Agility Adventures

At the start line

Myles and I very new to this awesome sport they call 'Dog Agility', and I thought it would be fun to share our follies as we start to learn something that takes years for dog-handler teams to master.
We began training in the middle of last winter, so only about a year ago, and when I remind myself of that I always realize how great our progress has been in such a fairly short time. Our instructor tells us that she trains a dog for at least a year before trialing, and many people train for much longer. With me being the most impatient person on the face of the earth, we started trialing in October, roughly nine months after we started training. Obviously with such a short history of training there are many things we have yet to perfect. And by many, I mean almost everything. By some stroke of genius he seems to be becoming more and more consistent with the weave poles, finding the entry and not popping out of the poles prematurely, and actually appears to thoroughly enjoy himself, bouncing through and barking every few strides. I think I owe this weave pole independence to our pole set in the backyard, where he gets his frisbee thrown to him when he completes the poles successfully. This gets him very excited about the task, and adds speed and rhythm. At our most recent trial, he blew me away with his weaving. Found the entry all by himself, had speed and rhythm, and even hilariously peeled out turning out of the poles because he had too much speed and excitement. All of this progress from initial frustrating sessions attempting to teach him what exactly the poles mean, thinking he would never get it. Amazing what they can learn when we put the time in to teach them!
Standard Run
Check out the video of our Standard run at a USDAA Intro trial, with his good dog weaves.

We have been to three trials, all of them USDAA (US Dog Agility Association), and all of them in New Hampshire, the first two at All Dogs Gym in Manchester, and the third at Riverside Canine in Nashua. The first two were regular sanctioned USDAA trials with titling events and all levels, and the third was USDAA's relatively new 'Intro' program, that gives new handlers/dogs and introduction to competition in agility with a little less pressure and more leeway.
Myles has shown improvement at each successive trial, and I could not be more pleased. Our first trial I was very nervous, but luckily had my best friend and original agility mentor there to help me with walk throughs and plan my runs. That first trial we competed in Standard, which is the course everyone thinks of when they think agility, complete with jumps, tunnels, contact obstacles (A-frame, dog walk, see-saw), the tire, the table, and other fun stuff; we also competed in Jumpers, which in USDAA is just jumps and tunnels, a fast, fun course, and Pairs Relay with Maryanne and her Boston, Fenway, which ended up being disastrously hilarious. Myles' excitement level was through the roof; barked himself out of the weave poles several times, then ran off course to say hi to his friends, who were waiting patiently at the start line. Needless to say, we were eliminated from that run! For his first trial, he really did great. He ran happy and fairly fast (lost a lot of time due to our combined lack of experience and his level of craziness) and paid better attention to me than I thought he would, especially at the start line. He has proven to be fantastic at the start line, sitting steady while I lead out and focusing on the task at hand. There are videos from that trial somewhere, and if I can locate them I will post them. No qualifying scores that day, but we finished our runs and the dog was a happy camper. We got to bring home some blue and red ribbons by default, but it still made me smile. A good day!
Our second trial Maryanne was supposed to be there, but something came up with one of her dogs at the last minute and she couldn't make it. I was lost without my buddy, and was fairly panicked because we were trying Snooker at this trial and I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, our instructor Betty was there, and she helped me plan out a potential course. Snooker is a game that requires the handler to plan out the first half of the course, alternating a designated 'red' jump with another obstacle, gathering points, and then completing a closing sequence. You get whistled off the course if you do almost ANYTHING wrong, and that day at least the first ten competitors got a whistle before making it to the closing sequence. I had come up with my initial plan without realizing that there were 'combination' jumps that require you to do both in a row in order to get your points, so I had to redo my whole plan during the walkthrough. I was flummoxed! Our run was a mess from the start, I got turned around at the start line and then my angle made him knock the bar on our second obstacle. We almost made it to the close, but he entered the wrong end of the tunnel that started the closing sequence and we got whistled off. And after that hilarity, at our next trial we got a first place and qualifying score in Snooker. Check out the video here:
Snooker Run
It was certainly not pretty, but he didn't knock any bars and he did a good job!
At that last trial, I brought my fantastically dedicated boyfriend Jared (who had been to every other trial also) and my best friend Kathryn who was a little skeptical at first but ended up immensely enjoying herself, as I knew she would. This particular trial was very low stress, very fun, just two courses and maybe two dozen competitors, a nice short evening. Jared has become an excellent collaborator, looking at course maps with me, using terms like 'just throw a rear cross in there' or 'blind out of the tunnel to the see-saw', which makes me smile a ridiculous amount. He was planning out our Snooker run to maximize our points and playing to Myles' strengths, and gives us excellent critique after our runs; 'just cue him earlier for the poles next time' or 'book it once he gets into the tunnel'. Mind you, this boy has absolutely no training in dog agility, has zero background in dog sports, and works in a computer lab. And he knows what he's talking about! Such a good sport.

