Carmel

SUMMARY: Memorial, beach, friends.

(Reposted with a bit more stuff than earlier. 8:45pm PDT)

My random notes about today.

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A good day. Memorial for Lisa Pomerance on the Carmel beach with dogs and friends. She was so involved with so many animal communities. Much purple was worn. My dogs ran on the beach before and after, and walked around Carmel with friends afterwards. And I took no photos. Not one. It was a wonderful day.

Me, in my purple (after getting home), windblown, with purple beads from the memorial

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In Carmel today, one random person asked what kind of animal Chip was. My friend answered, “dog”. He seemed disbelieving. Another said that Tika was clearly not all dog. I said that she was an Aussie mix, probably with Husky. He said, “Oh,” and looked at her critically. Not sure he was convinced, either.

“What kind of animal?” I’m still floored by that one.

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The memorial was nice. Quite a few people wore purple and quite a few brought their dogs. People just got up and talked about how they’d met her, the fun times they had, the things she was involved in, and so on.

I took all 3 dogs and they got quite a bit of off-leash beach time. I wasn’t sure what would happen with Chip with no recall, and he did tend to go farther away then either of the other dogs would, but he’d eventually come running back, so I guess he’s attached enough to us now.

I got there with 2 cameras and realized that (a) I wasn’t in the mood for taking photos and (b) it would be too hard trying to keep track of 3 dogs with a wide range of interests as well as concentrate on photos. So I took not a single shot. Fortunately I went with 2 friends with cameras so I’m hoping for lots of beach shots, maybe even with me in some for a change.

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The memorial–people brought their own chairs–was on the beach in the indentation where, in this Google Maps shot, there’s a volleyball net (above-left of the letter B). The wind was fierce and became fiercer; it whipped away many of the words that people spoke; by late afternoon, the wind had blown away all but a few hardy souls from the normally crowded beach despite the sunshine.

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Fitbit says I walked:

Doesn’t this mean that the dogs walked/ran about twice that while off leash?

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Shouldn’t they all be sacked out after that? *I’m* sure tired.

BUT when I tried to take Boost’s sacked-out photo, she jumped up, figuring that if I’m not at my computer, it’s time to play. Now she and Chip are chewing on bones, playing with toys, and generally not being exhausted. That’s the problem with having a  90-minute drive home afterwards: They can sleep all the way, but I can’t sleep more than occasionally while actually driving.

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Randomness Again

SUMMARY: Birthdays, superheroes, agility practice…

New Year’s Day–a perfect California day for a trip to the beach with twenty or thirty of your closest dog friends.

We were very happy about it.

We got a lot of good exercise.

Strategized about our plans–keep going or turn back? (The beach goes on for miles.)

Made a giant peace sign in the sand and lined it with dogs. It was a little challenging, even with our highly trained, super obedient (cough cough) agility dogs, but we did it.

Some of us LOVE LOVE LOVE going in the water.

Some of us think that moving water is an Evil Thing but LOVE LOVE LOVE all the action going on with all the dogs, in particular all those other fascinating border collies, or anyone running after a ball, even if they are chasing it into the Evil Thing.

From our agility club’s holiday gift exchange, Spiderman, The Hulk, and Captain America came home with us.

Boost loves Spidey.

But apparently is not so keen on The Incredible Hulk. Maybe it’s the hair.

Most recently, it’s birthday season in our family. Boost’s and my birthday one day; four days later, my niece’s birthday; ten days later my sister’s and Tika’s birthday.

Even at work, there shall be cake.

And a family dinner out.

Oh, am I supposed to be talking about agility? Class Thursday night felt great in some ways and not in others. I felt like Boost and I were both doing some awesome things on the courses. The only ones we got through without a bar down, however, were two short 10-obstacle courses (this demonstrating why we have so many Pairs Qs and not so much other things). Plus Boost still is having trouble making that bear-left entry into the weaves.

Our instructor asked us all what the biggest reason is for us to not Q in Standard and to not Q in Jumpers. I had actually just recently counted–as if I needed to. For Boost, it’s about evenly split between bars and refusals/runouts (if I count only the first fault in each run). For both classes. Very rarely an off course, only occasionally a weave fault, never a contact fault.

Tika is still more or less officially retired. We have our first trial since November coming up this weekend. We’ll see how she and I manage it.  Still feels very weird, anticipating running only one dog all weekend.

Last night I dreamed that I sent out an email to the club asking whether anyone knew of a dog who was available for re-homing who already had some agility training. You can see where my subconscious sits on the subject of getting a new dog and training it.

Generally, things are just flowing along swimmingly.

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read comments, and so on.