WordPlay

…Monday

Because, you know…everyone loses their brains now and then. Even earnest little dogs.

Once upon a time, the dogs were widely cross-training as a matter of course. But then I moved, and my energy and attention was severely, shall we say, challenged. So we focused on agility, which is our foundation joy.

And then in the latter part of last year, I introduced tracking to ConneryBeagle.

Mind you, what I know about tracking is basically…well…

Nothing.

But to my mind, training is about understanding the animal, understanding the goals, and breaking things down into manageable bits that conveys the latter to the former. So 95% of my work has always been a “well, let’s see what we can do!” kind of thing.

So I bought some books, read some articles, and started training. Picked a few brains…started asking around for local folks who are active in the sport–because tracking, it turns out, just isn’t a sport one can truly pursue to title without some group involvement.

ConneryBeagle thinks tracking is way cool, by the way. It puts his brain in a neat space, and makes him content with himself. (It also makes him really thirsty.) So we worked our little tracks up into zigzags and moderate distance…and then I got distracted with new house construction an hour from the old, and then we prepared to move AGAIN, and then I also gave up, for the nonce, on getting in with a tracking group.

In other words, Connery didn’t track for a good 8 months.

Until two weeks ago! That’s when we made contact with the right people, and found the opportunity to move forward with the training. That’s when we started a big agility trial gap for the summer. That’s when I started laying some refresher tracks here around home.

And that’s when ConneryBeagle proved that he had lost none of the skills, but had completely lost track of intent. (Oh, punny me!) From moments of brilliance in tracking, he switched to aimless wandering.

It took me a while to catch on. It doesn’t, as some might think, have anything to do with “he’s just not doing it” or “he’s being bad” or even, “he’s failing.” To be frank, I’ve never found that to be the answer to any of my training challenges. Especially not with a dog as inherently honest as a Beagle.

No, with dogs, there’s generally a reason, even if we don’t understand it. That’s OUR challenge, as trainers–to react on that basis. Not to blame the dog. Not even when he’s abandoning a track he’s just brilliantly navigated to that point.

For Connery? This time, he’s mixed tracking behavior with article indication behavior.

When we practice with articles, he’s in “find” mode, which involves quartering the yard, air-scenting, and sitting beside the article. He loves this game! He’s good at it, too–and we’ve been playing it, on and off, all along.

So when we started back into tracking work again after all this time, all his reinforcement was on “find” mode. When he ran into a puzzling moment in tracking, he simply switched gears. How clever is THAT?

So Connery and I are doing a tracking reboot, and he’s enjoying this very much. It means BEAGLE SUCCESS! BEAGLE COOKIES! BEAGLE SONG OF SELF!

Who knows. By the time we join up with the new group on Saturday, maybe we won’t…completely…embarrass ourselves. But hey, maybe we will! That’s okay. Bring it on!

A really fun Connery pic--he's braced and collected behind to control the teeter tip, while at the same time striking out boldy in front. It's like catching a dressage horse in both levade and extension! (photo by Bruce McClelland)

…Monday

Yup, this is what we’ve been doing the past couple weekends.  Flying dogs.

Seriously!

Sometimes they don’t fly. Sometimes they get cocky, and crash and burn.  Sometimes they get worried, and then it’s more like a “meander” around the course–that happens to both of them, as Belle is a natural worrier and Connery still stresses when he’s not sure he’s safe (due to those horrifying giant-breed attacks when he was younger).

And then there are the courses. Sometimes the timing is awfully tight. Sometimes it’s just not physically possible to get from Here to There as a handler, when There is the spot that will tell the dog exactly what to do. Sometimes they’re just wicked, twisty, tricky…you look at the course map and go, “Buh..?” And maybe drool a little in stupefaction.

So on a course like that, I’ve got to handle on time, with my feet in exactly the right place, my hands in the right place (hands indicate a myriad of things, from direction to distance from handler), my verbals just soon enough to give guidance while not distracting the dog from obstacle performance. And the dog has to be appropriately focused–a balance of handler and obstacle focus–ready to listen while at the same time committing to the next obstacle with enough energy to navigate it.

All as fast as possible, of course. (PS and don’t get LOST!)

My guys tend to be careful and attentive, which means we Q on accuracy more than we blow out on speed. But every now and then it all comes together and we get the right course and the right level of canine cockiness and the right handler timing…

And that’s when dogs fly.

Belle takes on the tire with her little legs flung high out of the way. You can just see the glint of the blue speck inside her left brown eye. (This, and all of these pics, were taken by Bruce at BAMFoto)

She's not panting here--that's her happy running mouth. You can see it in most of her photos.

