It’s been a funny year for birds. A wren put up a nest in the upright folded camp chair on the deck. When we realized what she had done we left the fabric chair unmolested and allowed her to bring along about five young chicks. Now the chicks are haunting the property looking for digs for their own homes. These wrens appear to be semi-domestic, rather like swallows that prefer a close affiliation with man.

A robin has brought along two small clutches of chicks in her mud & grass nest beneath one of the eves of the porch. Out of each clutch I’ve had to fetch a ladder to return a fat little chick to the nest as one had jumped out prematurely. It occurs to me that her nest is a bit too small for the fat little chicks she is raising. There’s a possibility too that she’s kicking them out herself as she grows exhausted with feeding them constantly. She’s actually a homely thing; and I’m not terribly sure I’ve seen the male. I’m not sure what this means.

I have to clean and refresh the hummingbird feeder about once ever ten days, as there are five or six who feed voraciously from it. The thing I find most interesting about the humming bird is how fiercely territorial they are. They really don’t give a damn about any other specie of bird. But among themselves they war vociferously waging these buzzing clattering little battles that would surely seem ferocious if I could slow down the action.

And this brings me to the crazy cardinal. There is a beautiful resplendent male cardinal who haunts the upper cabin, and on a nearly continuous basis wages a terrible war against his own reflection in every window of the cabin. He has been reported to us by every camper who’s stayed in the cabin for the past two months. And, I’ve seen him myself, attacking the windows, while I was down at the cabin working on fencing. I heard tell once that the likelihood of insanity on a percentage basis among any particular species is roughly equivalent to the possibility of insanity in the human animal. So it’s not surprising that from time to time we will find a crazy critter in the world. I find myself hoping that he finds himself a mate. Surely his preoccupation with his own reflection is evidence of angst the perceived competition with other suitors. Certainly one day a dour gray female of his own species will speak calmly to him, with sweet reassurance… and call him away from the windows of the cabin.

Goings On

Okay, the biggest out fall of doing agility camp for seven weeks in a row is that my own chores were set back, oh… about seven weeks. So I’ve had a bit here to catch up on landscaping, fencing, wainscoting, gardening and so forth.

I’ve decided henceforth to forgive myself for not keeping up with the demands of the world. My email continues to wrack and roll at about a 40 a day pace. And this doesn’t really include the stuff that my spamblocker catches and saves me from having to even consider. And trust me you that all of my “List” traffic is on digest. Just so you know.

In a couple weeks we’ll be having a TDAA trial here at Country Dream. This will also be a TDAA Judges’ clinic. I have considerable work to do to prepare for that. I also must finish up my DOCNA courses for a trial I’m judging next month… and I guess I have to enroll in a USDAA judging clinic as well. No, no, no… here I am beginning a list. If I continue the list much more, then I feel guilty. That flies in the face of the idea that I intend to forgive myself.

The Riddle of Sides

To my own point of view this is about the simplest thing in the world. The sequence begins dog-on-right; calls for a Front Cross after jump #2; and has dog-on-left on the approach to the pipe tunnel at #4.

I put this up as the beginning point in a private lesson… and pretty much spent the hour with what I observed from the handler’s conduct.

Frankly, I’d like to make a list of training points.

·        Big flat hand – The handler moves through life with a big flat hand in the air (albeit on the side of the dog). This is the most ignored hand-shape, by dogs, in agility. I tried to coach her to simply point in the lines, and adopt a luring shape in the turns.

·        Attitude of the arm – A raised arm is obstacle focus; arm tucked in close to the body is handler focus.

·        The dog turns most naturally in the direction of the handler – The intrepid handler will endeavor to be on the turning side of every turn.

·        The nature of pipe tunnels – The handler’s job is to show the entry. The dog finds the exit all by himself. I’ve never understood why a handler will break off towards the exit of a tunnel before actually gaining entry.

·        In a Front Cross the handler should rotate away from the dog to show the new direction rather than, as most people do… stick their hand in the dog’s face (essentially pointing 180º in the wrong direction. It’s worth noting that the counter-rotation of the Cross is the dog’s cue to turn. If I’m holding my hand up to the dog… then I’m not doing the rotation… the thing that actually makes the dog turn.

Serpentine

Some idiot has decided that the only way to handle a serpentine is for the handler to stay on one side. Sorry to be short and ill-mannered in my description of the architect of the method… but it strikes me that anything that fails so dramatically and so often in competition would actually stimulate the thinking centers of the people who teach such stuff, and have them reevaluate their own methods..

So do tell, how do you do a serpentine?  

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