The Music of Chainsaws

Yesterday was quite the eventful day. Around 4:30 p.m. we had a hellacious thunderstorm blow in with accompanying straight line winds of between 110 to 115 mph. The news stations reported it was consistent with an EF-2 tornado. There were 126,000 households without power in the Omaha area. It literally came out of nowhere, with no warning. When the wind started to pick up I crated the dogs in the basement because we have had some nasty weather lately.

One minute I was looking out our sliding glass door toward the golf course behind us and the next minute I was screaming for Denny to help me hold the door in its frame as the wind and hail were pounding to get in. He looked out and said, "Oh my God, there's a golfer out there." I looked out and saw a figure flat on the ground next to a stocky pine tree attempting to shield himself from the nickel-size hail and pummeling winds. I said I was going to go get him and as I took off my glasses and set my cell phone on the counter, Katie pushed by me and said, "No, you're not. Grab me that blanket off the couch" and out the door she went. Denny and I spend several worrisome minutes because we could see NOTHING more than five feet across the deck, when Katie and the golfer, Steve, came up on the deck and through the slider. Both were sopping wet and dripping blood from small cuts made by the hail. Nothing life threatening but minutes later as the storm lost some of its fury we could see that it could have been.

Katie has reddened hail welts in several places

on her face, all over her back and the back of both arms look like she's been beat with a baseball bat. (The scar on her left cheek was from a dog bite when she was 7. Amazingly she never lost her love of dogs.)

Here's the tree Steve had been huddled under.

He was on the ground on the right side curled up to the trunk and would have been crushed as it was uprooted and toppled over in the wind if Kate hadn't gotten him out of there.

Apparently The Man Upstairs must have been pleased with Katie's heroics because when we looked out the front door, there was her car in the driveway with a tree limb about 14" in diameter across the roof of her car.

Amazingly, there are only a few dents in the roof, but the glass in the sunroof was undamaged. We think the limb kind of sagged onto her car instead of literally dropping on it and really causing a mess.

The little town of Valley had some hard hit areas too. Mostly big old trees that couldn't stand up to the force of the wind coupled with the rain-softened soil that caused them to uproot. A grain silo in town must have taken a direct hit, crushing the silo and knocking the boom into the power lines.

Anyway, we finally got power back at 2:04 this afternoon after spending most of the day listening to the music of chainsaws.

I am SOOOO sick of this weather

I know. What good does it do bitching about the weather. Can't change it, so why bother?

For the fourth night in the last five, the Omaha, Nebraska area has been hit with high winds and pounding rain and hail. I looked out across our deck last night and saw a whiteout swirling not 100 feet off the deck. At that point the tornado sirens went off and I'm sure Katie's cat did not enjoy being chased down the basement stairs with three poodles behind her. We had nickel size hail but no tornado.

However, two tornadoes wreaked havoc in the Millard area of Omaha at 2:30 a.m. Saturday night. Fortunately there were no fatalities.

Not so last night when four Boy Scouts, ages 13 and 14, three of them from Omaha, lost their lives when a tornado came over a hill at Little Sioux Scout Ranch about 50 miles north of us. My husband is an Eagle scout. It's kind of like the Marines. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Once an Eagle, always an Eagle. Denny spent years at Little Sioux as a scout, an Eagle and later in his early to mid 20's as a quarter master. I found out this morning when I got to work that my court reporter's oldest son is in the same troop with one of the boys who died and she is friends with his mom.

Like a friend of mine said this morning, "Why couldn't we hear on the news that a crack house got blown to bits? Why do we always seem to lose our best and brightest?"

Life just sucks sometimes.

Another good day

Cash won the 12" Novice Jumpers class again today and only needs one more Jumpers Q to have his Novice title in NADAC. I didn't have the course yardage from yesterday and today until toward the end of the trial. I was pleased to calculate his YPS from yesterday at 3.82 and today he was smoking with a 4.79 YPS. We had a minor bobble that cost us some time. When his handler gets her poop in a group, he'll do better.

