Up and running!

So while I may not have been posting here recently it's been because I've been hard at work on another project:

blakerivas.com

^^ up and (mostly) running! Check us out!

Stay tuned as more is added

Ringing In The New Year

Given that this is a New Year's theme post I feel obligated to say that 2014 was an amazing year. In truth, it actually was. Trixie and I made a lot of progress as a team and racked up quite a few accomplishments include USDAA semifinals byes, a MACh, a C-ATCH, etc. Best of all, I ended up completing almost all of my goals for the year, the only ones I didn't were ones I decided to trade for different goals - for example, I opted not to finished Scooter's PACh to try and finish her level 4 CPE titles instead.

Speaking of Scooter... This past December Scooter got the last level 4 standard Q she needed to finish her CPE Level 4 Standard title and complete level 4. Given that she won't come to live with me after my freshman year in college I decided that she should retire because she is so far from completing a PACh and C-ATCH. The progress that we have made together over the past 5 years is amazing to me. Scooter went from consistently walking to actually running. She also got over her fear of the dreaded seesaw and approaches it with gusto. Best of all, she no longer stresses at trials and is her usual happy self.

*Spoiler Alert*

This video contains part of my first agility run EVER at a trial (hopefully it's obvious which one it is LOL)

As much fun as the early part of 2014 was, I had to leave Trixie at home when I left for my first semester at Cornell. College is so much fun, but I still think about Trixie all the time and wish she could be there too. Even though I have to leave again in a few weeks, the coming spring semester will be the last I have to be away from her, because I get to live off campus and she can stay with me - hooray!

2015 is definitely going to be a year to remember - I already have so much to look forward to! In early February, Trixie and I will get to compete at Westminster's agility trial in NYC. In May I'll get to move into my new house with Trixie and then in October the amazing Lisa Fricke and Tereza Kralova are giving a 2 day agility seminar right in Ithaca, NY (only 12 minutes from my house!) Best of all, sometime this year I'll be bringing home a new puppy :D Hopefully that'll be in May, but goodness knows the universe has its own plans...

Once Trixie moves back in with me I'll really get to start working on some things that really need improving. The biggest of these for her is really just her jumping (*just* haha) I've spent quite a bit of the winter already going through different resources - books, DVDs, the works - about improving jumping technique and have spent some time on grids already. Of course, 4+ years of bad habits won't go away in a few weeks, but I am hopeful that it shouldn't take too long to correct. Given the new 2016 AKC Nationals qualification requirements, we'll probably not be able to take a complete break from trialing until the next winter, but I'll continue working grids as much as I can.

The other major goal I have for the coming year is to improve Trixie's fitness. I already walk her quite a bit (probably around 30ish miles/week), but I feel like she's still not as fit as she should be because she actually tires rather quickly at trials. I'm unclear whether it's her mental or physical stamina that needs the improvement, but given that she has been trialing for a number of years now I'd be willing to bet it's the physical. Right now I'm thinking that she probably needs much more core strength than she has, so developing that will definitely be a focus of the coming year.

Some title/objective goals for 2015 are finishing MACh3, her TQX (just ONE more triple Q to go now!!), getting Q'd for Cynosports (2016) and  2016 AKC Nationals, and  finally working towards the last 2 Q's for her BN in obedience so she'd have an obedience title for when we go back to invites in (*hopefully*) 2016. I'd really like to get to do more USDAA, which should be easy given how much there is in central NY.

Here's to a happy, healthy, and wonderful new year!

Livin' The Life

Well, it happened... I left for college. The hardest part was, without a doubt in my mind, saying goodbye to Trixie

I've been here for two weeks and so far college has been quite the adjustment, but I'm finally starting to get into the flow of it. The agility withdrawal is crippling, especially since I get to see tons of videos on Facebook of other college students training and competing. I keep telling myself it's just a few weeks until I get to see Trix again and go to a show, but that doesn't make it any easier. What does is that college is tons of fun :) There's definitely something to be said for not being told what you should be doing and my independent self is loving that.

Also, as fate would have it there is actually a dog sports club at Cornell (who'd have thought, right?) so at least I get an agility fix every now and again even if I don't get to run myself. Not to mention I'm supposed to be actually writing about agility on this blog... I will, I promise!...Saturday!

