The time we interviewed Debra Jane Seltzer and realized, we are so not worthy.

One day, I got this email from my new friend from Brooklyn, New York, Debra Jane. And within minutes she is totally the new Team Small Dog hero. Because Debra Jane takes her pack of 4 small, fast, kick yer ass dogs all over the country in a van to photograph stuff. Stuff like giant milk bottles and 3 story high dinosaurs and motels shaped like teepees. Stuff that is vanishing before our eyes to make way for Old Navy and steam shipped sized boxes of office supplies and beverages. And when the cool stuff is all gone, Debra Jane and her dogs might be the only ones that found it all.


TSD:
Debra Jane, I haven't even made a dent in all your photo collections, and your websites, and I spent days in there. I am in awe at the sheer volume of your photos, that you only do on your little road trips. Because it looks like a full time job. Seriously. I am getting tired just thinking about it. My jaw is totally dropped in awe. Besides the actual trip where you are the only human in the car and the driving, and the stopping to get photos and turning around to get photos and going back to get photos, is the enormity of your websites.


Which, ok, is a little confusing. Debra Jane is an overachiever. She has a bunch of websites, and you kind of have to go see them all to get what I am talking about here. Go fix a snack.

gripper, fix, sputnik & gremlin

the big ol' website

flickr sampling of the website photos

the roadtrip blog



Debra Jane:
The site is ridiculously big at this point. (*The site. My god-this took me days to go through ALL the sites*) But I still have huge lists of stuff to get to yet. New stuff that I find out about as well as reshooting stuff taken many years ago with an old camera or in shitty weather. Or stuff that has been transformed over the years -- for better or for worse.


It is more than 40 hours per week I'm sure. Plus, I can usually sneak in about 3 or 4 hours of me time at work (which means website time in some form). Over the years, I've learned to get by on about 5 hours of sleep per night. I work nights (5:30pm-2am) which means the dogs are sleeping while I'm out. Offleash hours are only til 9am so I have to get up at 7:30 to get the dogs out there every morning or I'm screwed. Nik will start removing books from shelves or deconstructing furniture if I don't. So I stumble off to the park on about 3 1/2 hours sleep. Then I catch a two hour nap before work. For like 15 years I've been doing this. Side effects: memory loss, brain damage, ADD but otherwise great health.

TSD:
And then the technology while you're traveling of batteries and internets and not letting computers get stolen out of the van. Then, on top of it you have all the dogs and you are dealing with them and they need to go on walks and not bark in the motel room and not whine in the van and that it used to also include competing in agility but now just includes practicing for agility? I am like, how does she do this? Seriously? Because jaw dangling on floor right now.


Debra Jane:
It's very organized -- I just follow along with my list and bang things out. The organization is done way beforehand so I waste no time getting lost or shuffling paper.

The dogs are in the van so nobody's messing with it. My van has three cigarette lighters -- enough to charge the cell phone, the camera batteries and the laptop all at the same time! I have backup camera & laptop batteries always ready.

If I get Nik out to run for a few miles each day, several times per day, then I'm pretty good. The seniors (Grip & Fix) are fine with sniffing around & peeing on stuff. Grem I have to be very careful with or she'll take off. If we pass a water source (big river, ocean) then it's pretty much required that I stop. Nik & Grem start "monkeyscreaming" as you call it. By nighttime, they are shot and grateful when the van stops & they can finally get some quality rest. So they don't bark in motels. They are also used to NYC so they are used to loud, idiotic humans, dog collars jangling, car alarms, whatever annoying sounds that life can have.


The practicing agility is a good thing. I drive out to Long Island during a weekday. Have two rings pretty much to myself. So I can do whatever I want. And then there are some nearby trails where I can take the guys afterwards. The hard part is the driving -- tons of traffic usually both ways.

TSD:
Also, I think what makes this really amazing is that you're preserving stuff that is vanishing. I grew up in the south bay of LA and every time I go back there, all the old cool googie 50's modern restaurants and apartments and shops are more and more and more gone and it honestly sometimes makes me cry. But I didn't do anything about it and I can't go back and get photos of the stuff that's gone. So you are doing very important work here.


Debra Jane:
I'm so glad that you "get it". I spent a few years living in Venice in the late 1970s. Hadn't really spent much time there til last year and was so depressed about how much development has wiped out everything in West L.A., Santa Monica, etc. Also my the town I grew up in, Ventura, used to be lemon & avocado groves -- now horrible malls & government bldgs.


TSD:
Hey-that Tiki Aparatment building is from Redondo Beach, just down the street from where I grew up! I used to drive by it like every day! I grew up loving stuff like that, and just thought it would be here with us forever.

Do you have any favorite things? You cover a lot of genres, from architecture to signs to weird stuff like dinosaurs and giant lumberjacks to outsider art places. A lot of varieties from cultural production for commerce, plain old cool architecture, and some very passionate and visionary artmaking.


Debra Jane:
That's a tough one. I only dabble in the folk arty stuff. I'm much more attracted to commercial buildings & signs & fiberglass statues. Hard to choose one over the other. I tend towards mid-century buildings -- esp. banks, churches, office bldgs. which still don't get the respect that they deserve and are ripe to demolition. Most of mid-century devotees (websites, forums, etc.) are into houses but I find them pretty boring, plain & redundant. I'm more interested in how businesses brought attention to themselves, how buildings have been re-used, and what survives (vs. what's gone) and hoping to create more interest and therefore respect/importance for what remains so that these things might be preserved. Art Deco buildings have more respectability so I usually don't shoot them unless they are incredible. I am much more into the streamline buildings which are not as "in" -- esp. little ones. I'm sure there is some part of the brain that overlaps with rescue dogs & rescue buildings/signs.


TSD:
Can I just tell you I am totally jealous you made it to Salvation Mountain? I have LIVED in California my whole life and just can't ever get there.

Debra Jane:
Well, then you must schedule it! I was lucky to be there when no one else was around which kind of accentuated the surrealness of it.

TSD:
What sticks out in your memory as particularly mind blowing?


Debra Jane:
Stumbling into something that I didn't know about is a rare thing since I spend SO much time researching and prowling on the 'net for stuff. But sometimes I'll stumble upon some freaky UFO-ish 1960s bank or a nice cement church -- or some pet cemetery which I had very little info about turns out to be super great & rips me up emotionally with the photos/inscriptions -- or a neon sign has just the right light on it and I say to it "you're going on Flickr tonight!" Sometimes things that have been in my notes for years and years I finally get to and it's less than expected -- or better. So there are different types of the "unexpected" that would qualify as mind-blowing.


On this most recent trip, this guy comes to mind as "mind-blowing". I had no idea he'd been restored (and I follow this sort of thing so it's strange that I wouldn't know). They did a fantastic job -- but he was missing his Coke cup, paper hat, etc. So it was sad but fantastic. He's one of the super rare, unexplained heads, that were apparently made in Canada.


Another example, I'm very into giant milk bottles & was really looking forward to seeing the Milk Bottle Water Tower in Montreal. I had an intersection & couldn't find it. Asked around in my best broken French & was finally told it had been removed. I was very depressed by the new building that had supposedly replaced where it had been. That night, I looked it up just to torture myself & found photos at Flickr taken recently! Went way back to Montreal just to shoot it. So I felt a sense of accomplishment and awe that even in its rusty state, it lives!


Perhaps my biggest claim to roadside fame is digging up the info about a very special sign -- and even the guy that made them. This page includes all kinds of details like a map I made of where the signs were originally installed, links & info about all the ones that still exist, videos in descriptions here and there so you can see them operating, and even a few photos of Mr. Milks himself. For a real treat, at the bottom of the page are some "home movies" from the early 1950s that I uploaded to YouTube of what some of his creations in Bossier City, LA (then a mini Vegas).


TSD:
Does being a New Yorker have anything to do with this? Does living in Brooklyn give you super human powers? I always heard New York was where the super talented and super motivated people went, LA was where the super motivated yet possibly untalented people went, SF where the super talented yet possibly unmotivated went, and Santa Cruz was a black hole that just swallows us up and makes us want to sit around and watch the surf.

Debra Jane:
That's fascinating. Plenty of deadbeats, low-energy people in NYC I'm sure. But yeah, maybe survival makes you stronger, more willful. I always had the sense in Calfornia that years were just melting away. The lack of seasons. Out here, I find I'm racing to accomplish things in warm weather before I never want to go out. I'm deliberately savoring every day right now before it gets too hot and then too quickly fucking cold again. So it's sort of a more panicked way than dogs do of living in the moment. I'm now 51 and feel probably more panicky every year to get shit done & see stuff. Relaxing is not my style so NYC seems an appropriate place to be. If not for the cold and the parking hassles and way too many people. I don't go to movies or plays or museums -- I'm here because of the combination of my good-paying, perky job and my rent controlled apt. When I have a day off, I'm either slaving at the computer or we're off somewhere. I think being back in CA would be good for me & would force me to slow down a bit.



TSD:
I am totally wondering, what does her house look like inside? Is it so carefully catalogued? Are there millions of equally cool roadside souvenirs?

Debra Jane:
Very boring space. I don't collect stuff. There is a huge Muffler Man head (long story) and a few other things (postcards, photos but not really tshochkes). Otherwise, it's office-like. Tables, files, big screen TV that never gets turned off while I'm "working". Horrible marathon crime documentaries on right now -- murders, cellblock life, whatever -- titilating enough to look up once in awhile but not enough to get suckered in. I'm into neat and tidy and organized. Dirt and dust don't bother me. Clutter freaks me out.


TSD:
What do Brooklyn dogs do when you are at your investment bank job?

Debra Jane:
Got that one already. Grem wears her bark collar & snoozes in a crate while I'm out or she'd get us evicted. She tries to get Nik to play which gets everybody barking. I don't feel bad for her though. She gets tons of exercise during the day & it's just her regular routine. Everybody else behaves & sleeps. It's dark soon after I go to work.


TSD:
And is it weird to have an investment bank job when investments are falling apart all around us?

Debra Jane:
I've survived five rounds of layoffs -- but maybe not the next one (December?). My company is one of the more conservative and European-based so they didn't have to get bailed out and didn't do skeevy things. It's businesses buying/selling businesses or parts of them. Things have definitely slowed down. What I do is make presentation books look "pretty", make graphs, tables, simple graphic-y things, some editing/typing. A mix of Word & PPT & Excel. The stuff the bankers can't do themselves. Lately, the bankers have been doing more and more of it so the books look like shit. But in these times, they aren't making the millions that they were so nobody care how things look I guess. I'm like a chef working at McDonald's right now.


TSD:
Does this listmania and archiving skillset affect your dog training? I am thinking you are a super good dog trainer. Gripper has been a big champion in USDAA and NADAC, and they are all well behaved enough to travel around in a van and be behaved on all these different locations while you are running around shooting photos

Debra Jane:
I took boatloads of seminars and went to camps with all the greats in the first eight years or so. But I had no good trainers in my area. So it was always a mix of seminars/camps & then doing the actual training on my own in rented spaces. So I got used to winging it and experimenting and my dogs did damned well. So somewhere between what I learned from the pros and what worked for my dogs got us along quite well. I never had driven Border Collie or Sheltie types that LOVED the sport. But had to develop working relationships that mattered & motivated my dogs.


I know I lectured you about the barking on the teeter technique. I liked your approach to group teeters! Anywhere that you can insert novelty into training is a good thing I think.


