AKC also stands for A Killer Casserole.

Maybe I am just a reactionary, uppity, over-reactor. But I have this thing about the AKC. American Kennel Club, my not a dog person friends. Oh wait. I scared you off long ago. Never mind. I used to not really think much about it. AKC, lots of people do agility at all the lots of AKC trials in our area. My dogs, not very AKC looking so never really pursued. Won't be going for a MACH and DQ's any time soon. A MACH is your warp speed award, non agility friends, and you need the DQ's for your warp speed. You can run a Non Purebred dog in the AKC, but you get it a special Indefinite Listing Privilege, which grants you the privilege to run in AKC agility, just as long as you are not trying to pass your dog off as for-sure purebred. It's for pretty-much-sure purebreds. I Love Purebreds, other way to sound out that acronym of ILP. All fine. My dogs aren't purebreds, maybe someday I would get a dog exactly customized for me by a breeder, but not really a big deal for me who happy to have an Otterpop found in the street. Most of my agility friends compete in the AKC as well as in USDAA. I like USDAA. I like CPE. All good.

Then a few months ago, AKC ran a survey to see what people thought about allowing Non Purebred dogs to compete in the AKC. But not exactly AGAINST the real AKC dogs. In a special subset, sort of removed, back of the bus, not such a nice neighborhood as regular AKC. So I would be able to actually do AKC agility, but not be allowed to do stuff like go to the Nationals, or compete against all the same dogs I compete against in the USDAA. I'd just be in there, competing against dogs that were a little bit less pure for a different set of prizes. I would be privileged in some ways, but not all the ways. A decidedly lower class of competitor.

I get the whole thing of having standards for purebred dogs. I do. Gives us healthy hips and healthy dogs, right? Not German Shepherds with weirdo backends and fatty labs. AKC, you wouldn't allow that, right? I get it that the AKC provides useful information for dog owners about how maybe a purebred border collie not the dog for you and the purebred yorkie is. I sort of don't get the whole confirmation dog show world, but I know some of you don't get the whole dog agility dog show world. And I am happy to stay out of that world, and you are probably happy to stay out of mine. But when my dog show world is based on training and dogs learning skills and running and not having anything to do with breeds and standards, but not letting all the dogs compete based on that, creepy.

And I couldn't get it out of my craw that what if people did that with say, kids' swimming or baseball? And maybe just started a group for kids of a race that was more pure and less melting pot? Even though there were lots of kids out there that tried just as hard in swimming or baseball, but were different or didn't have the papers? So they could do swimming in a different pool or baseball in a different league. No one was saying don't swim or don't play baseball, but just saying don't play with us. You go swim over there, away from us. And then, when the biggest swimming or baseball league FINALLY said they could compete with them, it would be in a sort of separate and not quite as equal league. Like am I the only person that thinks that is a little creepy? Am I too anthropomorphy with my dog beliefs here? Isn't equality sort of an important belief, like the whole civil rights deal of the 20th century? Like FINALLY our state said a-ok to gay marriage. Just give everyone the same rights?

The dog club I teach agility for holds AKC trials. They said hey, why dontcha come over and help us since you don't do the whole AKC deal. I like the dog club and I like all the people in it. I'm not a member, because it's very AKC and very obedience in orientation, and I am so not. But they are a great community resource, teaching obedience and agility classes to anyone that wants to try. I'm just the fringe teacher way over here, doing the silly wacky running stuff on Wednesday nights. And Rob teaches there and I take his class at the end of the night. But just didn't seem right to me, to go and volunteer to help fund an organization that holds beliefs that give me the heeby jeebies to think about. Maybe I'm just over-reacting and I'm a big fat meanie. It's just dogs, right? Right?

Our Consistent Handling System, Part 1.

Look who's in my computer. My agility boyfriend, Greg Derrett! He talks like Kate Moss. He probably knows her. So the only thing is, my Agility Boyfriend Greg, in the first 30 seconds of talking to me in my computer, he showed me pictures of border collies tugging with frantic border collies running circles around them and said that by the time I am seeing this, I have trained my dog to always: Play Under Any Kind of Distracting Circumstance Because It is Highly Motivated By You Regardless of His Environment. Check. Hi Gustavo, we got that?

The the border collies are running around in circles while his dog has a perfect stay, and he says I have trained my dog to have a solid wait Regardless of What is Going on Around Me. Because the border collies are running and running and his dog is just sitting there, drooling at the thought of running out to him and doing some jumps when his Kate Moss voice says, "OK!"

Then, he said that I have taught my dog directionals. And we saw his dog jump about a course with him nowhere in sight but I could hear his sweet Kate Moss voice calling out, "Close! Back! Close! Back! " to make the dog turn and jump and turn and jump and turn and jump and he is sitting in the lawn chair with margarita. Or a pint of Guiness? What do we drink in England, Bernadette? And I suspect there are no ugly Home Depot lawn chairs in England but just lovely garden furniture. So that's where he's sitting with his nice English drink. Gin and tonic maybe?

You know what my DVD is called, right? Great Dog. Shame About the Handler. This may be painful. You know what? I watched the season finale of Lost instead.

Another cute and useful dog trick to learn.

I hate shopping a lot. I hate malls, I hate selecting items, I hate trying things on. I would like a stylist to show up at my house with a boatload of clothes, and just throw ones at me that will fit and look real nice, and send me a bill. In lieu of that, there is ebay and there is the internet and there is using your dogs to do useful things for you. Let's take shoe ordering as a great trick you can teach your dogs to do for you.


