Key Peninsula Trial with Scott

Last Monday (Memorial Day), I ran Scott in a trial at McDonald's sheep farm on the Key Peninsula. I had entered before I knew that I'd be getting my wisdom teeth pulled 3 days before. I was actually feeling okay on the Monday so Jerill, Diane and I headed out to the Peninsula in the morning - I was slated to run my first run later, around 11 a.m. I was entered in the Pro-Novice and Ranch classes with Scott and entered in the Novice class running Diane's dog, Rainy.

Although I was in a bit of pain from my teeth and taking some prescription pain killer (Tylenol Codeine) I had some good runs with Scott. If I had been well and not on prescription painkillers, I would have been more on-the-ball and I know we would have done better in our P/N class - we placed 10th overall among 38-or so dogs running that day. A couple hours later, we ran in the Ranch class. We were the second dog up in Ranch and I have to say that Scott and I were working as a true team. He was listening beautifully and I was helping him out too at the post-turn and at the pen (areas that I had failed to be pro-active in during my Pro-Novice run). We ended up winning the Ranch class! That was a surprise to me actually - I know I have a marvelous dog but given our last few trials, I wasn't expecting the run to go so well. Here is a play-by-play pictorial of running the course that day (double-click on the picture to see a larger pic). Also remember, we had only 5 minutes to run the Pro-Novice course, and 4 minutes to run the Ranch course - because they're timed, and there are a bunch of people watching you, and you're being judged, it can be a little stressful!

1) Setting up at the post. Sheep are about 150yds out. I have Scott set up to do an "Away to me" flank, meaning he'll run out counter-clockwise.

2) Scott's outrun was excellent with regard to distance from his sheep; however, he did need a re-direct/re-focus command from me when he neared the top. Scott is behind the sheep here in this picture and you can see the sheep being lifted and heading toward the first "challenge" - the fetch panels. The dog off to the right is the "setting" dog - its purpose is to keep the sheep in that one spot so all the competitors have a chance at getting a proper fetch & lift.

3) Made the panels! This has been something we've been working on. Scott has a lot of power with the sheep and the sheep will readily take off if he doesn't control it, which is my job, so I try to keep him at a fair distance and slow him down a bit using "lie down" "lie" and "walk up" commands.

4) This challenge, called "Turning the post" is where the sheep are turned around me and "the post", in the proper direction and heading into the direction of the 4th challenge - the "First Drive Panels." Those are the panels you can see in this picture.

5) Made it! Another skill that Scott and I have been working on - that is, getting all sheep through the panels and then turning them swiftly, without the dog gripping or pushing too hard, to head into the crossdrive to another set of panels about 300' away. We didn't make those other crossdrive panels - we were too low.

6) After settling sheep at the post (that is, having them stopped and calm after completing the drive), we begin the penning process. Scott was on the ball here - more than I was! The handler is supposed be "assertive' enough with the sheep to keep them from running behind the pen - you have to help your dog a bit in these circumstances. Note - you can't touch the sheep though, you have to stomp and wave your crook at their eye level!

7) ...And, they're in! A perfect pen! We actually timed out in Pro-Novice before I could pen all the sheep - one sheep had its big butt still hanging out the door when we timed out, so it was really, really close. When you time out, you lose all the points for that "challenge" so we lost 10-pts in P/N. We completed our pen (this pic) in Ranch in time.

None the wiser

Ouch.

Since yesterday was a planned furlough day at my company, and Monday is a vacation day for the Memorial Day weekend, I figured it would be the perfect time to have all four of my wisdom teeth extracted. Lucky me.

So Friday morning, I was all booked and prepped for this standard right-of-passage surgery.
One my Wizzers was already coming out, half way, and I have had some pain/discomfort with that for the past few months. On my X-rays, I appeared to have one impacted Wizzer down below, and the other two in there were starting to surface. So, my dentist and I decided that we'll just get all four effers out before they really start to become a problem for me later on.
Plus, I'm still under Jerill's dental insurance, through July, and with that paying 90% of all costs for this, financially, it made sense! Thanks Zymogenetics for the cheap dental care!

