 |
| Volume 3, Issue 4 |
International Parti Poodle Gazette |
October 2007 |
Six Dogs, Two Adults and a Motor Homeor . . .Confessions of an Agility AddictBy Helen Kingwww.jility.com
What
would possess two nearly sane adults, long past middle age, to move
out of two perfectly good homes (one in a cool place for summer and
one in the desert for winter) and into a motor home with their six
dogs? AGILITY!
Hi, my name is Helen King and I am an agility addict! My husband Mel and I purchased our dream home in the Southern California desert, Indio to be exact, in January of 2002. It was a lovely home overlooking the golf course and the snow capped mountains. Where else can you swim in your pool in 80 degree weather while watching the sun set behind the hot air balloons and the white mountain peaks? It was heaven! Then we found dog agility. Our lives have not been the same since. Before agility, we had two wonderful dogs: Isabella the standard Poodle and Millie the magnificent mutt. Life was simple, fun filled and nice. We traveled to far away places, went SCUBA diving in spots like the Galapagos Islands and Belize, we sat for hours watching Carnival in Rio and even went down the Amazon. Life was GRAND!
Now, the only place we go is to agility trials or dog parks or the beach so the dogs can run. Don’t get me wrong! I LOVE the dogs AND our life. It is just very different than it once was.
We traveled back and forth from Indio, CA to Silver Creek, WA twice a year. We left Washington in December for Indio and then returned in late May. It was the best of both worlds. Oh how I adored my desert! Then, something horrible happened. My close friend, Lisa Greene, became very ill with cancer. She asked if we would take care of her dogs for her while she went through treatment. She assured me it would only be for a few months so we agreed to take the two bitches, Josephine and Charisse but not the male, Flynnie. Both bitches were intact and the last thing I wanted to deal with was a howling intact male when the bitches came into season! That was in the end of June in 2005 and we were at our 55 acre farm in Washington so we had plenty of room for two more dogs. The yard in Indio was the size of a postage stamp so that many dogs would have been a disaster had we been there. Josephine had been an amazing agility dog. She and Lisa were quite the team! She had her MACH (Master Agility Champion) and had made the finals at AKC Nationals with Lisa one year. That was quite a feat! The day Josephine got her MACH was the last day she ever competed with Lisa. Josephine was then taken to her breeder, Janice Teller-West to fulfill her litter back contract. After that, she returned to Lisa but Lisa was too ill by then to compete or even to train her dogs. It was very sad.
Well, those few months turned into a lot more and before we knew it, it was time to head south to Indio for the winter. Our Home Owners’ Association limited us to two dogs but they all looked alike so we got away with having five! The side yard was pea (or “pee” as my neighbor called it) gravel and the area was very small. With that many dogs using it for pottying, it had to be disinfected every day or so or it stunk! It was also a real chore loading everyone up in the car every day to take them to train in agility and then to the dog park to run. Some times we went twice a day so they got enough exercise. We drove two hours each direction once a week for agility classes. I had planned to get a Border Collie but this really put that on hold! Lisa’s girlz had a blast swimming in our pool and hiking in the desert with us. Josephine loved dive bombing everyone in the pool and got very good at it! The other girlz did not appreciate it though because her aim was spot on! We had some very exciting doggie pool parties that year.
Lisa was getting more and more ill as time went by. She never complained and every time I asked her how she was she always re-plied, “GOOD! I am GOOD!” She wasn’t good how-ever, and, as the months passed, her health got worse and worse. Mel and I resigned ourselves to the fact that these dogs would be with us forever and that was OK because we adored them as if they were our own. We returned home to Washington late that spring. By that time, the young dogs, Charisse and MiniMe were ready to enter their first trial and Mel and Josephine were becoming a fabulous team. The girlz were SO happy to be home on the farm where they could run and play to their hearts’ content. They were a lot easier to live with too! AND I got that Border Collie. Everyone thought I was nuts for going over to the dark side. I had always wanted a BC, even before I knew about agility. I wasn’t getting any younger so I just did it. Now our life became really interesting!
