Category: Blog

Cowboys Stadium isn't bad. Seats are a good size unlike American Airlines and the acoustics are okay.

Thanks to Brian i have a good parking space and a ride as close as possible. Getting to a spot where they can find me to pick up will be good too.

I was 105 when i got to my seat so the candy i picked up at Walgreens was a good idea.

The opening act is The Script and they were actually quit good. They are from Dublin Ireland.

Sir Paul McCartney was definately good.  He is 67 and he looks hot.  Excellent job on the hair (they don't match the color of his eyebrows), and his age was showing when he got tired.

He switched instruments about every other song, sometimes more often, and played piano and several different types of gitars and other stringed instruments.  He was spot on and quite funny between sets.  Even did a few solos.

The musicians accompanying him were quite good.

It was quite a walk out of the stadium to the street where I could be picked up and lucked out again.  The place we decided to meet was a pizza place, and there were about 6 Arlington cops hanging out there waiting until the concert let out and they were needed for traffic duty again.  It was amusing to hear them talk, just like the old Police K9 days.

All in all a good night, well planned and executed.

It's really no fun being Campus Technologist because you can't have a moment off, you can't go to the teacher's lounge, or anywhere else without that hat on.  Heck, I was supposed to be doing summer camp last two weeks and spent most of my day dealing with technology stuff.

Don't get me wrong — I spent the four hours with the kids, but spent another four hours dealing with stuff while off the clock.

At least I don't have to deal with those issues now and most of them are completed.

Agility practice was good.  Macy still doesn't understand delayed gratification and her early runs were all about looking for the cookies in the grass.  Part of that had to do with me getting their late, having to go to the restroom, etc.

Later runs got better though.

Also she didn't hestitate at the teeter at all.  I'm vowing not to call it a teeter next show.

Maggie was good too.  I screwed up the course first run, Elizabeth called me on it, and Maggie wandered off and didn't want to come back.  The rest of our runs were great, especially the last one when I found myself head of her at the dogwalk and was able to do a blind cross.  She didn't like that the first time, bellowed and went around me, even though my hand was out.

Second time though, she did get it right, without complaining. 

She hadn't see that before but once she saw it worked, she was cool with it.

Two more days of teacher stuff and unfortunately it's over in far East Garland.  Putting lots of miles on the car this week, four drives to Ft. Woth, one to McKinney, two to Garland, one to Plano, and one to Arlington.  <sigh>

Our classes came too close together to blog.

Macy ran first in Jumpers and she make one mistake too many (she was 7 points from qualifying).  It’ probably me, but she ran around three jumps. 

Maggie ran standard next, and I think she had two refusals and that is one too many.  She refused a tunnel and I am sure the judge called a refusal on the weaves.  Everything else was good and spectators said she looked happy.

However, her jumpers run was a disaster, I think it was the camera in the ring, as she really was slow coming off the start line and she was headed towards a photographer with a huge lens.   She finally stopped in front of the weaves, again, facing the lens. I had to pick her up and take her off the course.

Macy tried really hard and got everything right until we got to the teeter, and she just couldn’t do it, but she did put two feet on it.

I really think all 8 classes were too much for us, and we probably should have left after Maggie’s standard run but you never know.

We all home, chilling in the cool house.

So I survived my first day of my "week from hell".   Even made it by Office Depot for teacher appreciation day.  We have one close to the house, really like the manager and it means a lot of him if I come by.   

From a diabetes standpoint, I did really well.  At one point, long before we ran I was at 191, but then remembered that I usually ran agility at 50% higher than my normal weekend rate, so did that.

Rest of the day had nice low blood sugars but also did protein most of the day — though I’ll admit to a McD Mocha for the caffeine intact on the way in.  I’m officially addicted, but it’s better for me than diet coke.

Did well on food, I had one of my days where carbs made me think about throwing up, so had a bratwurst and egg for breakfast, corndog from the vendor for lunch, some KFC dark meat grilled chicken on my way home.  Finally had my Diet Gourmet lunch for dinner. Doing on the total daily dose of insulin.

On the clothing front, I wore the exact same clothing — top and skirt — that I did a year ago.  However, a year ago they were too small, and now they are approaching too big. 

Neither of the beagles showed sign of stress — they were running with me, and trying hard.  Most of our problems had to do with handler confidence and some minor training issues — Macy is still scared of the teeter — and I think that will start going away after today.

I’ve very happy I entered and I am looking forward to the next three days of trials (tomorrow and next weekend).  I am even thinking about seeing if I can move Maggie to Excellent with this trial.

We had a nice run – she missed the tire when I first sent her, but she came back and got it.  She did the chute!  And she had trouble with the dog walk but I think she thought it was the teeter – I swear she needs beagle glasses.  She did everything else until we got to the teeter, it was the second to last obstacle and she was silly and just wouldn’t do it.  She has been afraid of chutes and teeters since we started competing but I think it will come.

Looking forward to a good day tomorrow, I’m getting my confidence back.

Started out good until we got to the tunnel  — she sent to it but decided I didn’t mean it and came back out.  Nice weaves, but I wasn’t in a good spot to direct her and kind of got lost.  I stopped her, gathered us both together and had a really nice ending.

She had a nice run.  She was a little stressed until she saw the camera disappear, and was with me and working the entire trip.  We each made a mistake – I pulled her off the table before the count, and she took the tire trap.

Looks like we’ll keep doing agility for a while (I had already told my instructor I would retire her if she kept running out of the ring).

Macy had her first run.  It wasn’t great.  She had a refusal, knocked bars, and missed a bunch of jumps.

However, she did NOT get the zoomies, she did  not run off, and she traveled in the same direction as I did most of the time.  She also weaved.

Still have three runs to go.

Her relative Linus however, did a beautiful job – was a tad distracted at first, but I think he probably Qed.

It’s still hot and I’m still not running as fast as I would like, but it will come.

We practiced short courses to get ready for this weekend’s trial.  I am apparently tensing on up Macy’s problem obstacles, and it’s making her miss them.  Will have to work on that this hard, and will have to babysit those obstacles too.  She prefers that I be on heel-side for them also.  She has problems with the teeter, the chute, and sometimes the broad jump.

Maggie was interesting but she always is.  She’s really worrying me and driving me nuts.  First half of class I was making handler errors so she started screaming at me, which wastes time and keeps her from listening.

We had a popsicle break and that seemed to help as she was calmer and listening more and had some nice runs.

We have trials this weekend in Fort Worth.  It’s a nice place and free if anyone comes out.  Everyone at the trials knows me, so just ask for me and they will point me out.  I’m planning to get there right before noon.  Wyatt’s Arena in the Will Rogers Complex and it should be clearly marked.

Although yesterday was a lousy food day (but not as bad as Friday).

No breakfast from Diet Gourmet because of database dump so I picked up an Egg McMuffin, one of my favorite breakfasts (at 30 carbs, it isn’t bad).  Really had a tough time eating it, was probably eating too fast.

Lunch was also pretty painful, but not bad.

However, I was doing some stuff on the computer in the gym/den/guest room and was running late for dog agility.  I ended up coughing up half of dinner, which was worrsome, but Elizabeth had some really good, really big popiscles and they did the trick of keeping me from going low.

Picked up a small snack on the way home and ended up coughing that up too.

It’s a process.