of our way, to Rehoboth Beach.   There was a special kind of geocache there that I wanted to check out!   It was a Webcam Geocache and they are no longer allowed to be created, only the existing ones are grandfathered in.   Unrelated to geocaching, there is a livestream webcam at the boardwalk at Rehoboth.   In order to log the webcam cache, you need to get yourself into the view of that webcam and take a screenshot of yourself.   This was simple with a smart phone!   Perri and I sat on a bench, did the screen capture at that was that.   Here is a photo of Perri on our bench, but of course with my iPhone and not the webcam. (Our cam picture was so far away you can barely make us out.  I wore red so that I could easily see myself and it's a good thing.)

We stayed at the same campground, in a cabin, as we did last year.  Perri was weird about the outdoor area at the cabin though (a different one than we stayed at in 2015.)  She approached it at a crouch and seemed very uncomfortable there.   Very strange.

Monday morning was the Poodle Club of America agility trial!   This was the only event that Perri was entered in this year.   I made the decision to not do rally obedience this year, and certainly not obedience.  Perri is just not there yet.

We got there early, I wanted to watch the Masters Standard class run!   Lots of acclimation time for Perri, lots of getting petted and admired by people and eating treats.   The Open Standard course was super flowy and we did really well on it...except...the weaves.   At about pole 9 she skips a pole and then gets right back in and finishes - she did this twice.   To be honest this was as happy as I could be with a weave fault.   She made a mistake, but got right back in there.   And she was willing and quite happy to try again!   I didn't ask her to do it a third time - her confidence on that obstacle is way too fragile and I need to respect that.  We will get there.

Excellent Jumpers with Weaves was next.  It was a fast moving, fun course!  I would have loved to try it with Molly.  I got us a refusal with a late front cross (sigh, so mad at myself.) and later a missed jump and missed weave entry.   I chose to not ask her to re-do the weaves, and she did finish the weaves after she got into them.   I still truly believe Perri understands weave poles, but her commitment to twelve poles is shaky and she has low confidence on it...so our time in the ring needs to support moving forward in those areas.   Duration and commitment.

So, no "ribbons or Qs" at PCA - those physical measures of success.   But truly, I was just so happy to be there and I treasure the many "personal Qs" that we had - it is a gift to be able to appreciate moving forward as a team even if you don't get a qualifying score on record.   PCA is so special.   I love the grass sod ring, the smell of the place, watching a solid day of only poodles running agility, and all of the people I got to meet.  

We met a woman who said that Perri reminded her so strongly of her parti standard that she recently lost, that she got tears in her eyes.   (On her suggestion, I looked up her Facebook page.   Her late dog definitely bears a striking resemblance to Perri.)  She swore up and down that Perri has "Mydramagic" in her blood - she said that it is not doubt with her parti coloring and head shape.   I did some amateur Google research, I know nothing of breeders and bloodlines.   I found it interesting that the breeder of the Mydramagic dogs seems to have resided not even an hour from the "breeder" that Perri's prior family bought her from.   I do have to wonder...  Perri's head is definitely shaped differently from other standards, not as boxy.   More petite and narrow and her eyes are like "alien eyes", we've always called them.   I noticed that dogs with a lot of Mydramagic in their pedigree have that type of head.   Anyway.   It was fun to research, I will never know for sure - but it sure was fun.  It didn't help that the internet wasn't as much of A Thing "back then" when this breeder was breeding.

Anyway.   Ribbon-less but full of joy, we headed out to the beach.   Now that Perri played agility and got some photos taken while doing so, it was time to undo all of that grooming!   We went to Ocean City, MD and found some geocaches...and then I let Perri off her leash for a run.  Wheeeeeee!   She was a total maniac!   She was spinning and pouncing and running and barking and barking at nothing, but just out of pure joy.  I owed her a beach run.   I will never forget when we went to the beach in October and she was on crate rest and we were struggling so much with all of her rehab exercises and restrictions and I dreamed of when ...if!....she would be able to run on the beach again.

I just love this dog.   I love this breed.   We finished our day with some nosework in the cabin!   Perri nailed three box hides and two interiors and we called it a night.   Very strong, confident work away from home.   

