this coming weekend

we got into a trial this sunday thats often very hard to get into - its very small and limited and indoors and air conditioned (yay) - i entered five months ago!!!!

berlin AND rah got in - im not going to show berlin i dont think. and i forgot i entered rah in open B - i dont remember what rah was entered in, but they have him in u tility B. im going to see if i can get him moved to utility A because i think it might be an error, though i could have entered him in b to see if i could get an UDX leg if it was going for our last leg.

so im nervous. trying not to be.

mynx's 21 gun salute...

no agility this week, we're all missing miss mynx. from mynx's "grandmom" -

It is with a heavy heart that I share that retired Military Working Dog Mynx, CA71, is now an angel. She has left our country a safer place while also making it a happier and loving place.

Mynx, a Belgian Malinois, retired from our armed forces to Debbie's home.

Mynx came into Debbie's house full of vigor and life, even though she had seen bad things and outlived her handler, Rick. Her body showed signs of her working career. And even though the stress of military life is hard on humans and canines, Her heart stayed strong no matter what.

Mynx quickly learned Dog Agility -- leaving her Bomb sniffing days behind -- and was very happy with her new life. And she loved her Mom Debbie with a passion. While we used to joke about it, Mynx still wanted to scan new places like hotels for bombs. The joke being that if Mynx sat, you better run!

In Agility, Mynx quickly got to the AKC Excellent level and USDAA Advanced and Masters. She showed and qualified in agility even after she lost sight in one of her eyes. Debbie and Mynx were looking forward to showing at USDAA nationals this year.

But Mynx's biggest role in her retired life was that of counselor. She was the lifeline Debbie and Rick's family needed after his death. Nothing can express or replace the importance of that role.

Sadly, Mynx's body gave out suddenly this week. There is no doubt the rigors of her service to our country were a factor.

So please give all you dogs a hug tonight. And in your heart, as you pet your dogs, please give a 21 Gun Salute to Mynx, who gave so much of her being to help keep us safe.

God Speed Mynx.

too good not to post this here too

rah's holter results are in- brandon called me today and i almost died because he did call right as i was about to step into surgery- i thought immediately something was wrong, he's NEVER called before, almost always emails!!! but the phone call was GOOD! we're down to only 89 vpc's!!!! he had 2 bigeminal beats, no trigeminy, everything else was gravy!! 6 months ago this dog had 5000 vpc's in a 24 hour period and now he's at this - and unbelievably it's still going down (this is 10 less than last time - only 10 less, but it's still less and i believe he did have one trigeminal beat)

so we're off the hook for three more months... and his heart is stable. it's almost good. better at least. he ate a plate of brownies tonight and had to have vomiting induced, it's never a dull moment...

videos from all star

here are some videos from all star:

round 1, diane obrien - rah's most "controlled" round. we lost 6.5 points -



i was really pleased with both db fronts in this round!!!!

round 2 - don levinson. the first thing in the ring is where don almost knocks a ring gate over and scares the crap out of rah. takes me about 30 seconds or more to get him back into set up.

then before the fig8, don talks to me about rahs illegal collar. then of course, the infamous shitty ROH, where i have a short throw and rah has a crappy pick up - combined we get a "no chance" return. rah is definitely nervous in this round. but WE RECOVERED!!!!!


round 3. fred buroff. THE CRASH.
rah blows the DOR - not because he doesn't see my drop, but because he's running not to me but away from the judge. he's crazed. not thinking. should have given him a verbal (as both my trainers observe on the video). then... the high jump. but we recover.

im so bad

i have so much to update-
i have to do a play by play of the runs at all star (i now have video!)
i have to go through agility two weeks ago (i at least have the courses)
i have to go through training this week
i also have video from the training session at top dog.

training this week was good. we're still out of agility, and next week is regionals (or maybe the week after? so we don't start until the 1st. i have to schedule some privates until then, and start working back in the yard once the heat breaks. did open and u tility with rah - started cracking down on his crazed heeling. his retrieves were better, and on monday kathy invited me to do some training with her and i worked some jump grids with him to get him more comfortable with jumping again. his fronts are kicking butt and we did some DOR work to proof him, some nice pivot work (great attention). go outs have been kicking butt, no matter what the distraction. signals will be the death of me.

berlin was very cute at training yesterday - very animated heeling and we worked on playing right into heeling and back to playing, rinse lather and repeat. her fronts and recalls were very nice, SFE perfect as were her stays. ill show her one of these days. im toying around with a few things in my mind for both of them.