Um, most people would not describe my dogs' van behavior as "well-behaved". Every nearby motorcyle is cause for mayhem. Toll booths. Gas stations where they pump your gas (NJ and OR -- I do all I can to avoid them). So lots of situations that are noisy, not pretty, with dogs thrashing against the glass. Grem goes off barking at any dog she sees. She sometimes smells them before she sees or hears them. I've seen her jump up from sleeping to find them. And she's a real earsplitter. Nik also brings me bits of anything he can find in the van -- a one inch scrap of paper or plastic will do & puts it on my shoulder & starts whining or bumping me to throw it. I indulge him sometimes which is a big mistake. Or he somehow busts into the strapped-up toy bins in back & brings up a squeaky. So there's always lots of amusement/annoyance to keep me from dozing off.

TSD:
Where is your next trip going to be? How do you figure out the routes you're going to take to avoid all the Home Depot's and Walmarts that are becoming so ubiquitous now? Do you have an inner radar devloped now that helps you find stuff when you're traveling?


Debra Jane:
Much more unromantic than that. The routes are really the most efficient paths between destinations. But on a major, old commercial strip thru a town, I will have a drive around sometimes to see what's there. I haven't been to the Midwest in awhile so that's where headed for the month of August. So I better not have any rain! My Ohio & Missouri shots are about five years old and pretty ugly. Parts of IN & IL I still haven't gotten to. KS & IA I've only covered part of. So for the past couple months & for the next six weeks, I'm frantically working on my lists -- printing maps for each destination & organizing the piles. As well as key word searching the crap out of google & flickr so I miss as little stuff as possible in the states & cities that I'm heading to. I always find out about some neat gas station or sign when I get home that was just blocks from where I was -- painful!


TSD:
Do you meet people when you're on the road that help you find things to see?

Debra Jane:
Nah, I'm the antisocial type. No time to chat. And 95% of what I see is preplanned. But I do sometimes have get-togethers with people that I've become buddies with at Flickr that like the sorts of things that I do. Usually a couple people on each big trip. Always had good experiences.

TSD:
Do the dogs ever do anything naughty on the road that puts you into a tight spot? IE, bad for life, good for story?

Debra Jane:
Daily! See blog. Grem scares the crap out of me daily even when I'm home. I can't count the number of times she's crossed busy roads. Running across the desert in NM was one of the worst experiences.

TSD:
Do all your dogs love each other equally or do you have pack dynamics?


Debra Jane:
Not so much. I'm not even sure they love me! They are true terriers -- self-sufficient, not at all clingy. Nik & Grem play together sometimes in the house -- terrier chawing on each other type play -- but never outside. Grip & Fixie do withers dances -- posturing and barking nastily at each other -- a lot. Female dominance crap I'm told. But it never goes anywhere -- just looks bad. Nobody cuddles with each other. Maybe they're all the products of broken homes & dysfunctional families. But with all their park experiences with hundreds of different kinds of dogs offleash, daily, they have perfect social graces. Can keep their space without getting into fights. Can handle obnoxious, pushy dogs with ease. Have some patience with puppies. I've had friends who claim they have dogs with aggression issues -- but have introduced my dogs to them with nobody losing it. The owners are always shocked. My dogs know how to say "stop it" and "leave me alone" in a serious but not insulting way.

TSD:
Introvert or Extrovert? Do you ever travel with another human, or is it only with the dogs only?

Debra Jane:
I don't think anyone could bear traveling with me or the dogs! I'm manic, they're nutso. Introvert I guess. I'm manic, they're nutso.

So there -- that oughta keep you busy. Damned life story! Grip is pacing and barking and spinning and digging on me and her full water bowl (practically speaking English) -- indicating that it's time for dinner.

Take care,

dj


So really. Scroll back up to the top. Go to Debra Jane's websites and see all the stuff she's found out there. Go see some of it yourself, and find more. It's all going to be gone someday. And don't call her Debra Jean, or Debbie. It's Debra Jane.

The time when she forgot the course, because she says she never does that but clearly NEVER is an exaggeration.

Last night at Dirt Nite things were going swimmingly. Was a dirty night, not too hot, not too cold. Clammy damp dirt clinging to everything.

Just had Ruby and Otterpop and Hobbes out. Gustavo was barfing. Is that too much information? Well, he was. So he just sat in the car.

We ran some courses, life was fine, dogs were good. You realize Dirt Nite is called this because it's filthy dirty and it's at night. So all day long, before I go, I ride people's horses and teach other people how to ride their horses. If it needed a new name besides Work, it could be named Dusty All Day. So I yell loudly at people about horses, then I leave and go to a different barn to yell not quite so loudly at people about dogs. From Dusty All Day to Dirt Nite. It's a glamorous life, the one that I lead. Lucky for me, my day to evening ensembles are so easy and breezy and don't even need different accessories to carry me through my day.

Because dirty goes with everything.

So by 8pm or so when I get a chance to run my own dogs, I am possibly somewhat brain dead. Wednesdays are long days.

Usually, I just carry on. There seems to be enough brain cells to run some runs then drag the equipment back to the trailer and drive home by 10pm.

Last night though, walking the last course, the brain cells just ceased. My non agility friends, imagine a sea of sticks and boards and floppy vinyl tubes. Drifting across a grand floor of sticky black dirt. That with the wave of a hand, becomes a Course and you walk around and remember what comes before what and where you shall turn and where you shall turn or not turn your dog. You walk and think, you walk and look, then POOF. Out you go and pummel around at great high speeds doing everything in an orderly fashion and this is the whole dog agility bit.

It is a useful and helpful thing that this vast sea of items is logical and makes sense and has one thing before the other. This, I believe, is course analysis. Which is employed after the course memorization. Which is employed by the stomping about with a pointy finger pointing and side stepping and back stepping until the steps have memorized their way into feet.

Usually, I use the logic and the memory and that a course may drift out to sea in front of me is the last thing I worry about. There's bigger fish to fry. Can I run faster than a border collie here? Will the small speeding zucchini loaf of a dog put her feet in the yellow paint on the end of the board? Can the doggy wrap their doggy body around that first pvc pole sprouting straight up out of the ground and zig and zag through all the rest of them if I am actually running way over there?

But last night, at the end of the night, I found myself adrift in that sea for a minute. Brightly striped pvc sticks floating by, over and over, and all I could do was spin around in circles. And realize that the clock had struck 9. And there wasn't a brain cel to be found. POOF. Gone. No logic. No order. Just floating around and spinning. In my mind, I am thinking about coconut cupcakes and how lovely they are. And what I get is a border collie pummeling at me, trying to have logic and get pointed in the right direction and carry on.

Kind of like when the ship slams into the ice chunks, gets some sense knocked into it and it's either sink or swim. Unless it's whale saving Captain Too Radical for Greenpeace and his ship isn't supposed to hit the ice! Sink or sink. Whales are dying! Coconut cupcakes! Good god, just put in a rear cross. Huh?

And then finally, the order comes back, and carry on.

When we use some sort of yoga zen things but somehow I believe this is not really our thing.

At yoga class, we are supposed to notice our breathing so we are In the Moment. Even if you are worried about your car getting towed because you were late for yoga class so in the moment used the illegal parking.


Seether is not in the moment. Seether spends a lot of time wearing her Impatient Pants. I believe these pants to be very, very tight in the crotch area.


Which makes her Seethe. Seeeeeethe. She is waiting for the gate to open and if she stares at it hard enough with the Evil Stink Eye, it may EXPLODE and Otterpop will have a walk, thank you. She will TAKE A WALK, thank you, and she will take it straight up with a twist AND on the rocks. NOW.


So she is supposed to wait sometimes because this is controlling her impulses. Because a lot of the time her impulses are highly unpleasant ones. The ones from Seether that cause things to EXPLODE including her brain. Here I made her wait on the super nasty slime filled drinking fountain. She was seether there because actual soccer players had the uppity uppness to actually use the pinecone frisbee walk run field for actual soccer. With men kicking and yelling things in Spanish at each other. Seethe. Seeeethe. Seeeeeeeeeeeethe.


At agility, there are turns and everybody gets one. And part of agility is you are waiting for your turn. I believe this is like the breathing part of yoga where you are learning a lesson. And everybody learns their lesson different-like. Like how at yoga I use the breathing part to write a brilliant chapter of a book which I will promptly forget after yoga which is the punishment for not thinking about the breathing. Ruby uses the waiting to plot a way to remove all the treats from the treat resting place of too high when someone else has a turn. And Gustavo is monkey screaming. But Otterpop is thinking about agility and she is watching and planning and uses this power to do distance handling of remarkable farness awayness.


And also uses the waiting for seething. Because In the Moment my ass. She just wants her goddamn turn. NOW.

How we roll.

The air has been gray and cold, which is sort of how it goes on some summer days around here. But the dogs can run for miles with my cruiser when the air is chilly and the evenings are long, so that's what we do.


Ruby gets to ride now. That used to be Timmy's job. She doesn't have miles of running in her, but she gets a ride to somewhere good, maybe the pond or the whale skeletons or a soccer field with pine cones, and everybody runs for another good long while until it's time to ride home. Even me. We have a new sport called walk-run-frisbee. Pretty self explanatory.

Otterpop and Gustavo. those two don't ever seem to get tired. I toss Ruby up in her basket, off we go, and they're ready to sprint, all the way back home.

Because even civil war re-enactors need jobs during the off season.

Team Small Dog has weekend guests. Ones that enjoy throwing balls and dangle food very, very close to the ground. Meaty food.


The guests went to the barn and rode ponies. The Boardwalk to ride rides. The wharf to eat tacos.


And to the Roaring Camp, up in the mountains, to ride the old narrow gauge steam engine.


Some of the guests were forced to pose with the one armed conductor that pinches kid's noses.


But really, everyone was happy to ride the train up the side of the mountain through the giant redwoods.


Not all of Team Small Dog got to ride on the train. Just because. Gustavo was loving it, riding through the forest.


Until, the train had visitors on top of Bear Mountain.


Because what train ride for tourists isn't complete without rotten tooth civil war re-enactors staging a train robbery?


With guns. Yes! A real shoot out on the train full of little kids! If the creepy old gun slinger climbing aboard and yelling, "Hands Up Varmits," didn't already do them in, dying cowboys hitting the dust one by one was exactly what they needed to make their journey complete. BANG! BANG! BANG!


The completely freaked out train car of kids and shaking, quivering dogs had a super ride back down the mountain. NOW who was the lucky dog that got to go ride the train?


Luckily, at the bottom of the mountain was the bbq picnic. Hamburgers. Hotdogs.


And then everybody was just fine.


Although next time, we'll try something more relaxing like sailboat ride out to shark infested waters, or gopher trapping with Uncle Gary. No more mountain folk train rides.

Where we interview someone new, because basically, I am super nosy, and this person will be Katie Trachte.

We're all so over Team Small Dog. Didn't win the lottery, blah blah blah Teeter Totter, took a hike. Let's face it. Bo-Ring. So I started my new hobby of investigative journalism with a series of interviews of people I know on the internet who were weirdly game to answer my slew of questions.

I'm about as good at investigative journalism as I am at succulent farming, but coming up is the first of my series of interviews with people who met my highly selective and stringent criteria of:
1.) Had a bunch of dogs
2.) Didn't say no to my interview request


All right. I bet a lot of you know Katie and Jeep. They have been on the AKC World Team, they have some MACH's, and they also have a whole bunch of USDAA accomplishments. And then there's her border collie, Tag. And of course Taco. Shivery chihuahua who owns a lot of tiny little dog jackets. Who is sort of like the HyCaliber cheerleader. Like does agility in a pinch but not gonna make a career of it. And that's just the start of them. I met Katie at the USDAA Southwest Regionals last year. She brought Jeep on the airplane in a sherpa bag. And got super sun burned.

