Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a training facility with a retractible roof? Well, it would be awesome if you could actually close the roof again after opening it! Mother Nature thought I needed more light but did not remember the fact that no roof is definitely not better than a giant skylight!
Unfortunately, Geoff came home to a real life disaster on Sunday night. The entire north side of the buildings roof was gone as was a whole lot of fencing and our 2 horses!
The Electric Co. was here and fixed the power lines that the roof tore right through and fortunately the horses were found and are being cared for by our wonderful neighbors while we work out what to do next.
If you do not live in the mountainous areas of the wild west you can never truly understand the power of the wind. They say there is no perfect place to live and although there are many perfect parts to living in Colorado the price you always pay is the sometimes continuous wind!
We have already started clean up and the insurance company seems to be working with us and has really gotten the ball rolling, we are waiting for a structural engineer to determine the fate of this building, but whatever is decided it would truly be a treat if the repairs/rebuild were actually performed in a manner that could withstand Colorado wind!
One would think that contractors in the state could figure it out but not so far!
Other than the building issues things are great! Merger is smiling because he was a great boy doing agility today :-)
We had to take a field trip to be able to train, for obvious reasons. But down the hill we went, Merger, Wally ,SoBe and Maze :-) Yep, Maze is back! Maze thought he would like to come back to the states to trial for a while and my very dear friend Julie was kind enough to allow it to happen, now we just have to do her proud!
So, having to schlep myself and the dogs down the hill to train is not something I am used to but thankfully another friend very generously offered me her training field whenever I want so I loaded everyone up and down we went.
It was very nice for the dogs to be able to train somewhere else, because I have been spoiled for so long I do not leave the homestead to train very often.
As I was heading out I realized that not having my own stuff and my own place I needed to be a lot more organized than usual. I had to really take inventory of what Merge knows and very carefully plan what we were going to work on. Then the plan had to be adjusted for what equipment was et up or available.
As it turned out Kathleen had a great course set up and although Merger is not doing course work there were many opportunities to practice his flat area behaviors, jump work, channel weaves and contacts. He was awesome!
Mergers running A-Frames are coming together very nicely and his confidence on the dog walk, one he has never seen no less, was much improved! He is also really taking to the teeter, I could not be happier with his progress.
We are continuing to work on jumping skills and tight turns over jumps, his long back is very conducive to quite a turn and he is really reading my hand signals and body language very well. Merger is definitely getting the concept of stride collection and how to read acceleration and decelleration correctly.
It has been a while since we have worked on outside turns over jumps and he seems to really get a "left outside turn but "right" is a problem, HMMM.... I detect a pattern here. His handler/trainer, oh yea that's me, is very left-sided and once again it is coming through in my training. Note to self, work right turns 2 to 1 over lefts. It is important to do a greater number of reps of the difficult side but do not eliminate the good side all together or you will still end up with a "sided" dog.
Merger all 22" of him seems to really be grasping the concept of stay as well and that is great!
Wally and Maze got in some really good contact and weave training, with lots of work on the tough entries.
Both Maze and Wally are turning on a dime and have really got their game on. I am so incredibly excited that my USDAA season starts this weekend.
SoBe was cleared to do a couple of "low" jumps in a straight line. She thought that meant run like a bat out of hell over 2 12" jumps and try to damage yourself before you even get fully healed :-) This would be the mind of a Border Collie, right?
OK, you could ask, who is the one with the big brain? That is supposed to be me and I think I have learned that regardless of the configuration of jumps or the height there is only one way to attack them... AT FULL SPEED!!!
She seems to be no worse for the wear but I seriously doubt that her Physical Therapist would call what she did today starting gradually!
I have to admit, it was so incredibly intoxicating to have my girl back around agility equipment, she is a mania and I enjoy the living daylights out of training her, but, I am going to to be smarter next time. I so want her better but I really want her BETTER and I do not want to go through this rehab stuff with her again if I can help it!
She certainly had a big smile on her face though! That is always priceless.
Vandal had to have his little puppy training session in the office today, he did fine with that.
Vandal is learning a wonderful 2on/2off I'm so proud! He played on the wobble board today and we did some perch work. Vandal had to work out how to get all 4 feet on the stool today which was a bit of a feat considering how much he has grown.
His heel and side positions are coming along very nicely and we have started stay training. Most importantly though we played! Lots of toy time and wrestling which as I have mentioned on numerous occasions is paramount to the level of training I am going to accomplish with this little genius!
Have a great day!
4 comments:
Sorry about the roof. Glad no one was hurt when the roof blew. You have certainly had your share of Mother Natures wrath.
If there's one thing we could change about Colorado, its the damn persistent wind. I feel for ya - we had the roof blown off our other house two years ago.
Enjoy all that light in the building once you get the OK to use it again!
So sorry about the horses! And the roof of course. Glad the dogs are doing well.
Well, if you're looking for a structural engineer I think I might know of one :-)
It's actually not up to to the contractors to design for the wind. The structural engineer should design the roof according to the wind speed requirements of the building department that has jurisdiction over you (assuming there is one). It's possible that the contractor didn't build according to the engineer's plans but in any case the contractor shouldn't be making design decisions, those guys have no idea how to do those calculations.
If you're concerned you can ask the engineer to overdesign the roof attachments but if everything's properly designed in the first place that shouldn't be necessary. Unfortunately the wind in Colorado can be so unpredictable and if you have a microburst come through there's not much you can do. Designing for those extreme loads is expensive. It's possible the design wind loads for your area are too low but it's my guess that you must have had some unusually strong winds or a mircroburst blow through unless the building wasn't engineered/built according to code.
I'm glad your horses are o.k. and noone was hurt. Must have been very scary. As well it's good to see that the main roof structure didn't blow away. Hopefully it won't be too bad of a repair if it's only the decking you need to replace.
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