Never Prepared

Last Tuesday morning I was almost done with my overnight shift at work. At 7:50am, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I picked it up, expecting to see a text from the day time emergency doctor, saying she would be running late. Instead it was my dad, with a message I had been expecting pretty much since I was old enough to know what drug addiction meant. My oldest sister, Barbara, age 44, had overdosed and was on life support in the hospital. Twenty plus years of preparing for that moment, and I still wasn't really ready for it.

As the details unfolded, it became more clear that this person who always knew exactly how far she could push herself did not do this by accident. She had been a user for more than half of her life and was always adamant that no one ever do it alone. But she had closed herself in her bedroom that night, had been dropping clues for weeks. All of last week was a process of my family processing the fact that this was ACTUALLY happening, this was no longer a matter of speculation of when or how or why. Everything the doctors were saying, I knew there was no way she was going to wake up. It was such a hard place to be. No, I'm not a human doctor, but I am an emergency doctor, this is the kind of scenario I deal with on an almost daily basis: a dear loved one, terminally injured, with the rest of the family left with guilt and grief and loss. I am proud that it never devolved into what I sometimes see: family blaming each other, taking out their anger and grief on each others' faults and shortcomings. It would have been easy to do, but it didn't. Everyone stayed supportive and understanding, sharing the grief equally. And I'm also grateful that when it came time, Barbara did what all of my clients pray their pets will do: make the decision themselves. Another curse of working in emergency medicine is I knew when I walked into the room that day that her vital signs would not keep going much longer. The decision had already been made that that would be the day she would be removed from life support. My biggest fear was that she would remain stable for days after removal, leaving everyone second guessing the decision. But she didn't do that. She had already made the decision Monday night we knew. She just waited for everyone to accept it. I am grateful for the peace that she met at the end.

But it doesn't make the loss easier. I really didn't see or hear much from her. In fact, I felt like I had to hide, afraid that I could be seen as a source because of my job and how close I was to where she lived. It made me a terrible sister. I deluded myself into believing it was for her own good. But she didn't need anyone's help, didn't ever want it and would never have taken it if it were given against her will. What really mattered to her wasn't how long she lived, just that she mattered to others. And I didn't show her that she mattered, that she was my big sister and that was important to me. It wouldn't have made a difference in the demons that she lived with. But she would have known that she was loved, and that was all she really seemed to care about. Services are tomorrow morning. One more chance for everyone to come together. One more chance to say good bye. I see her every where, and I hope that never changes.

How my childhood memory will always picture her. Love you Barbara.

How Much Is Too Much?

I've had some things on my plate this week. Well, just one big thing any way. I'll post some details when it's more or less over and done with. Let's just say I'm incredibly proud of my family. At a time when emotions have run at their highest, everyone has remained supportive without any blame placing or lashing out. Tomorrow, just one more day I think, before tensions can start to subside and we all start to feel relieved. I'm relieved just knowing that there's an end in sight.

I've laid low on the FB front regarding the AKC requirements for 2016 NAC. I really was looking forward to going back there, where Spy made finals in 2013 and where I hoped Kraft would debut at an AKC Nationals. I purposefully made sure not to trial enough for any of my dogs to be close to qualifying for 2015 in Reno, I just didn't want to have to make that trip again. Plus it would have taken a butt load of trialing to get Kraft qualified since he was still in Novice/Open this time last year. He would have broken down for sure if I had tried. Hadn't really intended on trying to get him qualified for Cynosports, that was kind of an accident. IMO, qualifying for Cynosports is a bit too easy. He got his Steeplechase legs his first two tries. He got Masters Challenge by accident, if he had spun the opposite way when I overshot a weave entry, he would have gotten called for the refusal (that I thought he should have been called for any way) and wouldn't have gotten that either. Then I had to send him with a handler to try to get that second GP leg. And it's still way too easy to go to the US Open, no requirements at all (but they are still growing, so I can see why they are keeping it so open, but that's just it, they are calling it an "Open", do they ever plan to place qualifying requirements on who can attend or just keep making it harder to get byes like they are doing this year?) I thought this year would be a good one to bring the focus back to AKC, it would be a good goal to try to get him into masters and get some consistency in order to be able to get the necessary points by the end of the year. It would still have left me time to play in other organizations too, as qualifying in USDAA should go a little smoother now that he has some mileage, and I was hoping to get plenty of UKI in there as well.

But now this. I really just don't see him getting qualified under the new rules without breaking him down. I looked back at Marron and Spy's records from the past two years. Spy qualified with 580 points for Tulsa, 550 points for Harrisburg, Marron had over 700 points for Harrisburg. Marron has a ridiculously high Q rate. With Spy I was going for Invitational points during some of that time and still would not have made the cutoff, though she had some weave pole issues and weird disconnect problems too. Kraft's Q rate is going to be probably even lower than Spy's was during this time. I just can't see increasing how many trials we do per month though, unless we gave up all of those other things we want to do. I mean, Kraft *could* qualify, if I did 4 trial days per month, which isn't that much, but that's pretty much all the trial days I have available. I know everyone is saying it isn't up to AKC to give a Rat's ass what other organizations people compete in. And I agree with that in part. However, they SHOULD care about who they are going to attract to their national championship. And IMO they should want to attract those who are at the top of their game, regardless of venue. Which means playing nice with people who want to participate in multiple venues. And what it sounds like is they don't care if the "high fliers" no longer come to NAC. So it brings the question of where do we draw the line? I can calmly say that this year, Kraft still doesn't have the experience and consistency to qualify for AKC Nationals, since in order to make up for his current inexperience and inconsistency, I would have to trial so often. I will very comfortably just bow out again this year with him. I think he unfortunately falls into one of the unlucky categories of dogs that may have been specifically aimed at, those young dogs who are not running in Masters and qualifying at a consistent rate by the time the qualifying period starts. Spy probably could qualify without increasing her trialing too much, since her consistency is actually better than it was when she qualified for Tulsa (and she missed a month qualifying for Harrisburg for her surgery). But at what point do I vote with my money and say that AKC is asking too much, even of experienced dogs? Where will they draw the line? When will they find some other way of paring down the entries? I agree that they need to keep entries down, not make it too easy to qualify. But at this point I think they are cutting out the wrong subset of teams. Or am I just being sour grapes because I was one of the subsets of teams that is being cut out? The Novice/Open/Excellent dogs with some talent and promise?

