Adventures in the Kitchen

Friday morning greeted us with cloudy skies and a bit of rain, not enough to get the pavement wet under trees and cars, more like a very heavy dew. But moisture falling from the sky usually means something is up with the weather. By Friday afternoon, a front started sweeping down from the north bringing very cold winds and of course dust. Twenty-four hours later, it is becoming a proper dust storm out there--you can feel the grit on your teeth and in your eyeballs after just a few minutes outside.

A perfect evening for cooking. Inspired by the colder weather (certainly colder by our standards; I was lounging on the porch in shorts and a Tshirt two days ago; tonight I need long pants and a sweatshirt just to take the dogs out to pee), I decided to cook up some chicken in red whine.

I've been wanting to try cooking with my whine for some time but only recently have I gotten production organized to the point that I have extra bottles sitting around when I bottle the most recent batch, i.e., I usually drink it all.

I had set aside the last few inches of a bottle of okay red (I know how to make fabulous whine but I can't help experimenting with each batch and sometimes the results are less than fabulous) just for this purpose.

Saudi chickens are smaller than their US counterparts and not all of the chicken parts that you buy are very well butchered or cleaned. But I have found that one Saudi company in particular reliably produces good quality chicken parts--I usually buy the thighs or whole legs as I don't care much for chicken breast.

I took three thighs, ready after a lot of cleaning and rinsing and trimming (I'm very thankful for my ultra high quality kitchen shears; never skimp on good equipment in the kitchen), and browned them in liberal quantities of rosemary, basil, fresh ground black pepper, fresh ground salt, fresh chopped garlic, and olive oil. I then added the red whine, a coarsely chopped onion, and about two handfuls of baby carrots (I used the regular adult carrots in the dog food meatloaf that I made yesterday). The pot is simmering away as I write this.

I'm going to dress some fresh mixed greens (baby spinach, yum!) with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and serve with my chicken in about half an hour.

Agility in KSA Week 11

The new Community Education session started this week and today was the first of ten agility classes that we will run until the end of March. By then, it will be getting too hot for the dogs to be working outside, even at 6:30 in the morning, so unfortunately, that may be all the agility we will do until next September.

Five of the handlers who took the class in the fall signed up again plus I managed to round up three new ones. Tomorrow is an Aramco holiday so a lot of people went OOK for the long weekend but this morning for our first class, JH and Aris and CJ and Webster both showed up along with new handlers HD with a "desert dog" mix Savvy and K with JRT Obie.

MH is OOK too so I had to run this class by myself. It took me three trips with my dolly to get the equipment down the hill to the soccer field but with plenty of willing hands pitching in at the end of class, we hauled everything up in one trip!

I spent my Christmas weekend building a pause table. I've built one before and knew that I had a good design to work from. But acquiring the materials to build it represented three trips into town over a period of about a month to different local shops--no such thing as Home Depot around here. These local shops are dusty, dirty holes literally crammed floor to ceiling with whatever goods they specialize in. A Saudi in a thobe, usually the owner or the owner's relative, sits at a desk near the front and directs a crew of small brown men who climb and crawl over the piles of stuff to get the items that customers want. No browsing shelves, no comparing prices, no selecting items for yourself.

The wood that is available to me here is extremely poor quality. I was looking for 1x1 strips to use inside the table to strengthen the frame but couldn't find any. I ended up getting "1x2" strips that had been ripped from larger boards. Unfortunately, the laborer who did the ripping didn't bother to rip the original boards down the middle. The "1x2" strips were randomly sized in all directions. I wanted to make the sides of the table out of 1x8s, a common board size in the US, so that without its PVC base the table would be the minimum 8 inches tall. The best I could find were two curved, knotty pieces of wood that were approximately 1x6 inches. The top was supposed to be made out of plywood. All I could find was extremely expense marine-grade plywood, not the cheap composite stuff. And I had to buy an entire 4x8 foot piece of it, although they did cut it down to size for me, sort of.