Then all of a sudden, Katie has her own giant agility park! Actually probably not all of a sudden but in my universe of time and space and how often I visit the Facebook, let's just say all of a sudden. And because I'm super jealous, and also super nosy, I'm all over it like my mayhem of small dogs on a 6pack of carnitas tacos. I'm thinking, who wants to read about boring old Team Small Dog when you can learn here about having your own 290 acre park?

TSD:
All right, Katie. One day I go on the Facebook and here are all these pictures of Katie and her gigantic, 290 acre park in Vermont with this very Susan Garrett/Greg Derrett layout of agility stuff spread out over the perfectly mowed 2 acre grass field. And so right away, of course I'm like, HATE HER. But then I remembered, oh yeah, there is snow and so forth there so I totally take back the hating part. But then like 5 Facebook seconds later, it's like, this is AgilityVision too, which I thought was Eric Larson who videos us out here in California, not on a giant 290 acre park in Vermont, so I'm like completely confused and I am going right to the source here, which is you. And you are a good emailer. You are young and equipped with Blackberry texting abilities. So what gives with this whole Vermont Agility Park thing which is also your house?


Katie:
We're pretty low drama here. Yep, Eric Larson is totally a Vermonter now, and I'll leave it at that! I'm formally from Connecticut and got a chance to snatch this place up, and I TOTALLY grabbed at it. We do have crap weather here, about 4 months of the year, but we're making the most of the good weather while we DO have it! The Vermont Agility Park is the new AgilityVision home... we have classes/seminars and more planned here for the summer. So much that I'm having trouble finding days for all the cool stuff going on. Think LIVE seminars!! Total of 6 dogs here at the Vermont Agility Park but they have plenty to do. Taco takes pride in being the cheerleader and home security system.

TSD:
Wow! This is very cool. Well, maybe except the part where Eric Larson, who was our favorite person to take videos of us at dog shows, moves far away and becomes a Vermonter. It just took me sort of a while to even find Vermont on the map. It is very, very far away from California. So what's on the rest of your acres? Did you have to do a lot to the house or was it HGTV ready to go? And all wired?

Katie:
Mountain on one side, river on the other! My dad and uncle were logging on my mountain, so there are a bunch of logging trails which are now excellent hiking trails. Complete with real dear and fisher cats! This was my old grandmothers house... it was so not HGTV ready but has now turned into super 21st century hi-tech!

TSD:
Are you in a town or is this in the middle of the forest somewhere, in this far off land of Vermont?

Katie:
I am pretty much in the middle of no where. Of course I came from the city, so not having a Wal-Mart or CVS within a mile is out in the middle of nowhere. We have 2 major grocery stores within 25 minutes and we're adjusting. We plan Trader Joe's bulk visits around the trials and seminars we have to travel too. So far the beer has been well stocked and no one has starved to death.

TSD:
So when you have, like a giant park, can you just leave it and go gallavanting off to agility trials? Can you tell I am kind of just completely freaking out here about your 290 acres? Who is going to water all the trees? Taco won't get lost will he?

Katie:
Yes! I usually bring all my dogs. If not my agility friend Kathryn at Great Fields Kennel takes the rest of the crew. Taco is master of the patio. Even when we're at the river he hauls his ass back up and guards the house. He can't be part of that lame-o dog swimming.

TSD:
And then what do you do in the winter time? I get this feeling that Vermont is very, very cold and snowy all winter long. So do you just shut agility down during the snow? Your interviewer here, native Californian. Lived once in Arizona for a few months. Generally must live within 5 blocks of the beach. I know it's summer now, and we're supposed to live in the moment and all that, but what are you going to do all winter?

Katie:
Winter sucks. We drive 45 mins to an hour to visit our 2 favorite indoor agility places. Both you have to rent for $20+ an hour. We'll be looking into our own this winter for sure. Or we'll go all Steve from New Mexico and install some field turf on the lawn to shovel off. The cold doesn't hurt as bad after a while....We just have to drive. We do loads of indoor skills like contact board brush ups and Susan Garret type games while it's cold out. We do loads of hiking in the snow. It's a really good workout!

TSD:
Katie, you are younger than a lot of agility ladies I know. I'm not sure how old you are, but you know how to do the Blackberry and I think you were recently in college. How long have you been doing agility?

Katie:
You get 2 points for that! (*TSD thinks maybe this is not so good, if 2 points based on a 10 point system.*) About 15 years now. Yea, like when there were Crossovers in agility and dogs had to jump 30". (*Yikes. 15 years ago, I was mourning the death of Kurt Cobain and living in a dirty warehouse, trying to build robots*) Oh, and I remember being in the car. A lot. 5 or 6 sometimes 7 hours in the car every single weekend to get to a trial. (*TSD does some googling and realizes Katie's mom is in the agility universe and they were perhaps a famous agility family and these are things next time we do an interview with someone we will investigate first.*)

TSD:
And how did you go from college student to AKC World Team member to owner of an agility park that is also going to be the new cutting edge live streaming video of all things agility and I don't even know what? This seems pretty ambitious. I just rode horses all day and holed up in my ratty old painting studio all night when I got out of college. I don't think I even talked to others. You are like a lady with a plan.


Katie:
It sort of went AKC World Team member to college then to agility dream park, but those are just details. (* Oops again.*) I went to school to become a Graphic Designer. So that's mainly what I do here, design and marketing. I'm not sure if it's ambition, when you have a job you love it doesn't feel like work. The goal behind this idea was to provide people with the opportunity to see some great seminars right from home. We have some really great events planned that I can't talk about yet, but I'm really excited!

TSD:
This sounds very high tech and secret squirrel. I'm sure you'll keep us posted here. Uh, not to change the subject, but can you offer any fashion tips to us over here on the left coast? What are they sporting for nice dog agility fashion wear these days out there in the fashion forward east? That's very close to Stacey and Clinton out there. So I am thinking you guys are pretty much on the ball with your outfits?

Katie:
Fashion on the East Coast. The trick is to wear as many layers as possible while trying not to look like the Michelin Man. We're all about water proof everything out here. Waterproof shoes, shirts, jackets, hats, socks you name it. Some people go all out and purchase the matching sets. I've sort of given up on that and get rain gear on clearance from LLBean or Orvis every few months.

TSD:
Right! The LLBean! We get their catalogs and they make me think whistfully about canoeing and roaring. Thanks Katie. Someday we hope to get out there and visit you. So are you going to be there forever?

Katie:
Vermont is really, really pretty. It would be my forever place if I had a spot to train in during the winter. Right now I don't and that's a problem. For right now it's home. Wherever my dogs and I can be that we're happy we'll call home.

So there you go. Go and visit AgilityVision-there are all kinds of new DVD's and seminars and live streaming video this and that. Wave of the future over there, coming from the agility park in Vermont. Thanks Katie!

RIP MJ and Farrah.

When I left for work in the morning, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett were alive, I think. I didn't check. Didn't really think I needed to.

Got home, and then they were dead.

Michael Jackson may have devolved into a epaulet shouldered, nose rotting, baby waving, freaky voiced anomaly, but deep down under all that, he was still MJ, Horribly Complex Royalty of Pop.

Wait. Stop reading this. Put Billie Jean on.

There. That's better.

I guess we didn't need him anymore. Became too painful to look. Shuffling along with an umbrella protecting his dictator costume, bodyguards shuttling the masked toddlers, I know I couldn't watch anymore. Young MJ lives in my ipod, so we can practice the Thriller dance any time we want. Remember that about him? The way the man could dance? Or lady. Not sure what he really was anymore. Kept the face rot concealed under flowing wigs and dust masks, a cautionary warning to everyone going under the knife for better, stronger, faster faces. Looking for something that might not really be there.

Farrah might have been a little loopy, a little tipsy, never really lived up to her swingy, shiny, fantastically blow dried hair and that one nipple, popping out of that red bathing suit forever. Her big white teeth and non stop hair kept girls and their curls in a dysfunctional relationship from junior high until the revelation of punk rock saved the day. Farrah hair was something we all endured, just because.

They both hit the top, back in the day, and maybe had a hard time figuring out what to do after. For years and years after. Let's say personal amusement park rides. Exotic animals. Marriage to Elvis's daughter. Maybe bought a country? Life got creepy for MJ, and then it got creepier, and even creepier, until he went broke and sort of faded back.

I'm not crying, but something seems wrong. That both of them died on the same day? And that Farrah had been sick a long time, but Michael Jackson? I guess he was too. Just in a different way. Did anyone ever call him Mike? Something always seemed wrong with his eyes. His gaze was so very indirect. The look of a man who had a pet chimp and who couldn't ever bring back what he used to have. His devolution may have been painful for everyone, but I don't think his flavor of super mega, nova star is someone that comes along very often. So when he vanishes from the ether, the gap that's left leaves a blazing sting.

In a day or two, for us it will seem like a distant memory. I guess. The legacy of a genuine legend doesn't really go away. What do we think about now when we practice the zombie dance? And I feel guilty now for not teaching it to Ruby better. Total deficit in my clicker training. The reminder that nothing and no one lasts forever, even when it seems like they will.

Dirt night rides again.

We've been on a little break from Dirt Nite. The arena got sprayed down with the special dirt polymer that makes the dirt oh so sticky and black and gooey and makes Dirt Nite what it is. Hella Dirty. So classes cancelled the last few weeks, and it was good to be back.

After I taught my class, I made sure all my dogs got turns running in the other classes. I tried to take the pressure off Gustavo, and just let him be who he is, and he had a bunch of super little runs. Not perfect, not trying to handle him through the hard master's courses anymore. I took all the pressure off, made things easy for him, and he didn't have to sit tied to the fence when the really fast, over the top dogs ran. Just did short easy sections of the sequences and he was great. And did a couple teeter totters. I can tell now when he's reaching meltdown point, and I have to know for him when enough is enough. Gustavo is who he is, and I'm finally getting it that he can only focus as long as he can. Then he has to have a break.

Just a little coffee break. His union demands it. It's taken me a long time to be willing to accept that his work ethic is a little bit different than everybody else. He's kind of the minimum wage guy around the office. Sweeps up the hair off the floor. Runs downstairs for a smoke. Sends the faxes, maybe to wrong phone numbers. Has a little more coffee, and he totally knows all the good gossip. Might not get around to getting those copies made. But he is the guy that EVERYBODY wants to hang out with after work. Party on, dude.

I gotta just keep his little square peg in the square peg hole. Let us all learn a lesson from super mega breeders Jon and Kate Plus 8. Kate, I believe tried to shove square peg Jon in the circle hole and then he left and had an affair with the 20 year old and then she had an affair with the bodyguard and my god. Hair plugs. The man has hair plugs and got a motorcycle and now, they're divorced.

The lesson we've learned? His inner championness will come out on it's own time schedule. And if it never does, PARTY ON DUDE! Like it's 1999. Hair plugs!

Ruby jumped low and she just seems so happy being an agility dog again. And Otterpop was Otterpop. Just doing her thing and like a hunk of zucchini bread on wheels zooming around and not a care in the world. I tried to make sure to take care of all my dogs and give them breaks and have a couple walks and let running be fun and stress free for all of us.

Wasn't I quitting agility just a few weeks ago? Something about a succulent farm? What was up with that?

Thirty Nine Million Smackaroom Jackpot that I believe was supposed to be mine.