Worth It's Weight

Going to use DABAD: Continuing Education to catch up on my thoughts recently about the OMD membership. I'll see if I can tie my thoughts coherently into something resembling a general post about continuing education in agility.

I posted (on my old blog,  Are We Getting Into One Mind?) about a year ago that I was sort of put off by the promises and advertising of the OMD'ers. I was curious about the system, seeing that it so fit in with the natural, motion based handling system I had been taught. I even subsequently paid for a membership. And for about six months, I grasped at every little tidbit J&J thought fit to dangle in front of wanton handlers (yes, wanton, if you read dinahprincedaly's response to my above post, you would know what I am talking about). And I felt very unfulfilled. One video a month. Occasional "challenges" that required equipment that I did not have (3 tunnels, space to set up something like 7 jumps in a straight line, etc), despite having what I feel to be a full field of equipment. Nothing that I could really USE. No exercises/drills that would magically make me a better handler. No sequences/courses to give me actual homework that would test my skills and tell me if I was on the right track. Then there was that little link in the upper right of the homescreen, the one that said "Next Level", where if you clicked on it, it said, "coming soon". Great, this sounded like what I was really hoping to get out of my membership, but with the "levels" of membership it seemed that they were working towards, I wasn't really looking forward to shelling out more money if this Next Level thing was going to leave me as empty as the premium membership had.

Then there were the two months leading up to my trip to California for Cynosports. Money was tight. My well pump broke, other unexpected expenses came up. I kept meaning to cancel my membership. I couldn't justify the cost any more. But I would keep forgetting and then DAMNIT the money came out of my account again. Kept telling myself, I'll go back and do it later, another month. And then the emails that Next Level was ready to go. And it said nothing about paying an extra fee. Could it be true? When I clicked on the first video, I half expected to see a teaser, and then be rerouted to a site asking me to pay another 20 Euros in order to be able to view the full exercise. That's how that other "icky" foreign program pushing dictator lures in her followers. But to my surprise, it was the real deal. Real handlers running real dogs (ok, I was a little put off that the first video was 4 BC's, but since then they have broadened, I think it was just coincidence). A real seminar, with real advice being given about how they wanted the handlers to perform the sequences, what they were looking for from the dog. And despite all the hype about their techniques being what really drives their handling system, what these first four videos have been about is really just obstacle performance and independence. Because you can't have all the fancy moves without the foundations being solid. Love that. It's like being one of their students, without even having direct input from them. So yeah, I finally feel like the membership has become meaningful, worth it's weight and then some.

So I guess in order to tie this in to continuing education in general, I guess what I will have to say is that online teaching is awesome. There's something out there for just about any need you might have in agility training, and beyond (obedience, tricks, recalls, etc). But there's also a huge variability in the level of involvement for each course. It becomes important to evaluate what your goals and needs are and if they are being met by the course. Sometimes you need might be just that you want exposure, to fulfill some curiosity. That's how I started out with the OMD membership. Once that need was met, I hit a bottleneck. I wanted instruction on how to put the pieces together. My current instructor was being fed the same information, at the same rate, as I was, so other than providing an objective eye (which is not to be underestimated, I still value that side of agility instruction) there wasn't much extra that she was able to provide as far my continuing education. I desperately started to look outside my online experience, but opportunities were relatively limited. Live training just couldn't keep up with virtual exposure. I would have to travel far and wide to find live instruction, which was just something I couldn't afford to do. So how do we mesh the virtual need and growth of knowledge with the limitations that geography and funds present? For now, I am thankful that the OMD'ers were able to come up with a valid solution, a natural outgrowth of what they were already doing. And they seem to be anticipating the next bottle neck that will occur when the 40 weeks of videos concludes. It will likely take me longer than that to work through all of the information they are dispensing, seeing that I have only made it through 2 of the 4 exercises they have released amongst the other skills I want to work on and the ever dropping temperatures and increasing threats of snow. Once this current source has been tapped, the possibility of joining up with a member of their pilot group of instructors becomes intriguing. There's even someone fairly local, but it becomes a question again of availability and practicality, as each instructor is obviously free to choose how much they are able to take on as far as student load. Hmm, I see a theme. Online instruction seems to only lead just so far until real, live face time becomes necessary. I sure hope that for the sake of those of us seeking to maximize our continuing education in this sport, new and innovative ways for the online experience to keep up with our growing needs are developed and experimented with.