Weekend Recovery

I’m taking a short break from the continuing series on the games of the Petit Prix. Agility people get away from the internet on the weekends. They get out in the world and… do agility, and things like that. [Okay… so why am I here?]

During the week people will take advantage of my offer to: Get Paid for Reading my BLOG! So, I’ll resume the series on Monday.

The Book of Agility Games ~ the X Factor

I find myself now doing serious writing for this book. For awhile I was engaged in doing only technical things to the documentation of agility games; making sure all the right headings had content; writing premium blurbs and so forth.

The basic conflict that has kept me from doing real work is in appreciating what is my role in the documentation of games. Am I historian and unbiased reporter? Or, am I the content expert who can define or dictate how a particular game should be played. I’ve finally resolved the conflict, at least within myself. I am both.

I’ve found myself over and over telling TDAA judges during course reviews “I know you are being faithful to the original rules; but this game has evolved to be X”. And you know, what I really should be doing is allowing a game to be documented to represent the form to which it has evolved. It’s the X Factor. To give a good for example, the rules for Jumpers CDS was originally a game adopted, then abandoned, by the AKC. So the Book of Agility Games has maintained the rules for the game as played by the AKC. But these days the only venue that plays this game (and for titling, mind you) is the TDAA. To be clear, Call, Direct & Send has morphed into a very fun game in which every error is not a death penalty. And those are the rules that should be forefront in the game. And what the AKC did with it should be relegated to variation that is no longer observed.

So, I’m doing some serious writing for this book now. I continue to work at the third edition ~ beta. This book is available as an eBook on my webstore: www.dogagility.org/newstore. The deal I’m making with people who buy the beta version is to give them a full discount for what they pay for beta to get the third edition production version when I’m ready to publish. I’m hoping that’s by the end of the year.

I also need to get my next Joker’s Notebook compiled. I have enough material, but it’s a boatload of work putting it together into a workbook. I just stay too busy these days for my various projects.

“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.” Steven Wright

Winter Workshop Schedule

We’ve scheduled a series of workshops here at Country Dream. The schedule looks something like this:

• Nov  25, 2012 ~ noon-4pm
• Jan  13, 2013 ~ noon-4pm
• Feb  3, 2013 ~ noon-4pm
• Feb  24, 2013 ~ noon-4pm
• Mar  3, 2013 ~ noon-4pm

Work Study

We’ve got another Work-Study camp scheduled. These tend to be a lot of fun. We run the agility camp for a half day; and we work on the property for a half day. This year we’ll clean up downed trees and branches and keep a big fire going. I know that doesn’t sound like much. But this property is 28 acres, about a half mile of internal roads, dog fencing all over the place, and something like 7 building structures.  Frankly it’s more work than I can keep up with on a regular basis.

And I like providing an inexpensive training option to agility fans out there.

Our next Work-Study camp is scheduled for Nov 9 through 12, 2012. We have a few campers signed up. There’s room for more. If you have any interest, contact Marsha at Houston.Marsha@gmail.com.

You know, I would really love to schedule a Geek’ Work Study sometime in the next six months. It would be fun to have a bunch of video and computer people here (and agility handler/dog talent). It might not even be the same format. Work and Study could have interweaving objectives. If you have interest in this… you should contact me: Houston.Bud@gmail.com. I’ll turn it over to Marsha for scheduling if it ever gets to critical mass.

Notes on CRCD-4

• There is no properly sized A-frame for the TDAA. The TDAA A-frame should have an adjustable width of 2′ to 2’5″.
• I was wrong about the ability to save the 3-D graphics image using a Save Ascommand. It will indeed safe the file as a .gif or a .tif… but it is the two dimensional image and not the 3-D graphic.So, the workaround for capturing the 3-D image is to do a screen print, and then trim and edit the image in Photoshop.
• The most annoying thing about the new version now is that the text source is not compatible with the old version 3. When I’m corresponding with people (as when I’m doing TDAA course reviews) I like to paste in the text for a course-map to illustrate a point. If they don’t have CRCD-4… they just can’t read it. So I have to work in CRCD-3 when I’m doing certain work.

Continuing notes on the Clean Run Course Designer v4 can be found here: http://wp.me/PmSZZ-15B.

Blog875

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston Houston.Bud@gmail.com. The web store is up and running. www.dogagility.org/newstore. I have five volumes (over 100 pp each) of The Joker’s Notebook available on my web-store at an inexpensive price. These are lesson plans suitable for individual or group classes for teaching dog to work at a distance.

Tags: Bud Houston, Work-Study Camp