For years I had tried to get Mel to buy a motor home. Before I met Mel, I had show dogs in the 70s and had a large motor home then. It was great! I loved going to shows in the RV. I had all of my stuff and it felt like home. Mel decided to try an inexpensive travel trailer to start to see if he hated it or not (and he fully expected to hate it!). It didn’t take long for both of us to figure out that life in the trailer was pretty good. We were only in it for weekends but it was comfortable. It only had one slide out and was 30’ long but it sure beat the devil out of dragging crap in and out of motels or even trying to find a motel to take the dogs! Our California home sold that summer and being in the trailer on the weekends taught us that we didn’t need all that space to live. After much discussion, we decided to give our Washington home to our son and his family. They were in disbelief when we told them and my son refused to even talk about it until he saw that we were dead serious. Trying to move out of two homes with a combined total of 6,000 square feet into a motor home seemed impossible but we were convinced that this was the thing to do. We could park at our farm in Washington in the summer and fall and travel the rest of the time to wherever the wind took us. Being a gypsy at heart, I LOVED the idea! Mel, a deeply rooted homebody, was still not so sure. We searched and found a wonderful used 2003 45’ travel Supreme with the ex-act floor plan we wanted. The former owner had dogs so the floor was all tile, except the bedroom and it had four slides, a residential refrigerator and a large pantry with lots of storage underneath for agility stuff. We gave them a deposit and Mel flew back to South Carolina to see it. He liked it so, with the money we got from the sale of our California home, we bought it and Mel drove it home. One day out of South Carolina, the hydraulic pump broke and the fluid leaked out. Mel was driving down the side of a mountain and lost power steering! He called me and said he nearly went over a cliff! I went on the internet and found a repair place close to where he was. He somehow managed to drive the crippled motor home the rest of the way down the mountain to the shop without crashing. He said it took TWO men to steer it into the shop! They couldn’t believe he had managed to get it down the mountain in one piece. He was very lucky he wasn’t killed! It cost a fortune to replace the pump and the seller took no responsibility (even though the threads had been stripped where it broke so he obviously KNEW there was a problem!). We didn’t want a fight and we liked the motor home so we just fixed it and he started back on the road. Our first weekend in the motor home was interesting. The Hydrohot system that gives us a constant supply of hot water and heats the RV was messed up so we were blowing black diesel smoke everywhere. People were complaining and giving us a hard time so we moved out to the other end of the parking area but the air was thick with black smoke. That too had to be repaired. There seemed to be a pattern evolving. It was and is always something. Either it is something little or something big but it is always something going wrong. I guess when there are so many things that can go wrong and your home moves down the highway at 70 miles an hour, things rattle and shake and go bad. Still, with all the problems, I loved it and Mel was growing more fond of it every day but so far we had only used it on weekends. The dogs, however, were a different story. Millie, our feral dog, thought houses should NOT move! It just wasn’t right! Every time it made a noise or rattled, she cringed and tried to hide. She wanted out of there! The first time she saw the slide coming in I thought she was going to have a heart at-tack! She was convinced the walls were going to come in and crush her. We made a bed for her right behind the driver’s seat and she felt safe there so that is where she rode. Josephine sprawled out over the couch and left no room for anyone else so I put several dog beds on the floor up front. The rest of them wanted to lie on the same bed and Isabella wanted MY seat AND demanded it! By December, we were ready to go on the road. The house was pretty much packed up and the keys turned over to my son. It was sad to think we would never again live in the home we had built ourselves but it was also exciting thinking about the adventure that lay ahead. Our plan was to spend a few months in Southern California on a friend’s 25 acre ranch in Oceanside. We would leave there the end of February on a road trip that would take us through thirty four States and up into Canada over five months. Our itinerary was as follows:
