winter, winter, go away

Yeah, I am one of those winter hate-a's. I have no use for the cold and snow and overall grossness. We still have a few days of decentness to hope for before we're all covered in the soggy dirty freezing mess that is winter.



I did just blog about the weather. Awesome.



Besides wishing for sunny days and just being glad that my hound is alive, I've ventured into the realm of (gasp!) running contacts with the little Sparrowlicious.



We indulged ourselves by purchasing a set of rubberized contact equipment, which FedEx Freight delivered in the middle of my street. No joke. They sent one guy, who waited until we came home so Dave could "help" get the 700 pound crate out of the semi and into. . . the middle of the street. I guess that's their definition of residential delivery.



Oh well, it's all water under the bridge now. I'm just happy to have the stuff so I can work on running contacts. Until it snows. Eep.



Video of us being hardcore, training in the backyard when it's decidedly not 65 and sunny. What do you mean, my little red hoodie isn't hardcore???

sparrow agility 11.26.10 from prudence rabbit on Vimeo.

as promised, a reuben agility mini-docudrama, in black and white

Agility course, feel the love.

I also played with Ms. Sparrow. See diagram below. No moving pictures. Sorry.



This is how you use your Jedi Mind Powers and the Ever Powerful Pointy Bordercollie finger to send to the tunnel snugged up behind the giant hosta plant. Dumb.



Coming up next: Space Invaders courses, and hopefully more videos of my backyard, giant hosta plant and all. After watching the Arcade Fire live webcast concert this week, their songs will not leave my brain, so expect some Arcade Fire goodness to go along with those videos.

sparrow's t-shirt features a pink sparkly glitter heart, the center of which reads "my heart belongs to weavepoles"

My dog loves weavepoles so much she wants to marry them. Granted, they are still in the early stages of their relationship, where they might momentarily break up if I run really fast, or they might hit a rough patch if the entry is just too hard for their delicate young love. But, she still has that feeling, and knows it's for real: true love at first sight, love that will last a lifetime.





Unfortunately, Dave did not feel the love for this course, created especially to fit just so in our unusually shaped agility practice space. Instead, he went mountain biking. Pshaw.




Tomorrow, dear backyard agility course, the flame will be rekindled.

cartoon reuben does agility

Another saaaa-wheeeet backyard practice agility course!!
Reuben is normally a cartoonish version of a dog, but check this out--here he REALLY is a cartoon. Brought to you by the magic of Windows Movie Maker.



Reuben, even more of a cartoon than normal.

And here is Sparrow (non cartoon) making me run superfast practicing some of the same course, on the flat. Oh, and not wanting to let go of her favorite purple wubbie. It's just SO TASTY. And it's PURPLE.





So, yeah. Blind cross after 2, flip after 9, and go, go, go when the dog commits to 5. Also, blind cross would be SO GOOD after 14, if anyone ever gets that far. Dave is speedy, and did a blind after the #10 tunnel, too. I would never in a million years get there in time.

Dave wants me to do sprint exercises to speed up my agility running skillz. Stay tuned. . .

my backyard, as illustrated by cleanrun course designer tm copyright

This is the course we set up for today's thrilling agility practice. The diagram approximates part of my backyard and all of it's fabulous agility-unusable areas, like the overgrown rock-garden featuring a huge boulder next to the pear tree where the squirrels hang out and throw half-eaten pears at us. And pee on the agility tunnel. From the tree. True story.

Here is a sampling of Dave's handling of the course, featuring a nifty blind cross in the pinwheel. It is entitled "Dave is Exciting and Runs Fast." Alternatively, it is titled "He Had Better, Because Coonhounds Only Run Fast if Someone Else is Doing it First."



This one is entitled, "Katie is Boring and Points Her Finger at Her Border Collie." In my defense, I did pull off a tandem turn (rear cross on the flat after the jump). Nifty.

a teetering hound

Welcome to the very first post on AgilityHound, the blog, aka Benjacat and Prudence Rabbit Do Agility.

Benjacat has been out of town this weekend, participating in his other fringe sport, bicycle racing, so I took a few moments to work with his dog, Reuben the Wonder Coonhound, on the teeter. Reuben has been doing agility for quite some time now, but unfortunately he is a big baby, erm. I mean, he still has issues with the teeter.

He does just fine with my short teeter base, so I finally got out my drill and put an extra slat on the teeter board so it would fit on the ancient built-in swingset that happens to be cemented into my backyard. How fortuitous!

Here is a short video of Reuben going over the new BIG teeter. He is actually being a vewy bwave widdle hound. I think the sound/impact of metal teeters freaks him out the most (Ruh Roh! says Reubie Doo), so the plan is to eventually place something hard and flat under the end of this teeter.





Yes, he barks a lot during agility. No, he does not bark all of the time. It's pretty much just during agility. No one believes us, but it's true. He sleeps through most of the day, every day, recharging just in time for agility.

Who, me?