What a difference a day makes!

Today was way different than yesterday.

A quick update! We got to the site, and it was raining, lightening and storming. They delayed running us pups until about 9:00 AM, then stopped running again. Started up at 11:00 AM, there was one dog ahead of me and then they stopped running us again. It was good to be safe!

About 15 minutes after this storm passed, during which about an inch of rain fell, I got to run in the pouring rain. Mum tried her best to not give me big splashes from the humongous puddles she had to run through when she ran, but it didn't work and I was just too weird. I ran the course clean with some fast parts, but it just wasn't good enough for a Q.

Then about an hour later I ran jumpers. Not too bad of a run, some good parts, but I took an off course tunnel entrance, for a no Q. And I have to tell ya - the course was so muddy and I was sinking as I ran - Mum too!

Gracie and I need a bath, or at least a hose down - maybe we can get a best buy on some towels.

We're beat, wet, muddy and really need a nap after this yucky day...Hoping for better results tomorrow! We sure hope they move the course to a different part of the fairgrounds tomorrow, so we'll have more of a fair shot, because sinking in the mud when you're running a course makes it twice as hard.

Indiana is having a terrible time today, parts of I-65 (a main interstate that runs from Chicago, thru Indy to Louisville) and I-70 (which is the main interstate east to west) are shut down from major, major flooding in the state. We got lucky, no flooding up here north of Indy. But some folks just south of us are having a really tough time today. We wish them well, and are glad we are home safe and sound.

2 Q's today!

Quick update -- We got two Q's today a DQ! And we got some great MACH points to boot, with a 2nd place and a fourth place finish! I was pretty speedy, not zoomie speedy, but we were pretty happy with the runs, vids coming later.

It was hot running today in 87 degrees and humidity. And it was pretty windy, the wind chimes at home were making a racket. But we had loads of fun. We'll check back probably on Sunday since we're back at the trial on Saturday and Sunday!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend! And keep away from the yucky storms rolling across the country!

Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

Another interesting Summer read idea...

Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

by Martha Sherrill

The dog man of the title is Morie Sawataishi, famed breeder and champion of akitas.

While working as an engineer for Mitsubishi in far northern Japan during World War II, he became fascinated by this hardy dog breed, one of the oldest in the world. Because of wartime shortages (many of the dogs were eaten or used to make fur vests for the military), the breed had dwindled to just a few animals.

Sawataishi illegally kept one hidden, and, as soon as the war ended, he began working to strengthen and expand the breed. His fame and that of his dogs soon spread, and his champions were winning dog shows around Japan.

After retirement, Sawataishi continued working and living with his dogs, hiking in remote mountains, and even hunting bears. Novelist Sherrill offers great insight not only into one man and his dogs, but into an older, rural way of life unfamiliar to Westerners for whom Japan symbolizes fast-paced urban life and the latest technology.

Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

Kate and Gin give it their all!

Sadly, Kate and Gin didn't win Britain's Got Talent this past Saturday (they were overtaken by dancer and winner George Sampson). But they sure gave it their all! Watch their grand finale performance!

The sounds a dog makes!

Mum and I were over at Dog Topics the other day and saw this great post. It's about understanding basic emotions communicated by other species.

They found a cool little test over at Discovery News that you can take to test your knowledge of dog language. You won't even need extra ram for your dog to want in on the quiz too!

It says that dogs are the easiest to try this out on, since canines have lived with us for thousands of years and have sort of figured us humans out, just as we have learned more about them. Now keep in mind that some people are more in tune with their inner Dr. Doolittle than others.

Get on over there and see how much you know about dog language!

Higher education!

I remember when I first started agility training. I was about a year old, just a kid really. And Mum thought I needed a job, very badly! She was right...all dogs need jobs.

We went through three different trainers before we found the one that was right for us. (They are all great and we love them, and thank them often for taking us in). And it wasn't all that easy getting into the second and third trainer. It wasn't just call them up and join a class. Our second trainer wanted to interview me and Mum in a private meeting before letting us join a class. Our third and present trainer, who we think is great, by the way, gave us a little quiz on our first day and took us on a recommendation of another trainer.

So getting into school is not an easy task even for a dog. Humans have to go through the same thing when they are looking for their higher education, don't they? They have to write admission essays to the colleges they would like to attend, and I expect that that is no easy task. I'm not a bad writer, but I can't imagine having to write an essay about my life, what I want to accomplish and achieve, and why I want to attend a specific college.