Tuesday we went back to the Civic Center and watched some poodle-only Obedience and Rally and relaxed in the bleachers.   Perri has changed, even from last year.   This year she was able to lay down and rest on the floor up in the bleachers.   She still did some alert barking and plenty of staring, but she is definitely changing for the better.

This was the last year that PCA will be held on the East Coast.  It will be moving to Purina Farms starting in 2017.   I don't know if we will ever go there - it seems so far away.  It was magical to be able to attend this year.  I will treasure our two trips to PCA, I feel so very very fortunate to have been able to enjoy those special times with the best poodle in the whole world.

The Vacation that Kinda Wasn't.

Caution: Ranty Post with a side of pretty beach pictures within.

This is the third October that Vince and I have visited Cape May.  We like to go to the ocean after the summer season is closed, when there are less people.   We keep our camper at our friends' house (who we met through a foster dog's adoption.)

It has been a little tricky in the past to enjoy beach-going with all three dogs.  Molly is a challenge because she becomes very overstimulated at the beach and enjoys: chasing her ball and body slamming the other dogs (and me).  After Perri's injury, I am extremely vigilant to not allow Molly to rough house Ein or Perri.  This means keeping Molly on a leash, or keeping Ein on a leash.  I used to let them both off leash and then run screaming at Molly flailing my arms and "Stop! Stop!"  while she enjoyed a perfectly good divebomb.   File that under "useless human behaviors" of mine.

Keeping Molly leashed means being jerked down the beach by a 60lb kite who has no manners, lurching around and digging through the sand, jumping on me.  Molly is a Bad Dog on the beach.  Ein is a Good Dog.  He minds his own business, he pees on stuff and smells all the stink and has his own adorable little agenda.  I want to have my camera and play a little ball with the dogs and take Instagrams with my phone and enjoy the ocean.   This is not possible with Molly.  And if any other person is walking down the beach, all dogs have to go on leash.  No fun.

Last year, Molly came fresh off of an agility trial and she was a little tired.  This year, she had been resting all weekend.  And she has also not had half as much exercise or training time as usual, because I am so consumed with Perri's rehab.  The whole drive down to the beach, Molly was back and forth in the truck seat, smashing into Perri and knocking her off balance and if she wasn't doing that she was trying to crawl into the front seat relentlessly.  When we arrived at our friend's house, I let her off lead in their fenced in yard and she raced around like a demon, took a huge crap in their flower bed, and pulled a new plant out by the roots with her teeth, followed by more crazed running.  I may have remarked before how Molly is a "Button Pusher", and she was pushing all my buttons like an elevator.  To say that Molly overwhelms me is an understatement.

Perri was to have a strict regime of No Fun on this trip.  Rehab exercises, no beach running, no pouncing, No Fun.  This meant staying in her soft crate while we took Molly and Ein to the beach without her.  I was beyond anxious about her separation anxiety rearing its ugly head.  The first night we were there, we crated her and took Molly and Ein to Cape May Point to burn some energy off.  We crated her again to go out to dinner with our friends. (Where I consumed multiple alcoholic drinks and complained about Molly.)  Perri was an awesome sport about her crate.  We returned at 9:50pm at night, I still had to do Perri's rehab exercises and despite 10 minutes of walking, she refused to even poop.  I actually started crying I was so frustrated.  I did not finish the torturous exercises until after 11pm.   It only worsened the next day when Perri did not want any of the four different treat varieties I had brought along for her stretches and exercises.  (She normally goes on anorexic strike on vacation.)  If she didn't want the food, we couldn't do anything.  And if we can't do her exercises, she can't get better.  Meanwhile, we were in our tiny camper.  Molly was perfectly willing to do rehab exercises for any of those four types of treats and she was like a pogo stick on and off the bed (where she was supposed to be holding a down stay.) and butting into reluctant Perri's exercises.  I said to myself, "Do the best you can.  Do the best you can." over and over again and tried not to disembowel Molly and tried to stay encouraging for Perri to do her exercises.  Back to the crate for Perri, brunch and a long trip to the zoo with our friends.  Perri back out of the crate.  Started her evening heat and massage and begged Vince to go buy ham at the grocery store.   Ham is the bomb diggity for Perri.  If ham didn't work, it was time to give up.

