The serendipitous weaving of my hectic calendar has taken me to a great and beautiful part of the world at the precise instant of its greatest beauty. In a splendid Autumnal display the forests have transformed into a shameless spectacle of colors. I played with the thought of describing the colors and found my own capacity for language too dimensionless to do any real justice. Orange, for example has so many gradient variations that it might be pale nearly yellow pumpkin on the one end, but will grow to a rusty and angry burnt umber on the other. And like a fireworks display, just as you grow content and fall into the belief that the beauty might be commonplace, a magnificent tree of garish color will rise up to shock your eye, all framed and crowded by the variations of yellows and greens and oranges for as far away as the eye might see.

The consequence of arriving in Vermont at this time is that all of the hotels, if you are able to find a room at all, are priced two or three times what they might cost you in a more lusterless time of year. Marsha and I stayed our several days in three different hotels, disdaining to spend a single night in any jail cell-like accommodations, allowing ourselves instead to approach the stay as a vacation. We dutifully explored the local restaurants, each night finding some new gem of merit.

This is of course tourist season. The locals refer to them bluntly as “leaf peepers”. Someone explained to me along the way that the leaf peeper is a leading cause of air bag deployment in the area.

Petit Prix

I’m finally on my way home. After judging at Riverside I got to be home for about three hours before heading off for Vermont and the TDAA Petit Prix.

In Westminster I spent a day doing tune-up seminars getting people ready mainly for the strategy games. Friday was a regular TDAA trial and the team competition. And on Saturday and Sunday was the Petit Prix itself, which consists of six Semi-Final rounds and two Finals rounds. On Monday and Tuesday I led a distance workshop. It’s quite a trip logistics-wise because it requires two days of driving on either end.

It wasn’t a bad weekend. My girl Hazard wound up in fourth place overall in the very competitive 8″ division (80 dogs). My very worst run of the weekend was the first event of the Finals (Tunnel Jacks). I truly don’t mind tanking a class every now and again; but it’s a matter of pitiful timing to do so in the Finals. I got a bit of redemption by winning the standard course that finished up the event. Indeed, Hazard also won the standard run at the end of the Semis earlier in the day. I am far from being disappointed in my girl and it was nonetheless the handler who played the fool and the weak link in the team. My brain exploded.

Blue, on the other hand, disdained to do more than two or three obstacles in any competition. My young Human Society rescue evinced a certain amount of terror each time we went out among the equipment. I’m working on a theory about the girl. So bear with me a bit here. I believe in some life before the ignominious moment that she was abandoned to the mercy of the animal shelter, she must have been owned by someone that either had a wireless shock fence (some euphemistically call it an “invisible” fence); or by somebody who’s cleverness as a dog trainer resorted to the torture of the animal with a shock collar… or both of the above. A dog thus abused becomes very sensitive to electronic equipment. There are certainly little tell-tale bleeps and boops that even I can hear; and there very well might be a whine and warning at a frequency higher than the human ear is capable of discerning.

I suppose it’s impossible to avoid electronic equipment these days. I am tempted to buy electronic timing equipment for my own training center so that I can work Blue through it by proper incremental exposure.

Anyhow, I get to spend tonight at home. But it’s off early in the morning to catch a flight down to West Palm Beach where I’ll be judging three days of USDAA. And, they’ve retained me to stay over for a one day seminar. The evening has been spent making course maps, setting the floor for our weekly run-through (tomorrow night… I won’t be here), and trying to catch up a bit on my email. Oh, and I’d better go pack. Eh?

The Whole Enchilada

Jenn Posted to my weblog entry (http://www.agilityvision.com/in-low-country) that she’d like to see the entire Steeplechase course I put up for Low Country Agility. So, here it is, the whole enchilada.

I have already discussed at some length the opening of this course. My memory of the running of the course is now eleven days old. But I am pleased as I look at the picture to remember the bits that might have caused the most consternation amongst the competitors.

Having gained entry into the weave poles the handler faces ahead a sharp left-turning dismount into a series of jumps which conveys the illusion of a pinwheel. You’ll note that a refusal is not faulted in the Steeplechase so the occasional run-by at jump #8 mostly turned into an inefficient use of time. It seems to have been better plan for the handler to have dog on right through the weave poles, folding into a Front Cross on the dog’s dismount pushing to cross behind the dog in the long flat transition from jump #7 to jump #8. And somewhere along the way the handler would have to change sides to the dog either by back-crossing again (at the A-frame?) or Front Crossing after jump #8 or jump #9.

After the #10 A-frame the handler draws the dog hard to the right and then flips back left into the three-jump pinwheel. A number of dogs turned very wide after jump #13 looking very hard at the weave poles; though I’m quite sure none took the wrong course. I wasn’t so surprised that the dogs indicated to the weave poles before being turned to the pipe tunnel. I think what surprised me is how many handlers approached the moment as though they hadn’t considered that the weave poles might be compelling to their dogs. So the matter of turning the dog often turned into a display of panic.

The #17 pipe tunnel produced a share of elimination scores. There seems to be the express illusion that it’s a straight line from the end of the A-frame into the pipe tunnel. But truly most dogs will forge on the dismount of the A-frame. And so in the calculation of lines and the dog’s path the handler should take into account matters of the turning radius. The handler who holds his dog on left from A-frame to pipe tunnel was probably most at risk. Though I observed that certain handler’s were already working to the landing side of jump #16 to make the bend into the pipe tunnel rather than baby-sitting the dog’s unambiguous finish to the ramp. Another effective plan was simply to Front Cross on the dismount of the A-frame so that the dog was inclined to wrap back into the correct end of the tunnel.

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: dogwoodbud1@earthlink.net. And Check out my new publication the Idea Book – Agility Training for a Small Universe available at www.dogagility.org/store.