Everybody in our neighborhood keeps asking each other, "Was it you? Was it you?" Some of the asking is all friendly and joking, but some of it, sort of squinty eyed look comes first, then, real slow, "Was it you?"

Personally, I think it might have been the guy that lives in the tiny shack house a couple blocks over, I think he's not quite right and doesn't brush his hair and has a squeaky voice and rides his cruiser around, brown bagged beer in one hand. His house is the size of a can of frijoles, and I think his mom might live in there with him too. Across the street is where they crammed the 3 modulars onto one lot and not sure how you get to the door of the back one, wedged so tight onto the tiny lot.

The surfer guys, who have been spending the day on ladders on Richard Next Door's house's roof, they don't know who it was. Couldn't believe it happened at the market they've been working across the street from all week. All morning, before I leave for work, I hear all about this, over and over. They say Dude a lot.

"Dude. No way. Can you totally believe it?"

"Insane, man. Like we are RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from that Market!"

"Sick. Dude. Like I almost BOUGHT ONE that DAY!"

"Dude. That's so tight. Someone is so stoked."

"Sick."

We heard it's a He. That's the latest rumor around the street. So not the grandma of around the corner, the sea of crap multiplying by the day in her front yard. Cars and mannequins and boxes and masks and bears and chairs and things to wear. Leaves moldy old rolls out for the pigeons on palettes outside her gate, where the Mickey Mouse See and Say hangs faded by the sun. Not her daughter with the haunted house stuff out in front of her own junk heap yard display a few doors down, barking white and black spotted dogs that live out in her front yard, or anyone from the funny half shingled nun house across the street.

Maybe Mr. Lopez, who quietly sits out in his yard weeding, day in and day out, songs from the '40's playing on his tinny and teeny transistor radio, laying on the grass? I wouldn't mind if it was Mr. Lopez. He moves slow, like he lives underwater, and I hate it when his big white fence gets graffitied. He's too old to paint that big white fence.

I know most of the neighbors. The ones that don't know my name just call me The Lady With All The Little Black Dogs. And I might call them The Guy with the Baby that Fixed Up the Jones' Old House or The Guy on the Corner that Works at the Mushroom Plant or the Guy on the Corner's Son with the Lowrider that Got it's Tires Slashed.

A lot of the neighbors, they know my name, I know a lot of their's. Lynnie, she feeds the squirrels and takes care of all the sick birds. Her husband had some bad health problems, and they don't have health insurance. Actually, I would be super happy if it was Lynnie that won. She showed me her special French Pigeons the other day. She lives across the bumpy street from Fern who has a big mean dog and a million parrots. Right by Dorothy who has a giant hole in her roof, still after all these years. Can't imagine how all those tarps still keep the water out. They helped out Dorothy a lot before she went in the nursing home. Dorothy's house is next to the one that's vacant now, but the punk rocker son still has band practice in the garage. Which is next door to Lexi whose husband died and rented out the barn and still hasn't painted her house, after all these years. Also next to the old guy with the vintage Willy's jeep and a million trailers and all the cardboard you would ever need stacked out back. You find out a lot about your neighbors when you walk by their house, every single day.

Everything except, Who It Was. That got my lottery ticket.

Monday was a very lucky day.

I'm lucky to have a Gustavo.

He's just a tiny little thing, 11lbs of fast. And I don't believe a sweeter dog, there could ever be.


I'm lucky to have forest agility nearby, and lucky to have Team Small Dog to take there.

Just up the mountain above Santa Cruz, Kathleen lives in the forest on the sand hills, and she's put 2 huge, grassy agility fields in her 20 acre yard and we can go up there and practice and run courses and do teeters. We're lucky she set up a really hard Standard course that Otterpop and Ruby could practice on.
The tiny dog, that fits in the tiny house, he even did the course, section by section, and slammed a bunch of brilliant fast and happy teeter totters.


We're lucky to have a tiny market across the street from our tiny house.

We buy beer and chips and ice cream and lottery tickets and really, all kinds of corn based products there. Bobby owns the market, we always wave at each other when he's having a smoke out front. Everyone in the neighborhood stops by the market for a snack or a smoke.

We are lucky that it's a lucky market and someone, who ISN'T US won the 39 million dollar lottery with THEIR TICKET from OUR MARKET the other day.

Lucky. Lucky. Lucky. Lucky.

When doom and gloom enter the room.

I went up to Power Paws for a lesson with Jim yesterday. Haven't been in a while, in a long while. Don't even remember my last lesson. Last time I was gonna up there, I went out and bought a bunch of succulents and tried to start a succulent farm with my lesson money. Not sure if Jim knows that one. Uh, Hi Jim!

So I gussied up the demented homeschoolers in their best prairie dresses, brushed their bangs up sky high, and we took a field trip off of the compound. Ran them hard at the beach first, low tide and thought that might help a bit. Woke up when they got to their road. Boy do they like going down that driveway.

I unpack mayhem out of the car and we sit down in the fine plastic agility chairs and Jim's all, "How's the Team? What are we working on today?"

Isn't this sort of how therapists open up therapy session? He thought I was just going to say, can we work on sending out to weave poles? Some 270's? I get to watch Jim's eyes go all wide as I unleash the horror of horrors of what's been going on with Team Small Dog. Actually, I don't because he's wearing sunglasses. But I'm pretty sure they're going all wide. Or maybe that was because someone started to dig a hole in the grass. Have you seen Jim's grass? You just don't do that.

Horrors. Actually, if you want to have some even more horrific horrors, go see the movie Food, Inc. Holy moley, that will get you freaked out. It's about the politics and industry of food. Basic old food and really, there's no aspect of food that isn't completely messed up, possibly beyond fixing and even if you've read Fast Food Nation and the Omnivore's Dilemma, you would want to go see this and then figure out where you can plant a garden, although you might be afraid of seeds. And Monsanto. Just ask Indiana seed cleaner Moe Parr about them.

There are graphs and animations and interviews and ammonia washing beef. I mean hamburger meat filler. I don't even eat meat, and I was freaked out. I won't even say I watched this one so you don't have to. I think everybody who likes to eat them some food now and again should go see it. I mean corn. Because almost all food is made from corn now. Except for the mutilated chickens in the dark that can't use their legs. Tractors dump their chicken bodies in the manure heap.

So actually I didn't tell this to Jim, instead just unleashed all the Team Small Dog traumas from the last few months. Although he would have liked the movie. There were tons of tractors.

I tell him about Ruby and she can't even jump or do any agility, anxiety and lame lame lame, then miraculously I have lowered her jumps heights to 8" and she's back doing agility. That's the good news.

And no one here has E. coli. There's some good news.

He gets the earful about Gustavo and the teeter totter whip and the blowing tarps and the sounds and the scaredyness and going back to foundation stuff and the horror of it all. Although I kept my mouth shut about the immigration sweeps from Tyson chicken processing plants and how they bring up illegals from Mexico, use 'em up then throw random folks back at immigration for deportation, just to make some numbers. Happens in pig factories and cow slaughter houses, too. That's the labor force and woe to any union organizers that step in.

I do tell the Otterpop story of her mental illness and weirdo aggression and freaking out about Ruby and can barely run in the show ring.

Basically, I'm like, "Jim, Team Small Dog is just really messed up."

He's sort of squirming in his plastic chair. Jim is super nice and I can see he's kind of like not sure how this lesson is supposed to fix all of that. Thank god I didn't start talking about bacon.

He's says, "Maybe you need to start having your lessons with Nancy?"

Maybe I need to start growing carrots.

Doom and gloom is sitting on his field and bumming out a sunny day when he could be riding his mowing tractor around, cutting the grass. Doom and gloom brings bad dogs that sometimes try to dig holes in the perfect grass. Doom and gloom can't help thinking about the specter of Monsanto, measuring the wind for currents that blow the genetically modified seeds across a fence line, into some unsuspecting farmer's fields.

Oh. And now doom and gloom's boy dog just peed on a post. Probably because I said I made him wear a prairie dress. And he's going to have to start eating carrots.

Doom and gloom trudges out, head hanging low, and sets the jumps really low so Ruby can have a turn.

"Sounds like Team Small Dog is just in a slump."

He gives us a pattern and Ruby just knocks it out like she's been practicing every day forever.

Give it a try with Otterpop and she's flying around like a rabid bat zeroing in on the vampire blood bank. No problem.

Jim's all, "Uh, they look pretty good? Wanna try it with the rear cross?"

Augh. I know! Right? They always do this to me. Perfect little beasts.

So then I bring Gustavo out, he's holding his start line and does the same sequences as those two. Some pole entry issues, not a surprise since we've kind of abandoned poles for teeter fixing the last months. But he's back to crazy fast and is actually handling well and actually not doing anything wrong. Listening! Much listening happening! Not much to get scared of up there, on the Power Paws mountain.

Jim's all, "Should we do some teeters?"

Doom and gloom all hemming and hawing. Maybe they'd be ok. Maybe not. Dark, windowless chicken farms. We've been working hard, it could be a backslide, or it could be time to move up and just get over it. I dunno.

"I dunno!"

We do some teeters. Start slow, just a teeter, not in a sequence. I tip the first boards for him. We build it into a sequence. His poles are actually a lot worse than the teeters. Those are just fine. We work on some stuff with the poles. They fix up just fine. It's just that old too fast to hit the first pole thing, which was why I went back to the 2x2 method and has clearly deteriorated recently. A proven fixable problem.

So we're back on the plastic chairs, and Jim says, "Not really sure I helped you much today?"

I'm not really sure how, exactly. But I think he did. Maybe everything's not fixed, and stuff could go wrong again. The cows will multiply and stand knee deep in shit, the corn subsidies stand in the way of affordable broccoli. Victoria Stillwell fixed the attacking Jack Russell in an hour, but Otterpop is still crazy. Later that evening, she leads Gustavo into a homeless camp deep in a willowy thicket and they pretend not to have recalls and guzzle down whatever was on that guy's foodchain. Probably some corn product.

But I'm just saying. Maybe not so much doom and gloom as I thought.

Where smallish dogs need to just jump smaller and smaller until the strippers totally tower over everything.

If you get your measuring tape and set it to 8", not many things in life gonna measure up to that. A framed 8x10 portrait of you and David Lee Roth after he became washed up and puffy and botoxed and bleached over gray. Almost the width of all the pieces of paper that are not so neatly stacked and cluttered over the desk and the counter and the table and spilling on to the floor. The heels on the stripper shoes that tranny guy goes tottering down the street with, downtown after 11pm.


In USDAA agility, the teensiest, tiniest performance level jumps are 8". Otterpop could aspire to those in her old age if she wanted. Ruby, too ginormous, as small dogs go. She is 13" tall. Supposed to be jumping 16" high, double the stripper heel 8 and she tried her little heart out doing it too, until I couldn't bear it anymore and moved her down to jumping 12" just a few legs before she finished her ADCh. I just couldn't watch the carnage anymore. And at 12" high, the carnage started soon after and anxiety and freakouts and sometimes leaving the ring, sometimes not, sometimes hopping around on 3 legs, sometimes not. Sometimes flinging herself off the ground, propelled by her twisted little back legs so as not to have to use front legs. Also very much affected her weave poles. And then drugs and rest and rest and drugs and then really, with an exasperated sigh, I just declared her semi-retired unless she seemed to be having a good day and does a run or 2 with various, mixed results.

A few weeks ago, started setting all the jumps at about 8" when I went to practice. Teensy, tiny, little things, and decided to give Ruby a go and see what happened.

