Until 2:27 this morning, I was on the fence about plucking ear hair for my dogs. Yes, I did it, but not regularly and not often. At 2:27 this morning (why yes, I am grumpy about the time), Elly started shaking her head and flapping her ears, over and over and over and over and waking me up. I heard her ears hit the wall next to her bed. (Yes, they sleep in our bedroom.) Finally, reluctantly, I got up (and checked the time) and took her into the kitchen to pull out whatever stray ear hairs were offending her.

I started pulling ear hairs, and then suddenly I was holding a wad of matted, waxy, seed-filled ear hair, packed as densely as possible and in the shape of a poodle’s ear canal. It was at least two inches long and a quarter-inch in diameter. It was still attached, and I had to pull it apart and pull it out at the same time. Poor Elly! And after I finished with that, there was still more to pull. I ended up with a disgusting pile of hair on the floor. Then, poor dog, I had to pour in ear cleaner and wipe out the residue.

After that, I gave her and Dancer (poor Dancer sat and watched the whole thing) some treats, took them out to pee, and went back to bed. Elly is not speaking to me this morning, but she’s not shaking her head either.

Basically, what the article says is that one gene (FGF5) determines coat length, one gene (a gene for a hair protein called keratin) determines curly or wavy hair, and a gene called R-spondin-2 determines whether a dog has furnishings. (Furnishings, for those of who who do not follow purebred dogs that have furnishings, are things like eyebrows, mustaches, and beards. Think airedale.)

A bichon frise has long curly hair and a mustache–and has all three gene mutations. A lab has none of the mutations. One assumes, therefore, although the article does not say so, that a poodle also has all three mutations.

Poor Elly. IBD. Hip dysplasia. A sore shoulder off and on for months now. I took her in to get the shoulder xrayed to see what the story is–and while she was there the vet, the excellent Evelyn Robertson, removed a mole from her flank and sent it for biopsy. It came back as a LOW-GRADE hemangiosarcoma. Low-grade hemangiosarcomas are not as bad as some others, but it still sucks, the prognosis is good but not great.

So today she had three more moles removed and biopsied. Sunday I washed her and checked her skin, and yesterday I shaved her all over with a 10-blade and Stacia and I checked her skin again. We found five spots that I pointed out to Evelyn, and she felt three of them needed to be biopsied. She did the removals under local anesthesia, apparently Elly behaved quite well. She is home and wearing a sweater, both to keep her warm and to keep her from chewing on the stitches. Results in a few days.

Dancer managed to completely tear off one of the toenails on her back left foot. (In attempting to look on the bright side of this, it has already occurred to me that now I have one less toenail to trim.)

She accomplished this today at our agility lesson. Not on the equipment, mind you, she did it while she was getting out of her crate. She came out of her crate–I noticed she caught her foot, I checked it, didn’t see anything wrong, she didn’t even limp, she did several complete training runs–I was focusing her working at a distance and she did beautifully–and then went back into her crate so I could work with Elly. Which was when I noticed that her foot was a bloody mess.

I dunked her foot in her water bowl to clean it off a little, carried her to the car, went back for Elly, and drove straight to the vet.

Notice that I didn’t say “wrapped it in a towel.”

There was blood all over my car. I was pushing my luck on the speed limit, trying to walk that hairy edge between making the lights and getting stopped, and I kept imagining trying to explain the pool of blood on the front seat (where Dancer was curled up).

At the vet’s, they put me in a room right away when the saw how much blood Dancer was dripping everywhere. They only had to trim off the tiniest bit of remaining nail, and she didn’t flinch at all–I sat on the floor with her across my lap–and then they bandaged it. Layers of bandage. Lots of layers.

Then she got up and walked across the room with me. Leaving a trail of bloody footprints.

So they took the bandage off, doused her foot with a ton of styptic powder, and rebandaged it.

That one held; we came home, and now she’s sound asleep.

Once again I have developed a new appreciation for a good groomer. Katrina demonstrated the foot on Dancer’s left front paw, which took her about ten minutes. It took me twenty minutes to do half as good a job on the next foot. However, by the last foot I did (seven in total), I was getting to be… sort of okay. I’d put up photos but Katrina went around and polished things up when we were done, so all you’d see would be nice clean poodle feet.

I did do  a fabulous job of cleaning up Elly’s anal area. This is not something I ever thought I’d write about in a public forum. I also shaved the base of her tail. All by myself. I have a little Arco Moser Mini clipper, and it’s quiet and light, and for that light trimming, it worked very well. Also, after doing seven feet, I was feeling pretty confident.

The face was scary. Katrina did Elly’s face (while I was doing her feet and her tail) and I did the left side of Dancer’s face. When I was done, Dancer had eyelashes on the left side and not on the right. I think she looks cute with eyelashes, but one-sided eyelashes were not a good look. Katrina cleaned that up too.

