Tag Archives: flyball

what you wish for…

21 Wednesday Mar 2012

Posted by in dogs, socks

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

i am so busy at work at the moment i barely have time to scratch myself, as the saying goes. my ‘work from home’ writing days are being co-opted by project meetings, its strategic planning time, the new VC has set a cat among the pigeons and my boss wants a finger in every pie and im now his go-to person for everything even slightly research policy related. actual research wise i have three papers to edit, two ethics applications to write, a survey to design and four focus groups to run. before easter. its good to be busy but this is a whole other level. i had a mini-meltdown last week. the solution involved 1. walking out of the office and 2. learning to delegate better. im getting there.

then there is the guild exhibit to co-ordinate (lots of ends but we’re getting there too). i got a whole heap of packages in the mail this week including some knitted items from members. ricco wasnt sure what to make of this one:

(neither am i frankly). and then for choir our director has just upped the ante by asking us to remember a whole hymn (ave verum) so that we can do our opening number at the april 29 concert with no sheet music. eep.

so i dont feel much like sitting in front of a computer in my spare time, and am getting behind in my blog reading. i will try and remedy that over the next few days, but i am away all this weekend again and i cant say im sad about it. in fact, im really super excited. of course, it involves the dogs, well one dog in particular, and it follows on from last weekend of my first time back at flyball in a year.

remember i said after the canberra show recently that i’d had a good time and was thinking of getting back into it? well you know what they say about being careful what you wish for. no sooner had i said that then trent informed me he couldnt go to the competition at the castle hill show because he had some trivial uni field trip to go on. pfft. students. anyway, i volunteered to run both possum and jem in two different teams. oh silly me. it involved packing the car the night before, all by myself

(possum thinks if she just hangs out in the back we will get there sooner). then getting up at 5am and driving an hour and a half up to castle hill showgrounds and setting up camp all by myself (well with other team mates i mean, but usually i dont do the heavy lifting!):

and then running two dogs all day, and actually doing a good job of it, and having fun, and actually, like, running! i was pretty pleased with how i coped with that (at the time), and i was also pretty pleased that despite it being a show, with plenty of ‘food on a stick’ on offer, i made myself a salad and just ate that for lunch:

i also had a lot of fun playing with team-mate louise’s new puppy.

we think his name is bobby, as he has a bob tail. he was so cute i nearly brought him home with me:

yes i got a bit puppy clucky. but no, there will be no 4th dog! i did get time to do a few rounds on the new socks ive cast on:

these were going to be whitby but i decided i needed easy transportable socks and the yarn (knitabulous’ ‘sacred forest’) is so lovely, it doesnt need anything fancy, so they are simple nancy bush ‘madder ribs’ from ‘knitting vintage socks’:

then it was time for presentations (one team came first and the other came third),

and then packing up by myself, and driving home by myself, and crashing into bed and then waking up at 3am with so much muscle soreness i could hardly move. oh my god. seriously, i am too old for this stuff. it took me two days to recover!

and this weekend i am driving out to manildra, near orange, to stroll around a paddock all weekend with possum chasing sheep. we havent done that for a while and im really looking forward to it. again, it will be all by myself, which im enjoying. i like the quiet time and i like the feeling of independence.

but gee it would be nice to have someone lift the heavy stuff!

k xx

letting go

24 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by in dogs, personal

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

,

its a very sad day here in my little old room. ive made a decision (that may or may not be permanent) but i think its the right one for now. its also one of the hardest decisions ive ever made. im a bit upset, so i might get soppy. sorry about that!

when trent and i split up, nearly two years ago, in some ways the hardest part was the dogs. neither of us wanted to separate them, neither of us wanted to stop doing our dog sports with them. when trent moved into my little house a few months later, and we started on this crazy journey of living together as friends, it was just wonderful to have the dogs together again. we were able to keep doing our dog sports and weekend aways as though nothing had changed.

but of course it had. ive been hanging on to this part of our life together because i cant bear the thought of thinking that everything is different. ive said it before, its no coincidence i studied history, and the weight of the past, of all of my pasts, bears heavily on my present. but sometimes, that burden is just too much. when we go away for flyball weekends together, its exactly the same as it ever was. he drives, i knit. i pass him his bacon and egg mcmuffin. he plays too much van morrison on the mp3. we argue about directions.  then we get to flyball and he runs off to be with his friends, or judge, or whatever other important thing he does, and i play with my dog and talk to the team, but my hearts not in it. i realise how it looks the same, but it isnt the same. then we come home, and we are not a couple, and i am meant to put all my feelings, all my memories, away somewhere. lock them up like a boggart, waiting to terrorise me the next time we go to flyball.