Good god almighty, these tiny little jumps, that the tranny stripper would just step over with a flick of a toe, changed her agility life. I take a coconut shell right now and bang it against my forehead. Why didn't I think of this before?


She can't show at that height, I guess in CPE but we don't go to many of those. She could finish her CATCH title with a couple 12" rounds of Colors, if we ever get around to it. USDAA, not gonna happen. But to practice, to have my old dog back again and run her with everyone else out on the field, amazing. Flying like the wind and no anxieties, nothing but all this right on agility that's she's had just stored up, sitting there on a brain shelf, all this time. Just by changing the look of the field, making it all look so tiny, to where it doesn't hurt her arms to jump anymore.

Not gonna do Otterpop any harm to practice with low jumps, me being way to lazy and late for work to set a bunch of different heights. She's so structurally impaired, built like a low rider Chevy mini truck in front and a straight hocked chihuahua in back. Those back legs not gonna last forever for her, the way she uses 'em. Gustavo jumps pretty darn horrid at that low height, but he's on the no pressure, back to foundation rehab of everything right now, bringing back the flying mayhem of joy and teensy little jumps are an ok way to go right now.

Teeter totter rehab center-maybe ours ain't like yours.

Radio control tower teeter, as yet unencrusted with jewels or the intended crustaceon decorative objects de arte which I believe are supposed to shells from the sea, is ensconced in it's new role as driveway teeter. I know it is supposed to be shells, because the submarines said so. I used to be unencumbered. Light. Didn't have to speak to subs. Now will be spending my days hunched over, walking around with a plastic bag for collecting sea shells and shiny sea glass and my phone for calling seal rescuers and all the while, trying to make sure I got the radio frequency right on my teeter totter so we don't miss any important calls.


You know, from the subs. Or the aliens.


In taking all the pressure off Gustavo, he sometimes does full teeters from running at full speed, sometimes just hops on the side like he's catching the cement train heading north. Slams it into a pile of soft, hops off and runs around to get another ride. The pressure is off. Sometimes I hop him on and just hop him off. Tried to take all agility pressure off in fact, and letting him just run and run and go back to what he loved about it. There's not really handling right now. Just running. A backslide for an agility super star in the making?


I prefer to think of it like this. I started to lose something precious to me. More precious than the biggest pile of rubies and diamonds and giant crab shells and broken sand dollars and old green beer bottle shards worn smooth by sand and surf. I started to lose my little dog. My fast and bright and shiny tiny dog, who valued running and playing and flying along at rocket speeds more than anything. I wasn't sure where he went, and I got all hung up on he's so far behind. How that reflected on me. Like I looked at my reflection in a chunk of glittering mother of pearl and I was thinking more about that than who my dog was. So I'm just all, screw it. Insert some parable mythology crap here about the raccoon who looks at his reflection in the pond while he's washing off his chunk of shiney tin and then the alligator comes up and bites down and snaps all his bones into bloody pieces and that's the painful end to the raccoon. That's not going to happen to me. Not that I know what's gonna happen to me, or to Gustavo's agility career. It's just that I think we can be happy radioing into the mother ship or meeting new German friends who live under the sea and finding stuff to stick on the radio tower with glue. This is just the Team Small Dog way, for better or for worse. Can't be any worse than one bloody, mangled, former raccoon, at least.

Summer light before the solstice starts back towards winter.

The light stays at a dim gray level, under the clouds, later than it seems like it should. Lets the dogs have more time looking for squirrels, out on a soccer field across the Westside. Brave hunters, out on the land.


Takes a longer time to walk there, but if the sun stays up that long, I guess we have time. It's been a long time since I've been out that way. Running around on a soccer field. In the middle of tract homes on streets that have names after glamorous locales like Reno Way and San Jose Street.


I used to live on Reno Way. Once my boyfriend found a dead body in a van at the end of our street. Most of those crappy old houses are torn down now for mini mansions that all crowd together for ocean peeks. Granite countertops. And crown molding. Walking all the way down there, we walk by the lion. Some dogs, they're not afraid. Some dogs, you notice, not exactly in the photo.


Some dogs, can line up to sit in front of the landscape wall. To imagine that they're at the sea. We have to brave the tract houses on Stockton Ave to get there. A soldier on leave from Iraq shot himself there, on a bench at Stockton Ave, a couple weeks ago. Just sitting on the bench, looking out at the sea, nicely called the police first to warn them, then blew out his brains with a handgun. Some dogs, you notice, not exactly in the photo.


The good dogs sit still, even though they're watching something, out far across the field. That something is running, and running, and running. Not going to waste another second of the light, slowly going dim, by sitting around and staring when there's running that still could be done. Doesn't really matter where to him, I guess. Forest is good. Beach is good. But a soccer field, by the skateboard park, doesn't turn his nose up if it isn't the preferred kind of nature. He'll run around til it's dark, until it's time to walk back home.

Today is a day where we feel the history and it feels like sparkly abalone shells.

This is the Kitchen Brothers' temple. It's down the street from my house. Lately we've been walking by it a lot, because we love it and the beach has dying baby seals and the forest has joggers and I've taken to just heading North on the railroad tracks and coming home by the temple because that seems like a nice place to walk instead.


Ancient Santa Cruz lore has it that Kenneth and Raymond Kitchen built it to listen to German submarines during WWII.


The radio towers are beautifully encrusted with sonic radar listening abalone shells and bricks and stones. It sits next door to the Hare Krishna place.


The two brothers would soak old mattresses with the garden hose, and lay around together and listen to the subs through the towers. Then Kenneth, or maybe it was Raymond, would walk home to his own temple, that's up the street, on the other side of the railroad tracks.


Not sure what they heard exactly, if submarine chatter came through the shell towers, or if they talked to aliens, or maybe they just heard stuff nobody else could.


Another piece of ancient Santa Cruz history moved to my house yesterday. Ancient in the history of agility in Santa Cruz. It's getting a makeover. I was thinking to beautifully encrust it with abalone shells and bricks and shiny things that glitter. And seeing if it will speak soothing magical chatter to Gustavo, or contact aliens, or just tell him stuff that nobody else can hear about what a beautiful thing it would be, to lose all fear and feel the teeter love.

And, just in case it doesn't have super sonic radio skills, we'll still have the most beautiful teeter for miles around.

I always wear shoes and socks on the beach. Because I hate to touch the sand.

You remember how that Surf Punks song goes? You had on pink neon pants when you sang it and white ray bans. Oh yes you did. Shout along with Otterpop, now. My beach my chicks my waves go home go home. You know all the words.


It's summer now, and the beaches have actual people that want to come down and use them. Imagine that. Too crowded for me when it's more than one person including me. Everyone butts heads. We only like the beach when we can't see actual people on it, or they are very few and far between.


Our other beach, besides rangers, has the yearling seal lions washing up to die. They're starving, is all anyone can figure out. Sad, starving baby seals sharing the beach. Someone said it's the global warming. Someone else said El Nino coming. Ruby and Otterpop, good about leaving them alone. We always turn around when we see the babies, and lately we switched beaches completely to one that doesn't seem to be a baby death beach. Has the most winter big seal carcasses, but has been strangely free of any babies, just a few miles further south.


Breaks my heart to see the pups. Who are starving and shriveling and too tired to swim and just want to come up, lay on the sand, then maybe die. Not ready for the, all, "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!" of the manic cheerful of Gustavo and the seal watchers. Just want to be there and see no one. No dogs. No strolling ladies. No kids with buckets. No field trips. No sand castles. No volleyball. No joggers. No One.


Just need a little peace, whether not it's for living or dying.

Handling the pinhead-a polymer.

I swear to you, this is the end of pinwheels forever. But wait? Didn't you learn so much useful information?


Like, clearly I eat way too much See's candy, pizza, chocolate chip cookies, and not much else and it's all gone to my ass.


Lord have mercy.


I am pretty sure Greg Derrett doesn't have this problem. Also, not sure if he would recommend rear crossing into a pinwheel. But it's a useful thing to do. Ruby is my only dog that likes rear crosses. Everybody else, would rather take a bath in honey at the country bear jamboree.


Did I really just say that? Pretend I said it in a Loretta Lynn accent. Same with Lord have mercy. Do you guys know the song "Pizza Hut Taco Bell" by Das Racist? They're sort of a slacker-art-rap Dutchpop world music band with mad street cred. Pretend you sing that song with Loretta Lynn accent. It might work ok, or totally fail.


I'm pretty sure Das Racist does not do Loretta Lynn covers. I think that would fail. They are like all about irony.


Ruby is pretty much not about irony. She is like super, incredibly straightforward. Stallwart. Is that a word? Ruby might talk to witches in her brain, but she also really, really, really always tries to do the right thing.


So if she can jump over the teensiest littlest jumps in the world, and will wait patiently while I dance around to the Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell song, I give her a treat, and tell her she's very beautiful and feel honored to have her by my side.

Handling the pinworm-a prybar.

So yesterday, we were talking pinwheels. Blah blah blah handle them. You got it. Let's move on, to one with a teeter totter.


You can guess where this is going.


Leslie McDevitt posted a comment here the other day. She said create a pattern where he chooses to put the pressure of moving towards it. Does him running across the field, just dying to get on count? Rad! Right on! Go Goo.


Have I told you recently I hate agility? Because it is hard to love something that you so totally, completely suck at. Or maybe it's easy, but I am just not coming to grips with this. GodDAMN. Another lifestyle that goes awry, turns out to be a bad idea, and just ends up in the crapper. Like baking a bundt cake. Remember how THAT little escapade turned out?


You know how much I love my dogs? As much as Antartica. Australia. Antartica and Australia and every single Ikea parking lot in the universe combined and add about a trillion. That much.


And then agility, wee hee, all fun and then eventually, total suckazoid bummer, man.


Because Gustavo is an awesome dog. He is sweet and he likes to run and he sits on my lap and we like to play with a dirty terry cloth tube and he loves everyone.


And then it's like, Oh, hey buddy. Learn this agility, K? Thanks! You'll LOVE it.


Well, most of it. He was dog who loves agility! Loves everything. Love love love love love.


And then it's just like issue issue issue issue.


And all my friends are all champion champion champion champion.


And I'm all why why why why why.

Handling the pinwheel-a primer.

Can you tell the jumps are so low? That's for Ruby. I'm finding she can actually stay pretty sound if she jumps these super mini jumps, and Team Small Dog, we all like togetherness. So if one dog is doing a pinwheel, all dogs are doing pinwheels. One dog jumping super shorty jumps, everybody jumping super shorty jumps.


Actually these pictures are of Otterpop. And actually we worked on pinwheels because Gustavo needs to be a little more fluent in them. En espanol, es el pinwheel.


But I sort of thought I should use the pictures of Otterpop because I think I look skinniest with her.


Um, this is sort of a Greg Derrett thing, I think. Right? Statue of Liberty arm indicates where to go and so forth? Good morning sunshine, hello mountain dew? Isn't that a Greg Derrett song?


Pinwheels maybe seem dumb and boring and baby stuff to practice. Training wheels.


That's just what I felt like today. Have been in sort of a goddamn agility mood. Who needs it. It scares Gustavo, makes Ruby sore, makes me cry, costs money, requires ugly clothes, takes up all my time, makes me feel like a big huge dork of bad dog training at dog shows, and just a big huge dork in general. GodDAMN, agility. You're making me mad.


And then Otterpop is all "Manic! Manic! Seether! Manic! Frisbee! Manic! Manic!" and there's monkey screaming and we had to hike by the sewers, so I'm all, oh hell. Stopped at the practice field.