So this table was cobbled together out of semi-random bits of wood, none of which were true to size or straight. And I did this without a workbench or even a garage. Stubbornness is a great asset in such situations.

Look at this corner! What a mess. Fortunately, the really ugly bits are on the underside.

I managed to get some acrylic primer at another store. For the final color, I chose to go with high gloss fire-engine red spray paint because it was easier to apply.

Now for the top of the table. Rather than go with a rubberizing kit, which I could have ordered online, or with paint mixed with sand, I decided to put green astroturf carpeting on top. I had my mother pick up some at her local home improvement store and in the best of all timings, the package arrived on Wednesday. I spent my Thursday afternoon cutting then glueing then screwing the carpet to the table--just in time to use for class this Friday morning! You can see the results in the photos below.

Even though I had two new handlers, I jumped right into some interesting exercises. I set up a jump box (four jumps arranged in a square) with a curved tunnel and pause table arranged outside. I had my experienced handlers work their dogs straight through the box, practicing good body language so the dogs didn't take the off-course jumps, then I introduced them to the reverse-flow pivot or false turn to help their dogs to the correct tunnel entrance. I had the new handlers work one, then two jumps, starting them sequencing in the very first class!

Savvy, the "desert dog" mix is Saluki as well as lab and pit bull. Pit bulls are banned in KSA but there is a big dog fighting affair up north of here and they smuggle pit bulls in for that purpose. Puppies mixed with pit show up all the time, discards that escaped being used for bait. Savvy is a very cautious dog but her owner is patient and follows instructions well so we had Savvy jumping 4" jumps and even getting onto the table after just a few attempts. It's not right to take credit since HD and Savvy are doing all the work, but I am really proud that I am able to help all kinds of dogs and handlers be successful.

Since all the dogs were extremely quick to pick up the table, I next had them work two jumps and the table, first in a straight line across the box then in a curve.

CJ and her little star Webster. We introduced him to 4" jumps this morning. Doesn't look like he has any problems with that!

What a pretty sit on the table!

JH and her little OLD star Aris. She emailed me and MH last week to say that she was concerned that Aris had been acting a bit old of late (he has a bum hip and arthritis and we leave the bars on the ground for him). But he had plenty of pep in class this morning for the full hour and a half!

One of the new handlers K and her JRT Obie. He's a bit too focused on her hands but he had no problem with the jumps!

Nice table landing!

Savvy and HD.

Savvy began class a nervous wreck--worried about the crate, about all of the strange dogs, about all of the strange people. But once we got HD and Savvy going, they started having a grand time! You can see Savvy looking ahead to the next jump and to the table after that.

Another extremely positive training session for all the dogs and handlers, and two excited new agility converts!

Adventures in the Kitchen

Being sick is never fun. Last night the gombu moved from my throat to my head. I lasted three hours this morning at work (I spent the entire time running around getting some consultants set up) before stumbling home to sleep most of the day. The dogs have an infinite reservoir of patience for daytime naps and happily stretched out beside me.

After sleeping all day and taking some non-drowsy cold medicine, I was feeling a bit buzzy and decided to do some cooking. Fussing around in the kitchen is one of my favorite ways to relax.

Eggplants have always defeated me. They always have a bitter edge no matter how I prepare them. But at last I found the perfect way to manage them: a Middle Eastern eggplant dip called baba ganoush. It takes a bit of prep on the front end but you can make this as a side dish for any grilled meat, curry, or green salad.

Select some firm eggplants. Wash thoroughly and cut off the top. Slice the eggplants lengthwise into three or four slices no more than 1 cm thick. Drizzle them with olive oil (both sides). Now here's my twist on the recipe. Most cookbooks will tell you to roast the eggplants in your oven but I use my grill whenever I can so I roast them over a propane flame. This gives them a nice char as well as a tasty smoky flavor from my well seasoned grill.