The Summer Comes to a Close

This past weekend was Trixie and I's last trial before I start college next Tuesday. It was bittersweet to be sure. On the one hand we got QQ#10 for MACh3, QQQ#8 for our TQX, and finished her MXF(!!!) but on the other I left the ring knowing that it would be at least 2 months before I would even get to see Trixie again. Sad as I am, though, it's for the best. Trixie has been to so many shows this year that she really needs a break... especially since we entered the AKC Invitational this winter! To be sure there are still a lot of details up in the air at the moment, but getting the confirmation from Steve Herwig was still pretty exciting :)

Our busy summer schedule also helped us make some significant progress toward the title goals I set for the summer. Unfortunately a bunch of AKC trials got cancelled this summer so there weren't enough days for Trixie to finish her TQX ( I swear one day we'll earn it!), I didn't enter any obedience trials so earning her BN title didn't happen, and then Trixie measured into championship 14" in USDAA so we stopped accumulating Q's for her PDCH - other than that I think we got every title I wanted to.

Trixie finished her:
AKC Coursing Agility Title
AKC Time 2 Beat
AKC Master Excellent FAST
CPE C-ATCH

Not to mention qualifying for AKC agility nationals in Reno, NV and picking up a good bunch of Q's towards her C-ATCH2 and QQs for MACh3.

Scooter was also a super star and finished her level 4 strategy title in CPE agility and is 1 Q away from finishing level 4 altogether, which will in all likelihood be her last title since she won't come to live with me after I finish my freshman year in college.


Speaking of college... I arrived in Ithaca, NY today!

Move-in day isn't until Friday, but I'm still excited!

2014 USDAA New England Regionals: Day Three

When I woke up on Sunday I was totally pumped. Trixie and I were sitting first in the biathlon and I was feeling good about our chances to make the podium in both performance Grand Prix and Speed Jumping.

I knew that Trixie wouldn't have her first run until at least 11 so I let her sleep in  at the hotel while I walked down to the venue to walk master challenge standard.

Well I would definitely need a start line stay for this one - running with Trix from the beginning would almost certainly lead to her knocking #3 or her taking the off course tunnel.

The hardest part of this course was undoubtedly 7-10. MANY teams missed the weave entry and those that got it often had trouble with the pull through. Quite a few handlers had success rear crossing the weave poles and then leaving their dogs in the poles so they could get ahead for the threadle. The second most popular handling plan was handling 6-8 like a serpentine. The majority of teams that chose this approach actually picked up the A-frame and a fair amount missed the entry. I this this was more because handlers were rushing the entry or were too far behind to help show the dog the proper line.

To my surprise, not a SINGLE dog took the teeter after #14 - on paper it doesn't seem like an especially tempting off course, but when I walked the dog's path during the walkthrough it actually was.

Really, the last handling choice was how to handle the #19 backside. A good deal of handlers decided to take the longer path and send their dog to the right of #19 instead of the much shorter path to the left side of #19. What seemed to be the deciding factor in this decision was how far ahead of their dog a handler could get. A number of handlers that chose, as I did, to front cross on the landing side of #18 often did not support #17 strongly enough and so their dogs pulled off of it. Lateness was also a common problem that, obviously, lead to many a knocked bar.

Trixie and I really rose to the occasion and had one of our best runs to date. According to the judge's wheeling she ran it at 5.44 YPS - which seems a little high to me, but maybe I'm underestimating her :)

We took 1st place in this round, which meant we had won the overall performance biathlon. This was definitely the proudest I'd felt about a set of runs since our showing at the 2013 AKC Agility Invitational - especially considering how unsure I was about our readiness for this event.

After the biathlon I settled in for what I knew would be a super long wait for the grand prix finals. For whatever reason the club decided to award medals and ribbons and take win pictures between each jump height. My first thought was, awesome! how efficient is that? But it wasn't. I didn't realize that they intended to actually stop the ring and make the judge wait until all the awards (byes included!) had been handed out, ugh. Once I finally got to walk the course - 3.5 hours after MC standard - the club realized that continuing like that would mean that their day wouldn't end until 9 at night, so they changed to hand out awards until after all the heights had finished.