I declined the laughing gas. They wanted to give that to me to make me more comfortable when they try to get the IV in. I had warned them at my prelim visit a few weeks ago I was not an easy IV; I'm very calm, it's just my veins are TINY and it ALWAYS takes the nurses multiple attempts to get the dang needle in. I told them to just put it into the hand, on the back where that big vein is, from the get go. But no, they just had to try in the inner-elbow, like all the other medical know-it-alls and guess what, after two attempts, they still couldn't get a line in. I wasn't surprised by that and now I have a nasty bruise and broken blood vessels. It did take them two tries in my big hand vein in fact to get it to work finally. So, the expeirience yet again met my expectations; 4-5 jabs in my arm.

After the IV was in, they started the general anesthesia drip. I was already in my zen state anyway so I fell asleep almost instantly. I woke up about a 1/2 hour later and I was done; no more teeth. Whisked into a wheelchair and out to the car I felt no nausea, in fact I didnt' feel much of anything at all. I was hungry though by the time I got home. Jerill got me home and I had my first doses of Ibuprofen. And then the series of guaze packs in my mouth begins. Instert on each side, bite down snuggly, spit out every 1 hour or so. Repeat. I did this four about 7 hours.
Anyway, the first day of surgery you do bleed a lot. There is a lot of spit involved too. But, with the good pain meds and just relaxing in bed with my cats, it wasn't too bad. In 2001, which seems like an eternity ago, I broke my pelvis and some ribs in a car accident. I learned a lot about pain from that experience and am able to tolerate quite a bit now. So, on the doctor's famed 10-point pain scale they like to use, I would rate the 1st day of having your teeth pulled as a 3.

Around 5pm Jerill brought Mattie and Lucky upstairs and all six of us (dogs, cats and people) all watched a movie together. Scott stayed downstairs. Between 11 and 11 yesterday I watched the following movies: Kill Bill. Kill Bill 2. Outsourced. 4 episodes of the X-files (Season 9).

Today, I rate my pain on the 10-pt scale as a 4 . The swelling has begun. I'm icing frequently and using some great Arnica cream that I got from my new chiroprator. For pain management I'm using Tylenol with Codeine and for swelling just good old ibuprofen. I'm hoping I will not need the muscle-spazm stuff also prescribed; apparently, there is a chance my jaw will decide to freak out some time tomorrow.

So, all in all, while it's disgusting to have four holes in my mouth and taste blood 24/7, I can see the light at the end of this tunnel - about 5 days from now I should be feeling great. I am able to walk around and cook for myself and take my dogs out in the yard just fine. I've groomed the cats and will likely brush out and trim up Lucky later. Jerill is getting me a few more movies from Blockbuster now: Slum Dog Millionare and Underworld: Revenge of the Lycans. Today I've already watched Gladiator and 2 of the 3 Bourne movies.

What do you eat when you have teeth pulled? Well, I'm eating relatively well considering I'm on a soft food diet! Check it out...

From left to right: Izze soda, multi-vitamins from Chiropractor that speed healing, ovaltine, organic spaghettios, yogurt, ginger ale, egg flour soup mix, Haagen Daaz ginger ice cream, Snoqualmie Green Tea gelato, organic potatoes (for the potato leek soup Jerill is cooking right now), jello, chocolate pudding, miso soup mix, Ambrosia macaroni (from UK), chocolate milk, creamy tomato soup (from UK), and fresh laid eggs from Diane's farm for egg salad. I have to say, the food options are not too bad!

On The River Trial in Acme, WA

Where is Acme, WA you ask? Why, it's just a few miles south of Clipper, WA, along HWY 9 north of Sedro Wooley. This area is quite beautiful and was a great location for the first "big" trial of 2009.


Scott and I only ran in this trial on the Saturday. I had Mother's Day obligations on Sunday. Overall, we placed in the middle of the pack of the 30 or so Pro-Novice teams that also ran. We did finish our run; however, we ran out of time before we completed our pen which was a bit disappointing. I suppose those extra 20-30 seconds I needed to finish the pen were used up by having to re-flank and re-direct my dog who wasn't listening to all of my commands. Scott was really making a lot of his own choices out there on the field and it was getting us into trouble navigating the course. There is only so much you can do as a handler too when your dog is blowing you off 200 or so feet away from you and you can't leave the spot you're in! As a last resort, you yell.


