This and That

This:
Despite the icy winds whipping across the agility training field today, there were many hearty folk (or should I say “foolhardy”) who showed up to train their dogs. I stuck it out with Cody, despite some reports of dogs being pushed by the winds off the dogwalk, because it was our last practice for a couple of weeks as I will be sightseeing in Cambodia next week. I will return in time for one practice before our next shot at getting a Level 2 agility leg on Feb. 20th (and a Flyball competition on the 21st).

In the end the practice session was shorter than I would have liked as Cody slipped a bit on the dogwalk with the winds. No sense in ending up with an injury… Instead I worked a bit on heeling (a long work in process that I’ve discovered is much more successful after a rousing session of ball tossing and retrieving).

And:
Which leads me into something I saw at an Obedience trial last weekend for the level CD3. I’m not too familiar with either AKC Obedience or JKC Obedience, so I don’t know if there are any similarities, but I can discuss what I observed at this trial. The handler and the dog did some heeling off leash, going at a normal pace, stopping with the dog sitting, going at a faster pace, dog sitting, turning corners, etc. There was a dumbbell placed alone in the “outfield” and the dog had to go and get it. The dog had to jump and wait on the other side of the jump for the handler to come. There was a long sit with the handler hiding behind a panel jump. And finally there was the “tricks” portion (my term), of which the handler can select 3. One dog’s handler took a bar and held it at waist height (tall dog, short handler) and the dog jumped over it. The dog then did a paw shake. Another dog weaved between his handler’s legs with the handler standing still and then again with the handler walking.

Cody just needs a CD2 in addition to the three Level 2 legs in standard agility in order to advance to agility Level 3. From what I understand, in order to attain a CD2, he needs to heel while we walk in a U, then he needs a long sit and/or down while I am within his line of vision. I’m not sure about any tricks…but Cody can weave through my legs, although I haven’t tried walking while he’s doing that!

That:
Totally separate from dog sports in Japan, I just want to comment once again on the thoughtfulness of the Japanese. The icy winds were still whipping last night when we went to a restaurant. As we were leaving, each person was given a hand warmer (a small chemical packet). I had a half hour walk ahead of me and was not wearing gloves, so I was very happy to receive this!

Win Some, Lose Some

Our first agility trial in two months was on Saturday. All of our trials are outdoors (although indoor trials exist, our club avoids them because the surfaces are deemed inferior). The weather in Tokyo is relatively mild when compared to New Jersey, but there was still frost on the ground and a chilly wind upon our arrival at the suburban riverside trial site. I was glad that I wore many layers, because as the day went on the temperatures rose to a very comfortable 55 degrees.

Our first run was Jumpers and although we had a clean run, the time was lackluster as I had a mental burp in the middle of the course. That landed us into 10th place (out of 75 dogs running). This was a reminder that I needed to focus, as the next run was one that could get us a leg towards Level 3. It went well until the dogwalk where Cody did a little hop at the bottom – I’m not sure what happened, except that as I was running, I reminded myself to decelerate near the end of the dogwalk so that Cody would pause in a 2on2off position. I suspect that he thought that we would be making a turn off the dogwalk and hopped off the side. Here is a video of the run:

So, there were no visits to the podium for agility this time. Our next trial is on February 20th, so we have a few weeks to work on proofing contacts.

Sunday was our flyball competition at the same site. Our team, “Shining Stars”, was composed of a corgi, two border collies and Cody. In recent practices, the team members determined that Cody is very fast off the block, so he was now assigned to be the first runner. It was important that I release him as soon as the judge sounded the whistle because the team runs are not electronically timed. This new set-up worked well, and after 3 heats, our team came in first! A trip to the podium and another trophy and blue ribbon were awarded. In addition, Cody now has 3 more points toward his JKC Flyball Championship, with a total of 6 out of the required 20 points.

First Place Flyball Team

Back in Tokyo

I had a happy reunion with my dogs last Tuesday evening and was very pleased to see that Cody had not gained any weight. We jumped right back into our old schedule and on Thursday went to agility class followed by flyball practice.

As I was driving to the agility lesson, I realized that it had been close to 6 weeks since we’d been there last – way too long! And it showed – Cody knocked more bars than I’ve ever seen him do, which could either have been due to my poor timing or to his being out of jumping shape – I suspect it was a combination of both. We managed to muddle through, doing fine on some of our newer skills (i.e., threadles), but not so fine on the skills that we used to have down pat (i.e., serpentines). Fortunately we have a couple of weeks to come together as a team before our next agility trial on January 30th.