Definitely another course that'd require a lead out. The rest was pretty straight forward and there wasn't a ton to mess people up. What separated the podium placements was really just tight turns - especially in the opening.

Trix pulled off another wonderful run that earned us a spot on the podium and a silver medal :)

Almost immediately after that picture was taken I had to run into the ring to do the PSJ walkthrough.

So, yeah. It's steeplechase - basically lots of running and lots of fun! The only part of this course that was tricky was the 16-18 line. Sure, it was easy to get your dog to take the obstacles, but it wasn't obvious to the dog just where exactly they were going. Leaving the dog in the weave poles, assuming you had the dog on left, made it a very do-able proposition. Those that didn't make it to that cross had a VERY awkward time, even if they got the job done. Then there were some dogs that just didn't understand what was going on at all and never even saw the tunnel.

So I planned to lead out to #2, but that didn't happen. I just wasn't feelin' it, so I ran. Really fast. The cheering helped :)

We managed to make it to the podium with another silver medal :) I decided to leave before the picture though because it was already 5 and they hadn't even started championship dogs and I was leaving for Ithaca, NY that night. I don't think they did the awards ceremony until about 7 or 7:30, so it was a good call on my part. I did miss out on the prize money though, but fingers crossed they'll be awesome and mail it to me - I can dream, right?

Even though the days were long the people were so organized, the surface was perfect, and I really had a wonderful time and would love to go back next year, - fingers crossed that it works with my schedule! Anyone who's considering whether it's worth the trip, it definitely is. Don't even hesitate because it's that fantastic.

2014 USDAA New England Regionals: Day Two

This was the first day of the "actual" competition for us, and I was actually pretty nervous about how it might go. Steeplechase was one thing - Trix and I almost always Q'd in it and the courses were rarely too challenging - but Grand Prix and Master Challenge were quite another. We NQ'd in Grand Prix about as often as we Q'd in Steeplechase, somehow something or other always got in our way - basically we were infected with the *one little thing* bug. Ugh.

Master Challenge wasn't much better. The one time we had done it Trix pretty much imploded and we didn't even finish the course. For two weeks I went back and forth about whether to enter the biathlon. Actually, I almost missed the closing date altogether. Given our recent success with international style course elements at the Nancy Gyes and Anna Eiffert seminars, though, I decided to give it a try, what was the worst that could happen?

The day began with an awesome gift. I finally took the plunge and decided to take Trixie over to get her last measurement for her 14" championship height card. It sounds a little ridiculous to get so worked up about a measurement but when you have a dog that's received measurements everywhere from 13.5" to 16" (yes, 16") you get a little concerned. Luckily fate/god/flying spaghetti monster was on our side and Trixie measured at 13 and 3/4". YES. Better still the judge that measured her was a CMJ. Even then it was unclear whether she would actually be eligible for 14" because she had gotten a measurement over 14". After about a dozen emails to the USDAA discussing the matter a member of the measuring department confirmed that she would be issued a permanent card. The only bummer was that I had missed my opportunity to transfer her performance titles to the championship program back in January.... So we'd have to start over from the Starters class again :/ Well at least we weren't one leg away from a PDCH or anything.

From then on I was sure the day could only go well because the permanent measurement card had already made it worth the trip. I basically skipped over to the course map pile to see what we'd be facing that day.

Master Challenge jumpers was our first course - might as well start with the hardest, right?

I was pleasantly surprised by how do-able the course was. Sometimes MC courses are just ugly and don't have any flow to them at all. As a friend of mine so aptly put it "Sometimes USDAA's master challenge isn't international, it's just annoying." The only "annoying" piece - at least at first glance - was 6-7. How in the world was I going to get there? Sure, I could just jog Trix around #4, but what kind of flow is that? Thankfully this was a course that looked a lot better when it was set up than it did on paper.

There were two main ways that handlers approached getting their dogs from #6 to #7. Many, including myself, opted for a front cross on the landing side of #6, which actually worked quite nicely because #4 was a lot closer to #6 than it seemed on paper, so getting to 7 wasn't as hairy as I originally thought. Most handlers, though, chose the shorter path - they ran straight from 6-7. That method seemed like it involved a lot of hoping and praying to me, but some teams really did it beautifully.