WHEW! I am exhausted just writing down where we went! The trip started out uneventfully. Mel drove the motor home and I drove our Excursion and pulled a 12’ utility trailer behind. The plan was to deliver some furniture to Mel’s daughter in Texas, leave the trailer there and then tow the car with the motor home for the rest of the trip. We both decided that we really didn’t want to return to Texas in the summer heat (good thing too with all that flooding they got!) to get our trailer back so I continued driving the car with the trailer in tow. We thought we could drop it off before AKC Nationals at a friend’s place in Ohio and pick it up on our way home but we never did so I drove that dang car with the trailer behind all around the Country following Mel in the motor home. We called ourselves “The Global Warmers.” We arrived in Tennessee to visit Poodle friends Kevin and Carol Stone. They had graciously offered to let us stay at their place for a few days before the TN agility trial. When we got there, we discovered there was no way we could get down their driveway with our huge home so they took us to a wonderful local RV park. The next day we were going to their home to train with Carol. I gathered all my tug toys, treats, coat, etc. and headed down the stairs of the motor home. Arms full, I lost my balance and fell from the top stair on to the sharp rocks below. I have a very high pain thresh-old so when I was unable to move, I knew I was badly hurt. Mel looked over and said, “What are you doing?” I thought it was quite obvious so I told him I was resting. I told him I couldn’t get up and need a crane. I have to be dying to go to a doctor but I knew I needed to go. We went to the local emergency room for x-rays. By this time my right ankle was hugely swollen and turning colors! The odd thing was that my right ankle hurt incredibly but my left leg wouldn’t work very well at all. X-rays showed nothing broken but it hurt so much I couldn’t stand it and I am allergic to ALL the good pain meds! They put me in a walking cast but my left leg couldn’t support me at all so it was crutches for me. Here it was, a week from AKC National Championships and I could barely walk! Mel tried to run my two dogs that weekend in TN. Isabella actually ran pretty well for him but Charisse was a disaster. Mel muttered something about the fact that I should train my dogs and I told him he didn’t have to run them if he didn’t want to listen to the best way to get them around a course. Our abilities as handlers are very different. Mel is good and I am not. My dogs have learned to compensate for crappy handling and inability to move well and didn’t know what to do with Mel’s crisp clean handling style and ground speed. I hoped I would be healed in time for Nationals but my left leg kept getting blacker and blacker and sorer and sorer. I had a constant leg cramp and it ached like nothing I have ever felt. A doctor friend looked at it at Nationals and made me go have an ultrasound to check for a blood clot but that was negative, thank goodness! The final diagnosis was hyper-extended knee, damaged leg nerve (which is why my leg wouldn’t work!) and ruptured deep vein (hence the entire black lower leg). My hopes for competing at my first and, most likely, last, agility Nationals were over. Mel tried to run Isabella but she had a paralytic seizure in the first class and had to be scratched from the rest of the competition. Mel had a couple of great runs with Josephine but knocked bars kept them from more clean rounds. All in all I was very proud of them. I licked my wounds and hoped to recover soon but I did not. It was nearly two months before I was well enough to run half way decently again and my knee still hurt six months later! Boy were we rusty that first trial back! Isabella thought Mel was WAY more fun than I was but Charisse was happy to be back with me again, even if we did stink. After AKC Nationals, we were off to Wakarusa Indiana for motor home repairs. It was only supposed to take a few days but they didn’t finish half of what they had to do. Mel had been run off the road into the rocks as we were leaving California. It was up in the mountains and he had two choices, hit the car or the rocks. He chose the rocks and crumpled the entire lower side of the coach. They had to replace all the basement doors and repaint. It was snowing in Wakarusa and freezing cold! I was miserable and hobbling on my crutches. The dogs were antsy for a place to run and Mel was grumpy about how long it was taking to fix things and how much it was all costing. We had a schedule and needed to get on the road for our next agility trial in St. Louis, MO. Every morning at 6 AM, the guys show up at the motor home door. You are sup-posed to be ready to go. They take the RV to the shop for work and we have to find something to do for the next 10 hours. That is not easy in Wakarusa when it is freezing cold and snowing! We went to a lovely town called Shipshewana, full of Amish, antiques and charm. We found a wonderful open field behind a museum where we were able to let all six dogs loose and throw the ball with the Chuck-it. They had a blast in the snow. We froze.
Josephine, MeMe & Charisse were in heaven swimming. Crush, the BC, got her second introduction to swimming. At her first introduction to water back in Texas, she thought she could walk on the water and I think she was half way across the pond before she sank out of sight! It was like watching a cartoon. After her near drowning experience in that pond, she was reluctant to get her feet wet again. They put a life jacket on her and they actually went in the water with her to help her. After a few times and some coaxing, she decided it was pretty dang nice. Soon she was swimming like a pro!