I was happy to observe that Cody didn’t forget how to play Flyball – he was quick and efficient. Hopefully he’ll perform that way at our next Flyball tournament in a couple of weeks.

On Saturday we had another agility practice and I am pleased to say that Cody didn’t knock any bars this time. Our lesson took place at the school rather than on the baseball field due to heavy winds. The ground at the school training area is large pebble sand, which was frozen, and made for a very slippery surface. We ran through the course 3 times and then went to another small training area in a warmer spot where the ground was soft with a dirt/grass surface. Here we had a very productive session, working on some of our lost skills.

Svelte Cody

Obedience Training

Since our last trial a couple of weeks ago, we have spent some time working on obedience, in addition to the usual agility and flyball practices. It is coming along slowly – unfortunately I have to do some “untraining” of a sit between my legs that was designed for agility, but doesn’t work for obedience. I had trained it in the hopes that I could get a better start line stay, but then was warned that sometimes a dog will take off from between the legs and the handler is stuck behind the first jump, so I never used it. Now, when I ask Cody to come and sit in front of me, he obliges, but then when I ask him afterwards to sit by my side, he keeps popping his head between my closed legs! I don’t think that will get us any points in the obedience ring!

As far as heeling goes, we’ve made a little progress, but have a long way to go. He is great for a few yards and then wants to shoot ahead. It will require patience and lots of practice, I guess!

I am not too worried about the sit and down stays from a distance (although you would think I would be given his lack of a start line stay) – so far he seems pretty solid with that and hopefully it will hold up during the testing.

I am headed out of Tokyo today for the holidays, unfortunately once again leaving the dogs behind. It’s just too much to ask them to spend 14 hours on a plane unless they really need to. I will resume posting after my return in the middle of January. Happy holidays to all!

Level 2

Cody and I left Tokyo at 4am on Saturday to head up to Matsumoto, near Nagano, for our final agility trial of the calendar year. I had been given estimates of 3 to 4 hours of driving time to get there and I didn’t want to risk getting there late and missing our walk through, so we left plenty early.

I cruised along at 120 km/hr (75 mph) practically the entire way, as there was very little traffic and we made it there in 2 ½ hours. The site was beautiful, surrounded by mountains, some snow covered. (You may remember that the winter Olympics ten or so years ago were held in Nagano.) It was very chilly in the early morning when we arrived, but the sun was out and not the rain/snow that I had feared and seen in the weather predictions.

Our jumpers run was first. The walk throughs for all jump heights were completed before the course was run. When it was our turn to run, Cody and I made it through with no errors, so we were off to a good start. When the results were posted, I saw that we came in 3rd out of 120 dogs in the large class. I looked more closely and saw that only 3 dogs had clean runs – I had thought that it was a nice smooth running course, but I guess others didn’t find it so. There were some challenges, but of the teams that I watched, most of the errors happened in the beginning, either with a bar dropping at jump 2, or an off-course to jump 5.

Jumpers Level 2

Our second run, agility, which counts towards moving to the next level, wasn’t as successful. It had a couple of challenges and I walked it many different ways, made a decision on how to run the course and then changed the way that I wanted to handle it based on errors I observed with the large dogs running before us. I made the classic mistake of not working each obstacle when I ran the course with Cody because I was thinking about the next step before completing the current one. So Cody, who was running very fast, leapt over the A-frame contact because he could see I was focused on the next obstacle. Here is the course that we ran:

Agility Level 2

The error that I had observed happened when handlers ran with the dog on left from the A-frame to Jump 13. The dogs would come out of the chute and curl towards the handler, missing the take-off side of the jump. Handling the A-frame with the dog on right allowed for a pull to the take off side of the jump. Then it was necessary to fly over to the other side of the ring in order to get the correct side of the tunnel. Coming out of the tunnel the dogs were facing the tire and unless the handler got the dog’s head at this point to send them to the dog walk, they headed to the tire. This is what happened to Cody because I was busy running down the dog walk to get a front cross in before he reached the contact. Oh well – we were happy with our 3rd place in the jumpers course and got to stand on the podium again.

Third Place

Our next agility trial will take place on January 30th, and then there will be a flyball trial the next day. I will be away from Cody for 5 weeks over the holidays and am most hopeful that he will not be chubby again when I get back as we’ll only have a couple of weeks to get back into shape.

Meanwhile, we need to start working on obedience. I had mentioned in an earlier post that a basic level of obedience is required in order to move from Level 2 to Level 3. Cody and I have only worked on enough obedience to get by in agility (and even that is not perfect, as evidenced by his lack of a start line stay). To move ahead, he has to learn 10 obedience maneuvers and then the judge (who is the head of the training center) will choose 3 of these maneuvers for Cody to perform. I have started by teaching him to heel, but so far it isn’t working out too well! If I hold the leash in my left hand and a toy or food in my right hand, he just keeps jumping up at my right hand. I can see that this will require a lot of patience on my part!