Product Placement Zappos.com, an online shoe store that should sponsor Team Small Dog sells Navy Blue Slip On Vans, is so easy that even a dog can order you shoes and get them sent to you the very next day. It helps if you know your size and all that, and since I've worn this exact shoe since like age 13 which would be for 29 a few years or so, it is really easy to just type in Navy Blue Slip On Vans and here they come to your house. Or Red Goretex Trail Running shoes, or whatever kind of shoe it is you need. The thing you might like about Navy Blue Slip On Vans is they go with everything. Navy is a neutral, goes with jeans, skorts, shorts, dresses, whatever you want. Brown, black, camo, they all look good with Navy shoes. But make sure if you are wearing Vans with a dress you live in a surfish town like Santa Cruz or Hermosa Beach and there are no holes in them and not too fadey. And the bottoms are more for skateboarding than for dog agility so just be careful if you are doing a lot of running that day. Have your Red Goretex ones close by.


So I never really taught the dogs how to use the internet, but the other day, I sprouted a hole in the toe of the most recent pair of Product Placement Navy Blue Slip On Vans. So Gustavo, he can be hard to teach things like regular dog stuff, but he likes to sit at the desk, so I tried to see if he could figure out the super easy Product Placement Zappos.com website. Such clear usability! Easy to navigate, clean, simple design. No frills, lots of ways to search. Great product reviews, selection and product photography. Like here's a tagline for you Zappos.com, my new friend that I hope you are reading this and thinking let's give her a bunch of Men's Size 7.5 Slip on Vans in EVERY COLOR and THE ONES WITH THE FLOWERS AND SKULLS - So Easy Even Gustavo Can Use It!


In the end, he needed a little help. That's why we have Otterpop. Also she was the one that knows how to use the credit card. Maybe we never get him actually ordering off the internet but we'll try just checking email or bezier curves or something even easier next time I decide to teach him a new trick. Or we go back to that High Five that he's still trying to figure out. And actually start his Turn-Tunnel. Otterpop, please keep track of any purchases you guys make on that card, is all I ask of you.

Proofing your dogwalk contact-a primer.

All right. We're back and it is contact bootcamp week at my house. I feel mean and surly and like I have bad contacts and we are going to revisit EVERYBODY's and by the time dog shows start again for us in July, we will have sparkling clean contacts, all shiny like they've been bleached and dusted and waxed and vacuumed and look way better than the floors in my house.

So everyone has different dogwalk contacts in my family. I didn't plan this, it just happened. I believe it is evolution. Or devolution. Or disintegration? OK. They're not that bad, actually, our contacts are fairly decent but with, surprise, training holes in them sometimes. So we are going to actually practice all methodical like and see what happens. Let's start with Ruby.


She has a running contact. Did I teach it with years of careful practice, starting on the low board and clicking for millions of repetitions until we had a shiny happy and perfect contact? Of course not. It started as a 2o/2o and somewhere I fell in with a fast, dangerous crowd and I guess the peer pressure was too much and I started a quick release and it felt so good and I did it some more and before I knew it, a dicey, fly by night running contact. I was hooked. It was there. We tried to quit it here and there, contact rehab and cold turkey, but the monkey's there, on my back, and the monkey whispers, "fly like the wind ruby, down that yellow, fast as you can." We sometimes blow it, but I'm pretty good at holding it together, man. Except when that tunnel is there, staring me in the face, the mouth of god there, rolling it's big round lips into words, rolling off it's tunnel lips, "You should really have a totally consistent contact." And she's in, she may have bailed the yellow, but there was just no stopping her. Tunnel sucks her in and she's a goner but it feels so good.


So our little patch of a fixup is I throw food at the bottom of the dogwalk. I reward almost all contacts in practice. I click for feet in the yellow. It's a fine, thin line we walk on, this so-called running dogwalk contact. We are practicing clicking for feet in yellow during bootcamp. We'll see how it goes when the dog shows start up again. How do you like that turn to the tunnel? Inside hand, good thing I had a clicker there in my outside hand to keep it occupied. I believe that is good handling. Although I do need to stay near her dogwalk, is my tradition and voodoo belief.


You know, she's just a damn good dog and ran a whole heckuvalotta dogwalks today after a several week agility vacation and did not miss a contact out of the bunch. Or a turn to the tunnel or a straight ahead with the tunnel there. And never seemed sore and happy to run later in the evening at the beach. We believe her to be in good health and good spirits and will take that over maybe sometimes missing a dogwalk contact if that's what we have to do.


Otterpop started her contact career with a four on the floor. Which turned running on occasion when the judge was on her back and she was running down the dogwalk, looking over her shoulder trying to decide to jump, or perhaps fly off the handle at the judge, and we just decide to keep on running and get AWAY from that judge. So when she's slower, I just let her run down the bottom. So she practices sometimes running, sometimes stopping. Her cue is whether I call ok on the top or target. God knows if she gets this or not. I used to think she got it just fine until recently.


We have been practicing back with targets lately because she started leaping dogwalk contacts a couple months ago out of the clear blue sky. Always something. I believe I had said something to someone like, "Oh, Pop NEVER misses a dogwalk contact." Was struck down then and there. The agility commandment, Though Shall be HUMBLE re. your Contact Performance. Her four on the floor can be little haphazard and if it's too far out, creates too wide of a turn to the tunnel.


For some reason, I didn't really deal with the word turn with her so much as just say tunnel and point my claw and in she goes. But she is always speedy into that tunnel because frisbees lurk in the air outside of tunnels is her belief and speedy fast she goes hoping to be right. And Otterpop is always right.


Gustavo. Who is enough of a monkey we just stayed old school and 2o/2o on that dogwalk and it's staying like that until I receive some message from some mouth of god, saying, "You can Quick Release now." Like way far, down the line. Until then, he's staying put there. Too wiggly and giggly and fidgety and quick. Like maybe when he is 7 years old and has no giant wart on his snout.