The eggplant is done when the flesh begins to turn yellowish and smooth. It took me about 20 minutes to roast slices of four large eggplants on my grill on medium heat, turning frequently.

Let the slices cool then remove the flesh from the peel. If you have properly cooked the eggplant, you can separate the flesh from the rind with a spoon. Place the eggplant in a food processer.

Add fresh lemon juice to taste, and coarsely chopped, peeled garlic to taste. I used three large cloves for my four large eggplants.

Now here's the part that makes this dish really great for parties or potlucks: add a volume of plain, unsweetened yogurt equal to about half of the volume of eggplant.

Pulse until smooth.

Serve with whole grain crackers or bread or as a side dish.

What's not to love here? If you are a bit stingy with the olive oil and use low-fat yogurt, then the fat content doesn't have to be very high. You've added no salt or sugar. And eggplants have good fiber. Enjoy!

I'm eating my eggplant dip tonight with oven-roasted chicken and potatoes. Yum!

Catching Up

I was just sitting on my porch with the dogs, drinking a glass of whine (white flavored with powdered ginger; surprisingly successful), and enjoying the evening. It's nearly 80F here at 5pm although the sun is already below the western horizon. I've been wearing shorts and a Tshirt to walk the dogs for about a week now, mornings and evenings. Our winter came early this year and sneaked away without any notice. There aren't really four seasons here, but we'll be generous and call this spring.

I'm sick with the same gombu that I had in France last July but this seems to be a milder case. The symptoms are most consistent with a strep infection: persistent fever (can alternate with chills, how nice), difficulty in swallowing, swollen lymph glands, etc. I'm taking it easy this weekend. (And before you get all wound up, yes, I know, you aren't supposed to drink alcohol when you are sick but here in the Magic Kingdom we get to make up our own rules. So there.)

Kinky has made himself right at home. He and Tsingy are apparently going to maintain this detente for some time but at least they aren't showing overt aggression towards each other. If anything, Kinky tries his best to entice Tsingy down from her perch. I think he'd like to get close to her but right now she isn't allowing it.

In desperation, Kinky has turned to playing with Mimi. He has already learned to give Harry a wide berth at all times, which I suspect was due to a chomp Harry gave him one day last week. That's a fundamental rule of this household so the earlier Kinky gets in line, the better.

But back to the Kinky and Mimi show. He will flop down on the floor and start biting her rear feet and legs, but ever so gently. She will respond by grabbing his entire head in her mouth, or take darting nips at his neck. When she jumps back, he will scoot over and bite her rear legs again. This game can go back and forth for quite a while but usually ends when Mimi gets too excited and starts stepping on Kinky, which of course is no fun at all.

The dog training classes start up again next weekend so I should have more fun agility posts to write. I'm exited to see how this second session will turn out. I built a table so have a new piece of equipment for the returning participants. And I'm going to paint and prepare a plank that we can use to start teaching contact behavior. Of course, we have no contact equipment, nor do we have any place to put such things even if we had them. But that doesn't matter--it's all part of the challenge of doing agility in Saudi Arabia.

Meet Kinky Friedman

In mid-December, a very skinny orange and white tabby kitten started hanging out in my area of the Mango cluster-housing ghetto. He was loud and persistent and hungry. Because I am both stupid and soft-hearted, I fed him one night. And you can guess where that led. He showed up every night and started darting onto my porch every time I opened the gate. Not the best idea, I told him as I gently shooed him back out.

He wasn't feral--you can't approach or touch feral kittens. He hadn't been outside long because he wasn't torn up or scarred and wasn't really that dirty, mostly dusty around the edges. He looked to be about 10-12 weeks old, later confirmed by the vet. My guess is that he was abandoned.

I kept hoping that he would find another part of Mango to beg in but he kept showing up, surviving the gauntlet of feral cats, foxes, and dogs. On top of this, we were having a cold snap. So a few days before Christmas I decided to bring him into my house so I could figure out what to do next.