Scott responds well to "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?? L I S T EN !!!!!! LISTEN TO ME!!!!! LIE DOWN!!!!" This was pretty much how it went - he would listen to some commands, then stop listening. I would praise him up when he did as I asked, and used my magical "LISTEN" command when he didn't.


Honestly, in a trial when you are speaking out the commands instead of using a shepherd's whistle, it sounds like you're speaking Norwegian - lot's of highs, lows, sing-songy type of speak. I took Norwegian as my foreign language requirement at the UW so I know a bit about how the language works. And honestly, by background in Norwegian and being confident in sounding like an old Norseman is probably why I am somewhat decent at herding and working dogs. Just a theory of course.


Scott is nearly 10 years old - for herding it's getting up there in age but it's not THAT old - I've seen some dogs run at age 13 just fine. He is still quite spry and tough with his stock when he needs to be and if he were to ever start looking tired or fed-up with it, then we'll quit. As with any 8+ year old dog, Scott's runing speed is not quite what I'm sure it used to be when he was a youngster. So, when I sent Scott on his outrun, which is the initial sprint out into the field to pick up the sheep we are going to work, Jerill heard someone say in the spectator area "Hey, look at Scott's out-jog." Har dee har har. I later found out who made the comment, and was able to laugh it off knowing that this person had learned a lot about handling and herding trials from an older dog too. What Scott may lack in speed he well makes up for in the control and power he has on his stock, and his out-jog, lift and fetch were quite good this weekend - no complaints really with how the first part of the run went actually.


Here are some pictures of Scott and I during our run. These are when we are doing our first leg of "the drive" which means the sheep just "turned the post" around me and I am using my dog to push them through the gates you see in the picture. I think just one or two sheep made it through the panels; I honestly can't rememember though. Sometimes, we totally miss the panels or on occasion, will do right and put the sheep right through the middle of them.

Does your cat do this?

Does your cat do this?

GiGi, our nearly-5 year old pastel calico shelter kitty sucks on her tail about twice a day, sometimes more, sometimes less, but usually, we catch her doing this about twice a day. We're told it's because she was taken away from her momma too soon - we did adopt her as a kitten. But, she was surrounded by 5 other brothers and sisters and I doubt all of them are tail-suckers. Plus, I haven't heard any reports of tail-sucking from the kittens we fostered and adopted out to friends - those appeared to have been even younger than GiGi and probably never knew their slutty-mommas. So, I'm not sure what is up. Don't get me wrong - it's adorable for GiGi to do it, until she quits sucking and whips around her wet tail that ends up slapping you across the face if you're not too careful.

I looked online to see what other cat-ladies are saying about the phenomenon. All I find is that there are some pretty crazy people out there. One even says that what GiGi does is "dangerous." Okay, I understand that when George, our 13 year old kitty, ate a 3 foot long piece of stringy material and had to get it surgically removed that this can be "dangerous" behavior - this is why our home is a "string-free zone" now. However, GiGi, as seen above, is hardly endangering herself or anyone else.

GiGi has other skills though. She will still play with her "neutron accelerator" toy - a big round plastic tube that has a yellow ball in it that she can swoosh around - best $15 ever spent on a toy for the animals. She is also skilled at knocking things off counters, bitch-slapping our dogs in the face without getting killed, and keeping the spider and moth population down in the house.

What has 8 eyes, 16 legs and 4 wagging tails?

It's Sunday and I'm sitting on the couch totally surrounded by sleeping dogs - 3 collies and 1 Shih Tzu mix. Jerill and I are taking care of Rainey for Diane while she undergoes another heart procedure this week.

Rainey is a daughter of Scott and she looks a lot like her daddy, albeit she has brown eyes and and she probably weighs 10-12 pounds less than him. She's about 18 months old and as cute as they come...

Four Dogs! They're all getting along marvelously

I am actually running in a sheep trial with Scott and Rainey at the end of the month. Rainey and I will be running in a Novice-Novice class, as she is now beginning her career as a working dog. The apple doesn't fall from the tree and Rainey has a lot of tendencies/flair that her dad does, as well as those of her momma, Tess ,who is as accomplished in stock work as Scott.

I have a trial with just Scott this coming Saturday, up in Acme, WA (wherever that is!). Jerill is coming with me so I hope to have some pictures to share!