We proof. He does ok. Feet are not supposed to be on the target and what am I doing about it? Yeah, that would be nothing. Sometimes I just really suck at dog training. Pick yer battles. He stopped, didn't he? He's staying put. A nose went down. Details, details, details.


So he doesn't have a turn exactly so to get him in the tunnel. And because we haven't formally met the whole concept of Turn-Tunnel, I am fully escorting him there and yes that is my outside hand and pointy finger. Special occasion. I swear we won't do many of these til I teach the turn. But the other dogs were practicing and it's just a couple and you know I won't get hooked. What's one or two tunnels? I promise, I promise, I promise I'll set up the baby tunnel by the contact trainer, maybe today and start teaching it the real way. One or two little ones, it won't hurt. Right? Right? You are NOT telling Susan Garrett on me. Or Greg Derrett. I know it's his system. Put down that phone. I knew you were his best friend. It's just one little outside hand turn, that was it. I swear. OK. We are going to practice right now, I promise, I promise, I promise.

Conditioning agility dogs based on their custom personality profile.

So I was looking at the calendar, and decided that it was time for the Team to get back into the swing of things so we're all back in shape for summer trials. Timmy seems to have stablized for now, happy enough to spend his days just laying there, sometimes getting his head stampeded on by the rush of small dog feet flying across the house, but not really noticing. He hasn't really improved, but he hasn't really gotten any worse, so we're going to see how long he can hang on like this. I just live with less sleep than I would like, and we have to plan and schedule things around taking care of him. Which is fine by me but requires organization.

Dog agility trials? Time to start conditioning and training again. Timmy would want us to. We never entered the Sunday DAM team trial for this weekend because I was worried Ruby would still be lame. And Timmy was so bad, I just wasn't sure how to deal with a weekend away. Ruby only just started to seem her normal self again last week, so it's just as well, goodbye to our only chance to get her Team Q on a Sunday. She started doing a little bit of conditioning this week, slowly building back up from her vacation, seeing if we can actually keep her sound for the summer trials. So we have been doing a little bit of hiking, trying to get some muscles into all of us on some good old fashioned hills. I think for Ruby, just getting her in shape and tough and strong is even better than practicing agility. And maybe trimming some of the flab off of my non conditioned self.

It's sort of a quandry, finding enough places to hike around here. Sometimes we go to Pogonip, which is officially an onleash place, but not heavily patrolled. Fun dog leash roulette, the way Lighthouse Field is now. Pogonip is a lot more land for a ranger to worry about than 33 acres, and a lot of it is heavy forest and probably not where the Rangers are going to be out and about. Ruby just stays off her leash the whole time. She hates being in Pogonip on a leash, and looks around all spooky and paranoid, like things will get her if she is tied up and can't get away. Off her leash, happy as a clam to trot by my side. She has the best instinct and common sense of all the dogs when she's out. One deer kick fiasco aside. I wonder if it was her past as a wild dog. Like she was so aggressive when she was young on a leash because her life before that had never involved being attached to something that could impede her own self preservation.

The other dogs, a whole different story. Otterpop and Gustavo just like to run and chase each other at flat out warp speed at all times, not really thinking in terms of we are out in nature where there are potential coyotes and deer and joggers and secret homeless campsites. They just think run. They should probably wear helmets. Otterpop usually wants to stay near me, but also likes to run ahead, like a trail scout. Gustavo, just likes running and running and running. Not for any reason other than running. He always checks in but he has no interest in actually Walking With the Group. Without Gustavo, Otterpop used to stay closer in with me and Ruby but with him, it's just insane running and body slamming. So those two stay on a leash until we're deeper into the forest where it seems like they'll do less damage and not go barreling blindly around a corner into unsuspecting joggers with their sedate golden retriever or stroller full of sticky babies quietly trotting along the main path. When they're on a leash, they pull me along out in front like a little team of driving ponies, so we all kind of run along the whole path anyways. Is sort of like jogging but jogging being pulled along by shrimpy little dogs.

I can't ever imagine Gustavo or Pop as feral animals, fending for themselves in a forest, living off of squirrels and tiny birds and nuts and berries. Ruby, not a far stretch. She's a natural and I think lived like that before I got her. Otterpop, she's a working dog. She belongs on a ranch, helping out her person with important jobs. She just wants her one person and she just wants her occupation. Which, in lieu of being able to actually work on the ranch (her old important job at the old ranch was lay down in the dirt by the gate when I was on a horse, just in case I needed her) has become agility and fetching sticks and being supervisor of the other dogs. Gustavo? Neither working nor feral. Even though his favorite thing to do is run as fast as he can, he is a house dog at heart. Even though he was a street dog, I know he always hoped to live in a house, sleep on a bed, sitting on laps and eating from actual bowls.


That difference in drive is what makes him such a puzzle. Ruby, I channel her prey drive. Otterpop, she is happy to work and is closest thing to a herding dog as chihuahuas get I guess. Gustavo? Who lived in the streets off of charm and cuteness and a sweet nature? Who loves to sit on the beds of old men whose eyes tear up when they pet him and ask me when they get to go home? Who the toddlers love to drag around? But has the speed to keep running through that tunnel a bunch of times and keep slamming the teeter down. And chase Cats! We kind of channel a lively party for him, tiki torches and little umbrella drinks and the promise of cupcakes with sprinkles at the end. Um, is that the Premack Principle? Not sure. Maybe I just call it party drive?

Walk around the neighborhood with the Team.