 Tsingy took one quick sniff at this stranger in the crate and ran upstairs to hide. The dogs were simply besides themselves with curiosity. I introduced the kitten to them that very night. There was a very hysterical moment, about 30 seconds long, in which the kitten was poised utterly motionless, back arched, every hair erect, tail puffed, making not a sound, staring at both dogs who were also utterly motionless (except for Mimi's tail) just a few feet away. In the end, nothing happened. Nothing at all. Quite the anticlimax. Kitten didn't run, dogs didn't chase. And that was it.

I have to give some credit to my dogs because I have no doubt they would happily kill any cat that they found outside. But once that cat is inside, well, their concept of pack is rather fluid. None of my dogs has ever known life without cats as part of the household.

I put the kitten in a very large dog crate with food, water, a cozy bed, and a small litter pan. And the next morning, I made an appointment at the vet. I wanted to make sure he was free of nasty things before he had any opportunity to interact with Tsingy.

Kinky in his dog crate.

Because we are only allowed to have two animals registered to one Aramco badge number, I had to find a "sponsor" for the kitten so that the vet could see him. I called up a friend from my dog classes who only has one dog and who isn't a cat person and thus is unlikely to get a cat in the future. She was more than happy to lend me her badge number and sign the form. The vet clinic is completely aware of how we multiple-pet owners manage to get around the system: Tsingy is on her original owner's badge while their new second cat is on the badge number of one of their friends. That's how the animal-owning community here in Dhahran makes it all work.

In the 24 hours between my call and the vet visit, the kitten fell horribly ill. Vomiting constantly, he became lethargic and wouldn't eat or drink. The vet didn't waste any time--he thought it might be kitty parvo, which is horribly contagious and often lethal. Kitten did not have a good prognosis. They whisked him off to kitty ICU and put him on fluids and antibiotics right away. There he stayed for five days. The vets called me with daily updates, even over the weekend. I told them, he deserves a chance. And if it was necessary to euthanize him, then he deserved to die with dignity and in as much comfort as we could provide. This is the least we can do for the least among us.

I spent the rest of that weekend cleaning my downstairs floor and everything kitten had touched with bleach. I was very worried about infecting Tsingy.

In the end, the vets decided that kitten did not have parvo (he tested negative for that and for feline leukemia) but instead had gotten an extremely nasty bacterial infection in his gut. He was a very sick kitten for several days.

In the end, he pulled through. The following week, I brought him back home, weak and much thinner. He spent a couple of days in the large dog crate until I could make sure he was able to properly use a litter box. He needed the extra rest, too. I would let him out when I was home in the evenings, much to Mimi's pleasure--she was fascinated by him. As the days passed, he became more active and curious about his surroundings and he got to spend more and more time out of the crate. His personality started to express itself. So he had to have a name. I chose to name him Kinky Friedman. Either by accident or birth he has a 90-degree bend at the tip of his tail (the kink). And it seemed to me that he had some sort of spiritual kinship with the famous Jewish cowboy/politician/musician, a feisty attitude and a love of life.

Mimi and Kinky.

During the past two weeks, Kinky's personality has really begun to shine. It's been a while since I had a young animal in the house and his energy is astonishing--and remember that I live with Mimi, the perpetual motion machine. Kinky, like Mimi, quickly figured out how to surf across the tile floor. The other morning, he gave one of his toys a big whack, took off and dropped into a slide, only to ram headfirst into the five-liter communal water bowl. Bong! It rang like a bell and a wave of water sloshed over the edge onto him. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to pee myself. Harry, being no slouch in the "I can get attention too" department, got up and brought me another cat toy. Logical, of course. If I was that amused by the stupid kitten playing with a cat toy, Harry wanted in on the action. I could only laugh harder.

Kinky has collapsed into a stupor from kibble gluttony but he can't drag himself away from the kitchen.

