Eblo

Martini Frost Jam

033_martini_frost_jam.mp3 - 23.7MB - 50:35

Stuff is all out of order. I have stuff I MEANT to put out last week, but now it'll likely wait for NEXT week, unless I get some new stuff this weekend that just HAS to go up before it. Or whatever. Who cares?

Anyway, I start out talking about our Wunderhund, Martini.

Flickr

Click the pic for a full photo set of the weekend. Darling Rose took the photos at the trial and outside. I took the ribbon photos at home.

Although Martini had run in competition before, this was my first time handling her. It was an AKC Novice Agility trial put on by the Smack-Dab Agility club of Warrenville, IL. We ran in "Standard" and "Jumpers with Weaves," one of each both Saturday and Sunday. Going in to the weekend, she needed one more qualifying run (or 'leg,') for her Standard title, and two more legs for her Jumpers title.

On Saturday, we knocked it out of the park. Not only did she pass both runs, thus earning one title, she also took a 1st place and a 3rd place. She was dead on - though I miscued her once, likely costing us Second Place in the Jumpers run by losing about 3.5 seconds. But we lost out to one of our friends - a relative of Martini's, actually - so it's all good. In both events, she earned perfect 100 scores.

Sunday wasn't as over-the-top successful, but she did pass both events again. There were no placements and no perfect scores. In the Standard run, I wasn't paying attention to her, and didn't give her enough direction to avoid going to the wrong obstacle right off the bat. We recovered pretty well from that, but it cost us 5 points. In the Jumpers run, she missed a jump (called a refusal), but I was able to call her back and take another run at it to finish the course. However in both runs, she had problems doing the weave poles - something she did perfectly on Saturday. Since I had to reset her a few times on those, we ended up get a 5-point deduction for going over the allowed time. I think by that point, she was just really tired.

But a pass is a pass is a pass, and the second Jumpers pass on Sunday earned her second title. In two days, she picked up 8 ribbons, 2 titles, and 4 stuffed toys. Can you guess which were her favorites? Though tiring, far away, and early in the morning, it was a whole lot of fun. Winning is fun, I guess.

On my way into work this morning, Tuesday, there was a kickass fog over everything. Serendipity had whispered in my ear and told me to grab my camera in the morning, and I also happened to have the camcorder from work with me, so I went on a photographic spree. On the drive in, I had my co-pilot shoot video of the passing shrouded scenery. I hope to edit that into some kind of music-backed video in the not to distant future. And once I got in to work, I found that the fog had actually frozen to the trees and buildings. I took 144 photos, recording the whole while. Click the photo below to get to the full photo set on Flickr.

Flickr

I end the show with a song from The Podsafe Music Network, Elliot Smith's "Memory Lane." Very cool stuff. The background music interspersed throughout is stuff I played live on my Korg Karma as I mixed the recorded audio segments together. Let me know which parts sucked the hardest.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

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