Twelve Up and Down

I appreciate all of you who have kept in touch during my blog absence.  December was a pretty tricky month, with 10 final exams that ate at my time for two weeks, several holiday parties, a stomach virus, and my grandma's ongoing recuperation from her hysterectomy surgery.  Things seem to have calmed down now, though I know that the quiet is only temporary (school starts again on the 28th of January).

I wish I had pretty pictures from a walk on the beach or a hike in the woods.  But, the fact of the matter is that we haven't been to a park in months, all of the beaches are still closed, and my digital camera is broken!  Marge's life has become mundane in that regard, with fetch sessions and walks with me along the paper route making up the bulk of her exercise.  Agility has started back up, though, and we're gearing up for what I hope to be a competitive 2013 season (more on that another time).

Anyway, I thought I'd pop in and make an appearance before the year ended.  It's been a difficult year in many ways, and I expect 2013 to boast a similar set of challenges, but there are bright spots that shined through this year that I hope will continue to be a source of happiness, comfort and entertainment after the calendar turns.

Live from Bridgeport NJ

We're at the hotel, relaxing after a fun day of agility.  Given the events of the past couple of weeks, we haven't run agility in close to a month.  

Marge picked up her 15th Excellent B Jumpers Q for 4 points.  Her Standard run was nice, but I sent her off course.  Arrow had a bar down and an off course in Standard, and weave pole issues in Jumpers.  But, all things considered, both dogs ran very well.

We were supposed to trial last weekend, but the trial was cancelled because of the storm.

Here's to a pair of QQs tomorrow! (Or, if I'm not being greedy, a Jumpers Q for Arrow and a Standard Q for Marge!)

How MargeDog Did

I have to say that Marge was an absolute trooper during the confusion of Hurricane Sandy.  In fact, despite the fact that the storm was much more severe than Hurricane Irene, and much more tumultuous (leaving the house with the storm surge rushing up your block is certainly enough to set a fearful dog off) than anything Marge has ever experienced in my household, I was really surprised at how well behaved she was.

Contrary to popular belief, Marge was NOT a Katrina dog (she was born in 2007), so I'm not sure she's ever experienced anything like this before.

Marge definitely knew something was up in the day or so before the storm.  She had that nervous look about her and seemed to watch my movements closely.  However, even once the wind started to roar, she was relatively calm.  She enjoyed a few romps on the beach on Sunday and Monday and didn't appear nervous at all.

She did nearly have a heart attack when we threw her in my dad's hatchback car and she rode with me in the trunk as we escaped the high tide, but that's to be expected.  She settled down once we arrived at my grandma's dark house, though I kept her on a leash to be sure I knew where she was at all times.

Most importantly, once we returned home, she responded very favorably to the visitors coming and going from my house in the wake of the storm.  One neighbor who had her house completely destroyed stayed at my house for several hours, and Marge was nothing but hospitable towards her. (We did put her away when folks like the National Guard rang my doorbell, though, because I knew she wouldn't take kindly to men in uniform.  It's all about setting up for success.)

My friends stopped by to check on me, too, and she greeted them with only a few hackles and mostly swooping, happy tail wags.

The one thing that did make her really nervous was walking past the front-loaders that were taking garbage away from a nearby block.  But, she recovered quickly, and a few minutes later, ran some zoomies in a successful attempt to burn off the stress she just experienced.

So, she may not be perfect.. but she's pretty darn close!

Staten Island Strong

New Dorp Beach, 2009

The beach we would so frequently sit on is busy with debris, yet at the very same time, left barren from the immense erosion of sand.

The field we would so frequently run in is now being used as a base for the National Guard, the American Red Cross, FEMA, and countless other relief groups.  The neighborhood blocks we would so frequently walk down have been left impassable by the endless bags of garbage - the content of people's homes, destroyed by the ocean, now left at the curb, sopping wet.  Helicopters fly in the skies overhead, starting as early as 7 AM and continuing in to the dark hours of the evening.  Cars line the roads, but most of them are not moving - some fell prey to the storm, others sit idle in a line for gas that stretches nearly a mile.  The roads are street corners are packed full with volunteers, donated clothing, spectators, residents, and the NYPD.

It's bad here.  It's really, really bad here.

Hurricane Sandy has absolutely ravaged my neighborhood.

Those who doubted this storm, those who thought the media was overhyping this storm, were proven very wrong.  Hurricane Irene, which did far more inland damage than it did coastal damage, lulled many people in our beach community in to a false sense of comfort.

Including my family.

In fact, we figured that since my grandma's house always loses power, that we'd bring her to OUR house, a half mile from the beach and in NYC's "Zone A" rather that pack up and go to her house, which is 60 feet or so above sea level, on a hill.

We were smart about one thing, though, and did have things packed up in case we had to leave at the last minute.

Aaaand.. we DID leave at the last minute.

Social media began to buzz after 7 PM on Monday night with reports of the storm surge starting to reach roads and residences.  I found out that a nearby block was under water through Facebook, and the local online news said that people were being rescued off of rooftops just 5 blocks away.

It didn't feel real until I looked out the window and saw what looked like the end of the world - the sky lighting up from transformers exploding, and a mass exodus of cars away from the streets nearer to the beach and closer to higher ground.  Police sirens blared as loud as the wind was blowing.

The final straw was when the water began pouring up my block.  I saw it between my block and the next out on the main road, and that is when I knew that we had to leave.

So, we very quickly packed up a family of four, an 80 - year old grandma, and a cat and a dog in to my dad's crossover, which he conveniently backed up on to my front lawn to avoid the floodwaters, and he drove us to higher ground.