This one's got it all--the little blue eye dot, the happy mouth, the little front leg fling... Go, Belle, Go!

Connery hits those same weaves with fierce concentration (and the cutest little face!)

Typical Connery waiting at the start line. "HURRY MYMOM HURRY!"

…Friday

So hey.

I’m not really here.

I’m in a car heading for Santa Fe (again!), where we’re traveling out to our first “away” agility trial of the year. Whee!

Thanks to the move in January (a year after the previous move, pant pant pant), we’ve already missed a couple that might be considered within decent reach; the dogs will be very, very lucky to get anywhere near Nationals qualification this year, even though both qualified last year. But one does have to go to a certain number of trials to even have a chance…

Today, all of that is neither here nor there. Today we’re making the dogs feel special, preparing ourselves to explore a new trial venue, and hoping–oh please–that whatever we left behind this time, it isn’t too important.

Also, we’re steeling ourselves for that 4am alarm. Oh, seriously. An alarm shouldn’t even allow itself to be set for that time.

So I got clever! I wrote this up early in the week–I’ve no idea if I’ll have internet access at the hotel, because I never bother to check ahead. Not that I’ll be thinking about blogging on these days.

Nope. It’s all about the WHEE!

But hey! To put you in the mood, here are some piccies taken at Connery’s USDAA trial in March! We can thank Bruce McClelland at BAMfoto for these goodies–always nice to see him at a trial, because I know the pics will be good ones. (Bruce! Get a web site!).

posted on Monday

This past weekend, the dogs and I were at an agility trial. Super fun!

Also, getting up super early for super long, super exhausting days. Ready to sleep now! So what have we here? As a weekend stand-in, a photo essay of dogs HAVING FUN!

(AKA, Connery and Belle had a big tennie day a while ago, and I did the one-handed camera-while-tennie-tossing thing.)

The Monday Post

Oh, we are so full of fetch!  So full of happy!  Here goes!

(We are also taking pictures while crouching in the snow, balancing the honkin’ big camera with one hand, and tossing the tennie with the other…so, no promises!)

The Big Dive!

Graceful Agility Dogs, returning from the chase

Connery would really, REALLY like that tennie ball

Belle: O the Happy!

Belle:  O the REALLY Happy!

posted on Friday

What’re you gonna do. The dogs are clamoring for training, and the road is pure muck, and the agility yard is hovering somewhere between knee-deep in snow and melted into sludge.

Not to mention the next trial is looming, in the big scheme of things–when you’ve got dogs to condition and tune up.

So out we go into the arroyo. It’s more like a pre-arroyo–it has some really steep parts but is mainly more gentle, and it’s within the horse pasture. Now, just the other side of the horse fence, that’s where we’ve got a several-story drop and sheer verticals, a tangle of junipers growing out with no visible purchase, deadfalls, and gutted-out soil.

We’ll stick to this side, I think.

We head out the north side, loop around the back…running leaping happy dogs, sniff sniff sniff *wag* BAWH! And we play the Come Game, which means I wait until Connery has found the very best most interesting SNIFFY thing and I call him, and there are cookies.  (Belle doesn’t really  need this game, but she gets a cookie anyway.)

Along the fenceline, through the arroyo, and climb back up out, where we emerge into the agility yard south of barn. Not much there now–a few half-buried jumps, set low. The dogwalk; the teeter. The table, half obliterated by snow.

Connery, of course, throws himself over the dogwalk, all full of BAWH, and then we play with handling in the little jumping square. Wraps, turns, switches, front crosses…drive out to that far jump and pull around to the teeter. None of it’s very fast, but it doesn’t matter. They’re having fun, and they’re learning to work agility under conditions that will leave them unphased by inclement weather at trials.

Half of the obstacles they perform in tandem; they head for the table together; they run the dogwalk in single file…Belle watches while Connery works the jumping square, and she’s thinking, “I’d rather keep my feet tidy right at this moment.”

Then we cut through the arroyo to skim behind the house and hit the gate we used to get out, and towel off, and if it’s not agility…well, it’s snowgility.

Here he comes to save the day!

Racing for it…

Wuh-oh

“No, really. Pick me up.”

Obligatory artsy piccie

End of the Day: Hat hair and happy Beagle

The Monday Post

Look, it’s a muddy Monday!  On all counts.  Mud in the yard, mud on the roads, and oh, look.  Amazon muddying the waters for authors again.