so, im not going to flyball anymore (well not as much anyway, just for team emergencies). if we arent a couple anymore, then we should do less couple-like things. i make this sound so simple, but really its not. its so very very hard, and i feel like my heart is breaking all over again. ricco and i watched him drive off just now with possum and jem, and i hate thinking that flyball has won somehow, that its taken them away from me.

that after all these years, all the terrible hurtful things that people have done to us at flyball have somehow got the better of us. but its not about that. its a miracle that we lasted as long as we did, and it makes me so proud to think that trent has hung in there despite all the crap, and that no one knows what thats been like for him, for us. its hard to think that other flyballers will think ive quit, that i couldnt hack it, running my own dog. but they will never know how hard it is for me to let someone else have the joy of running her, for her sake, not to satisfy my own pride and selfishness. i feel like im letting possum down, letting people down, but at the end of the day the only person who can look after me is me. i will miss my team, who are some of the nicest people ive ever been around in flyball, but i wont miss a lot of the other angst flyball has caused me.

i am home alone now for four days, and i have my friends, and i have ricco with me

but i cant pretend im happy. i know ill be ok, but its so hard, this letting go.

k xx

ode to possum

18 Monday Oct 2010

Posted by in dogs

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

,

so you know how i have dogs right (shared with trent), three of them at the moment, to be precise, and how we run around the countryside doing all these dog sport things, and how one time, earlier this year, we went to do a flyball competition down near ulladulla and i fell over and fractured my elbow? well, we went back there this weekend just gone, to the same place, and i ran possum all day and i didnt fall over, and i had a great time.

but this post isnt about me, its about my amazing dog. i know some people out there arent into dogs, and some people dont understand how much they are worth, how much pleasure they bring, but when you dont have kids, wont ever have kids, dogs are sometimes the only things that make life meaninful. and this one, my little possum, is something else.

you can read about her breed, and her background, here, but i just am so full of love for her today, i thought she deserved her own post. she worked so hard this weekend, and she hardly ever gets recognised for the work that she does, how fast she flies up to the box to grab the ball

how high she jumps on the way back

how she never tires, how she races at 100% all day, how she knows exactly what’s happening, how she listens to the starting lights, how she plants her feet in the ground for grip when its her turn to run, how she pays no attention to anyone except me and the ball and the tug rope. how she never ever makes a mistake. she is a testament to the soundness of breeding dogs for their working ability not their looks, and she is a testament to trents training. she is patient and good natured

she is loving and affectionate

she is my princess. my possumpants.

thanks for a great weekend poss

k xx

road trip with donuts

04 Saturday Sep 2010

Posted by in dogs, travel

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

,

*warning, very picture heavy post! enter at own risk!

so yesterday, friday, we headed off late morning for our annual pilgrimage to kioloa beach where there is a flyball competition held at the caravan park there. its usually a great weekend away, (although something always goes wrong with the team but let us not speak of this), and i had intended to take a whole heap of pictures that would explain flyball somewhat. i know not everyone is into dogs, and thats cool, but trent and i share three (two from our previous marriage, plus ricco the rescue), and we still do dog sports together. we got into flyball many years ago because we had a tennis ball crazy dog called scout, who would break out of our house on abercrombie st and go and steal the balls off the sydney uni tennis courts, and i saw this flyball thing on tv and thought she would be good at it. she was, but she didnt live long enough to really succeed. but her owners were hooked, its just as much fun for the people as it is for the dogs, and of all the dog sports its the only one you do in a team with other people and their dogs. which can be great fun. it can also be really f*cking painful. but we are with a good team of easy going people at the moment, and all is well (touch wood).

but i digress. after you spend about a year training your dog, you travel all over australia (well the east coast mostly) to compete against other teams, in one or two day competitions. we often compete at the big rural shows, like the canberra royal, and the sydney easter show. this was meant to be just a small comp, where everyone travels down to kioloa (halfway been ulladulla and batemans bay) on the beautiful south coast, hires cabins in the caravan park, do flyball, have bbqs, and take the dogs for runs on the beach.

