I got some good input after my whiney post and I think that what I am feeling is frustration with myself. I just feel like in some areas of my life I have no follow thru. For some reason I don't fight for what I want and just go with the flow not always happy with the results. The frustration I feel I think is that Ricky & I are at that point in our training together where he very rarely does anything I have not asked of him- it all falls on me. I know how to handle him now and while all the courses feel easy I still make stupid mistakes way too often. It's rarely ever about making the wrong handling choice- it's about getting sloppy or lazy for no reason. That's what was so infuriating about last weekend- we really should have walked away with all clean runs and instead I made so many stupid errors because I just wasn't trying hard. I feel like I have gotten really lazy with my training and handling.
I don't understand where this is coming from. I do it in other areas of my life too. Especially my health, I love hiking, running, walking, swimming and yet I get lazy and don't do it like I should. The stupid thing is that I LOVE being active I really do, I love getting all sweaty and dirty romping with my dogs. I know how to eat well, I know what works best for my body yet instead of making something healthy I'll just grab something stupid because it's easy- it's there and takes no effort to prepare. I am apathetic.
I am beginning to wonder if I have taken away my goals because I fear to make them now? The last 2 years were very heart breaking for me. Each time heading into fall we were in the position to go to AKC Nationals and I was excited and ready to go and each year Ricky suffered a severe enough injury to be out for 7 months & then 9 months. I worked so hard those years, driving up to Portland for lessons to learn how to run Rick, practicing at least 3-4 times a week, conditioning my dog 5 days a week, trialing as often as I could, I gave it everything I had and each time was left without a dog to run. Last year I went from being poised to go to thinking my dog would never run again let alone do agility. It's making me re-think my whole change as being not about letting go but being about fear. That has me spinning a bit.
Am I TOO Chicken to care again??? It would be so like me...
- Mood:
contemplative
- Mood:awake
Home from our shorty campout and the pups are all passed out in post camping Nirvana. It was seriously mosquitoey- at dusk & dawn I thought they might just carry Ricky right out of camp. But the plus side- the mossies kept the campground empty and the dogs had run of the place just how we like it. Plus it made for much entertainment watching people roll in thinking they found the best spot ever and then watch it dawn on them that they are in the midst of a swarm and go running and screaming for their car like something out of a horror movie. It was a blissful day and much needed after Saturday which was Kate's worst day to date. She was such a trooper and had a blast camping. I think the activity somehow keeps her tremors damped down a little because she didn't have a single episode all day. She did have a few at night and seemed to be a little disoriented, my plan was to have her sleep in a big crate with Ricky so she would be warm and feel safe but she wasn't having it so she ended up in my bed. We retreated to the car this morning for the last couple hours because the mosquitoes were too thick to brave. I guess most people bring a tent for such things...
Ricky swam so much yesterday that he scuffed his feet all up again, here's hoping they are back in working order by the weekend for his stretch of 7 trials in 10 days. It was his kinda of camping, no leashes and having free rein of swimming or hanging in camp. This morning he hit the water at 7am and didn't come out until 10:30 for a snack and then back in again. He's so funny too- he always has to launch into the water instead of walk in even though we are all up at camp. You just here a huge splash and look out and there he goes- swimming circles for hours. It was Butters first taste of that and he kept jumping up and running down to see what he was doing, he would go out and swim and look at Ricky trying to figure out what in the world he was doing.
Butters must have been a lumberjack in his former life because he is seriously gifted at log rolling. This lake has so many tree logs in the water, the water level is the highest I have ever seen it so all the logs were floating. He has unreal balance on them! Michael of course finds great fun in swimming around on rolling logs so he & Butters spent a long time playing out there. Butters just swims right up climbs onto the log and rides it along. He did really well for his second camping trip, he was a little grumbly this morning as he heard forest sounds but didn't bark like last time.
Kate & Picabo are camping pros & they had such a wonderful time. Kate had scrambled eggs & pancakes along with her breakfast. We took some great pictures of her in her natural form- completely covered in dirt but it's a little disposible camera that we have to use up & get developed since my camera died last camping trip. Seeing how good Kate does on the camping trips I can tell you what we will be doing every weekend we are home this summer!
- Mood:
satisfied
Heading to the lake...