I did not nick either dog with the clippers, but I did clip one of Elly’s toenails too short and made it bleed. Back to the Dremel, I think, for her toenails. They get really long, and she hates having her toenails clipped, probably because I’ve gotten the quick twice now. Bad dog mom.

I will get better with practice, I expect. It can’t be that hard, people do it all the time. I just want to be able to keep the feet and the face looking neat.

The judge was Lisa Potts. (She also has a poodle.) I enjoyed running her Open and Novice courses, finding them challenging but not impossible. I liked that she made a point of complimenting really nice runs. Thanks very much to Lisa Potts for her permission to post the course map here. This is the Excellent FAST course:

Okay, let me say upfront that several people decided during the walkthrough that they would do the course only for training, because they didn’t want to be forced to layer a jump. I’m going to ignore any runs that were clearly for training when I discuss what people chose to do.

For those of you unfamiliar with FAST, it is a strategy game that requires that the handler accumulate 60 points (in excellent), which includes a required distance challenge (the send) worth twenty points plus the value of the obstacles. The obstacle value is set by the judge as part of the course design. In this course, the send is worth 33 points, so getting a Q would require 27 additional points and a successful send. There is a limited amount of time to complete the course. Every second over is deducted from the points earned before time ends.

If you’re trying to understand how people handled the course, I suggest printing out the course map and tracing the routes described with a color pencil. It really helps to use one color for the handler and one for the dog.

The send was 5-1-7 (jump, jump, weave). Not many competitors completed the send successfully–fewer than five of a class of 30.

The most common opening was a leadout to the entry end of tunnel 4, followed by the dogwalk and a swing to tunnel 3 (9 points to this point, 18 to go). From there most handlers did a cross to put the dog on the left over the A-frame (ten more points, 8 to go), over the two jumps (1, 9, points finished) and around to the send and out over the finish jump.

One handler, who did Q, took the dog over the broad jump with the dog on the right, then front crossed to put the dog on the left for the 1-9 jump sequence and the send. Still short on points, she swung the dog back and took the 8-point jump in the corner, then ran hard for the finish jump, finishing as the horn went off.

Another option, which I saw two people use unsuccessfully, was to lead out from the dog between the dog walk and the finish jump, take the 1-point jump, then the A-frame, then the 1-9 sequence (all with dog on left, total to here 21 points (6 points to go if the send is successful), then the send. From there, they pulled the dog back to the 8-point jump, then over the broad jump and around the one point jumps and the 3-point tunnel (in one case) or out (in the other case). Both of these handlers crossed the line to complete the send, so they didn’t Q, but they did complete the course within time.

Finally, a competitor who was clearly avoiding all contacts chose to do the 4-point tunnel, the two jumps to the 3-point tunnel, the 1-point jump after the tunnel, the broad jump (total to here 15 points, 12 to go), the 1-9 jump sequence (2 to go), the send, the 8-point jump (by stepping in after the weaves were complete, putting the dog on right, and sending the dog from left to right over the jump), and ran hard for the finish jump. I believe this worked for her, although my memory of exactly who Q’d and who didn’t is hazy.

I only competed for one day. Elly took first place with a 64-point Q (out of a possible 80) in Open FAST–a strategy version of agility where you set your own course and there’s a distance challenge as part of the course. The distance challenge was two jumps 13 feet away from the challenge line. Very few dogs Q’d so I am very proud of Elly. We also ran standard and jumpers, but my timing was off and we utterly failed to Q.

Dancer wasn’t interested in the distance challenge in Novice FAST, but she’d just crashed a bar on a jump–it was entirely my fault–so I can’t blame her. She ran very nicely in Novice Jumpers, though she required close handling, and finished a 99 yard course in 36.10 seconds with a Q and a first place of her own, slightly under course time. In standard, she refused to do the dogwalk or the teeter–both of which she has issues with–but did nicely on the rest of the course. The judge, Lisa Potts (also a poodle person), complimented my patience with her.

The Jumpers courses were interesting. There were no repeats in the course, so lots and lots of jumps were out there! There were several places where I would have liked to layer jumps (put a jump between me and the dog), which I did with Elly by accident. Dancer needed me RIGHT THERE so I didn’t try it with her.

I got permission from the judge to post her Excellent FAST course and comment on how people handled the course, so I’ll be doing that in the next few days.

“Do you go cycling with Jay?”

“No, I can’t keep up with him.”

“Oh, get a tandem.”

“No, I spend my weekends at dog agility competitions.”

“You do what?”

“I compete in a dog sport with my poodles.”

“You do what?”

“Agility. It exercises the body and the brain, and it’s all over in 60 seconds and I don’t get any chafing from the bicycle seat. I love it.”

“You do what?”

I gave up trying to explain.

Dancer was just as manic–she was jumping up and down in front of me, so excited she just couldn’t settle down. I did some distance work with her, too, playing with a toy, then sending her through the tunnel and then letting her play with the toy again. Or over a jump. She was so excited and having so much fun.

I am proud of myself, with both dogs I remembered to quit while they were still excited, not after they got tired!