Making Choices

I am trying to make different choices this year.

First I started with a lot less drinking and snacking. I am down 10 pounds and seem to be stabilizing there which is ok by me!

Next is to do more fun things with the dogs and less long trial days. This one is harder.

I start looking at the trials coming up and want to enter both days. Or enter two trials in a row. Because despite not enjoying the early mornings that much, I do enjoy the thrill of stepping to the line to tackle a new course. The accumulation of titles and seeing what kinds of times we can lay down. I don’t really enjoy having to cheerlead Twitch around the course though.

So I am trying to choose other activities for the summer. I am committing to two trials in July and August. Both USDAA and both outside. Otherwise I want to go camping and hiking. I want to go to new trails and get up early-ish on a weekend morning and go some place new at least twice in July and August.

May is already full though we could plan a hike on one weekend.

June I am currently planning one trial and one conformation show.

See? Not enough weekends for all the fun things!

AKC Ridgefield, WA 2018-03-18

Vader and I headed up to Ridgefield to attend the PAC AKC agility trial. We were entered in Open Fast, Open Jumpers with Weaves and Novice Standard.

FAST went well despite me completely changing my plans after walking. The line other folks were setting off the aframe was way better than what I was going to attempt. It all went just fine until near the end when I turned him the wrong way and we bobbled the teeter approach. He did fine and we Qd anyway. 🙂

JWW was a disaster. I got him out way too early and he did 1-2-4 instead of 1-2-3-4. I had much too much collection and pull off cues and that is exactly what he did. Then he took the tunnel. From there we just hit the finish jump and left. NQ.

Novice Standard was 4 hours later and went just fine. He took all the things I told him too and in the order I showed him. Q! Now we are out of Novice and won’t have to do that stay stupid late bit again.

Good boy Vader!!

CAT CPE Longview, WA 2018-03-17

Today Twitch, Vader and I trekked up to Longview, WA for a CPE games only trial put on by the Columbia Agility Team. I signed Twitch up for 4 runs out of 5 and Vader for all 5.

Twitch ran really well for me. I am pleased with how he did. He managed a couple firsts and seconds with Qs in all runs. We did Jumpers, Colors, Snooker and Wildcard, all Level 5 as a Veteran. I ran the same way with him as I did with Vader in all runs and he had tighter turns than Vader on some courses but was overall a few seconds slower every time. It was neat to be able to compare some of the times with each other since I was running the same course in the same way for each dog.

Jumpers was first and the only difference is I didn’t trust Vader for the second jump as much and ended up rear crossing the serpentine versus a blind like with Twitch. I ran the same course in Snooker for both dogs and neither dog heeded my “push” cue for the backside of the 7b jump. Both started towards the table. I managed to get their attentions and we did fine after that. No video of any runs which is a bummer.

Vader also ran Fullhouse at the end of the day. I planned a super fast flowing circle of fun for us. We needed 25 points to Q and we had 30 seconds to do it in. We got 47 points in 27 seconds. 🙂 It was a lot of fun and we flew! I ran as fast as I could and I’m sure it would not have looked that fast on video. 🙂 I was really puffing after that run. But man it was fun. He read my decel in the two places I put it and got every obstacle we ran past. It was so awesome!

Vader’s Snooker Q was Level 3 so we are finished with all Level 3 now!

Tomorrow we do AKC in Ridgefield!

Feels Good

Feels good to pay off a loan! We paid off two in the last couple days. Granted we took on one but we are net down one! Woot!

Next month we get back to some serious monthly savings. I bumped up our savings starting next month based on our budget and loans, etc. It will be good to start saving again. Now if we can just quit spending so much extra each month! 🙂

It really does feel really good to have the field paid off.

Selling Cars

Before today, Kris and I owned 4 cars. Today we said goodbye to my minivan. I bought the 2002 Honda Odyssey in 2006 so I could spend more pleasant days at trials and get sometimes 4 dogs and our gear to the trial site. That van went from IN to NY to OR and WA. We took it to CPE Nationals in 2017 down in CA. It was a really great vehicle and I miss parts of it.

It was getting old and quirky. We sold it to a young woman with 3 kids. I hope they get lots more years out of it without too many issues.

Tomorrow we are selling off the Outback. It too has been a good car but I am not as attached to that one as Kris drove it the most. It will remain in the family and now belong to the Leith’s. I hope they too enjoy it and get what they need out of it.

Kris bought a 2013 Ford F150 with 105k miles on it. I really hope he gets at least 7 years out of it! Lol

I have my Acadia which I like very much! It doesn’t have quite the room the van did but it is great otherwise!