- Mood:
groggy
The car is all loaded up so we can head out first thing in the morning to squeeze in a quick over nighter camping trip. We'll head up to a mountain lake and hide from the heat & splash around with the pups. Kate & I started working on her bucket list. I know many people don't like to think about this kind of stuff and are apt to stick their heads in the sand hoping it will all be ok or just go on as usual but that's not me. It's not that I get all depressive & mopey but I get a sense of urgency about wanting to suck the life out of every minute we have left before it's too late. So today it started with brunch, I fed Kate earlier this morning & then after working on office stuff for the business I made myself pancakes with fresh berries, real whip cream & maple syrup. I made Kate a stack of her own and she had a smile as big as Texas as I set it infront of her.
This morning she had her first bigger episode, usually she just either head ticks then regains her wits before she falls & sometimes if she stands up too fast she collapses, this morning she had her head ticking which lasted long enough that she lost her legs and they splayed out making her collapse, this time she was still head ticking on the ground and her legs kept splaying out. It was the first time she has been scared and it broke my heart. I made myself not freak out or cry because I didn't want to upset her so I just held her until she calmed down. I cried later boy let me tell ya. She has had about 6 mini episodes today already and fallen 3 times.
I'm hoping that the camping trip will perk her up like it did last time- if not at least she'll get to get out of this heat and swim like she loves to do. Not to mention lots of camp food:-) Tonight's list item- she's getting her own dinner plate and eating with us- George Foreman roast chicken, potatoe salad & corn- with angel food cake with strawberries & blue berries for dessert. I can't wait to see her face when she gets a plate:-) I gotta buy a camera since mine is toast- no way I can miss pictures of these adventures.
- Mood:
sad
Frustrated and Deflated...
1 week on the lower dose of Imuran:
Weight- down 3 pounds
Right front- wrist fluid & warm - toe fluid, hot & swollen
Both back- fluid, warm
Skin infection of right cheek - healed
Ear infections- healed
New skin infection on the flap of her left ear after being off antibiotics for 3 days so back on antibiotics and once this is healed will stay on a low dose of antibiotics for the rest of the summer.
Falling episodes & head ticking weird seizurish stuff: Much worse. She is falling at least 2-3 times a day & I made the observation that she always falls leaning to the right. She is doing the seizurish stuff at least once a day. She said she is pretty certain that she has a brain tumor:-( weep, weep, cry, cry... The only way to be sure is way too much to put her thru and we can't do anything about it anyway. So there is really no way of knowing how fast this thing is going to progress or what to expect.
So we had a little bit of "the" talk. I asked her if she would be comfortable scripting me an injectable that I can knock her out with until I can get ahold of her if she has a sudden decline after hours. I can't stand the thought of her suffering while I try to reach someone. I've seen dogs hit that uncontrollable seizure state and I want to spare her that as best I can.
Nervously waiting on the bloodwork results to see if her white blood cell count continued to bottom out or if she is ok...
Bloodwork results are back: Almost exactly the same as last week- so good news it didn't drop more, but since it didn't come up we can't increase her imuran yet... Thank you so much everyone for your well wishes & sweet words- LJ folks are the BEST!
- Mood:
gloomy
After morning classes I worked Ricky, we worked in fast furious little spells with shade & pool inbetween as by that time it was scorching. I am so lucky to have such a willing teammate! He'd work til he dropped. Worked on a little part of a course we had in Redmond- it started with a jump to the dogwalk - front cross hopefully provided dog stops on contact to a straight tunnel which was right next to a set of weave poles on one side and a teeter on the other. They had to come out of the tunnel and pull into the weaves back towards the dogwalk and not take a double that was right infront of the tunnel exit, then pull by the tunnel & dogwalk to the teeter. It was one of the funnest little course challenges I've had in a trial in awhile so I wanted to play with it some more. Worked on some fun things I was not brave enough to try in the trial- like calling him into the weaves instead of hauling ass trying to get down there, that was fun and gave me a great set up to front cross to the teeter taking the dogwalk out of the picture. I tried to see if I could do a rear cross to the tunnel well enough that he would come out of the tunnel turning in the proper direction (we are not so good at this). For fun tried layering the tunnel and turning him away from me to the weaves. I noticed something I had not recognized before that the more steps I took inbetween the dogwalk & the tunnel the further he shot out of the straight tunnel- had an aha moment that he was reading my movement cues he last saw and seeing me haul ass to try to get to the weave entry made him rocket out. Front crossing and loading him in the tunnel with one calm step gave him the best turn to the weaves.