Tsingy has been the X factor in all of this--I decided that I would not keep Kinky unless I could get Tsingy to go along with it. Upon Kinky's return from the vet, Tsingy disappeared upstairs. She didn't eat, drink, or use the litter box for three days. I figured it wasn't very healthy for her to keep that up. So I changed the arrangements a bit. I set up Tsingy's food and water and litter box in her room and shut her up in there alone. And I set up a new litter box next to Kinky's dog crate. So there Tsingy sulked for a couple more days, deigning to eat three or four pieces of kibble (although she gobbled up the canned cat food I bought especially to tempt her). But at last she started to eat and use the litter box.

Group nap. Mimi usually takes the purple pillow but she was being polite for a change and didn't push the kitten off.

It has been a very slow process of integration, more difficult than my other experiences with introducing a new cat to an existing household. Tsingy is very stubborn and not at all happy about sharing space. But thanks to the blissful ignorance of kittens, Kinky blunders his way around ignoring her snits and snarls. Both litter boxes are in the office now, and Kinky has full run of the house. Tsingy is starting to resume her normal schedule. Kinky has claimed sleeping spots all his own and has his own routines. While these two cats may never curl up together in a patch of sun for a nap, I think that a general detente is being shaped.

I know this particular photo looks pretty tense but for the most part, the cats are ignoring each other.

So welcome to Kinky Friedman, the newest member of CircusK9!

Kinky lounging on one of the dog beds. He's got quite a tail (a kinkajou tail, to be exact; "kinkajou" is his new nickname) and you can see the kink a couple of inches from the tip.

Agility in KSA: The Back Story

This is a post that is long overdue. I want to give you North American readers some idea of the issues and obstacles that make doing agility in KSA difficult.

Like my Basic Obedience classes, the agility classes are part of Community Education. There is a remarkable array of classes available nearly year-round through Community Ed: hair cutting, digital photography, cooking, intro to carpets, and of course language classes such as the French classes that I've been taking for two years. The classes target adults although in special circumstances and with permission of the parents, older children can sometimes register for them. All of the instructors are people like me, a member of the Aramco community who has a special skill or interest and who is willing to share that with others. We sign up for Community Ed classes online and payment is taken directly from our paychecks (in the case of non-working wives, the payments come from their husbands' paychecks!). And instructors who are direct employees are paid through an addition to our paychecks at the end of each trimester.

Offering the dog training classes through Community Education provides many direct benefits to me. First, they handle the registration and the money. That's a huge administrative hassle that I don't need to worry about. And for the basic obedience class, Community Ed arranges for us to use a very large air-conditioned room at the middle school, so the classes can be held any time of day and any time of the year.

But much more importantly, Community Education provides me an Aramco-approved cover for playing with dogs in public venues. With their blessing, we can pass through the school security gates. With their blessing, we can use school property on the weekends when it is not used by other groups. Community Ed's wasta gives us cover.

The venue of the middle school itself is also extremely valuable. First, there is a 10-foot high concrete wall around the entire school. Second, we can control which gate dog class participants use, and thus can keep a close watch on poop patrol. And third, for the agility class, the soccer field itself is fenced again (although with a dozen openings).

Why is it so important that we keep such a low profile? I can already hear you say, why not trot out into the desert or use a sports field that is only used in the evenings?

We expats that wish to have dogs are allowed to do so only by the thinnest level of tolerance. For example, for about a year, no dogs have been allowed into KSA unless their paperwork describes them as labs or retrievers.

A majority of Muslims believe dogs are unclean. The religious reasons are far too complicated for me to deal with here. But I will tell you that these opinions are based on interpretations of hadiths, which are "sayings" of Mohammed written down as late as a couple of centuries after his death. You can google "hadith islam dog" and do the research yourself. Saudis' fear of dogs is palpable. They will cross the street if they see you approaching with dogs. Women will move to the other side of their husbands. Children turn and run. And to be truthful, many Asians, both Christian and Muslim, are no better.