Cody and the crows
Tokyo has quite a few crows, who are noisy and can be pests with any sort of garbage left out. When I lived here before, I had heard stories of crows dive-bombing heads of hair. Not a pleasant thought, but I had never known it to happen to anyone. The noise the crows make, however, does make me think of Tokyo if I happen to hear it when I am elsewhere.
One morning I let Cody outside in the yard attached to our apartment, and was startled 10 minutes later when I heard him barking incessantly. I have discouraged his barking here, as we are in close quarters and I worry that it will disturb the neighbors. I ran outside to see what was going on and found Cody on his hind legs with his front paws on the cement wall divider between our yard and the neighboring yard. Right above him on the top of the wall, about a foot higher that Cody’s paws reached, was a crow, staring down at Cody as he barked. What guts!

Then last week Cody and I had finished our agility lesson and practice and I was throwing the ball for him. He surprised me during one of the throws by not returning to me once he caught the ball, but ran off in the other direction on the huge field. I called, not understanding what it was he was doing, until I saw a crow sitting nearby taunting Cody. These birds do not scare easily!

Flyball Competition

On Sunday, Cody was entered in a flyball trial, in both team and individual competition. I’m still learning the rules, which is taking time due to the language issues and to my not having run any dogs in flyball in the US. I learned from the last trial that we attended, that team competition is a tournament where the winners of two teams who play against each other move ahead. The individual competition is solely based on time, the best of three scores.

Cody had his individual competition first – he now runs well up and back over the hurdles, but the actual ball catching is inconsistent. Sometimes he’s very efficient, other times not. This time he was the most efficient at catching the ball during the second of the three runs, but that was the same run that the lab in the other lane decided that Cody’s hurdles looked more interesting than his own, and started jumping them just ahead of Cody on the return, slowing Cody (who was polite about the whole thing) down somewhat. It was still his best time, oh well – he came in 7th place and received a pretty pink rosette.

The team competition came after and was even more interesting: the drawing for which teams play which pitted our team against the top team of our club, so we went into it knowing that it would be one round and that was it. Thank goodness that was the expectation because for some reason during the second run, Cody became very distracted, similar to our first flyball trial where my husband had come and Cody spent the whole time watching him instead of the flyball machine. Since then I don’t let my husband come to any trials, as it’s very difficult to get Cody to concentrate in these conditions. It was Cody’s turn to go and I sent him to get the ball from the flyball machine, he ran up the 4 hurdles, skipped the ball machine and ran down the neighboring hurdles while looking in the crowd for what I assume was my husband. Crazy dog!! Fortunately the other team was not affected and they went on to win the competition.

The trial site was on the edge of a large river, the Edogawa. It was a beautiful day and there were sports activities set up on both sides of the river as well as on the river in the form of water skiing and jet skiing.

Flyball Trial Site with Wave Kids team members - Note the jet skis on the river

One of our team members told me a story about their black lab, who in the same flyball competition site two years prior, had spotted an orange buoy in the river and thinking it was a ball, jumped into the water and swam out to it. This caused quite a commotion, as you can imagine, and there were people lined up all along the water front and a couple of motor boats who tried to guide the dog back to shore. On Sunday, the same dog skirted around his handler after a flyball run and started heading toward the water – fortunately members of the group had lined up between the dog and the water and kept him from plunging in again.

Our last activity for the year will be an agility trial on November 21st in Nagano. It will be our first time competing at Level 2, so it should be interesting! I have just learned another rule for levels 2 and 3 agility: if there are 3 faults during a run, the dog is whistled out of the ring. (They are whistled off immediately if the dog takes an off course obstacle.) Hopefully we’ll be able to stay in the ring to complete our runs!

In a final note, someone showed me the November issue of Dog Sports Journal in our agility class last week, and Cody and I are pictured in there from our Level 2 Jumpers run at the non-JKC trial we attended last month. It is one of the larger pictures, as we had won the class. Our appearance in this magazine has given us a small level of notoriety – on Saturday I was in a park with Cody along with a friend and her dog when we encountered her dog obedience instructor from long ago. The man was very interested in Cody – he had seen his picture in the magazine, but had never seen a Nova Scotia (as they refer to them here) in the flesh. He made numerous comments as he was examining Cody, but unfortunately they weren’t translated. I can only imagine that they were all positive notes, how could they not be??