We also set up another part of a different course with a pretty tough little aframe to a U tunnel off to the side that was really hard to handle any way except holding the dog to your side past the wrong end then loading them into the proper end, there was also a jump directly infront that was pretty darn close. The lead up to the afram made for such that getting in a front cross was not the easiest and after the tunnel you really wanted to be in postion to handle the other part of the course which was easiest done staying on the side you were on anyway. It was fun to play around with and to work on the dogs not squirting off to the wrong side of the tunnel. Anyway it was a fun little practice and my boy was so darn good in the heat. LOVE my cool coat:-)
After practice we headed to the river for a much needed swim & cool off. How lucky we are to have a river so close to the arena.
(OK weirdness- I wrote this yesterday morning, in the middle of typing it disappeared and my computer shut down. I've logged on several times just to quickly check things out and this morning when I did it had this weird little message that said restore from memory- yatta yatta, I hit yes and here it is???? Where the hell did it go?- seriously confused...)
- Mood:
sleepy
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Much thanx RRR!!!!! A very entertaining read, of course it didn't help my emergency preparedness thinking self as now I have the strong urge to stock pile all the more:-) Thank you for all the great books!
Ummmm. Sunday morning pancakes with strawberries, raspberries & real maple syrup off our friends farm in upstate New York.
I bought the stuff for our camping trip that we had planned but it's threatening to Thunderstorm so instead- Sunday Brunch.
The stuff is great- yummy and no mess at all- just squirt it in a pan and voila - perfect pancakes...
In the past we have had 2 situations I could recall that were minor in comparison but still caused folks to have to make due and live on what they had. Many years ago we had a very severe winter storm that had I-5 closed north & south of here for several days- the power was out and nothing was coming in or out of the valley. We were cooking on the camp stove and we did manage just fine with 4 days of being shut in. Then we had the year of the major flooding when our power & water was out for a week. That was pretty major and we had to wait in lines to fill up water jugs from the national guard tanker trucks- it was winter so no showering or laundry. Again we made it alright- but at that time I only had 2 dogs & 1 cat and they all ate dry food which we had plenty of so it was only Michael & I eating the food we had on hand.
Well now that I have a house full of critters I feel a little pressure of how would I take care of them if we had some major natural disaster? Way I figure it our biggest risks are: forest fire, earthquake, winter storm or freaky worst case terrorist attack that shuts down the food chain. On a side note all the rioting over food in other countries and the direction our economy is going has me a little concerned in that department as well. I do have the cow I've bought that will be soon be in my freezer so that will certainly help raise dramatically how long we could eat as long as the power stays on- otherwise giant BBQ feast will be happening at biggmellon's to eat 300lbs of beef before it goes bad:-) After the flood thing I got pretty good at storing water- but I have slipped on this one and I am down to just a couple gallons- time to restock that. I've decided to take my linen closet and turn it into a pantry and make my spareroom closet the linen closet so I can stock up on canned goods a little better.
Sure maybe I take this a little far, but I think that comes from being raised by a mother who lived thru a major trauma and who faced starvation for almost 5 years who trained me- keep food stocked. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. On the candles, batteries, flashlight and such department I am way off the mark. I think I have A flashlight- in my car and half the time it has no batteries because they get stolen for other things. TG we are campers because we do generally have the camping gear easy to reach.
Evacuation plan- how would we do it??? Where would we go??? What would we have to take??? I have no plans for this. I can't think of many places we could go that would take us in with the 11 animals we would be bringing with us. I don't even know how we would wrangle up the sugar gliders and transport them- I do have a little travel cage for them but it is not easy to catch all 3 of them. Lizard??? Cat carriers- do I even have 3? Where the hell are they?
Do you have emergency plans in place?
aw man wish my camera wasn't broken- all 4 dogs are sleeping in a perfect little row side by side on the floor by my chair.
- Mood: contemplative
Very interesting odd little fun book.
God takes human form as a woman in Sudan and is killed and the rest of the book is about the way the world responds to living knowing God is dead.