Crossing the finish at our first ever run, at our first ever trial

We have had a lot of fun in these initial trials. The atmosphere is incredibly supportive; everyone is friendly and approachable, and everyone is there to have fun with their dogs. I regularly get comments from spectators that he looks like he's having so much fun, and I'm so lucky to have him.
The time spent at trials is really a lot of fun; a place where people don't ask me if Myles is a Bernese Mountain dog, they ask me what kennel and bloodlines my Aussie is from. The give me encouragement and advice, and for someone like me who has been a perfectionist for all my life the support helps me realize we really are doing well, and that this is a sport that people spend their lifetimes perfecting. Trialing really is addictive. When I leave a trial, the whole drive home I'm replaying the courses in my head and itching to get back out there and try it again. I set up sequences in my backyard that we struggled with at the trial and work them a million different ways. I lay in bed at night running courses in my head. It's such a fun thing to do with your dog, and Myles loves it. Once I start my clinical year of school in March, time for agility and trialing especially is going to be extremely limited, but I will hopefully be able to squeeze it in here and there, because we will certainly miss it terribly.
Before then, we've signed up for a short course on distance handling in January, and will hopefully be able to fit in another session of our regular classes. Stay tuned for more agility adventures!

One more (half of a) semester...

The TCSVM class of 2013 just finished our last full semester of classes, and we could not be more excited. I can't even believe the sheer amount of knowledge they crammed into our brains in four and a half months. We learned how to perform abdominal ultrasounds, how to spay a dog, how to perform safe anesthesia. We put in catheters and took skin biopsies, put in feeding tubes and set up IV drip sets. Thinking back over the last two and a half years and everything we've learned since then reminds me why we put in the long hours sitting in class, taking exams, and studying until our eyes fall out.
We start our clinical year in March, and I have to admit I am fairly terrified. I know what's I'm in it I will love it, but the thought of putting into practice all of this knowledge is overwhelming. Even scarier is now planning everything I want to do in our elective weeks during the next year. There are too many things to do, too many places to go, too many logistical nightmares to figure out. One of those biggest logistical nightmares that has been plaguing me since the beginning of this year is what I'm going to do with my dog while we're working 16 hour days. I'm realizing now why they tell you to think really hard about getting a dog in vet school. And a dog like mine does not take to being alone for 12 hours at a time. Love that residual separation anxiety.
So what am I going to do with him? I still don't know. Beg my boyfriend to home him for a week and drop him off at daycare in the morning and pick him up at night? Farm him out to his breeder? Give him to his second mother? Our longest rotation is four weeks, Small Animal Surgery, with unpredictable hours, never any guarantee to have time to run home during a 'lunch' break. And for many of our rotations we will be up so early most normal doggie day cares are not open yet. Dilemma of the century, I say. If anyone has any brilliant ideas, feel free to share, because in all honesty worrying about my dog is stressing me out more than having to figure out how to be a doctor. Which is terrifying.
What else is there? Apply for externships? Apply for internships? Impress the clinicians so you get good letters of recommendation? Don't get kicked in the face by a horse? Don't lose a thermometer up a cow's butt? Oh and sometime in there, study and pass boards. No big deal. And try to maintain your relationships with your family, friends and significant others. I won't have time to do any agility with Myles for a year. What will I do without my weekly escape to classes with an entertaining group of humans (and dogs?) I was really enjoying our test schedule this semester of Friday tests... weekends were full of fun for the first time in vet school. At least we won't have to come home from eight hours of class and study until we go to bed, right? Right? Upper classmen offered us a survival guide when we came to vet school... is there a survival guide for clinics? Because that seems to be way more necessary now.
For now, I need to relax, sleep late, and cram all the fun and real life things into our two week vacation like hair cuts, car inspections, agility lessons and visiting everyone we've been neglecting all semester. And seeing as I didn't post all semester, there will be no guarantee I will write again any time soon. Maybe another post during the break. Stay tuned!