In retrospect, it was a little stupid for us to leave, since it was entirely possible that we would not be able to get out of my neighborhood, and then would have been trapped in the floodwaters.  But, we made it to my grandma's dry, albeit pitch black, house.  My sister, the pets, and I spent the night in my grandma's spare bedroom, on the floor, listening to the wind howl, sandwiched between several layers of blankets.

Fast forward to Tuesday, when I finally arrived home.  The ocean water somehow skipped over my house and stopped dead on my front lawn. We had some damage in the basement from the sewers backing up and spewing filth all over the basement floor.  Some stuff got ruined, but nothing terribly substantial.  Nothing like the devastation experienced elsewhere in my neighborhood.  We were very lucky.

Since I arrived home after dark on Tuesday, I didn't get out to see my community until Wednesday.  It was like a movie.  Literally everyone I knew from my neighborhood was affected in some way.

There doesn't feel like there's an end in sight right now, though I know things will get better.  Already people here have made tremendous progress clearing out their houses, and Sanitation has been doing their best to get the garbage off of our streets.

I've never been one to be ashamed of the fact that I'm from Staten Island, the way some people are.  I've lived here my entire life, in this little house in New Dorp Beach, so one would hope that I like the place! But this week, I'm truly proud to be a Staten Islander.  The support people are giving to one another is amazing and will, no doubt, help us get through this time a little bit easier.

We're On A Roll!

This past weekend, Marge and I competed in two days of agility trials at one of our favorite trial sites.  Marge has not competed in a show since the beginning of August, so it was really nice to get back out in to the ring with her.

She must have felt the same way!  She qualified in three out of four of her runs, earning a Jumpers leg on Saturday and her 4th double-qualifying score on Sunday.  We were one measly off-course jump away from a perfect weekend.  This was one of our best weekends to date.

Maybe she ran so well because she was happy to hang out with her best friend, Spirit, for the entire weekend.  (I was happy to see Spirit, too, as well as her mom, as well as all of the friends who I tented with or near).

Both Jumpers runs, though they were qualifying, were somewhat unremarkable.  She had slow weaves in both, which I think might have to do with the fact that they were very early in the course (it usually takes Marge a few obstacles before she really gets going).  She picked up 5 MACH points in each of them.

Her last run of the weekend, Standard, was completely different.

She started out at her normal speed, but, after completing the #2 tunnel, shot right over the dog walk and never looked back.

During one part of the course (just before the weave poles), I felt REALLY far away from her and had to yell out my commands to her from probably a solid 15-20 feet away.

She also attacked the weaves in this run, jumping in to them so quickly that I am lucky she didn't pop out due to lack of collection. This eased my worries that her slow weaves earlier in the weekend were the result of her feeling sore or injured.

She still placed towards the bottom of the qualifiers (seems I am doomed in the 20 inch class when it comes to placements), but she matched her previous high and picked up 15 MACH points for her effort.  She is no Border Collie, but the fact that she's running more quickly and more accurately is very exciting.

Here's a video of our double-Q runs:


Our totals to date: 4 QQ's, 148 MACH points, 14 MXJ legs, 6 MX legs.

We'll be attending one day of a trial in Long Island this coming weekend.  I hope we can continue to build on our success, and add another double to the ones we've earned at each of our last three trials!

These Little Moments

Life has definitely changed the past month or so, now that I'm back in (graduate) school and things have once again gotten hopelessly busy.  It's easy to want to plop down at the end of the day and totally abandon any of the other responsibilities that I have outside of school, but think I've done a pretty decent job so far of balancing my schoolwork with my hobbies and other commitments while still finding enough time to sleep.  That, in part, is the reason for my blog absence, and I'm not sure there's much I can do about that.

Since being a brand-spankin'-new PT student comes with so many questions about how I like the program, how I'm doing with it and how much work it is, I had a person tell me a few weeks ago at an agility trial that I'll have my whole life to do agility and the other things I love - that school should be my first priority right now.  While her intentions were good in making the statement, and while I suppose school should be pretty high on the totem pole, I didn't quite like the notion of completely putting the things I love to do off until a later date.

Marge is five years old; she's still pretty young for a medium-sized dog, and some would say that she's entering the best years of her life. But the gray hairs propping up on her bumpy little chin are a reminder that she will not live forever.  (To be honest, I get a little unnerved when I look at them, even though they are still barely noticeable.)

So, in that sense, no, I won't have the rest of my life to do agility or anything else.   Marge is living her life now, and I will not deny her the joy of doing the things she loves to do because I cannot find the time to do them.

Yes, I've had to make changes, like denying both Marge and myself the fun of taking more than one overnight trip for agility (but we are still taking one this semester!).  We also haven't gone on any hikes or trips to the park, but the high number of ticks we've had here are just as responsible for that as my sore feet are. But, at minimum, I'll always make sure that she gets to go out for walks, run around in the field, go to trials, and play with her buddies.

Some snapshots of the past couple of months:

It may mean skimping on vegetative stretches of time spent on the couch (kind of like the one I'm allotting myself right now...), it may mean passing on the occasional social outing, but the story of Marge will not be put on hold.  We can't afford to let that happen.

Few Words Monday

There are so many things I can update about.. but I'm still in lazy summer mode, and can't quite think of the words to write. For now, enjoy this picture of Marge on the beach Saturday night, taking in the sunset.

We've been enjoying a laid-back summer together.  I love spending time with my good little girl.