Touch N Go and Tunnelers was a totally different story. As hot as it was today I presumed he would be somewhat tuckered for these two classes that ran this afternoon in the heat of the day with high humidity. Not a chance, he was attacked by a case of the poodle zoomies in TnG and that was that.

Tunnelers again bit us in the collective butt with an off course. However, his start lines stays all day were excellent. Since we struggled with those early on I was pleased.

Woo Hoo! Two more Q's!

Friday night I took Cash to the Fun Run practice session for this weekend's NADAC agility trial. Thank goodness I did because he was a total wild man! I was not anticipating a good day today based on the insanity I saw from him last night.

I am happy to say, Cash was an awesome boy today! He won the 12" classes in Jumpers and in Touch N Go. He now needs one more Q for his Novice Touch N Go title. He NQ'd in Tunnelers due to bad information from his handler.

We are entered again tomorrow in Jumpers, Tunnelers and Touch N Go. He is absolutely loving agility and am I glad I taught him Right and Left. He is sooo fast and I am sooo slow, with those commands I'm able to steer from behind. If I could just teach him to read numbers I could sit on the sidelines and let him run the course by himself.

Not bad for a little guy who won't turn 3 until June 18th.

Fun weekend

Cash and I were joined by my friend, Darla, and her Pom, Nina last weekend to drive to the U2KanDu NADAC agility trial in Lawrence, KS. It was our first trial (well, their first trial and our second if you count the Wahoo trial in January of 2007 where Cash broke his start line stay, took 4 jumps and lapsed into poodle zoomies).

We both entered Novice Skilled Weavers 1 & 2 and Touch N Go 1 & 2 for both Saturday and Sunday.

Touch N Go 1 was the first class and Cash had an awesome start line stay and solid contacts. Touch N Go consisted of tunnels, an A frame and a dogwalk. He had not been on either the A frame or dogwalk in quite some time at class but did okay on the Friday night practice run throughs.

On Saturday he won the 12" TnG class with 3.78 YPS and no faults for a Q and a blue ribbon, and followed that with a 3rd place finish and Q in the Weavers 2 class.

Unfortunately, due totally to handler error, we failed to Q in the other two Saturday classes or any of our Sunday classes. (All the while Darla and Nina are racking up Qs and titles in Weavers and Touch N Go!)

We decided to be gluttons for punishment and entered Tunnelers before we headed back home. I didn't realize the SCT (standard course time) for Tunnelers is significantly less than the other classes. Suffice it to say Cash and I missed a Q by 1.97 seconds due to a very slight veer toward an off course tunnel that I was able to call him off of.

We had such a good time I am contemplating entering some local NADAC trials.

It's Mine! No, it's MINE!

And today was pretty much like yesterday....

I am choosing to look at the results (or lack thereof in Cash's case) as information. Nothing more.

Cash gave me GREAT attention outside the ring. Isn't that how it always is? But from the start sign, just lost it. Only through do-overs was I able to get him halfway through the course before he left the ring. He did come back, but by that time the judge excused us. I wonder WHAT is going on in that head of his when he gets into a ring and the leash is removed.

I'm thinking about registering him with APDT (another rally venue) where we can start in Novice again and all exercises are on leash. Hmmm, have to mull that one over.

In other news, Betty got Reserve again today, but showed happily and looked fabulous (if I do say so myself). Another poodle person helped me with her topknot yesterday, but today, I did it all by my lonesome. For the first time in 30 years! She is such a happy girl.

Here's some video taken by Julia, the 12 year old granddaughter of my friend, Loretta. You can hear Loretta in the background talking and hooting for Betty.

My bad that I forgot to tell Julia not to zoom in as the quality gets fuzzy. The first dog seen is the light platinum bitch who won. Betty is the gunmetal grey with the big mouth. Hopefully the sound comes through.....