The country in which I reside is openly hostile to dogs, particularly the idea of dogs as companion animals. The official rules are designed to make it as difficult as possible to bring dogs into the country. The behavior of the locals is intended to make it as uncomfortable as possible to move dogs openly about in the community.

If a single Saudi were to complain about the dog classes, even if they complained for no other reason than they didn't like dogs, then that single complaint would be enough to end the classes, even with the wasta that Community Education possesses.

We walk a very fine line with our agility classes to be sure. You can't do agility with the dog on lead and yet it is a direct violation of Aramco rules to have dogs off leash. Now I hope you can see the value of tucking ourselves away behind the middle school fences and holding the classes at sunrise on the weekends. We can't offend if we can't be observed.

Having a dedicated dog park somewhere else on camp is something that Aramco doesn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole. The security and safety risks are overwhelming. Given the barely tolerated presence of dogs in the community, I hope that you can see that Aramco does not want to be involved in such as issues as:

• who is responsible if your dog gets out and gets hit by a car?
• who is responsible if your dog bites another dog in the dog park?
• who is responsible if your dog escapes from the dog park and bites a person?
• who is responsible for keeping the dog park clean?
• who is responsible for making and enforcing poop pick-up rules?
• who is responsible for deciding what constitutes an aggressive dog and for making and enforcing a rule of "no aggressive dogs"?

The short answer for most of those is that you are responsible and your dog will be put down if something happens. KSA is not a democracy. It does not have a codified legal system. There is no recourse to such decisions.

There is a vocal dog park contingent at community meetings who simply do not understand these safety issues. They are always the people who are known for not picking up their dogs' poop, or for never walking their own dogs (houseboys rarely pick up dog poop). There are certain streets in Dhahran which are literally lined on both sides with piles of dog shit (I never walk my dogs along those streets). A dog park would quickly become a sea of dog shit in this community.

The "dog parkists" don't understand how important it is to stay under the Aramco and the Saudi radar. They don't understand that it takes work and commitment to openly maintain the presence of dogs in such a culture and community. They would risk the privilege of owning a dog for the ease of not having to walk their dogs any further than the "dog park" in order for Fluffy to shit where he wants to, and where they don't have to pick it up.

The constant threat of the "dog parkists" has caused me to abandon all attempts to form a recreational dog training group. We can play our dog games and I can help a few dogs each year become good canine citizens by keeping our heads down and by staying under the protection of Community Education, who gives us a semi-official stamp of approval.

I am very thankful that Community Ed supports us and gives us a safe place for us to train. I am not a patient person and am still surprised that I managed to wait for two years before pushing the agility classes. I built up wasta of my own by holding so many basic obedience classes without incident and to such positive feedback from the community. It's all come together for now, but I am aware that our agility game could end at any moment. That's why each week, each class that we manage to hold, is a little miracle all by itself!

Agility in KSA Week 10

Today was our last class for this session. I'm very happy to report that Community Education is going to let us run the dog agility class again starting in late January for another 10 sessions! Even better, I've arranged to move it to Fridays so that I can reclaim my Thursday morning shopping time in Khobar. At last report, I have 7 handlers signed up for the agility class. I'll teach the basic obedience class again on Thursday afternoons; registration for that class filled in about a week.

MH and I planned a very special set up for this final class: a complete novice level course comprised of 11 obstacles with one side change. The course had 7 jumps, 2 tunnels (one straight, one curved), 1 chute, and for a special surprise, two sets of 2 weave poles, canted at 2 o'clock and 8 o'clock, 10 feet apart, put in the course as a "weave" obstacle. You can see the layout in the videos I've posted below: a sweeping U-shaped affair with the chute as the final obstacle off to the left. We numbered the entire course and set out cones for the start and finish lines.

