Team Fernandezlopez

It’s official – our minivan is a total loss. Get the details here.

So – anyone want to share thoughts on minivans? Esteban’s in love with the Honda Odyssey – because it was named the best (must have shiny new toy! (love you honey!)). But agility needs are so different than ‘normal people’ needs. I fear that the new trend of foldaway seats will take some of the vertical space away. We actually got the ‘extended’ wheelbase Venture which gave us another 6 or so inches in the back.

Must haves:
2 sliding doors
Completely removable (or stowable) 3rd row

Let us know what models you like and which you hate for agility!

I don’t receive emails from any listservs—too much junk. I will check out different lists from time to time, and I randomly saw a post on the agile list about the passing of Lisa Greene. I knew the name was familiar to me and when I read she had run a standard poodle, I was instantly transported back in time—-more than 5 years ago.

We lived in Austin then, and I was a grad student, not a med student. We didn’t have a BC yet, and Sammie was Sarah’s main agility dog, with Denver and Gypsy just getting started. Lisa must have lived in Texas then. We saw her at the local AKC trials in Hutto all the time. Lisa was a great competitor and she was a really big supporter of Sarah and Sammie. She always had encouraging things to say about the rottie (remember, this was in the middle of Sammie going 18 months without a standard leg). Her very fast poodle Josephine also jumped 24” and Lisa was a great handler. Supportive competitors like her make agility fun.

I came across this website that has video of Josephine running, but with another handler, while Lisa was sick. You can see how amazing she is. She has made the finals at AKC nationals in the past and she still looks great.

We miss you Lisa.

No new news (that I’ve heard) on whether any exceptions will be made to allow docked and cropped dogs to compete at the FCI World Championships. However, here is an interesting Youtube video protesting the choice of locale for the FCI this year:

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YouTube Description:
The FCI has given the organisation of their World Championship to the city of Hamar.
In Norway competition is forbidden for dogs with docked tails.
That’s why a lot of excellent teams cannot participate.
What a mistake !!!

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Thankfully, no canine or human injured! My wife has posted about it here. Her post includes pics. It happened yesterday, Saturday, immediately following the 2nd day of a 3 day trial in Hutto, Texas.

The rottweiler picked up QQ#18 and the BC handled beautifully! She nailed every cross on a very slick surface jumping 26″. I will post more about her and recent training after Thursday, I’m pretty busy until then. We went from the scene of the accident straight to the emergency vet in Austin (we live in Houston) to clear the dogs. I scratched them from Sunday’s runs and Connie was nice enough to pick up Sammie’s crate and my chair from the show site.

We should have taken pics of the inside of the van. The damage didn’t look bad from outside. But you can’t open the back or the right side, so we had to take out the baby seat and undo the crates from the back to get the dogs out. From inside, Sammie’s crate was bent in two places: where she hit the crate and where the back seat slammed into her crate, partially collapsing it on her. At 24 lbs, Rook didn’t dent anything, but Sammie is around 60 lbs. The baby seat was askew, and no airbags deployed. I am glad Isaac was not there. He would have been jerked forward, hit on the head once when we got rear ended, and then hit again when the crate flew forward. We are looking into redesigning our set up in the van. Surely there is an agility engineer out there who has given thought to all of this…

Elf has three excellent and informative articles about this issue on her blog:

FCI Bans Docked Dogs from World Cup

More on FCI and Docked Tails

The Word on FCI World Cup Tail Docking

This is the unofficial word from the AKC world team folks:
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“The AKC team will be held to the same rules as any other country for the FCI competition. I understand we are not the only country having problems with the docking rules. We are still hoping Norway will figure out a way around this rule for this particular competition for all countries – but it is not looking good at the moment.

Certainly, docked dogs will not be excluded from future tryouts – depending on the rules in the country the competition is held in. We are still discussing what to do this year, due to the late notification of the docking exclusion. We will announce it to the Tryouts yahoo list as soon as we know.”
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In my view, there should be some kind of grandfather clause, as is being done in the UK (read Elf’s blog). If this rule ends up being applied to the Norway competition, the U.S. will lose the services of several top dogs. As an aside, I know that some BC folks will tape their BCs’ ears when they are young, but I do not know if they are truly cropped (surgically altered). Will they be affected, and how would they be detected by AKC or FCI? For now, I will cross my fingers and hope I can take the rottie to next year’s tryout. It sounds like the AKC is doing a great job of looking out for the U.S. team, but may not have a choice in the matter.