this year, however, it rained. it rained the whole way down, from the minute we left home. our first stop was berry

mostly because i had forgotten to bring my 2.5mm DPNs with me and thought i might grab some from ‘sew and tell’ the little shop you can see on the right hand side of the road. this is a great shop, with a terrific range of yarns, however, the shop attendant wanted to argue with me about whether or not 2.5mm needles even existed, because they didnt sell them and most people made socks on 2.25 or 2.75 so obviously i had no idea what i was talking about. sigh. after that, i needed sustenance from the famous berry donut van

mmm hot freshly cooked cinammon donuts

from here, we wound our way through dairy country

and past nowra into the coastal rainforests

and then turned off the highway into bawley point and head further south along the coast road to kioloa beach

where kangaroos roam freely.

they were out in force this weekend,

probably because its not tourist season yet. we had time to let the dogs have a run on the lovely kioloa beach

and then walked along the headland

and out to the point

it was a fantastic day, i love the ocean in winter, all that grey thundery melancholy! great for photos, great for dogs exploring:

or just looking.

i found the stick figure instructions for this new rescue device amusing:

and possum just loves jumping into the waves. in this photo, you cant see, but she is swimming along as trent walks along the breakwater.

we sat for a while and i did some knitting,

i only took this one sock with me (my plan was to do the cuff on 2.75 then switch to 2.5, alas, the whole leg gets done on 2.75 now, no thanks to sew and tell!), and i have nearly got the whole leg done. then we went to the caravan park to set up our gear, and finally drove back to milton to our friend and team mate rosie’s house (along this road somewhere):

where she had the fire going and a casserole in the oven, which was good because it was still raining. and really cold. we got up at 5am this morning, to head back down to kioloa, without coffee and muffins from the ulladulla mcdonalds (which was closed due to an overnight robbery. its all happening on the south coast today). it rained the whole way down there. it was pouring when we got there:

and this is as close as we got to doing flyball this weekend. poor puppies.

oh well. at least we had donuts!

kxx



summer’s lease…

01 Monday Mar 2010

Posted by in dogs, friends, knitting

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, ,

…appears to be running out:

while for shakespeare, this was lamentable, for those of us who are less than enamoured of the delights of summer, this is a good thing. it is raining today and thoughts turn to cardigans, and the imminent wearing of them. i am quite addicted to the malabrigo featherweight but i will put it down today to do some more seaming on the mountain view. i promise. in the meantime, lets just have a little look at said featherweight:

you may notice i have added some increases along the front edges where there were none in the pattern. this is at the advice of knitabulous who has recently made a featherweight, and suggested that if i wanted it to do something other than disappear into my arm pits, some increases might be a good idea. i have stopped now, because there is still a wide border to be knitted on, and that should pretty well bring it (at least partially) across the bust.

i didnt get much knitting time this last weekend as we were in canberra for the 2 day flyball competition at the canberra show. we have changed teams, and the team we have changed to are the organisers of this competition. it was a huge job, including needing new turf layed and a whole heap of physical stuff (thankfully my tasks were mostly secretarial!) but it was a 6am start both days and we didnt finish till after 7 last night, then the drive home with everything covered in dust and mud from canberra’s alternating hot westerlies one day to thunderstorms the next! i was meant to take photos, but was so busy and distracted on sunday i completely forgot. instead, here is a kind of representation art-shot: the symbols of flyball hanging on my clothes line. im sure this is very post-modern or something:

(the little red things are possums racing boots. we put them around her front ‘wrists’ when shes running on rough surfaces so she doesnt scrap her pads too much).

one of the distractions on sunday was spending some brief but quality time with bells and george, which always makes trips to canberra a treat. we did the obligatory ‘dinner at the club’ surrounded by hordes of children, including the increasingly adorable PJ and GracieK. it was lovely to see the beautiful knitted things both bells and george had entered in the show, and to have them both visit the show on sunday. possum got a new number one fan in the form of bells’ neice, who cheered her on loudly from the sidelines. our new team had a few racing hiccups and there were the usual flyball dramas (what IS it with some dog people?) but overall it was a fun and exhausting weekend. the star of the show is too tired for photos:

actually, so is everyone else:

(photo cropped to protect the guilty. two lectures in one day is hard work you know).

and finally, thanks so much to everyone who has followed me over here to wordpress, so many lovely comments! it made my day.

knitters are the best people.

k xx

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 304 other followers