That's got to be tough!

I'm about to turn the big four, that's 32 in human years, and I'm not going to be a Spring chicken anymore. Mum has been thinking that I need to expand my higher education - you know, maybe take some herding lessons, obedience classes, maybe even some tracking lessons since I seem to be so good at finding my kittie bro.

So, what do you think of higher education? Is it worth it?

Tracking Wiggy!

I promised there was something big (other than dog agility, of course) that happened this weekend. Well, here it is!

On Saturday night when we got home from the trial and we had rested up a bit, Mum let Gracie and Me, and my kittie bro, Wiggy out in the yard to play.

Wiggy has been super good this year about staying in the fence. So much so that Mum has given him some independence, letting him be out there on his own with us for time periods (with Mum watching from the window of course). And, to Mum's amazement he has not jumped the fence once.

Well, Saturday night was a different story. Mum admits she took her eye off Wiggy from the window for about 5 minutes to go and run something out to the car for the next day's trip, and what happened? You guessed it, Wiggy jumped the fence. And Mum didn't discover it for about 5 minutes, which in kittie time means you can make it about three houses away.

Mum looked around the neighborhood, down three house, up three house, the backside of the house, the front side of the house - calling for Wiggy all the time. But after about 25 minutes she still couldn't find the little escape artist. And she was getting tired and worried.

For those of you who don't know, Wiggy used to be able to go outside a lot, BD (before dogs). But he had to be on a harness, because that's the rule in our town - kitties have to be on leash if they are going to be outside. And it's a whole lot safer anyway. Overtime, though, it became more and more dangerous for Wiggy to be outside, even on lead with a loose dog here and there. And after Gracie and I came along, there wasn't a lot of time for Wiggy to go out on leash - he got to go occasionally, but not everyday like he used to. And when he did, he loved to go down three houses to where the storm drain was and hang out - guess he felt safe there.

So the drain was the first place Mum looked for him when he jumped the fence. But she couldn't find him there either.

Panic started to set it with Mum. So she did the next thing that popped into her mind. She thought, maybe if Johann can find his target as well as he does, maybe he can find Wiggy? So she leashed me up, and we went out the back door and the back fence - all the time Mum saying to me, "find Wiggy, find Wiggy!"

Well, you would have thought I was on a mission from God! (Love that line from the Blues Brothers movie). I was swimming the ground on leash, nose to the ground, Mum running behind me trying to keep up, heading three doors down the front side of the houses on my mission to find Wiggy. Just as I got to the last house before the road, I suddenly turned right and ran as fast as I could with Mum holding my leash to the drain where Wiggy used to head out.

I sniffed and sniffed around the drain, Wiggy had been here! I knew it! Mum had me go a ways in to the drain to see if Wiggy was still there, but I came out right away - no Wiggy in that drain. So Mum said again, "find Wiggy, find Wiggy!" I started sniffing and picked up his scent again, headed up the hill that is behind all of our houses and started running toward the house a couple of doors down from us. Mum looked up, and sure enough, Wiggy was sitting at their back door.

Mum was super excited! And totally amazed at my talent! She just couldn't believe that I actually tracked Wiggy. I've never been trained to track anything, I've never tracked anything, and I don't even know what tracking is. I just knew that Mum needed me to find my kittie bro, and I was going to find him!

And I found Wiggy in about three minutes!

Wiggy was not very happy to be found. When we found him all the fur on his spine rose up toward the heavens, he humped his back and spat at me. Silly kitty. Don't you know, Wiggy, that I saved your life? Where's the gratefulness? Huh?

Mum and I had a lot of fun on Sunday telling our friends at the trial about me tracking Wiggy. We're not sure they believed the story, they had not heard a lot about shelties doing tracking. They where curious if I had done any tracking before, and if I actually knew my kittie bros name. But yep, I did it, and I did it with incredible focus, quickly and very directly. Mum was most certain I knew exactly what I was doing.

Now I can add tracking to my repertoire of accomplishments - agility, tricks, herding and now tracking! Can you believe it! Mum was so grateful and proud of me, that night I got some super good treats, a nice icing down of my muscles when I got home, followed by an incredible massage! Hey I earned it right?

We're back!

We're back from the AKC trial and have good and interesting stuff to report.