Everything got better for the ham.  She did every stretch, she even did her back up exercises.  And yes I brought cavaletti poles on vacation.  We got all of her exercises done by 6pm and back to the crate. (We were only having dinner in our friend's house, but I didn't want Perri unsupervised with Molly where a wrestling match could break out, or bouncing on and off the bed could occur.)

Our last day we wanted to take Ein and Molly to the bay again.  We finished breakfast with our friends and pottied our dogs and my darling husband said to the dogs "Do you wanna go for a ride??  Wanna go to the beach??"   You bet Perri did!  Her tail started wagging and she even yodeled with joy.   Here's the issue: Perri wasn't going to the beach, she was going to her crate.  I was furious, but the damage was done.  Ein and Molly got loaded into the truck and I zipped Perri into her crate and locked the camper.   The predictable, hysterical separation anxiety screams began within a second.  I could understand!   Perri had been a good sport but now this was ridiculous and she wanted out and she wanted to go do whatever exciting thing Daddy was jazzing her up about!!  I took about fifty deep, cleansing breaths to give myself patience and got Perri out of the crate and took her for a ten minute walk.  She was very excited and I petted her and praised what a good girl she was and we walked way away from the camper and truck to get her mind cleared.  Back to the camper and I gave her an awesome chewie and a chicken jerky and thank dog, she was quiet and satisfied with that.  Awesomest poodle.

I was determined to enjoy the bay with Ein and Molly.  I only let Molly off her leash if she was playing ball.  All I could think while watching her plow through the sand was "Cruciate Tear.  Cruciate Tear."  I am so fearful of another injury now.  When I decided Molly was tired, I put the ball back into my backpack (I have learned that the best way to switch Molly off of the ball is to get it out of her sight.  I could train Molly's impulse control forever and ever.  She never runs out of boundary testing for the ball.)  Molly accepted this instantly and settled into a nice leashed walk on the beach, she did not try to yank me all over the place.  She was pleasant.  We walked out .6 miles to a geocache while Vince metal detected.

Elbows were having gravity-control issues.

 

Mr. Perfect.

 

We decided to take Ein and Molly back to the camper, where they collapsed into a nap, and took Perri at last for her truck ride.  She could not go on the beach in the sand, but we went to Cape May Point.  I took Perri to just sit by the ocean with me while Vince went out again with his metal detector.  We sat there for well over an hour and Perri just stared at the ocean and people watched.   She loved that.  I think she would have sat there with me for many hours.   She is such an interesting, deep dog.  She sometimes reminds me of Atticus from the book Following Atticus.  The Little Buddha.  We went shopping and left her sit in the truck, which she loved.  Perri loves riding along, she would live in my car if she could.

I felt really great that we were able to give all the dogs a nice day, and end on a good note at last.  Perri did her exercises well that evening and we all settled in and watched Christine on our DVD player.

We definitely had a lot of nice times on our vacation, but it was overall very stressful for me.  It goes without saying that having an injured dog on our vacation was extremely stressful.  I did not want to cancel, however, because our friends were so looking forwards to seeing us and the feeling was mutual.  I knew it would not be easy but I did my best and I learned to just bring the ham.  

The more difficult thing is that this may be Molly's last time coming to the beach.  We are considering a winter visit when (optimistically) Perri's shoulder is better, and Molly will definitely be staying home for that trip.  It is to the point where yes Molly has a good time, but it is very much at my expense.  Her self control is nonexistent at the beach.  We work very hard on her overstimulation and low frustration threshold at home with a lot of success, but at the beach it all evaporates.  I have no doubt that we could get better behavior if we visited the beach more frequently, but since we only come 1-2 times a year...it is not really fair to me to spend what should be an enjoyable vacation on constant training for Molly.  Another factor is that Ein will be 11 soon.  How many more beach trips do his hips have left? (the sand is a lot of work for him.  You would never know it while we are there, but he needed Rimadyl in the evenings.)  Ein loves to play ball at the beach and we absolutely cannot enjoy doing so when we have Molly with us.  I can stand on her leash or hold her back while he chases the ball, but her screeching and yanking and screaming is unbearable and it is all I can do to stay on two feet and keep her from pounding Ein when he returns to me with the ball.    Hard decisions.  Guilt.

Hurricane Sandy - Day One

Better times in Cape May, NJ.  December 2011.