The weather began warming and spring was in the air. The next few trials were very pleasant. St. Louis was inside but then we went up to Michigan and that was really lovely. From there it was Illinois where it was WINDY WINDY but still a nice temperature. After Illinois, it was off to Minnesota to cheer for our good friend Jef Blake and his amazing BC, Voucher. They were trying out for the US World Team. They won two of the three rounds (he also won two of the three rounds at AKC Nationals and made the finals with his other BC, Gael!) but were not chosen for the team. Voucher is only three so he has a very bright career ahead! It was wonderful seeing all the top dogs and handlers at one trial! From MN we headed back to Wakarusa so they could finish what they started on our first factory visit. The weather was a bit nicer this time. Once again, they didn’t manage to finish the work and we had to leave for a trial back down in IL so we made an appointment to return on our way home the end of June. With the Illinois trial in the books, we headed for Canada. There was a Greg & Laura Derrett seminar at Susan Garrett’s in Atherton Ontario. It was a last minute decision so we really had to scramble to get our papers in order for the dogs to cross the border. As it turned out, we were never asked for a single piece of paper coming or going! We did have a funny experience coming back into the US. I was still driving the car and pulling the trailer. Mel crossed the border in front of me and pulled over to wait. He had the keys to my trailer with him. The border guard asked if I was bringing anything back from Canada. I told him only mosquito bites and they could have those back! I think I saw a little smile on his face as he asked if he could look into the trailer. I said yes but that Mel had the key. Mel was about 300 feet away and I told him I had to go over there and get the key. He looked at me and said, “Forget it,” and waved me through. I was dumbfounded! I could have had anything in that trailer! I guess I have a trustworthy face or he really did like my mosquito bite joke. The seminar was amazing! I worked Charisse and Crush. It was only the second time we had been able to train since we left California and we were THREE MONTHS into the trip! I never get tired of training with top instructors and Greg & Laura Derrett, as well as Susan Garrett, are the cream of the crop so being up there was such a treat! After Canada, we drove to Hamlin, NY for another trial. It was gorgeous there! The town was very quaint, the folks at the trial were extremely friendly and supportive and the scenery was beautiful! That was certainly a place to which I would love to return. From Hamlin we headed straight for Gloucester, Massachusetts. I grew up there and still have family in the area. We stayed at a wonderful campground called Cape Ann Camp Sites only a few minutes from the gorgeous white sanded Wingaersheek Beach. We took the dogs there every morning to run and they had a blast. It was SO beautiful. I miss the magnificent Gloucester scenery so much. I do not, however, miss the hot humid weather or the bugs or the cold in the winter! It felt so strange when first drove into the beach parking lot. The last time I was there was in the mid 60s. I had just gotten my drivers license and my friends and I would go there on the weekends to party in my family car. The parking lot, formerly just gravel, had a brand new black top applied and it was perfect for doing “donuts” in re-verse. We all thought that was SO much fun! Sometimes I wonder how I ever lived through my teenage years! Anyway, the once pristine, level black topped parking lot, was now full of frost heaves. Weeds grew up in abundance along the many wide cracks. It felt like a science fiction movie to see the drastic changes. It had been over 40 years since my last visits there but it seemed like just yesterday. It made me realize how old I really am. After a few days of fun and family, we moved on to an agility trial in Granby, Mass. The weather was stifling hot and the bugs were horrific. It was on a lake and very pretty but typical New England in the summer. We met more great people from the Agility Poodle list and had some wonderful visits. From there it was a LONG drive down to Rutherfordton, North Carolina and the Four Paws Kingdom Campground. Four Paws is an incredible place for people with dogs. They have RV hook ups and cabins if you don’t own an RV. The dogs had a blast! They have a fenced swimming pond for the dogs, a fishing pond for adults, two fenced play yards for dogs (one for large dogs and one for small dogs), they have a fully equipped agility yard, a rally course and hiking trails for dogs and their people. I think this might have been our most favorite stop on the entire trip. We certainly plan to go back next year and spend even more time there.  The Girlz at Four Paws Kingdom Campground in Rutherfordton, NC We based at Four Paws for almost a week but left on the weekend to attend an agility trial in Fletcher, NC. That was a very nice trial. The building was great and they had hook ups for the motor home. Our next stop was Southern Pines, NC to have the girlz coiffed for PCA. Vicki Haywood from the PSG list groomed them beautifully for the PCA Parade of Champions and Title Holders. We were threatened within an inch of our lives to stay away from the beach and any other activity that would ruin their do before PCA! We did our best but girlz will be girlz so they weren’t quite as lovely by the time the Parade rolled around but they looked pretty spiffy.