So there's these 2 guys on my street that are new additions to the cast of characters of my own little entertainment show that I call "Stuff That I See on My Street." I lead a pretty boring life. Some of these other characters include The Really Old Chinese Man That Gives Me The Stink Eye All The Time Except for When He Lets Out A Groundshaking Belly Laugh and He Has No Teeth. And of course, The Family With 3 Little Girls Who Wear Princess Uniforms Exclusively And Jump Off Their Fence Into The Street. The Small Boys With the Weapons. Crackhead Professional Surfer and His Skinny Skateboard Pal. Nervous Looking Yuppie Neighbor of Crackhead Surfer. Deranged Mountain Man That Climbs the Highest Palm Tree With a Machete. And there are so many more.

So these 2 new guys, maybe a little shifty. But probably just in a stealing aluminum cans from recycling bins way. Not going to be too worried about them. But they are just sort of endearing in their shiftiness, in a weird MTV sitcom kind of way, and even have their own dog sidekick too. We'll call their dog sidekick Buster. Maybe the guys have made up names for my dogs? Or maybe this is just something I do to pass the time.

Guy Number One is super tall. He's younger than Guy Number Two. Sort of a little gangstah, backwards cap and sometimes sporting the Blacks. If you dress all in black or all in blue, apparently you are sporting colors and it is kind of best to wear coordinates and not be all matchy matchy when outfit selecting in my neighborhood. If you are me, you are probably ok with all black though. Being a 40ish dog agility lady doesn't get me confused with being a gang member too often so I will frequently wear the all black (slimming!) and be matchy matchy with all my dogs. Like me, Guy Number One, he's sort of older than most colors wearers. He has Buster with him usually, who I believe is a relative of pitbull Teddy, from back in the day of our street of the fun pitbull breeding program 8 houses down. That didn't go over so well and we spent about a year never walking down that part of our block. It ended up with a couple kids in jail and the pitbulls vanished, with the parents off to Texas I heard. A couple with a baby and a couple dogs and Obama bumperstickers on their Subaru moved into their house and replaced the windows and pulled the weeds.

Sometimes Guy Number One also wears a garbage man style jumpsuit. Which is a little weird considering his other more stylish outfits, but that seems to go with the aluminum picking job so is more functional office wear for him. We are pretty sure he is not really a garbage man though, because he is more of a stroller and garbage men are not really known to just be strolling around the neighborhood at random times of day, selecting specific items out of garbage carts.

Guy Number Two is really old. He sort of shuffles down the street, and Guy Number One, when they're together, just walks slow with him. Sometimes they're together, sometimes I just see Guy Number One. Like maybe Guy Number One sometimes takes Guy Number Two out for a walk like I take Timmy? And brings Buster along too, so everyone is getting a little fresh air and exercise on the block. Although sort of a different kind of walk than with me and Timmy or the small dogs because Buster seems not so well behaved and subscribes to Leash My Ass even when walking in the street and goes bouncing off after a cat while the Guys stop and open up some trash cans and look in. Or Guy Number One, sometimes who carries either a coffee or a brown bag beverage, stops and hangs out by a recycling bin. He kind of takes a long look down the street, like to see who all is watching this. I wave. He waves back. He just hangs out there while I'm walking by, sipping his beverage, ignoring his pitbull who has gone after another cat, and enjoys the day.

I know. You're like, OK, where's the punch line or the exciting part where I chase his pitbull down the street with a board or start yelling at the Guys about something? But I guess that was the kind of day it was. I did help take home a lost dog, and during the wacky volkswagen starting debacle with the drunk guys I rescued the surfboard bag out of the street before the Lady That Moved Into the Cryogenic Guy's House ran over it while the Deranged Mountain Man and his new sidekick Another Deranged Mountain Man cackled over their Coors Lites. And the Guy That is Always Chopping Wood in His Straw Hat chatted with me about the weather for a minute and the Evil Robot Mailman ignored me and it was just another walk on my block.

Securing your dog agility field with a solid fence-a primer.

After work today, I went to a fence building. To help build a fence to for my friend's new dog agility field where someday, the new mobile home park will be built and the fence will have to come down. Because Santa Cruz county is all about developing agricultural lands for things like tract houses and mobile home parks. People sell their properties that are used for things like horse ranches or apple farms or dog agility fields, and other people do stuff with them like build tract houses or tennis courts or mobile home parks. We know how this one goes. We will revisit the ranch searching era one of these days when I ready to have another good cry and tell you why I rent a ranch and don't own one. Or a dog agility field. Another story for another day. For a while though, this field will be my friend's fabulous new dog agility field. Because her old dog agility field is going to become a mobile home park so she moves to this one which will also become a mobile home park. Another story for another day.

The fence building people had been hard at work all day, when Team Small Dog was hard at work at actual work all day. So I showed up there conveniently late and most of the fence was actually already built yet many snacks and beverage remained. There were some dog agility ladies there, and some husbands, and everyone was helping to build a nice strong and tall fence to keep the dogs in and away from the busy road. Dog agility lady fence building sort of looked like this. One of the husbands, a talented fence builder, would work on the fence with my friend. Someone else would sit in the lawn chair with a pepsi. Someone would play with some dogs. Someone else would hold stuff for the fence building husband. Someone would put border collies away that were getting scared of the super loud Blue Angels airplanes from the Air Show flying over the field at one gazillion miles per hour scaring the dogs. The field is very convenient to a small airport for those dog agility people with their own small planes or for Blue Angels during the Big Air Show.