And maybe it was just a little bit fun. Just maybe. Like some of it, not. But moments, ok.

Hiking the Suburbia Sewage Trail.

There's another forest near my house, that runs through the neighborhood known as Suburbia. There's not much going on up there in Suburbia, other than it connects the lower Westside to the upper Westside, which is near the University, which is the Gateway to the Forest. The path starts down on the lower Westside. Just look for the chain link fence next to the subsidized apartments. Ends up at the Upper Westside, by the super big houses built on old ranches and the park with the tennis courts by the Jewish cemetary. Suburbia, sandwiched in between.


This forest is sort of different than the real forest. For one thing, it's just a big canyon for suburbia to look down on. A bunch of it is paved. Right? In suburbia, they pave the forests. The foilage is limited to Eucalyptus trees, blackberry bramble and poison oak. And a sewer runs underneath it. It's a convenient location for teenage rebellion drinking. Dude. It's Suburbia.


The sewers flow deep underground. But not so deep you can't hear rushing water. Is that the sound of Suburbia flushing? Suburbia, you all up there taking showers right now? We can hear you, down here in Suburbia Canyon.


Or maybe we can smell you. Sure smells good to Otterpop. Smells so good she's going to roll it all on her. Every manhole cover, like a gateway to fragrant sewer smell. We just do things different in this forest.


There's some brackish swimming holes too. The convenient location to Suburbia somehow means every single person we saw down there was a lady in a jogging costume. And every single lady had exactly 2 labs or exactly 2 goldens, and one of every single lab or golden pair was also mean. And every single one of them had a personal brackish swimming hold staked out for tennis ball throwing dog swimming. They must have good dog washing tubs up there in Suburbia.


He's brackish. I think this is right after they had to all run away from the mean black lab. And you'll never believe this. It belonged to a lady in a jogging costume, and her other one was nice. She makes a point to tell us this after she lets the mean one go after the team. Hey lady. I didn't get a chance to tell you those labs make your ass look fat.


On the forest scale, this one is pretty lame. But it's another chunk of land that I've found, somewhere near my house, where no one cares if my dogs aren't tied up on leashes. So it might stink like shit, but actually, the dogs sort of like that.

Nature calls, if the call of the wild sounds like this. Guuuuuustaaaavooooo!

Antonielli's Pond is a far western westside pond, surrounded by fields and a farm and an industrial waste factory and the train trestle and a mobile home park and new apartments. Perched up on the windy start of our North Coast. People go there to bird watch and drink beer. Or maybe drink beer and bird watch. I've seen fishing. And just down the road, tractors already grading for a 113,592 sf of businesses and apartments. Still, for now, it's a good back up place to run the dogs around, if you don't mind the pitbulls and beer drinkers and traveling folk who use the train trestle to hop the cement train for a ride north. An appealing thing about Antonelli's is there's no rules there. Which means lots of beer cans, but no rangers to piss on the parade.


It's all about the timing there. When you're bringing high speed mayhem to a pond, you sort of want there to be no bird watchers around because of, well, the mayhem. The beer drinkers, I don't worry about. They've never been able to catch us. On an evening with good timing, it's just us and the birds and the bunnies and all the stuff that lives in the pond and makes weird noises. I don't know jack about birds. I just know there's all kinds of seaplane style birds out there in the water, and they all make funny noises and flutter about. Maybe some of it is frogs, and maybe some of it is stuff that lives in the pond we don't even know about. Can anyone say industrial waste factory next door?


My dogs don't really swim so much, but stick a bird in a body of water, have it flap some wings around, make some gutteral woo woo honk honk sounds, and all of a sudden, we have swimmers. Although swimmers might be too generous of a word. More like leapers off of docks into murky waters necessitating being pulled up by tiny little collars onto mud when they're stuck in the deep end. Does that count as swimming? It's slimy, it's wet, and it's possibly not nice to the wildlife. Probably not nice to the wildlife. But it's a big pond. I figure there's room for all of us, and I sure like crazy dog watching better than bird watching.


Because one dog, not naming names if your name is Otterpop, has to leap off the broken old dock thing, into muddy, vine coated water after some invisible, bullfroggy noised apparition, does that mean others amongst you, Gustavo, have to follow suit? Like a soggy, wet slime suit on a day when I pulled the dog crates out of my car and dogs are riding on upholstered car seats. And where there's no way for feverishly dogpaddling little dogs to climb out unless someone goes down and yanks 'em back in. Some dogs who are perfect citizens, they know better. Stay on dry land. Understand the whole sinking dynamic. But the swimmers, just hell yeah and leaping and then having to figure out the whole swimming thing until a nice lady, such as myself, runs to the edge and fishes 'em out.


It's a breezy, bright evening, after a long weekend at work, and I just stand on the path for a while, and watch the dogs race around, fast as they can. Try to not look at the apartments. Not look to towards the mobile homes. Not look up at the manufacturing backlot of whatever it is they make next door. If I squint, I can just see trees and fields and that blur of black until it's time to go home.

RIP Grasshopper

Was having sort of a shitty day. Couldn't get out of the house in the morning. Kept having weird epiphanies of loserdom. Nothing getting done right. We tried to do some agility and we were all just off. Gustavo spooky and unfocused. Otterpop sort of blah. Ruby couldn't even run and there was no jumping on her horizon. Long day at work, couldn't even bear the long drive home from the ranch. Got home super late. Just a day that could have been erased, overall. The black cloud not only following around over my head but just dripping real slow, all day.

How do you go back and vanish a whole day? If you can get rid of the day, then how far back you go? Keep unraveling the thread until you're left with a shreddy little pile of nothing? Can you pick out some remnants of ok or it's an all or nothing proposition?

And then, got home, saw the news in the internet, our Grasshopper, David Carradine, found dead and hanging in a Thai hotel. Naked in a closet, dangling from a rope, and that was his end. Vanished, just like that.

Soothing sounds for the seether.

Last night, I went to yoga class.

I like to say that because it sort of sounds like this is something I do all the time, when in actuality, it happens about twice a year now.

Let me say it again. It sounds so nice and calm and healthy. Last night I went to yoga class.

So when I leave the dogs at night, I want them to be all calm and chill so there is no HOWLING. And so that when we get home, there are nice calm dogs and not a frantic insane rush to the door led by Otterpop who can switch from excited to completely out of her gourd manic at the drop of the hat and go to the dark place and we like to keep Otterpop in a world of sunny bright unicorns and rainbows at all times. Just because. I'm mean and evil.

So I got this new thing. As part of my economic stimulus plan, basically I spend no money at all on items any more. Maybe a t-shirt on etsy. Maybe snacks. But that's it. No items. Except I had heard of this item, I had thought about it, I had tried to re-create it, and I could not get the thought of this item out of my head. Because it sounded so weird, so bizarre, like right up there with taxidermied squirrels in a diorama of tandem bike riding in Swedish clogs, that I finally had to shell out the money to buy it.

And not buy just one. No. I had to buy two. Hard earned, economic stiumulus money gone straight to two of these things.

I know. You're like, WHAT! WHAT! You already skipped ahead because you never read all the words here, just some. I know. You're a cheater and I know it, just so you know. Did she get the squirrel diorama and they have little ear holes cut out of their tiny hats??

I wish. If only life was so sweet.

No. I got two cd's of Dog Soothing Music. Music to Calm Your Canine Companion. Clinically Demonstrated Through a Dog's Ear.

What this is, is music to make humans run screaming from your house and retch uncontrollably in the street out front. It is super boring, slow played piano songs of classical music by actual classical music composers. You've heard of these guys. Totally dead now, can't hear how their music's being used. Vivaldi. Chopin. Beethoven. Maybe you can even play some of their tunes by heart on piano. But your versions don't sound half as terrible as the ones on the cd. Oh my god.

Don't try to put it on in the car. I did and Gary flat out refused to get in. Flat out. I tried driving with it on and after I got over the feeling of wanting to claw at imaginary bugs flying around my ears, it almost put me to sleep. Literally. On the freeway. Hola, Officer!

But here's the thing. I put it on, and the other dogs just sort of seem normal. But Seether, she gets up on the couch arm and sort of curls up there, looking all, uh, soothed. I'm like, weird, but it's like it's speaking to her, THROUGH HER EAR. Like the cd says. Good god. Truth in marketing.

So we go to yoga, and when we come back, I'm expecting all dog bliss and everyone laying around on the floor like we've just walked into a crack den and the junkies are sprawled out on filthy mattresses on the floor, half dead and od'ed. I have low expectations.

Instead, it turns out that I left a baggie of string cheese in my purse and there was a rampage on it and there is crap from my purse all strewn around and someone ate the lid off my tupperware I bring sandwiches for lunch in. And Gustavo ate a cute card made for me by an 8 year old that illustrated a horse on it and why are my sunglasses on the laundry room floor?

Ha. Music to go on rampage by, I guess. But I'm hoping they were so busy doing that there was no time for a howling festival. I'll never really know, I can only dream. We'll try it out again though. I own it now. If this blog had a soundtrack, I would unfade the really slow piano music right now, and it would swell up loud and plinkety plink plink of slloooowwwwnnneessssss and there you go, careful not to barf on your shoes as you exit the building.

When the practice field is a very nice place to be.

Big Pink had to go home last week, so there's been no new teeter totter excitement.

At the practice field, that teeter slams uncontaminated and fast and happy for Gustavo, and if I had a bottle of botox for every time I said if only dog shows happened where we practice, I would be an unwrinkled, frozen faced, expressionless biyatch of smoothness instead of a haggard old leatherface with lip wrinkles.

For big fun today, we practiced the teeter with scarey, blowing tarps set up every which way. Damn tarps. Not scary at the practice field. If only dog shows happened where we practice. If I had a bucket of nickels for every time I said that, I'd have the biggest squirrel made of nickels standing on top of my roof that anyone has ever seen, instead of just old rotting roof shingles.


At the practice field, Otterpop runs fast and does hard gambles from 50 feet away. If only dog shows happened where we practice. Oh hell. If I had a basket of chihuahuas for every time I said that, my god. Over run, over thrown, infested we'd be, chihuahuas in little baskets as far as the eye could see. Gustavo slams down onto those dogwalk contacts with style, and hits every pole entry I throw at him. I can't stop myself. If only dog shows happened where we practice. If I had a penny for every time I said that, I'd probably glue gun them all to the bedroom wall, overlapping like coppery fish scales and making me weep for all the dust they collect. I keep Otterpop's frisbee on the table, tell her it's there after she runs a course, and she runs and runs and tries her hardest, until I tell her she can go get it. If only dog shows happened where we practice. Aw hell. You get the point.

At the practice field, Ruby is 100% sound and doesn't crash into things. Actually, that is a complete lie. And Gustavo still runs around jumps, like he just doesn't LOOK. Otterpop misses occasional dogwalk contacts and goes ballistic if the goat across the road comes up to the fence, or if one of the wahoos in the super giant pickup drives up and climbs up on the roof of the shed where he might be able to see her. Life isn't perfect there.

But it would still be better if we just had the stupid dog shows where we practiced.

Team Small Dog is not now and has never been, manic.

The lady looks like me, but with black hair. She has a little tan dog, sort of Otterpop and Ruby type. He's running wild with Gustavo and I'm keeping my distance. She looks nice enough, probably not crazy, but I'm just standing over there and squinting at the horizon line across the Pacific. Gustavo and her dog are ripping up and down the beach. She inches her way closer to my way and I know it's inevitable.

GodDAMN, doesn't KILL you to talk to humans sometimes.