We nearly ran out of gas in the motor home after leaving Southern Pines for the drive to PCA. I had begged Mel to fill up earlier but he said there would be no problem finding diesel on the way. Our GPS took us on the back roads and station after station had no diesel. Finally, we found one that had diesel! Mel maneuvered the Global Warmer into the small station, only to discover they were OUT OF DIESEL! Well, I got to nag some more and off we went in search of precious fuel. FINALLY, when he was running on fumes, we sputtered into a station with plenty of diesel. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel was a trip! I had been over it many years ago just after it first opened but seeing it again was awesome! I drove behind Mel as the Global Warmer barely cleared the ceiling of the tunnel and there were just inches to spare on either side. I held my breath as Mel threaded her through the narrow pas-sage. He did a great job and there wasn’t even so much as a scratch on her! Last stop before PCA was Salisbury, MD for, you guessed it, another agility trial. It was held in an indoor soccer arena. The surface was a tad hard but not bad. The air conditioner needed help but the judges were terrific and the courses were the best we had on the entire trip. Unfortunately, Josephine had overdone the swimming at Four Paws and was a bit body sore. We thought it was her toe but realized she had pulled something so she didn’t want to go on the teeter and her weaving was horrible. She ran about 8 seconds slower in standard than she usually runs and her jumper runs were also a few seconds slower than normal. Our entire trip was planned for this week-end and the PCA trial and our best dog was injured. We were heart broken indeed. The excitement of arriving at PCA was overwhelming. It was happy and sad at the same time. Lisa Greene had planned to make the trip to see her girlz run and be in the Parade but, sadly, Lisa’s illness took a turn for the worse and she died 2 months be-fore PCA. I missed her so much and thought of her often and how proud she would be of her girlz. Cathi Winkles wrote a wonderful tribute to Lisa for the MACH (Master Agility Champion) Parade and I cried so hard I could hardly see where I was going when I went in with Isabella. It was such an emotional time. Josephine was doing a little better by then and she won the 24” standard class. She didn’t do it with her normal speed but it was still a very nice run. Isabella had a nice run and MiniMe and Charisse came close to qualifying but it wasn’t to be. Mel pulled Josephine off a jump in the jumper class but our little three year old Legg-Perthes girl, MiniMe, won the 20” jumper class! We were THRILLED! PCA 2007 Agility Photos by Cathi Winkles
While at PCA, we went to Assateague Beach and saw wonderful wild ponies and the dogs got to romp on the Maryland shores with about seventeen Poodles. It was SO much fun! I do hope we will be able to return to PCA in the future. I won’t, however, grow hair ever again! They will have to skip the Parade as long as they continue to en-force that really stupid hair cut rule! What a great time we had! After PCA we headed southwest to Roanoke, Virginia for another trial. It was SO hot one day we could barely stand it. I scratched Isabella but the other girlz did well. We visited the nearby Dixie Caverns where we had parked the motor home for the weekend and enjoyed the Virginia scenery. The trip was winding down. We only had a few more stops! The weather was really getting too hot and we all longed for the Washington farm and the cooler days and nights of the Northwest. The girlz were sick of being cooped up and we were sick of not being able to train anywhere along the way. Our Q rate slipped as we practiced poor performances at every trial.