Thanks RRR for another great read.
On another note...
Took the dogs hiking today so they would be a little tired and with the doggie valium on board they are living thru the stoopid fireworks. Some genius in the neighborhood has friggin m-80's and those valium is useless against since they shook the house. A-holes- have another beer, give the kids some explosives- sure half of California is burning but hey that's a whole 20 miles from here so light em up. Medford has made fireworks illegal- maybe time to move a few miles north:-)
- Mood:
annoyed
Whew, busy week at an end...
Yesterday was a marathon day, loads of fun stuff- new puppy consultations, I'm super excited that I have been hired to help the SAR bloodhound handler find her next pup- hehe meeting bloodhound puppies won't that be fun! Have some new difficult aggression cases as well as a dog with OCD.
I can't decide what to do today. Michael is working but I have the next 3 days off and have a strong desire to go camping but the weather is not great- thunderstorms today and it's been so smokey. I know I don't want to do the crazy busy downtown Ashland thing- they have a parade, block off downtown and have all sorts of booths set up in the park. It's a little too crazy crowded for me. I'm pretty tired after the busy week while still recovering from the Endometriosis spell so most likely I'll just take a hike and hang out at home hoping the fireworks are not too bad. Happy to have the valium incase, Ricky & Kate had some last night and it worked great. I keep hoping for rain so everyone will just stay inside.
Kate had her recheck yesterday, we have to drop her Imuran down again as her white blood cell count is dropping again. We are not in OMG range but it was a significant drop in one week. The bummer is that her joints are perfect so it would have been be nice to stay on the Imuran longer to keep them that way. She has fallen a couple times but not doing as much of the weird head ticking which is probably because of the valium for the fireworks. I hate to tease but at times she looks like a little drunk (maybe she has been hitting the bottle) like a couple days ago she was walking to me and then started swaying and falling to the right- she kept on walking and I caught her before she went down. This part of it just has them all stumped. I won't put her thru an MRI just to find out since I know we won't be doing any kind of surgery and she is already on chemo so if it's a brain tumor or something there really isn't anything else we can do. She is still so happy and so we just plug away seeing how much great quality time we can get in. She also gained a pound and is at 59- woot! She's 2 pounds away from what is in the normal range for her.
I don't know how I missed it but Ricky ended up with a 4 inch slice in his left shoulder (the one that had surgery) from the collision with the jump in his last JWW run in Redmond. It isn't really deep and is looking ok. Rough weekend for the boy- getting attacked coming out of the ring by a loose dog, slicing his shoulder, and running with a brain dead mom- poor dog.
Sending lots of well wishes out to everyone in the fire zones!
- Mood:
tired
On a side note- I'm about sick of breathing in smoke all day. My eyes feel like scratchy cotton balls...
- Mood:
thirsty
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein & Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver.
The first is a book told by the family dog, it is refreshing that the dog is portrayed as an intelligent being and not a moron. The story being told was full of drama & trauma so it wasn't really a "dog story" it was more a story of a man & his family told thru the eyes of Enzo the dog. I really enjoyed the book!
Animal Dreams was also a very good read. It was a bit the opposite of Poisonwood for me which I loved the first part of the book & the second part was harder to stay with, this book took me more to get into and the second half was much better.
- Mood:awake
Our Runs:
Standard- a really fun tight course, that had a fun start with a tough weave entry which he aced. Actually he aced most of the course except he had a funny refusal at the table, I was over handling calling him off a tunnel under the dog walk and I called him right past the table- oops! Then he dropped a bar after a very fast straight away into a sharp turn that I failed to decelerate and show him a turn was coming. I was very happy with his run- I did push his dog walk contact and it was perfect. His aframe not so much:-) But after watching the video I caught my silly little babysitting self and promise to do better tomorrow.
JWW- was a picture perfect beautiful run. He had a run out at the third jump from the end but the rest was just wonderful. He was watching me so well, did terrifc weaves, a fun lateral leadout, and was just flyin. It was a super fun day of running courses.
I am happy to be back in the air conditioned hotel and going to take a cold shower now:-) Good luck to everyone over at regionals- hope you are having fun too.
Off to walk pups & hit the sack!
Ummm fluffy clean dogs are the best!
- Mood: tired
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