Over the field, on one side of the air, were Blue Angels! On one side of the air, fire dousing helicopters! Someone (possibly me) would watch the airplanes and say stuff like, "I don't feel like I'm helping very much but WOW look at those planes!" Because how often can you look at the sky and see helicopters swinging giant cloth buckets over a forest fire and on the other side of the sky Blue Angel airplanes flying in little bunches, looking like they are going to crash right into you and making this insane loud noise that makes you stick your hands flat on your ears and press in and go WOW! And then I would look at the sky and wave at them as if they could see me down on the future mobile home park / dog agility field waving at them driving their loud planes. The same way I've been waving at all the firefighters driving around in their truck convoys. I am like this total waver now which I am pretty sure I used to not be. Somehow, by the time I went home, after doing important jobs such as Turn on the Hose and Could You Find the Tape Measure and be a Small Dog Specialist and see if small dogs could get out of the fence through fence holes, there was a very nice large fence built around the new future dog agility field. Team Small Dog, always happy to put in a hard day's work in the name of dog agility.

A simple math lesson involving horses and fires.

So let's be clear. I was never in any danger of burning up, nor was my ranch or any of my horses or my customers' horses. We were lucky ducks compared to a lot of folks still worrying about their property and their animals. But here's the thing in a fire. When you see a fire moving down out of the mountains at an alarming rate of speed, all of a sudden you have to figure out, what are we going to do with the horses? And you start to have a big math problem to solve. Here's the equation:

X = (amount of horses)
times
Y = (amount of horse trailers)
/ divided by the fact that some trailers hold 2 horses, some 3 horses, some 4 horses, and so on up to maybe even 9 horses, except right here and right now are the 3 and 2 horse ones but maybe the bigger ones come later variable.

Here's the square root now. Some horses are too big for some trailers or need to ride in the front or can't turn around in that trailer or ride next to that horse or that one is a crappy loader.

And the word problem part is where are you taking the horses and how long does it take to get there and they have room for how many horses?

And you have an unknown variable involving potential damage and injury to horses at unknown places to balance out with potential no injury if fire Doesn't move down mountian times higher chance of worse injury or worse if fire Does move down mountain.

Divide that by how long would it take the fire to come over that ridge closest to us with the subset of once it's smokey the horses are not so happy to just hop in trailers?

Multiply by Oh Shit the Wind Changed Again and LOOK HOW FAST THOSE GIGANTIC FLAMES ARE MOVING DOWN THE MOUNTAIN.

Addition part: Add to your new list of 90 gazillion phone numbers each call that you are getting non stop, all day. Much of the first fire day was spent on the cel phone. Talking to all the people that assume that being a trainer, I will know Everything and What To Do so they call me. Except I'm calling other people I think know Everything at the same time. Mostly people are calling to find out about the safety of their horses, and then people calling to see how they can help. People I don't know or used to know or know their name or never heard of them and I am talking to them and we are all trying to figure out what to do with their horses and our horses. And people I don't know come in and offer help and we send people out to people they don't know to offer help. Everyone is on best manners and behavior and only thing anyone is thinking about is how do we get all the horses somewhere safe.

Pretty much I was doing mathematical equations all day long on the fire day. I never was any good at math but sometimes you just need to make yourself good enough at it to get by because everyone just assumed I was the math whiz and so I tried to let on like I am the Professor of High End Math here and I will figure all this out. I had a lot of help and I have a partner who is a super Professor of High End Math. I think I mostly just talked on the phone. We only moved enough horses out to make the math problem seem less hard in the event the fire did make it to the closest ridge. Which it didn't. And we were able to get all the horses back easily and undamaged the next day. Better safe than sorry was Everybody's motto on the first fire day.

Lots of people did not come out so lucky and are still up there, waiting to see what happened to their places. We watched all day the second fire day helicopters scooping up water, and buzzing around in the smoke like bees in a lilac bush dropping their water out. A normal day at work for a helicopter fire guys I guess. I had a nice normal day at work, all safe and sound because the wind had ended and the fire stayed put up on the mountain instead of coming down to us in the foothills. I read in the newspaper some people lost dogs and cats and other animals because they had no time to get out. All of ours worst fear. I had my dogs with me all day, they went everywhere with me. The only running they did was when I had them out on a walk early that first fire morning. For some reason, I put my phone in my pocket which I usually don't do to walk the dogs. Leave me in peace for a tiny part of my day. It had been a bad Timmy night. Got the first call asking me were our horses ok in the fire and I was like "What Fire?" and good thing we are a super fast dog agility team, me and those small dogs you should have seen how fast we hauled ass back home to jump in the car and go.

We interrupt this whole dog thing for the Fire.

Well hey, nothing like a little fire to give you a bigger picture to worry about. Any of you heard about that giant wildfire in the Santa Cruz mountains? It was precariously close to my ranch all day, and this will just be a quick update for all of you that the ranch is ok, our horses are all ok. We did evacuate some of them out this afternoon when it was looking just too close for comfort, but we are hoping that nothing shifts tonight drastically tonight and we can leave the rest of them there and all good. The winds are supposed to subside overnight and hopefully they get it sort of contained.

So just figured some of you would be wondering, and I know how you get worried if I don't give you a nice story every day. But on the chance I am back out there tonight or early to move more horses, there you go. But I think it will all be fine, at least for us. I know hundreds of horses have been coming down from the hills, moving out to the fairgrounds. So I think we have been very, very lucky. I know, this was a very utilitarian, functional without frills message from your sponsors. But that is about all I can muster for you and just think nice wet and not windy thoughts for us all and mostly for everyone way up higher in the mountains. No crispy critters jokes. Horses and fires just really, really suck.

Here is a whole thing on an agility blog about not doing any agility.