Here I am in my travel crate after a nice run on Saturday.

It was a long weekend driving back and forth to Dayton. We do pretty well, until the day after, which is today. Today Mum is exhausted, sunburned, and kind of sore. I'm a little tired and really happy to be home. Gracie is tired too - what a great dog agility cheerleader she is at trials lately! Traveling is a lot of work, but we didn't have to stay in any cheap hotels!

Everyone over in Ohio this weekend was really nice, friendly, supportive and fun to be with. Thanks to the Gem City Agility Club for a great trial. We tented with some folks from Cincinnati and had lots of fun cheering them on. One of them will be our DAM teammate this coming July at the USDAA regionals. We got to talking a little about our team shirts and Mum is going to come up with a little design for the shirts that we'll wear at the event. That will be so much fun!

We buddied up with a friend from Springfield to video and had a blast taking turns videoing each others runs.

We met one of the judges and talked with her for a while. She was interesting and we loved her courses. She had some fun and challenging courses with some nice open flowing areas where you could stretch out for speed. We talked with her about our IPod playlist, training ideas, Texas and lilacs which were blooming profusely over there - the smell was amazing! We found out later that she was one of the AKC World Team assistant coaches. Even though we liked her courses the best, they were the very ones we didn't Q in. But Mum learned some really cool handling maneuvers with her courses.

The courses were good, tricky in some areas, interesting, and fun! We ended up with a couple of Q's which was great. But our main goal was to be speedy, have lots of fun, and work to build my confidence after the latest injury. Even though I'm doing really well at the confidence thing at practice, I still need some at trials. We accomplished that pretty well, even though we had to sacrifice some Q's. We didn't mind and I had a couple of really nice runs.

Here's one of the better ones.

On this run it was 85 degrees and really high humidity, from an unexpected heat wave after all the nice 60s and 70s we've had here lately. This was the first time running in the heat for me this year. Even though I bailed my dog walk and was really wide on some of my turns, we were pretty happy with this one. It shows that I'm feeling more confident.

I was fairly speedy on a couple of my other runs. But come Sunday afternoon, I started losing my gumption a little from the heat. Mum put me in my Cool Coat before my run, and then ran the last run (JWW) with all rear crosses, which I love. I missed two obstacles, but we ended the weekend with a fun, fairly fast run, which was the goal.

On my Standard run on Sunday morning, Gracie got wind of us running and was screaming her silly head off back in our tent. I could hear her cheerleading us on. She is the best cheerleader out there, fur sure!

We found out this weekend that Gracie doesn't like generators (the ones folks use for their fans). Just another thing for her to get used to. First it was men, then cars and trucks, then the grass trimmer - we got her over those, so Mum worked with her to get used to the generator. After a bit it was no big deal and she napped soundly between runs with the generator churning about 5 feet from her. Good girl!

Between my runs Gracie got to meet some nice folks, do a little training with tricks and focus with her long line with all the distractions of a trial. So she got to have some fun this weekend too, a little anyway. But it was pretty hot and we mostly tried to stick to our tented area to keep cool. Dark dogs, beating down sun, and humidity really don't mix too well. Gracie did have fun flirting with the neighbor dogs, though, while she was in our tent.

Here are a couple of the courses we saw this weekend, a couple of our favorites. You can click on them to enlarge.


We're off to another three day trial this next weekend. It's here locally, so we won't have to drive far. Guess we'll see what next weekend brings!

But I have to tell you, running agility wasn't the only big thing that happened this weekend, check back for the big story!

I don't think my kittie bros would put up with this Rat Agility thing!

It's rat agility, and it's real!

They have their own equipment, rules, competitions, and more. Here's some info from their website:

Rat Agility is much like dog or cat agility only the equipment is rat sized. Fancy or Pet Rats are very affectionate and intelligent animals. They are as far removed from their wild cousins as a wolf is from a dog. Rats can be taught tasks, tricks and behaviors. More and more people are keeping rats as pets so Rat Agility just makes sense. And, (smiling as I write) the equipment for rats is easier to transport and is easier to build and store then the equipment for dogs and cats.

I have found, over and over, with many different ratties I have trained to do Rat Agility, that the animals love the equipment, the tasks and the fuss made over them for doing it as well as any treats they may receive....but mostly they love spending time and interacting with their trainer.