"What kind of dog is that?" Her hair is in one braid, mine's in two. She has on shorts and a blue men's jacket like the one I always wear. We're the same height and probably wear the same pants size. Clearly the same taste in dogs.

"I dunno. Just a little fast black dog." Usual answer. Short, simple sentences. A lot of words with strangers makes everything way too complicated. By the end of the day, I already spent my talking to humans coupons.

"Maybe he's a schipperke? Or chihuahua. Definitely chihuahua. Or border collie? Look at him run! Definitely chihuahua. Or border collie. Runs like a chihuahua. And a border collie. Could he be a Boston terrier? My dog's from Merced. They pull the small dogs out of those shelters out there and bring them here. Got him at the shelter. Border collie, hey he runs like a border collie. What is he?"

She's not exactly, just chatty. More like posessed. I sort of nod and smile and mumble my usual answers when she stops. My answers are boring and dumb. "I dunno. Just a dog."

"I got my dog when I was manic. I used to be manic and I was in an emotional state, and you know, that's not a good time to get a dog. Because when I got my old dog I didn't even know and I didn't think to check his teeth and his teeth were so bad he died in 3 weeks. I had the dog 3 weeks and the teeth made him die and so I learned when you're in an emotional state to not get a dog and even though I got him I made sure to check his teeth. You checked his teeth right?

The dogs have run in now, to where she's crouched on the filthy sand. Mitchell's. The beach that smells like sewage. Shit beach. Covered in rotten seaweed.

Gustavo loves all people, and has no shyness about climbing on to a perfect stranger's chest to lick them in the face. She holds on to him, and looks in his skinny little mouth.

"You checked his teeth right? Have you seen his teeth? I went to the VCA and it was $285 for the whole teeth cleaning and I have pet insurance and you better take a look at his teeth because you know, it can kill them. The pet insurance makes it not so bad. I think the premiums are $25 and there's coverage for wellness and (something something all these numbers she's rattling off and I'm watching the pelican) It's expensive though, but you don't want them to die. You know, I get this newsletter from this Boston terrier lady and she was just recommending this supplement. You know, to build calcium for their teeth? I forget what it is. Like vitamins? It would probably help him. I just heard about it. You might like that newsletter."

I'm exhausted from listening to her. I thank her, without really opening my mouth. Then smile. Goddamn. You're supposed to smile at people. Can she see my fake tooth? She's still talking.

I start to explain the thing about he probably had distemper as a puppy. Crappy, rotten teeth with no enamel. But all of a sudden, it seems really complicated and too hard to explain. So I stop.

She has a moustache. I think she's still talking.


Me and the dogs prefer to walk around in the closed off parts of the day. Land of the lost. No one around. Not that I especially want to be invisible, but it's preferable to be where things are abandoned, the people erased. The part of the day where the sky is gray, and maybe you see the one legged guy emptying aluminum into his hefty bag, or a beanie guy with ragged face on his cruiser, wearing ugg boots and riding by slowly, drinking a beer. There's some houses around that are empty, and some days I like to walk by and look in their windows. Just to see the spaces filled with air.

My mom is reading a book that explains the difference between introverts and extroverts. She's learning what everybody is now.

So I'm telling this to Gary, who has like, no friends. Because he just might be an introvert.

"My mom says I'm an introvert. You too. And her."

He's all, "How does she know this?"

"She's reading this book that tells you. Right? Doesn't that make sense? Remember how I was just wishing that the whole population of Santa Cruz County just vanished?*"

He's all, "Uh, I think that's different than introvert. Doesn't that count as anti-social behavior?"

"Oh." I have to think for a minute. Yeah, it's possible sometimes I'm anti-social.

But also part of the time, I am like super nice! Bubbly! Friendly and helpful! Glinda the good witch floating in her magic bubble.

I don't want anyone dead. I'm pretty sure that would be anti-social. Don't want anyone messed up. Just invisible. And I'm not going to, like, DO this. Not a unibomber. Not a columbine. I just like to imagine the landscape how it looked before there were houses on every spot. When it was just land, with dirt and brush and trees here and there. When it was quiet. I like people just fine, but a lot of the time I don't want to see them. Like at work, and at dog agility, I'm totally ok with people. I like all my friends. Just sometimes, I need breaks where no one's around.


I was in the forest this morning, walking around by the spring on the side of the hill. It was cold, and damp, and a good day to just stay a little longer in the woods. From up top, above us, we heard the voices of a couple of hiker guys. I ducked down behind an old, burned out redwood stump, to see if they were coming down or continuing on the trail above us. Me and the dogs had crossed the creek on a skinny log, and were just walking around where it's ferns and mud, looking for sinkholes and slugs. Not really looking hard, mostly meandering to give Otterpop and Gustavo time to run up and down the slope.

The guys had walking sticks and little backpacks and were carrying water bottles. I could see them good, and I hoped they couldn't see me, down the hill, behind the stump. They have on gear. I was wearing navy blue slip on vans and a skirt and my legs were all covered in dirt. The dogs heard them, and we all stood very still for a little bit. All of us, behind that stump, staring up the hill and watching.

We're eavesdropping, and the hikers had never been up there, and they hadn't seen the spring box that has the fish in it. It's a big stone box that the spring fills and it's full of forest gold fish. People must dump them there and they grow to the size of slices of ham, in that cold spring water under the redwoods. Gustavo fell in already this morning, running too fast and didn't make it to the edge for a landing in time and just skimmed right in and had to swim out. He does that sometimes. Usually, no one else is up there. They're just a couple guys, talking too loud.

When their voices faded, we all hiked back up the slope to where they'd been. I sent the dogs up ahead of me with their, "Go Go Go" words from agility, which means run fast out in front of me as far as you can. It works in the forest too. I figured, the guys still up there, they could just see the trio of forest creatures go ripping by. I'd be way in the back, still behind the trees. Gustavo, he's all wet and covered in slime and redwood tree sticks, the other dogs are just dirty. They look like a pack of mud foxes. As they fly up the slope, the only sound they make now is the sound of thundering, tiny paw prints, pounding on the dirt. The hikers, they were gone, coast was clear. So I just let the dogs keep running as fast as they needed to and we made our way back out to the meadow.

The USDAA Witch Trial at Turlock, as manifestoed by Otterpop.

She put us in the car and it was dark. It was my preference to stay in the bed with the one that is so much less demanding and also has The Vehicle With Fine Leather Seats, but she put us in the car and obviously it would take a long time and be for the agility due to in each hand She holds one large mug of the coffee. Which equals two mugs because Otterpop can count as high as anyone would need to count.


Otterpop knows about these agility so called Witch Trials. Where historically, they ate hallucinogenic rats and they saw the witches then they burned all the She's at the stake. Otterpop knows this and knows many other things. Now the Witch Trials do not burn any She's and they wear skorts. This Witch Trial is in Turlock, which Otterpop likes somewhat because it is where the houses where no people are. Otterpop does not like people and houses without people are JUBILATION.


It is the USDAA and it is the goddamn team and goddamn sparkle and goddamn ariel are on the team with Otterpop but Otterpop does not have to look at them. Actually aside from humans and dogs, Witch Trials are not as terrible as Otterpop wishes She would believe. This one had some things Otterpop did not hate.


Otterpop will count these now to the number Eight. The following list is called Positive Attributes.

1. Otterpop kept Ruby in a box the entire time. Ruby had less treats and less FRISBEES and Otterpop believes Ruby should always have less therefore Otterpop more.
2. Otterpop did not allow Ruby or Screamy G to ever get the FRISBEE and many, many, many times Otterpop had the FRISBEE and WOULD BE THE ONLY DOG WITH SHE.
3. Agility with frisbees happens at the jumps out on the grassy park near where Otterpop keeps the other dogs in their cage.
4. She did not go in the Witch Trial with border collies, especially the hated one that stares at Otterpop and Hobbes who She lets touch Otterpop's FRISBEE and always GAH BARK SMOOSH about the Hobbes one.
5. The climate was temperate and many times Otterpop could step into the vessel of wet water then roll in grass then run and there was a FRISBEE.
6. She hands out a lot of finest cheeses at Witch Trial and carries FRISBEE around much of the time.
7. Screamy G was scared of tarps and a photographer and the freeway.
8. Otterpop did allow one new person to pet her at the witch trial and the person has red hair and used the correct method so Otterpop did not hate this person.


Otterpop will also now count things that were terrible of the Witch Trial. Otterpop will count these now to the number Eight. The following list is called Seether.

1. There is agility without FRISBEE with judge standing near Otterpop's personal space bubble. Even if judge is so called facebook friend of She, she is terrible because she stands in no FRISBEE zone and looks at Otterpop. At least this one would get out of Otterpop's way and NOT STARE AT OTTERPOP.
2. If Otterpop is allowed to speak freely on Otterpop's feelings of judge, Otterpop gets put in the car and Otterpop believes Ruby and Screamy G and border collies touch Otterpop's FRISBEE during this time so Otterpop did refrain from speaking freely which Otterpop HATES.
3. Dogs and humans are walking, running, speaking and are not invisible.
4. Humans touch Screamy G and pet it and it just loves that and it has turns of agility and Otterpop wants that others not do things that Otterpop HAS NOT SCHEDULED.
5. Otterpop did hear various humans refer to Otterpop as male gender. Otterpop mostly tries to not listen to voices of humans and instead sings a brain tune that NO ONE KNOWS BUT OTTERPOP and wishes the humans would disappear.
6. On various occasions when Otterpop was having a nice time having FRISBEE agility before stepping into the no FRISBEE zone, humans start telling She some burden of unwanted advice about Otterpop or confounded teeters and Otterpop demands undivided attention of She especially if the hell of stepping into no FRISBEE zone is inevitable.
7. She's all GAH BARK SMOOSH to other dogs and Screamy G and humans. In fact She spends too much time speaking to humans when Otterpop believes She ONLY MUST SPEAK TO OTTERPOP.
8. The goddamn team of Otterpop somehow had the Q no matter how hard Otterpop tried to do Otterpop's worst and OTTERPOP WILL NEVER LET ON WHY OTTERPOP DOES THIS.


In conclusion, Otterpop will take this opportunity to inform the public that Otterpop one day, WILL RULE THE WORLD. Otterpop does not like you all, Otterpop does not hate She and wishes that she could see She AT ALL TIMES forever including during ruling of the world. Otterpop also does not hate The One Who Yells at Television and has Vehicle With Fine Leather Seats, Joel Warner, Laia, That Blonde Child, Girl at Barn. Possible Otterpop does not hate that red hair human that used correct method to greet Otterpop but is undecided.


Postscript. Not from Otterpop. Otterpop ran Team, Ruby nothing, Gustavo Adv. Jumpers, Gamblers and Starters Snookers, where he could be nowhere near the teeter. Otterpop, as is now usual, was manic and fired up and having a swell time until the second she set foot in the ring, would run slow but consistent enough, then want to go run around and do warmup jumps crazy fast as a reward. Otterpop seems relaxed and happy and not hating things and wanting to run crazy fast and show off her trained dog agility skills unless she is actually inside the ring. I am continually confounded. Gustavo had a good gambler's run, and then got sort of scarey freaky about a couple things as mentioned above by Otterpop. That gambler's was a good run. He got spooky during the other ones, though, I get anxiety and really, we both unglue. Otterpop's team Q'ed but not due to any lightening speed from her. Goddamn. Ruby really seemed fine just hanging out and not running at all. It was a nice, small, relaxed trial and I like all my agility friends. Thanks for everyone who understands my frustration with these trials and why I can't make them go like how we train.