After we had it all set up, MH and I ran it with our dogs to ensure it was runnable, and to figure out where the change of side needed to occur. I originally thought it would be a cross before jump 10, but the speed that our dogs had on the second straightaway meant we could never be there with them when they were at jump 10. So the side change had to be done between tunnel 6 and jump 7. An FC or a RC would work, although we have only taught them front crosses in class, so I hoped they would choose that.

Just imagine what we were asking of our dogs and handlers: eleven obstacles! That's a lot to tackle after only 10 weeks of class, considering that none of these ladies and their dogs attended all 10 weeks. But MH and I wanted to set the bar high for them.

After they walked it and we had a short discussion about walking courses in general and this course in particular, we had them backchain it. This means we had them work the last 4 obstacles, then the last 8, then finally doing the entire thing, with plenty of rewarding along the way. One thing I didn't do often enough with my own agility pups in training was stop and reward during a sequence. I wanted to make sure that our novice handlers and their dogs didn't make the same mistake. Then, after all of that practice, we asked them to run the full course and reward at the end.

Our little novice group exceeded expectations and more! All three dogs were focused and driving forward, diving into tunnels and over jumps, happy to receive their rewards along the way but also quite happy to do the obstacles, and by the end of class, all three dogs were able to complete the full course with only one huge reward at the end. That's a huge leap forward in dog and handler understanding of what agility is! MH and I were getting goosebumps watching them! Of course they weren't perfect but I have seen far worse handling in real trials. I told MH that we managed to create some real agility handlers and dogs in just 10 weeks!

Judge for yourself in the videos below.

All of the handlers looked at the "weave" obstacle and said, my dog doesn't know what the poles mean. They only do it for the toy reward at the end. MH and I said, try it anyway. We've been sending them home for several weeks with either fixed steel 2x2 bases or stick-in-the-ground poles (depending on whether they have a backyard with grass or not) so they can practice. Turns out that practice does pay off because all of the dogs drove forward from jump 7 directly into the first set of 2 poles and forward to the second set. To their handler's surprise, they absolutely understood what the required performance was supposed to be.

And yes, I already know what you purists are saying, that we are totally perverting Garrett's 2x2 method. So what? We are in Saudi Arabia and making all of this up as we go. We put those 2x2s in a sequence and the dogs did them in the sequence. We may not have dogs doing inline weaves yet...but we will. And we are going to have plenty of fun getting to that point.

There were other challenges in our little novice course besides the side change. Jumps 3, 4, and 5 formed part of the curve from the first leg of the U to the second. The handlers worried about these curved jumps because they'd only done jumps in a straight line, but for the most part, the dogs did just fine.

And I sneaked in the curved tunnel, obstacle 6. We've been putting out straight tunnels for weeks but we've been heavily rewarding for the tunnel commitment. So the curved tunnel presented no problem at all for the dogs (handlers, it was another story as they had to drive forward to get in position for the FC!).

On a final note, all of the handlers who signed up for the class (all of them, not just these three) apparently were sneaking around behind our backs because they presented MH and I each with an extremely generous gift certificate for the spas and restaurants at the Ritz Carlton in Bahrain! I suspect MH was as moved by this as I was. And I'm not kidding about the generous part!

This class has been a labor of love on all levels for me and MH. Yes, we get up hideously early on a weekend morning. Yes, we haul every scrap of equipment up and down a steep hill each week. Yes, we set up the class in the dark. But...we have learned so much about teaching agility. We get to remember way back when we were novice handlers too. We get to try out different teaching and learning methods. And we have been able to provide our own dogs an opportunity to do agility that both of us have waited two years for. In the process, a very happy coincidence indeed, we have provided that same opportunity for some handlers and their dogs who are now infected with the agility bug! I am so very thankful that MH is my partner in this venture and that we have found some dog folks who find this crazy game just as exciting as we do.

I am quite blessed to end my second year in Saudi Arabia doing agility with friends.