Not really a huge surprise.  Lots of things live in the murky Amazonian rivers.  Things that will EAT you.  Things that will eat authors, anyway…

Amazon has a bottom line.  It’s not authors; it’s not readers.  It’s not building a more stable future for books in print or e-version.

No big shock:  it’s market share and profit.

Also no big shock:  Macmillan publishing has a different bottom line.  They want to protect their own interests–among which is making sure the book marketplace remains robust overall.

I can get on board with that.

And, of course, I can understand how these bottom lines differ.

But what Amazon might not have realized is that since there are sharks in the waters of those muddy rivers (the bull shark, if you’re curious),  it is possible for Amazon the company to yes indeed, jump the shark.

Whether they’ve done it this time, I don’t know.  It’s the second time they’ve pulled this particular bullying tactic–yanking every listing of certain books from their ranks on a Friday night, leaving the results to resonate through the weekend.  In this case, yanking every listing of every Macmillan book, including Tor books, because they don’t like the direction of ongoing discussions over ebook pricing plans–new plans inspired by the emergence of the Apple iPad, in which–can you imagine!–the publisher would have the right to set the cost of their product.

(Want some obsessive clicky-links?  From the Tor site, a primary source.  From Falconesse, who has a skill for pulling complexities together.  And oh, I do not have the willpower to not list Laura Anne Gilman’s reaction to Amazon’s whining announcement.)

I know that something in me feels that enough is enough.  It’s time Amazon the company learned that behaving like a bully–and especially behaving like a bully for the world to see–is not the way to do things.

(You may excuse me if I think it is especially not the way to do things when I have a book releasing in one day via Tor.)

For readers, this is about whether one retailer is allowed to gain a monopoly, and control the cost of publisher product–and what effect it will ultimately have on reader costs and availability.  For publishers, it’s about whether it’s healthy for the marketplace, short- and long-term, to allow that to happen.

For me, it’s about both of those things.  As I said in my previous post, I swing both ways when it comes to books.  But as a writer, it’s very much especially about how this will mess with my livelihood, and the how it might interfere with the success of a book I hold very near and very dear.  And, as a writer, I am very much not happy.

But as it happens, you can find the purchase option–for any of my books–that best suits you by going to Indiebooks.org.  Or  AllBookstores.com.  They list new, they list used…whatever floats your boat.  Including Amazon.  Because…dude, check it out.  Not everyone believes that monopoly is good.

ConneryBeagle also has an opinion about the Amazon situation, which he will now demonstrate with his Posture of Woe:

Oh, okay… I confess.  He just fell asleep like this one evening.  Is he a very silly Beagle, or what?  But he would like to continue eating kibble, which is paid for by my books, so I’m quite sure this would be his actual Posture of Woe if he truly understood the situation.

In any event, like many others I’ve read about today…I won’t be renewing my Amazon Prime next month. The wishlist has become a tool, not something I’ll be using there on Amazon. And I’ll be following my own provided links to do my shopping through AllBookstores and IndieBound. Because, really…I don’t think bullies should get their way.  And I don’t like being jerked around by a company throwing a tantrum–not as a consumer, and not as a provider.

The Friday Post

Yes! Finally! After three weeks on crate rest, ConneryBeagle is FREE!

Three weeks of subsuming bounciness into expressive eyebrows and wrinkles of woe.

Three weeks of quiet yodeling, sobbing, and the perfection of the mournful howl.

Three weeks of, “Mymom, are we THERE YET?”

The first week he was so heavily drugged it wasn’t a big deal.  Thank goodness, because we were moving with a vengeance that week, and Connery spent his time in whatever crate I could push from place to place.  Lots of yodeling and singing, but…kinda stoned.

The second week, he mourned…in a new place, unable to smell all the KEEN NEW SMELLS, baffled that Corgi packmates Belle and Jean-Luc had free run while he didn’t.  I took him around on a heel so he could smell things and see things, but…mostly he stuck his face up against the crate door and experimented with amazing new Calvin faces against the wire.

The third week, he said he was READY TO GO!  He’d come bouncing out of the crate and grab the nearest toy, flip it fiercely around, and then say, “Oh.  OW.”   I began to give him controlled down-stays in the office so he could be with me sometimes.

And now here we are!  The end of the third week!  He doesn’t get to rush out to instant unfettered glee; this’ll be a slow reintroduction of activity, complicated by the intense series of storms sweeping through the area.  Think slush, mud, slush, and ugh…

But still, ConneryBeagle is FREE!

Well.

To be serious for a moment.