For the first time ever, I guess, I bailed on agility all week. I didn't stop at the field to practice. I did no weave poles or contacts in the driveway. We're on a hiatus from Dirt Nite for a few weeks. I'm not going to practice on the way out to work today. I just want to spend that extra little bit of time around the house with Timmy. He seems to be perkier in the morning so maybe it helps him if me and the other dogs are around for just a few minutes longer before we drive out to work. Not sure. But that's just how we're playing it this week. It sort of creeps me out, like what is my next phase in all this? Like then I have to start canceling work and not leaving the house and dragging Timmy around in a baby stroller and never get out of my bathrobe and stacking newspapers in towers all around my house? Whispering to strangers the life story of Timmy, Best Dog, with a sort of glazed over look in my eyes?

I think I might be playing mental voodoo roulette about him. Like if I leave 25 minutes later for work, when I get home tonight he will be 67% better! If I skip agility practice, he will notice and be so thankful that he will be able to walk and see the stairs he is about to fall down. If he spends an additional 15 minutes around the other dogs, he will be revived to a more youthful status, say that of 3 weeks ago. This is probably not a healthy way of thinking. Is probably sort of grasping at straws. Apparently I am at the graspy stage of dealing with the future of not having Timmy, a future that just seems so very sad. Is sort of like when you are driving, and you think for a moment, death is the best thing for him. His quality of life is very low, he doesn't do anything he used to enjoy. It is time. I am OK with this. And then, in a blazing second later, as soon as you think I am OK with this, then you think, I am Not OK with this. I am not going to end the life of him if he wants to have some more life even if it is a peeing on the floor and dancing around in the puddle kind of life then running top speed across the kitchen floor and crashing into a wall. Then unable to walk 5 minutes later faster than a drunken shuffle like an old guy sitting in front of the Vets Hall with a cold one in a brown bag. Who drops the beer and starts to yell to no one in particular about something incomprehensible but possibly involving South American rodents. Little dribblets of saliva all over his chin.

Like yeah. He is crazy. He is a mess. But really. He used to be someone else, and he's still here, and maybe we need to just let him hang on a little bit longer. Because no one is talking about euthanizing the drunk guy in front of the Vets Hall. All the old folks we visit in the old folks home, they aren't who they used to be. But we let them go on and live out their lives, even if they are sort of weird and crappy lives that really suck compared to who they used to be. This is not Logan's Run. Remember? Farrah Fawcett is in that. And at the very end, instead of everyone dying before they get old, they find out they actually get to live to become old homeless guys sitting in front of the Vets Hall with a beer. I think the sun comes up on their Logan's Run future city like it's a new day. It's just a new day that someday is going to really, really suck.

He is our own ghost, but he is not so much like Casper.

Timmy is still here. His lows are lower and his highs are pretty uneventful. But I have this idea that he doesn't quite yet want to go. I listen at night for the fast little clack clack clack of his too long toenails pacing around on the floor. We keep all the lights on all night like we are having a fun and super party so he can see as he makes his circuits around the house. Sometimes I wash the floor at 2am if he couldn't wait for me to get him out. Then I never know if he's going to sleep or frantically make his circuits again. Too frantic and I tranquilize him when it seems neccessary.

I take him out to the yard and sit with him in the night. You have to watch him so he doesn't get stuck and start to freak out. I sit on our porch steps at 3am and see cats, or shady guys up at the payphone at the corner store. I don't think he can really see hardly anything at all. Sometimes one of the other dogs will walk up to him and he looks like he's seeing a ghost. They don't seem to know what to do with him anymore and pretty much treat him like the ghost, as if he wasn't there.

A walk up to the corner isn't so fun anymore, it takes about 10 minutes to go past 3 houses. The list of things he can't do keeps growing, but then later on he seems content to just lay there at my feet. This kind of Timmy means I stay up a lot of the night. During the day it's like I'm the ghost now with the fuzzy memory and slow moving. Except I'm allowed to drive a car.

These are not really supposed to be part of a handling system.

OK. I am not sure what Greg Derrett's system says about weird pointy fingers. I haven't gotten his videos yet to do my review session. I can't really remember if claw-like, pointy talons are a big part of his handling system. I am going to guess that this part I have improvised all by myself! There are so many nice places one could point while running around a course to indicate grass, sky, judges, parking lot, shoes, and ears.


Here is a nice picture demonstrating the sheer panic pointing finger. I actually remember why, I had missed the front cross I was hoping for and had to run this whole little section of the course with rear crosses, which I am convinced Hobbes hates me doing with him, and I know I did something weird, I was so paranoid of making him hate me, and he hit a bar. So that all covers the sheer panic screamy face, but not sure what I am pointing at to go along with it? Sheer Panic Gratuitous Pointing, not part of the system.


So I believe that my left hand is doing an out, which is part of the system. Hooray! But it is like an arthritic claw of an out. Uh oh. And my right hand is pointing to what would be a blue circle if we were on the Twister mat. Just sort of running and pointing and luckily Hobbes knows the system and is not wondering about where the blue circle would be if we were doing Twister. Will have to check, but I believe arthritic crab claw is part of that T-Touch stuff and not Greg Derrett Handling System.


I am VERY sure kneeling at the 26" table and showing fangs to the dog is NOT in the system. Like I am boring him into laying down and staying there with the sad saga of my front tooth. Wait til you hear that story. It's a doozy, but I won't tell you because you'll never come back to Team Small Dog. I believe that Independant Obstacle Performance is part of the system, and either scaring dog with fake tooth or boring him with the whole story of the dental fiasco to get a down on the table is Not Independant Obstacle Performance. But possibly not pointing here, may be crossing fingers behind my back if I am telling him some kind of fib that will get him down on the table. "Hobbes, it looks like you have something on your tooth? Like some spinach? Is that basil? No, that tooth, over there..." until the And Go.