Two Days in Sendai: Agility and Flyball

Cody and I have just returned from our two-day agility trial in Sendai. We were required to compete at Level 1 as the processing for the move up was not completed in time, so I just decided that we would make the best of it and have fun. And fun we had: Cody qualified on all four of his runs, with two visits to the podium to receive rosettes on Sunday (5th place in jumpers, 6th in agility).

5th Place Jumpers

6th Place Agility (Standard)

Here is a video of the Sunday Jumpers run: (You will see that we are still having start line issues…)

We also had a Flyball competition on Sunday, and Cody’s team, composed of a very fast Corgi (Will, aka Miru, whose picture is in a past post), Cody and two border collies, came in first place. The final heat was against another team from our club, “The Wave Kids.” We were given a nice trophy and 3 points towards our Flyball Championships (20 points are required to become a champion, and they are only awarded to the winning teams). My teammates decided that I should take home the trophy (they’ve won in the past, so I suspect that they each have trophies on display at home). They suggested that I fill it with beer and drink from it in celebration – sounds good to me!

Cody with ribbons and trophy

I have noticed over time that communication with my group of friends has become better, mostly due to their improving English, although I am taking Japanese lessons, so I hope that the balance will eventually change. There are still some times where I am puzzled, and here are a couple of those situations that occurred over the weekend:

Tacos: On Friday, after having met a couple of friends at a rest stop along the way to the competition site, we arrived in the afternoon and reserved parking and tenting spots for our group, and then decided to visit the discount shopping center next door. As we entered the mall, I noticed a small restaurant called Taco-ya. “Ya”is the Japanese word for shop and I was very surprised to see that there was a taco restaurant in this city when I had never noticed one in Tokyo (although I have seen products to make tacos in all the local grocery stores). I commented on it and my friends asked me if I like tacos and I told them I did. We continued on with our shopping, and later went out to dinner.

The next day someone came with a plastic container of warm round fried balls of food and proudly told me they had gotten some tacos for me. I looked at them quizzically and took one, assuming it would have the familiar spicy beef flavor inside. I bit in and found something chewy and slightly fishy tasting and asked what it was – Octopus. I then learned that the Japanese name for Octopus is Taco!!

Coy: During agility competitions in the past, I had noticed that a number of dogs had a similar name which sounds like the word “Coy”. Nice, short name. This past weekend some of the handlers were calling their dogs away from off course traps and I noticed that there were an unusual number of dogs with that name, enough so that I realized it probably wasn’t even a name at all – I asked, and it turns out “koi” is the word for “come”. Now that made more sense!

The kindness of my group of friends never ceases to amaze me – here are a couple of examples of many:

Navigation: On Friday night after dinner I was programming my navigation system to take me to the pension (Japanese style bed and breakfast) where Cody and I would be staying – the rest of the group was going to stay at the campgrounds in their campers. They then told me not to bother because they were going to lead the way there for me – one hour away! So they drove their two campers (small van type campers, not full sized ones) for one hour each way, just to make sure I got to where I needed to be.

Support: The agility trial ran until after dark on Sunday night and the award ceremonies didn’t take place until the end of the competition. This group waited with me, rather than head on the long drive home, so that they could take pictures with my camera and cheer while I was up on the podium (there was one other ribbon recipient in the group, who received a third place rosette).

Friends

At Last!

The stars, sun, moon and planets must have been aligned properly last Saturday because Cody and I finally got our third Level 1 leg at the JKC agility trial, and we can now move on to Level 2. However, as it takes 3 weeks to process move ups, we will be running at Level 1 at our next trial, a 2 day trial in Sendai (Oct. 24 and 25), five hours away. This will be our last agility competition this year, as I am unable to attend the two remaining trials due to visiting family and travel plans. So we will make our Level 2 debut at the end of January 2010.

We continue to practice flyball and Cody is showing more speed. The main issue that remains is that he’s inconsistent with the amount of time he takes to catch the ball from the machine and start back over the jumps. I am hoping that with practice, he will become more efficient. His next competition will be in Sendai on the same weekend as the agility trial. He is entered in both team and individual events, so we’ll see how it goes.

In other news, we had a typhoon here in Tokyo last week. I awoke at 4am to a voice over the loudspeaker on the street – I imagine that they were telling people to stay inside as that was when the worst of the typhoon was hitting the area. (It was the first time I realized that the streets are equipped with a speaker system, although I should have figured it out because every day at 5pm there is music played throughout Tokyo telling children that it’s time for them to go home.) Other than being awakened from a nice slumber and the cancellation of my agility classes, the wind and rain didn’t affect me too much, but from what I understand, it played havoc on public transportation.