Not free in an emancipation kind of way.  I’m not one of those who will turn a pet into traffic or out to the coyotes because any horrible death is better than slavery–although at shows, I’ve guarded his travel crate against those who would.

And I’m not his “guardian”…I own him.

I also adore him, train him, show him how to find glee in learning and pride in doing well.  I keep him alive against all odds and a tricky autoimmune system that baffles veterinary science, and every year his hot house flower medical expenses are my savings for a new car, broken ribs aside.  But although I call myself a dogmom, that’s about the emotions.  Legally, responsibly, and by all means with every right to decide his fate, I own him.  It is a privilege, and it is a right–and HSUS and PETA would have it differently, but for now, he is mine.

And I, it must be said, am his.

The Monday Post

This is the second Monday in the new home!

On this Monday, the office is in minimal working condition–no stereo yet, boxes on floor diminished but present, no pictures hung.  Internet access still relies on ArroyoNet, a remarkably stable WIRELESS WIZARD WIN! as long as a certain wireless phone at the broadcast end isn’t being used.

On this Monday, Duncan Horse is one step closer to his first ride in his new place–the modest north flat now clear of machinery and introduced on a nice walk-in-hand.  He has also observed his large donkey neighbors up the road with much indignant strutting of his studly stuff, to which the donkeys said, “Got it, you’re a horse, yada yada yada.”

There is still a lot of mud.  Much of it is now on Duncan.

On this particular Monday, I get to start the week knowing that over the weekend, I not only unpacked things, drove out new routes to old places from this totally opposite approach to the city, beat up on non-functioning new appliances (marginal success, sigh), spread shavings and straw over the aforementioned mud,  and cleared the garage of some freecycle items, but I slammed through a huge chunk of the second pass through Demon Blade (the next Nocturne novel) and wuh!  Finished it!

The last couple of previous books, I worked second pass on directly on the computer…logistics made it more viable.  But this one hit hardcopy early, and it went everywhere with me.  To doctor’s offices, where long waits ensured work time.  To the vet’s–yes, even to the doggy ER on New Year’s Eve while I was waiting for the vet to return with ConneryBeagle’s x-rays.  On the road between the old house and the new, every time we drove over to check on progress, plan out the fence line, or try, once more, to figure out where the little barn would fit.  If I went, the battered manuscript pages went, too.

It’s been a busy and well-traveled book, yes it has.  Me, my customized clipboard, my stack of papers, and my Energel pens.  Purple or green, please.

Tomorrow I start putting changes into the laptop, and then it’s time to make sure all the threads hold together and all the little rough spots are polished.  And then I get to call it a BOOK!

I am almost inspired to cackle with glee.

(Ha!  Maybe I even did it!  You’ll never know!)

What’re you cackling about this week, out there?

ConneryBeagle Crate Countdown: THREE DAYS!!!

PS: WordPress spellchecker suggestion for “ConneryBeagle” = “anaerobically.”

The Friday Post

I do it without thinking.

There I am, writing along, and my fingers tippity-tap out a word…and hesitate.  It doesn’t look quite right.  Is it?

Then I do the spelling squint.

Actually, the spelling squint does itself.  My head tips ever so slightly left.  My left eye closes.  My right eye narrows.  And ta-da! I can spell through the problem word.

I have no idea when I started this little routine, or why–it’s probably that left brain/right brain thing.  I don’t really care–as long as I have my magic tool!  I do sometimes wonder, in a fly-on-the-wall-way, what impression it gives to those who might catch a glimpse.  Popeye the Speller-man (er, woman)?

Arrr, matey, just pop me some spelling spinach!

It’s not the only face I make when I write.  I find myself frowning, smiling, wincing, snarling, and offering up steely-eyed looks at nothing in particular as I pause in the typing, letting the moment settle in and translating feeling to paper.  And then I find myself glancing around, so very glad that my little office has no one else in it…

Choregraphing  fight scenes in the physical, I leave to someone else.  I make mine up as I go along, more or less.  Or my characters make them up for me, but that’s another topic altogether.

No, in this office, it’s just me and my squinchy, frowny, smiley, glaring writing face and my dash of spelling squints on the side.

Of course, spelling squints can happen anywhere.  Just today I was offering up a crate pacifer for Connery Beagle–one of his favorites, a cow hoof.  (Or, as Connery would say, HOOFIE! )  It was so very kindly labeled, in case I didn’t recognize it–big round sticker:

HOOVE.

Ohh, yeah.  Tilt.  Eye closed.  Squint.

Bet I’m not the only one here who secretly corrects misspelled signs, though…

Crate Countdown: SIX DAYS!