Here is a pointing hand pointing at the earth. I suspect my left hand is pointing somewhere too. And Otterpop is like, "Duh. Teeter going down. Called Gravity, you knucklehead. Don't need to point at it." Gravity, definitely part of the system. Pointing out to the dog? Not.


Crooked pointy finger indicating the grass at bottom of entire yellow zone. Let's put that in the independent obstacle performance group. Because pointing at the grass at the bottom doesn't really have anything to do with run all your stubby little legs through the yellow painted bit. That is a lot to explain with one bony finger.


Pointy finger indicating a late front cross. Or perhaps this is on time. This is either a stunning example of my handling system or just really sucks. I can't tell anymore. I believe this is correct pointing unless Otterpop interprets as giving her the finger and gets mad and tries to bite it. I like this picture. It's not often I get to see Otterpop looking like a tiny, little pony. I can tell you I never, ever point at the real ponies though.

Preparing the therapy dog for his job-a primer.

Yesterday Gustavo had a therapy dog visit. It's not as easy as it looks, having a Certified Pet Assisted Therapy Dog. There's stuff you gotta do. First thing is, get the dog tired. You gotta go down to the beach, run him hard, chase those sticks until all the dogs start to look a bit parched and peaked. Like that ever happens. But you gotta at least take the edge off, so he isn't fidgety and wild with the old folks. Maybe he could be like that poodle that just lays quietly on laps? The other therapy dogs are so, um, still? But wasn't happening yesterday. The fog rolled in, was nice and cool, and the dogs were tireless. Uh oh.

So Gustavo is dripping and sandy and needs a bath. Quick dog bath. Clock is ticking, was too long at beach. Throw the dogs in the front yard to dry off, and to try and get Timmy to eat some food in peace. Where is Timmy? Wedged between the waterheater and the dryer, just standing there, waiting to not be stuck. Poor Timmy. Go check on if wet dog is drying. Therapy dogs required to be dry. Only 2 dogs in front yard, the wet one is missing. Augh! Under the house. In the dirt and cobwebs and whatever else is under houses. Making the special noises ala screaming monkey and dashing about under our entire floor plan, subterranean style. Get him out through the crack he went in.

What is on his previously clean neck? Some kind of foulness excreted by something that apparently also likes running around under the house? That was maybe getting chased around under the house? Dunno. No TIME for this DAMN DOG! You are a THERAPY DOG and I am pretty sure the other therapy dog people are not giving their good and still and clean therapy dogs a second bath when they should be leaving the house! Industrial strength rubber gloves required for bath number two.

Gratuitous photo from guest photographer due to no way taking photos on this day.

By now, is clear that it's that kind of day, it is inevitable that as you run out the door you keys will be GONE because the Beatles are on the stereo, and they are playing that song Happy Birthday. Which is a song, honestly, you don't even like. And you can't help it, you are in a hurry, and you yell to Otterpop, "Hey, Otterpop, Happy Birthday!" not thinking about the power of the words you just said, and from the living room the HOWLING starts and by the way you can't find any socks, because you have trained your dogs the cute trick to HOWL when you ask Otterpop 'Is it Your Birthday?' and when she starts it and then they all howl together. Real loud, like. Real cute trick for one or two times then dog strangling may have to start. STOP HOWLING DOGS! you are hollering as you leap into shower.

And then like a flash you get out of the shower and you put on your pants and there is a hole in them. By the back pocket. That would surely show your underpants to old folks if you wear them. It is a suspicious hole as if someone discovered dog treats in that pocket and chewed their way to them and because you are not always tidy and maybe fell into bed at midnite leaving them on the floor likely it was a renegade small dog who has ruined the pants. Not horrid, ill fitting Gap Jeans but expensive ones, purchased on sale but still. The best ones. Can not have an underpants showing hole for visiting the old folks.

And so you are running into the bedroom to find new pants and the shirts stayed in the dryer for days so are all wrinkled but there is no time and you find some other pants and howling just starts on it's own again and you can only see small black dogs, wherever you look. Like have they multiplied? There may be no car keys but there are hundreds of small black dogs. You cannot tell them apart but one is chewing a pen that was procured from the desk? The counter? STOP THE HOWLING and there is Timmy. A little calm in the storm, but having his own tiny storm, spinning in circles on the kitchen floor. He just spins, and spins, and spins, and spins. Not unlike so many of the people that we're off to go sit with, maybe to see if they can stop their own kind of spinning for long enough to pet the soft little dog.

A little tale for a Sunday that ends with a big, dead bush.

This is one of those little tales that tells us something at the end. I think. I'm not sure what it's going to tell us yet, but I think it might have something to do with why my subscription to my handling system has led me to a career as a five faulter. And I shall tell you this tale through gardening.

Wait. Stop laughing all of you who know about me and gardening. Let me explain. Did you ever get the idea I might be the kind of person who can work really, really hard at something but perhaps do it in a completely retarded way because I did not exactly follow the instructions because I am unteachable or my attention span is somewhat short? Like if I were a dog, I would not get awarded border collie status. I don't even know what status. You tell me. I'd sure like to hear that.


So. When we bought our house long ago, the backyard consisted of cement and a tree. It was a beautiful magnolia tree, with blossoms and ugly cement, in some places 2' thick. And I decreed, it would all go because all of a sudden I was a landscape architect and I would design a perfect backyard as seen in Sunset Magazine! I was in that phase. Pre-agility career. Because I know what all your yards look like. Although we are talking about enough space in my yard for like one giant sized plastic penguin only, let alone weave poles. So anyways, the tree got chopped down, a whole story for another time, and I ripped out that cement with a sledge hammer and a jackhammer. And I started to collect plants from places such as the side of a road in a garbage bag, flap of cardboard taped on that read FREE. And then I began to collect the same way I collect plates with log cabins on them and deer items and molding taxidermy and broken digital cameras and then we had millions of plants. And just ask Joel Warner about the whole rock patio and flattening the dirt fiasco.