maybe ill share some of the videos tonight...

wow, i missed a lot!

well, we've been on a whirlwind these past few weeks - as a follow up to our trial my club hosted in july where rah earned his first utility leg, the following weekend we traveled down to NC where the working dobermans of the carolinas had their UDC show - rah finished his D-CD with typical rah antics such as trying to bite the leash and being just silly in the ring (a 193 and 193.5 - consistent and have i mentioned i hate novice??)- berlin also got her ATT with flying colors, alerting the minute the aggressor came out from the van (did we have any doubt?) - maybe a bit too early but nothing is too early for berlin! berlin also took best altered (ha ha) in a field of one. a show dog she is not, thank you to the crowd for double handling!

this past few days we've been in PA for the all star tournament - ill give the play by play for each run and hopefully have video soon.

it was such a thrill to be there - truly an honor to have qualified, a great few days doing what i love best, and so much fun hanging out with my friends, my trainers (whom i am blessed to have as friends!) and other dog people. it's a surreal experience - 6 huge rings, people all over the place, running from one ring to the next (in rally i was in three rings at once!), great shopping, tons of fun events!

we had ups and downs - i did a total of 12 runs that weekend and we were ALL tired - rah was ranked for the first two rounds of open, but he had a few mishaps - truly not mistakes on his part, but he showed a tremendous amount of recovery and that meant more to me than anything - he has a fear of male judges and he showed to not one, but TWO male judges, and worked his butt off in both classes even though the first male judge almost knocked a ring gate on him during our first set up. rah freaked, but recovered enough to work the class, but had a heartbreaker of a db throw by me over the high where it landed at just 8 feet - when he went to pick it up, he dropped it and it fell next to the jump - when he picked it up, he truly had no way to get over the jump safely and he came around.

the last run in open, we had something that almost broke MY heart - again with the high jump (guess who will be doing jump grids???) - rah took off from 12 feet back and didn't clear the jump. thank god for breakaway high jumps, but he crashed INTO the jump, took out the first two boards, and landed on the other side of the jump on his chest and his face - however, true to form he never looked at anything else and got up, picked up his DB and came back over the jump to me with it!!!! and then went to complete the next exercise without blinking an eye, like he hadn't just stopped the entire 6 ring show!!!!!!!!!!!

rah was knocked out of the placings and came in 16th, but the fact that he shook off the two spooky things that happened to him and kept working meant more to me than anything (ok, i would have loved to have been top 10 and he could have been, ill admit that!) - he's a wonderful dog and did everything i asked of him that weekend and i think that while scary things happened, it gave me some more confidence that we CAN do this and he IS a good dog. his fronts with the db were spot on, he never once thought about not coming back with it and he REALLY focused on me and gave it his all (excluding his spook events that were NQ's he worked three open rings and lost a total of 17 points!) and was rock solid on his stays despite the other dogs around him breaking.

rally came up next - what was i thinking! poor berlin got the short end of the stick because she never got the proper warm up she deserved and never got the walk throughs - she ended up in 15th place in rally novice and of the 29 points total she lost, 20 of them were MY fault (i misread the signs in a nested course and in another section i touched her!)- again, i knocked her out of the placings!

rah, here was my super star! after already working open and working his heart out, rah had to show 6 more times in super rally - and came in 7th!!! this was a hard class - many of these dogs were fresh dogs that hadn't done obedience, at least a few of these dogs in all rally levels were OTCH dogs already, and heck some of these dogs actually train in rally but he worked hard (backed up three steps in EVERY TRIAL!!!) and even humored me when i was running back and forth between three rings trying to remember courses at the same time - i ran 9 different rally courses in about 24 hours!!!!

rah's rally "team" placed third in the entire tournament - so that was awesome - it was "mixed nuts" - a frenchie, a corgi, and rah - which one doesn't belong? our obedience team, "loose cannons", didn't place but the other two teammates did (my trainer and her BC secret took second in open and another one of our friends who trains with us took second in super star with her aussie, luna).

then, berlin was on a db relay team and our team (BAZINGA!) won that too! that was tons of fun and berlin tried to chase everyone's db out and i barely managed to restrain her...

shopping was good, im exhausted today and im so pleased with my dogs who did everything i asked of them and more. now to focus back on utility...

we're at the hotel in york, PA for the all star tournament which starts tomorrow! our crates are dropped off and we're all set up - dogs are passed out on the hotel bed and im ready to pass out with them... ill update tomorrow!