Another tricky area of the course was the #4 backside. At first, I thought I'd front X on the landing side of #3 to present the backside, but I saw A LOT of dogs run for the weave poles. I was fortunate, however, to see Karen Holik run the course with her 14" sheltie, Ice, before I walked it and I noticed that she pushed to the backside of #4 by going the long way. I'd be lying if I said that it didn't completely blow my mind when I first saw it but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. The dogs just got such a nice entry to the weave poles that way and it gave the course a nice flow.

The rest of the course was actually straight forward and most handlers made the same decisions - a FX after 9, blind/FX after the tunnel, then keep the dog on left for the rest, perhaps with a RX at the end. What caused problems for people was #13. None of the dogs refused the jump, but most assumed that they were going to the tunnel afterward and so when they realized that they were not, in fact, headed in that direction, they took the bar down while adjusting their line. On the actual course it seemed like #13 was a little further back than it is in this diagram, meaning that handlers almost had to treat it like a backside jump.

Overall, this course was pretty rough and not a lot of dogs ran it clean - but Trixie and I did! Woot :D Not only that, we won the class. Once again Trix decided that start lines were for squares... *sigh* Of course I don't have any of this run on video, but that's okay.

Next up was steeplechase semifinals.

Yeah! A speed loop :D Sometimes a good sprint is just awesome and that's exactly what this course was. I front crossed only twice in 19 obstacles, but still loved it even though it was simple. 

The course ran beautifully and was very true to the map - except for 1-4 which ended up being a much straighter line than it looked on paper.

Trix finished 3rd. 2 seconds off of 1st and 0.5 seconds off of 2nd. For such a straight course I felt pretty good about those time disparities because Trix is usually much slower than other speedy dogs (read: shelties) when there's a course as straight as this. I hoped that finals would be a bit more technical to give us an edge.

Last up was grand prix round 1:

By this point it was about 3 o'clock and I was feeling pretty tired. Trixie and I had a bye into the grand prix final tomorrow so I figured I'd at least walk the course just so I could check it out. I ended up scratching Trix, though, because she tires pretty easily and I wanted her to be as on her game as possible for tomorrows runs. 

I dropped the dogs off at our hotel and then my mom and I went out for sushi - which was great.

*Food Porn Warning*

2014 New England USDAA Regional: Day One

On Friday I decided to enter Trixie in the local rounds of Performance Speed Jumping and Performance Grand Prix instead of the team competition because 5 runs in a day is a lot for her and I didn't want her to be tired for the next two days.

We ran in PSJ first.

I planned to front cross after #2 and then sprint around the course to #9 and then rear cross, then keep sprinting. Once we hit the weave poles the second time I was going to leave her in the poles and do a front cross on the takeoff side of #17 then rear the tunnel. The plan went awry from the beginning - Trix just didn't want to hold her startline, so I ended up having to run with her and then rear crossing #3. Our run smoothed out after that small snafu until we got to the weaves the second time. I completely forgot that I was supposed to move laterally until she had reached pole #7 and then I was just like "Ahhh I should be over there!" and then I ran over to where I wanted to cross. Of course, Trixie popped out of the weaves because I suddenly moved away from her. *smacks forehead* When I took her back to the beginning to start the weaves again to at least get a Q Trix weaved a couple poles backwards so we got an E *sigh*

A couple hours later I got to walk Grand Prix. I really liked this course because of its flow and especially because of the dog walk set up - it made it really easy for me to babysit her down contact while still effectively cuing the next parts of the course. Much like PSJ I hoped that I would be able to lead out to about halfway between #2 and #3 - but that didn't happen. Trix really didn't want to stay so I just had to be a little late to the front X. Luckily that was the end of our troubles and the rest of the run went really nicely. For some reason Trix's teeter was really slow, but then she picked it up after that. My favorite part about this run, though, was that she gave me a really nice deep contact hit on the dog walk - ok, for USDAA it was high, but considering that I usually look for a hit on the much larger AKC contact I'll take it! 

 

Trixie got a Q and 1st place - granted there were only 2 other dogs, but given our bad luck with GP I was happy to have the Q.