Little Brinkley swam like a trooper out after his toys. He was sure brave to get in the water with all those Hooligans! After a few days rest, we said good-bye to the Leisters, pulled in the slides and headed off to Grove City, Ohio for our last Eastern agility trial. There were some big names at the trial looking for last minute AKC Invitation points. Josephine was back to normal and she did very well, as did the others. We were tired, though, and ready to go home. It had been a very long trip. There were just three more stops to go!  We left the trial and headed back to Wakarusa, IN for final repairs on the motor home. They were all minor but necessary. This time in Wakarusa, it was hot hot hot! What a change from the first time we were there back in April when it had been 25 degrees and snowing! Now it was nearly 100 and very humid! ' I found the warm Indiana nights comforting but Mel complained non stop. The fire flies lit up the sky by the millions. We don’t have fire flies on the West Coast and I miss them so much. I also miss the intense thunder and lightening storms that sent the thermometer diving from the high 90s to the low 70s in a matter of minutes! The ground flooded in no time as the skies opened up to release an amazing amount of rain in a very short time. Next stop: St. Louis, Missouri for a seminar on horse structure. It was a very informative seminar and what made it better was that we camped at an RV park that is only a mile from a great dog park! The girlz were very happy to be running free again. It was nearly the fourth of July, my favorite time of year. We looked online to find fire-works and saw that Lincoln, Nebraska had a huge display planned! I contacted Steve Soberski, fellow PSG and Agility Poodle list member and invited ourselves for a visit. Steve and his wife Eileen were nice enough to offer to have us park outside their home in Lincoln. I reminded them just how long the Global Warmer was and that I was driving the Excursion and pulling a trailer behind. They said they had plenty of room so off we headed to Lincoln. People have NO idea just how large the Global Warmer is! We had a heck of a time maneuvering through the Soberski’s neighborhood. We pruned many trees along the way with our roof top antennas (the pruning didn’t do the antennas a bit of good). Finally, we managed to park in front of their home, their driveway and their neighbor’s home! It ran down hill a bit (well more than a bit) so, even after leveling, it felt like walking down the aisle of a steeply descending airplane! There was only room to put out slides on one side so it was a bit cramped too. We told them next visit we would find a nearby RV park. I think they AND their neighbors would like that a LOT better. It was a lovely neighborhood of older homes built in the 1920s and it felt like we took a step back in time. The girlz invaded their city-sized back yard and had a great time sniffing for urban critters. Eileen made us wonderful vegan meals and we had some great agility discussions. I looked forward to the fireworks but Steve said he really didn’t want to go to the big fireworks display. He said there would be over 50,000 people there and it was clear across town. I was SO disappointed but tried hard not to show it. He said the neighbors had great fireworks and the country club up the street put on a good show that we could watch from the street. Great! I thought. My favorite holiday and I get to watch some lame fireworks from local roadside stands and a distant show from the street. BOY WAS I MISTAKEN! It all started in the afternoon. You could hear firecrackers exploding from all sides and they were LOUD! About dusk, we decided to wander outside to see what was happening and head up the street to the home of a neighbor whom Steve said had really great fireworks. One step outside told me these were NOT the average roadside fireworks! These were NEBRASKA fireworks! I couldn’t believe my eyes, ears and nose. There wasn’t a breeze in the air. Not even a leaf stirred from the many huge trees along the street. The air was so heavy with gun smoke you could cut it with a knife. The smell of gun powder, along with the non stop loud booms and cracks, made you feel like you were in a war zone. But all you had to do was look up to see that this was not your every day war zone! These were fireworks like no other home lit fireworks I have ever seen! They shot high into the sky and burst into colorful umbrella shapes. Over and over and over these rockets shot into the heavy night air. A fire truck patrolled the neighborhood in search of accidental fires. I was in heaven!
Now, I have seen some pretty amazing firework shows from a ship in the NY harbor to the fabulous display on the Puget Sound in Seattle but this was the best 4th of July ever! Thanks Steve and Eileen! My life now complete, we thanked Steve and Eileen and headed out for home. It was a long drive from Lincoln to Silver Creek. The girlz, however, knew when we headed up our street. They all started screaming, especially Millie. When we let them out of the motor home, they took off in all directions. Isabella went searching for kitties, Josephine headed for the koi pond to swim and terrorize the fish, Millie stationed her-self at the first mole hill she found hoping and praying for movement, MiniMe leaped through the air with joy, Charisse just ran around aimlessly while Crush the BC herded her. They were back home once again and SO SO happy. What a trip! We went through so many States and met so many wonderful folks along the way. It was truly a trip of a lifetime and I would not have changed a thing! We will have things to talk about for many years to come. We are still living in the Global Warmer and loving it. Next year, we think we will head for Florida. That is the beauty of being retired and living in the motor home! We can go wherever and whenever we want. FINALLY, an advantage to being old! To see video clips of some of the activities the King dogs participated in, go to: http://www.jility.com/Leadouts.html  The Royal Jility Poodle Girlz |