Cooking With the Team-Sickly Little Dog Edition

Dog been barfing for 3 days. Has to eat the magic secret recipe of dog health. This is totally up my cooking alley. Culinary lame-asses, you will like this too.

First, stop at Safeway on your way home and get some chicken baby food. And you will find out that the baby food aisle is conveniently located on the cookie aisle. Who was the marketing genius that figured that out? So get cookies too, and you can eat those on the way home, but whatever you do, don't give them to the barfing dog.

Then, stop at the Thai place on your way home and get some steamed rice. They do it up nice there. I recommend Sabieng Thai for the closeness to my house, but you could also go to the Chinese food place too. And also if you are stopping at the Thai place, you could get some fresh spring rolls and peanut butter high fat sauce. If you finished off the cookies already, you can eat these on the rest of the drive home. Whatever you do, don't give them to the barfing dog. And don't try to use the peanut butter high fat sauce as a dip in the car. Trust me on this one.

Put the rice and some baby food in a bowl. If dog is getting an appetite back and isn't barfing it up, finally, dog not sick no more. Then you can enjoy the rest of your cookies and spring rolls, if any are left, for your dinner.

I have this feeling. That this recipe going to incite some emails from those of you who shake yer head and go, that Laura. Damned IDIOT. Saying it like this. ID-EEE-YiT!! Didn't she even think about this could be a lot more serious than just dog barf? Liver damage? Obstruction? Maybe your sickly little dog ate an entire tube top or a man bikini that is wrapping around chunks of guts. Yes. If your dog's stomach feels weird and there's pain along with the barfing, then go to your vet. Or maybe you have vet friends and you can completely irritate them and make them late with your dog gastrointestinal questions but they will help you decide, emergency vet for xray and bloodwork, or just stick with secret magic recipe of dog health.

After a couple days of recipe of dog health, Gustavo is perky again. Perky. A nice way to say freaky, leapy spazzola. And there he goes! Was sort of weird and quiet at home with no little insane fox-like creature leaping around and around and around and around. Carry on!

Team Small Dog channels an important message from King George the IVSomethingSomething.

As a public service, Team Small Dog offers some good advice as originally advice columned by King George of England. During WWII. Or just before it. When basically, the whole western world was going to shit.


Gustavo looks confused. Because is this Calm as in, don't Carry On when the border collies are running which involves monkeyscream? But if it's ok to Carry On, then is ok to monkeyscream? Like best of both worlds, Keep Calm until it's the border collies running then is ok to Carry On?


Or is it like an important psychic wave teleprompter message from Whiplash? The unflappable. Talk about a stiff upper lip. And a hairy one. Meaning just hold on tight. Don't let go. Use your tail when neccessary, and fingernails and gritted teeth. But no matter what, let's try not to freak out here. Because always. Always. ALWAYS. The dog eventually stops.

Finally, Team Small Dog returns to the agility practice field after their vacation.

Didn't do much agility the last week. OK, didn't do any. Because we had important things to do like drive around LA in a car. So when we went to practice this morning on the way to work, it felt like it had been years since we actually practiced. One week feels like one year. Which I think in blog years is actually 7 years? Or wait. 7 minutes? How does that work again?

Anyways, I set up the teeter totter a little low, set up a little sequence with some poles and a pinwheel that could also be part of a serp and a discrimination chunk. In non agility english, my non agility friends, that means I dragged some pvc jumps through the dead grass and kind of shifted them to and fro and would step back and admire, then step in and shift until, Voila! It looked so lovely. Like say you have just arranged the fruit platter to look like a tiny little Stonehenge and you carry it in and everyone goes, Voila! Or else they go, Goddamn stupid ugly lemons. But they probably don't say that in English. It's just in their head. Unless they're one of those people who thinks they are just thinking it but really they're saying it and stuff like that just comes out no matter how nice your fruit Stonehenge looks to everybody else.

So anyways. Otterpop practiced first, this is a nice warmup you can do, the whole pinwheel. The first part of a pinwheel and a pull through. One part and a pullthrough. Then backwards through part and pull through and back to non backwards. How many ways can you wear YOUR pinwheel? And I am highly impressed by Otterpop thinking, this Otterpop, she sure may be pain in the ass who thinks she can just bark at the Coast Guard, but this dog, she GETS the agility. We are a team. Mental illness aside, and completely freakish, bizarre behavior at trials not counting, this is one trained dog.

And I'm all pat pat pat on my back and throwing her frisbee and just gushing on, "What a gooood guuuurrll you are," and she's all just getting the frisbee and frothing at the mouth due to frisbee joy or else rabies. I'm pretty sure it was frisbee joy and eating some grass by mistake.

And then Ruby practiced the same Pinwheel–Like a Legwarmer you Could Wear on Your Arms and for a Cap and a Bikini Bottom Exercise, and it made me think about how different they are. Ruby is erratic but so fast but you really have to get in there and SHOW her what to do, whereas Otterpop, just gets it. Is like psychic and knows the Greg Derrett rules, which is actually not psychic but trained. And Ruby is trained sort of different, sort of hands on and just needs you to handle, and they are so different yet both so cool.

Pat pat pat on my dog trainer back and throw some more frisbee for Ruby now. Who only brings it back to get some cheese but so what. I have highly motivated dogs who love to play and I should win the Susan Garrett Award today!

And then it's Gustavo's turn and I am ready to feel all super dog trainery some more because I know he'll be all ready to go and pinwheel mania, except he sort of trots over to the fence and is ambling around and doesn't want to play frisbee or even chase his gross furry thing tied to a leash toy.

O M G. I have to turn in the Susan Garrett Award. She sends a Say Yes Instructor down from Canada on a broomstick who snatches it back. Off to Canada it goes. That didn't last very long.

This and that and this and that, he finally does a couple speedy pinwheel to the poles, and a couple teeter totters. He loves him his practice field teeter in a nearly obsene way. Like, now he runs across the field to get to the teeter because teeter totters mean biggest awards. Bigger than the Susan Garrett Award. The Vice President Joe Biden Award! Supreme Justice Sotomayor Award! Slammo! So did a little agility, although didn't have that back patting best dog trainer award winning feeling anymore because he seemed sort of off.

The successful dog training day, sort of just so so after that. Goddamn stupid ugly lemons. Did I break my dog again? Now he doesn't want to play and can only do a smidgey widgen of agility? This is the thought that is sitting in the back of my mind as I drive out to work and get on with the rest of my life.

This is the question though, that keeps answering itself now, over and over, in the form of dog barf! Dog not broken. Dog just barfing. Dogs sick enough to be barfing all over the couch and the rug and the bed and the car, should not be agility dogs. Should be white rice eating, sitting around dogs. Not cheese eating, teeter totter riding, running dogs. All dog trainer awards totally turned in now. PETA probably showing up on my doorstep as I speak to file a full report on dog sport abuse of sickly little dogs. Those evil, old agility ladies. Make their dogs run around chasing gross old furry things tied to leashes and pinwheeling until they barf. And barf. And barf.

And dog barf, might be one of those things best left unsaid. Might have violated one of the 7 deadly sins of blogging. Do not mention the barf or the diarrhea. Or fungus. Or fruit platters arranged to look like Stonehenge. See where a little too much back patting can get you?

Team Small Dog tours the Southland, and their social director doesn't even schedule in a single teeter totter ride.

Did you even notice, Team Small Dog away missing?


To the land of 1,000 Lakers. A million. A billion. Thank god they were winning. I think LA not a fun place to go if the Lakers aren't winning.


There was some howling.


But minimal. And they only barked at one officer of the law, one Coast Guard representative, and one guy with a completely restored '65 Barracuda. I am happy to report that I was not arrested and no one had to call the rest of the Coast Guard. Because I have learned not to photograph officers, Chinese shipping containers in Homeland Security harbor zones and stepped away carefully from the Cuda.


The small dogs toured places like the squirrel garden at Whittier College. The park in San Luis Obispo on the nice little river where the homeless people drink under shady trees. Hendry's Beach in Santa Barbara. The path in Palos Verdes where the old guy feeds many, many cats near the No Dogs beach. Beaches with rocks instead of sand and not one, not two, but three seal carcasses! Grassy fields with trucks screaming by on I-5. The cute downtown in Ventura where the CUPCAKES are. Multiple times, they were forced to act like dogs you see on tv and stroll around city streets and parks and sit outside pizza joints and not eat pizza or passerbyers. Thanks to the power of dog training, they totally did this. Or the power of something. Sheer exhaustion?

Hey, helpful travel tip! Always keep your cellphone in your pocket and have it on your dog's nametag because if you happen to have a dog that can squeeze through rat sized holes in fences, he might take a tour of the apartment house next door and make friends with all the surfer guys who are having a busy day drinking la cerveza on their deck. So you could get a call, all, "Duuude, I have this little black dooooog here and he's eating my catfoooood and I live on this busy street and..."

And when you go to find him, a super tan guy with puka shells might be feeding him catfood. Hypothetically speaking.


There were other, important reasons for our trip. Not naming names, unless your name is Laia and you got a Masters Degree!


Or like if you are Joey and you turned one years old and luckily have a brother who can do the whole candle blowing bit for you.


Or like the steaks! Wait! Team Small Dog, did not steal ANY steaks.

Really, were relatively mayhem free. Aside from the whole seal carcass thing. And I'm sure that the Harbor Police would appreciate me passing along the info that Homeland Security High Alert means EVERYBODY, even dog agility ladies, can't just drive around in our great Port of Los Angeles taking pictures of shipping containers. They do let you keep your camera if you just get back in that car nice and slow. But with the non stop weekend of graduation ceremonies and luncheons and brunches and birthday parties and going to the park and the pizza joint and the hippie cafe and the cupcake shop and the dog beach and finding sneaky places to run dogs and getting up at 5:30 and freeway driving, all crammed into 3 days, really too structured for us all to get into much trouble.

There are good dogs, and there are my dogs.

I usually get up really early, because either I like to wake up with the sun or Gustavo climbs onto my head at 6am sharp and the distinct feeling of a monkey pawing around in my hair and licking my skin jolts me right out of sleep in a panic. This morning, when I was in the shower, everyone else sleeping so peacefully. Quiet, well behaved dogs resting until it's time to go to the beach. Except for one dog, who not naming names if your name is Otterpop, who patiently and purposefully waits until I'm in the shower, then goes in and starts barking at the other dogs until she incites a howling riot. Premeditated, howling mayhem. Our walls are thin. I can hear every single bit of this from the shower and I have a distinct feeling there is probably cursing going on from anyone else who was quietly slumbering in the bedroom. Emphasis on the WAS part of that sentence.

I am pretty sure this is not a problem at Nancy and Jim's house. Just going out on a limb here to say that, but I'm pretty sure. And now Nancy has a new puppy and she has made a blog all about training it so it doesn't DO STUFF like that. Nancy is my dog agility friend, she has mostly border collies and one small sheltie that regularly beats the pants off of Otterpop. Some day, Jack, some day. When she's not busy training her dogs and her puppy and winning at dog agility shows, she is also the AKC World Team coach. Her husband Jim is my dog agility teacher, whenever I have enough cash for my homeschooled dogs to go to the big academy named Power Paws, where all the champions train. He also just happens to be, like, a huge super champion of dog agility, with his super champion border collies. You met him here once. He trained Black Beauty how to meet sheep her first time at Power Paws.

So my dog agility friends, perhaps you start getting some more useful information over there. It was nice knowing you.