Cultural Snippets and More Agility

Since I haven’t posted for a while, I have an assortment of amusing cultural experiences to relate:

First, regarding the picture I put in my last post of “Miru, the amazing Corgi”, Kyoko (the dog’s owner and handler) laughed at my spelling of her dog’s name in an e-mail that I had sent her. It turns out the dog’s name is Will! It’s just pronounced as Meeroo – the Japanese language doesn’t have a “w” or an “ll” sound, so the “w” becomes “m” and the “ll” becomes “roo”, with the “i” in the middle sounding like “ee”. Definitely something lost in translation!

Following introductory remarks at our most recent agility trial, attendees were invited to do some stretching exercises. Music, similar to what was played in my daughter’s ballet class when she was 3 years old, was broadcast over the loud speakers and we all performed stretches following a leader. Although this was a first for me, I am aware that it is not unusual for employees of some Japanese companies to engage in a similar activity before starting work every day.

The food “stall” at this same trial was a hot dog truck, with the delicacy pronounced as “hotto dogu”. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to try one to see if it really was “N.Y. Style”.

Hotto Dogu Truck

And now for the agility: Two weekends ago Cody and I competed in another non-JKC trial in order to get some additional practice on start lines (which Cody held following a couple of scoots and “no”s from me). We ran the Level 2 courses, the most difficult offered, and won the Jumpers run. As a prize, we were giving another large bag of rice, freshly harvested. We now have a cabinet full of rice, having barely made a dent in the ziplock that we had won at our previous visit there!

We attended a JKC trial this past weekend and had a similar experience to what my friends in the NJ area have been experiencing – deluges of rain and at least 6” of mud as a result. It was very difficult to negotiate the courses, but that wasn’t the cause of our downfall (again!). Instead, it was a one step forward rather than lateral at the bottom of the dog walk, which led to Cody taking the wrong side of the tunnel. And so we continue trying to get our final Level 1 leg – I never thought that it would take this long!

Wet Agility Trial

Silver Week

Last weekend was a 5-day weekend (Saturday through Wednesday), celebrating the Autumnal Equinox along with a couple of other holidays (Respect for the Aged Day and a public holiday). This string of holidays is called “Silver Week“, named after a similar grouping of holidays in May, called “Golden Week”. Cody and I attended a JKC agility trial on Monday and his first Flyball trial on Tuesday.

The agility trial was the first of a series that we will attend in the next month, totaling 5 days. Our last trial was in the middle of July and Cody is still sporting a few extra pounds from his vacation, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Fortunately the skies were cloudy, giving Cody the slightly cooler weather that he likes. Our jumpers run was first and he ran nicely, coming in 8th amongst very tight times. I wish I could say the same about the standard run – for the most part it went well, but a handling bauble resulted in his taking an off-course jump near the end. Since this was the run that would count towards moving to Level 2, for the moment we remain in Level 1.

In a previous post I had mentioned that it takes 3 weeks for JKC to process move-ups. Given that we have so many trials coming up, had we qualified on Monday, we still would have had to compete at Level 1 until later in October. The trial dates are such that if we qualify at our next JKC competition, October 3rd, we would move to Level 2 at the same time as we would have for a qualification on Monday. So, the pressure is on!!

Tuesday was the Flyball competition. Cody performed admirably well, but the team, dubbed “Miracle Star”, didn’t make it past one round. Nonetheless, it was great fun and there were expressions of surprise when people found out that this was Cody’s first trial. His next competition will be towards the end of October, along with a two-day agility trial, at the site in Sendai (5 hours away), where we went in July. He will be on a different team, along with an amazing Corgi, Miru, and two Border Collies. Unfortunately, I don‘t have any pictures of Cody with the flyball machine, but here is one of Miru:

Miru, the amazing Corgi

A couple of other notes, as it has been a while since I have posted anything. Last weekend after agility practice a couple of my Flyball friends asked if I wanted to join them for lunch. I accepted their invitation and figured that we would go to a Japanese restaurant where there are no menus in English (something I am reluctant to do on my own). I followed them in my car and laughed when we turned into the restaurant parking lot – they were going to “Billy Bronco’s Steakhouse”! And while it was true that the menus were not in English, the steak and burgers were easy to select from the menu full of pictures!

And finally, the last of my updates on the rice paddy, I promise! Since the rice was harvested, there have been two developments – the paddy was burned:

Burned Rice Paddy

And then the soil turned over, completing the full cycle.

End of Rice Paddy Cycle