Missed Runs, Missed Trials

Being a frequent gate keeper (my favorite job), I often wonder why so many people have ABSENT scrawled by their names.  Why would they pay for a run then not show up?  It's so . . . . . uneconomical!

Well now I know.  I was paid up, the RV was all packed to leave out late Wednesday for Kiln (only 2 hours away), giving me plenty of time to set up and enjoy a bit of camping before Thursday's runs. Tuesday night, throwing in my last load of clothes, I decided to wash the house dress I was wearing, peeled it off me right then and threw it in the washer.  An hour later my husband emptied the washer for me, and I heard a big "UH OH!"  My iPhone was in the bottom of the basket!  It had been in my dress pocket and went through both wash and rinse cycles.  I had killed my phone!  I was dumbstruck.

Wednesday morning I called AT&T first thing.  If our 2 year contract was up for renewal I could get an identical 4S phone for .99 cents!  Otherwise a new phone is $549!!!!!    But they wouldn't talk to me about our contract because John's the only contact listed.  I had to wait til he got off work at 4 and meet me over there.  How dumb! Oh well, I could still leave Thursday morning.  The first dog on the line wasn't til NOON Thursday.  Plenty of time to get there by 10 and set up. 

We met up at AT&T at 4 Wednesday afternoon, and found out our contract has a year to go, so no cheap phone. They suggested we take mine across the street to iRepair, who took it apart and confirmed that it was fried.  Showed us the corrosion on the mother board.  But, they had a used one identical to mine for $200, so I bought it.  Of course it wouldn't have any of my contacts, apps or settings until I could sync it to my iTunes via my laptop, so we rushed home to do that so I could leave in time, or maybe just miss the first 2 runs.  The damn thing would not sync, nor would it connect to my Bluetooth speaker, and my computer kept serving me popups asking me to update, upgrade, etc., then iTunes wanted me to upgrade, then my anti-virus program announced it was restarting my computer. One delay after another.  I was beginning to get upset.  What good is a smart phone without your list of contact phone numbers and if I can't stream audio books and podcasts for entertainment at night?  I don't know anybody's phone numbers any more, except John's (how dumb is that), and I wasn't about to get on the road without my phone (can you believe we all used to drive around all the time, even cross country, without phones?????).  I struggled for 3 hours trying to make it sync.  The more I tried, the more tense I became until finally I was sobbing. That's when my back started to hurt! 

We agreed to take the "stupid phone" back to iRepair Thursday morning.  They erased the whole phone and uploaded the Apple programs like a brand new phone (which they should have done in the first place).  This took a few hours, and my back began hurting so bad I couldn't get out of the car! Brought the "new" phone home, it synced perfectly and was set up just like my old phone.  But I was in such pain, I thought I had kidney stones or lung cancer or something.   No way could I drive, much less set up camp or run my dogs.  I was contemplating going straight to the hospital. This debilitating pain lasted through Sunday.

After my phone got back to normal and a few days passed, my pain miraculously disappeared.  It was simply tension!  But the trial was over.

And that's one way to get an ABS scrawled by your name at the gate. :-)

Upward and onward!

Jump Chutes (Continued)

Lucky takes the 5th jump in the chute.

I first discovered and blogged about Jump Chutes last year, tried to measure my dogs to see what "body type" they are, and of course, mine don't remotely fit the 4 types described in The Clothier Natural Jumping Method, so all the charts Susan Clothier gives about calculating your dog's stride and how far apart to set the jumps to train proper jumping style were pretty much down the toilet. I played with it awhile then got discouraged.

Lately I've set up a few jump chutes for my students, including Lucky, and today I am revisiting the book, setting up my video camera and trying to determine how Lucky really jumps. She jumps so high, I would like to teach her to jump lower, which should improve her course time on competitive runs.

Stride is briefly defined as the distance between one takeoff point and the next takeoff point, and is ideally, according to Clothier, Body Length x 3.

Bounce is briefly defined as taking no strides between jumps, dog just lands between jumps and immediately bounces over the next jump, supposed to be Body Length x 2.

I took Lucky's measurements again: 22" long, 20" high, 11" ground to elbow.
If I take the closest ratios Susan gives for those dimensions, Lucky is:
a rectangular dog, elbow at 11" from ground, which is greater than 1/2 her height at withers.
Lucky's Stride is supposed to be, more or less, 22"x3, or 66", or 5.5 feet.
Lucky's Bounce is supposed to be, more or less, 22" x 2, or 44", or 3.6 feet.
(with different body styles, you might have to add + 1/3 to body length to get the right footage).

With this intel, I should set 5 jumps in a straight line, 2 strides apart, or 11' for Lucky.
Lucky bounces over 5 20" high jumps set at 8' apart, and has to work to slow down and collect between jumps. So did all my students' dogs. Same at 9' apart. At 11' apart, Lucky easily bounces over each jump but still holds power in reserve. Trying to determine when she would begin taking a stride between jumps, I moved them to 12' apart. She still clears them in a single bounce, but she jumps with much less clearance than the foot or so she usually clears her jumps, which I caught on video today. The first time, she knocked 2 bars, the rest of the runs she nailed them all perfectly, which indicates she learns as she goes, and has at least a 12' extended bounce stride, which is 6.5 x her body length. WOW! This video was her 3rd pass, with a little tugging reward at the end. In it, she shows just the right amount of clearance for efficiency and speed without knocking bars, and jumps very rhythmically. She covered 60 foot of ground in about 4 seconds/about 5 YPS.  In her 6 competition Jumpers runs to date, she is averaging about 3.4 YPS.

Aside: How stupid of me to be training in my wooden clogs. I can barely walk!  Could easily twist an ankle! Yet I was too lazy to go put on my tennies for just 10 minutes of training. Shame on me.




After a few weeks of this, I am to add "oxers" (double bar jumps), which is supposed to cause her to put a stride in between, improving her "impulsion".  I still don't know her capacity and probably, neither does she.  (NOTE: Susan recommends training jump chutes no more than 3 days a week, 3 reps, 2 times, with a 10 minute break in between, so this will take awhile to find out.

Upwards and onward,