And then these so called plants grew and I grew tired of gardening and moved onto other new endeavors. And then the plants eventually started to kill eachother, survival of the meanest, and my husband grew cranky and wanting the yard that had at some point looked at least interesting and yet hardly Sunset Magazine as promised. Since my landscape architect skills often involve hanging silver reindeer from things and plastic horses, Sunset Magazine was a stretch. In MY mind Sunset Magazine, to the naked eye, a yard full of crazy. So he said, perhaps in All Your Free Time you should do some more gardening but DON'T CUT DOWN THAT BUSH WITH THE RED FLOWERS. Sort of blocks the neighbor's house and I think he likes those red flowers.


And I got home from work early yesterday. And he wasn't home. And I thought, I could do that gardening I've been putting off for the spring   this year like 3 or 4 years. And I got the big clipper things. And you know what the only thing I ended up cutting down was, right? I couldn't help it. It just happened. Wait. Did this tell us anything about dog agility? I am pretty sure it does. Because I think some of you, my five faulter friends, might have done this same exact thing. I am not totally sure what I'm getting at or what the moral is, but at the very least. Thank god dog agility does not involve power tools and hedge clippers.

I am full of joy that I do not have a giant wart on my muzzle.

Oh Dear. I've bitten off a big chewy bite of dog training now, with my promise of taking you on a journey of Greg Derrett, Team Small Dog style. Like when you stuff all the sushi in your mouth in front on the sushi chef and he looks at you, and you know he's thinking, gross, disgusting, rice dribbling, soy sauce drooling lady. No free sake bombs for you. But have no fear. I have asked to borrow the Greg Derrett videos! Although, you remember last time I tried to watch dog training videos. Attention span of a flea. But I haven't seen the Greg Derrett ones in years and maybe now that I always sometimes wistfully actually remember to use my Handling System that I subscribe to I will have a longer attention span to better translate to both my agility friends and my non agility friends who I will reel in thinking that I have a subscription to a Dog Agility Boyfriend. And we will do it to sizzling disco grooves and we're going to have a grand time.


But for right now, can I tell you about Gustavo's wart? We pretty much just call him warty face now. Not that I don't have a Timmy with real and genuine medical problems that I should be thinking about, but disgusting facial warts are a nice way to think about something that isn't Timmy pacing and heavy breathing on the floor here next to me. This one I guess is histiosomethingnotcancerousprobably. I am very lucky that 2 of my beloved customers are small animal vets and since my dogs are part of the landscape at work, there is no avoiding vets for my dogs. They just think it's nice ladies at work letting them sit on their laps. So this kind of wart is the kind that most people start to freak out of the ugliness when it reaches the size of your thumbnail. Which is the precise size that they should start falling off all on their lonesome, sans surgery. According to the histiowhateveritis wart belief system. Vets learn this stuff in vet school just like we learn handling consistency in dog agility school. And all the vets I know were WAY better students of veterinary medicine than I am at dog agility school.

So one of my beloved vets is more of a surgeon type, performing important dog saving surgeries every day, and she said he could just come in on Monday and she'd hack that thing off and stitch him up. But the other beloved vet is of the Just Let the Damn Thing Go Away On It's Own school of wart belief. Which she says is hard because it's at this thumb size that people really start to do things like writing up little stories about their dog's wart and then not being able to stand the sight of it and getting it hacked off and stitched up. I'm tending to try and use patience and not looking at his face so much and just hoping the thing goes away. Dealing with nose stitches on a dog that never sits still? Who is getting ready to go on a journey of dog training that will turn him into a perfectly, well greased mini Hobbes? (Who is like totally the teacher's pet of Correct Handling System usage. But like a really cool teacher's pet, not one the other kids are going to gang up on and steal the pants of. )

There might just be this one little flaw in this whole plan. That I am somewhat unteachable. And teaching me tends to make things go horribly awry and end up with the furniture hooked up to earthquake machines and the paint all falling off the house. Oh boy. Good thing it will involve sizzling disco grooves.

Greg Derrett's handling system made easy.

So my non dog agility friends. Do you ever wonder how we make the dogs tootle around our little courses out there? If you are my dad, your dog is very smart and could do it without ever having to practice a thing. I believe many people have this view of dog agility. Which is fine. Come and try it with me one day. Your ass will be so kicked and you will be in awe of the magical training powers us dog agility people use to get our dogs to go over and through and around.

Some of us even have a system. Sort of like betting on the ponies and making a lot of money. Or sitting, staring at a roulette ball in a drunken stupor for hours at a time trying to win back your money. Using your system. I have one for agility but I did not invent it, I subscribe to the system of Greg Derrett. Sort of like I subscribe to the New Yorker magazine. They come to my house all the time, with their colorful and witty covers. They sit on the table full of important information and well written things that make me cry at the whole well writtenness of them that I cannot ever hope to aspire to. Sometime they are full of very, very boring articles that would make me very smart and enriched to read and other times with articles that when I do get around to reading them make me very happy I have read a Whole Article in the New Yorker because it was about monkeys or earthquakes or a chef with cancer of the tongue. So I subscribe, but I don't always utilize to full advantage except in my mind.

Who is laughing out there that are my agility friends, because you are saying, Laura, you DO NOT USE a handling system! And you NEVER read the New Yorker! YES I do! But sometimes it is just in my mind and not in my body and OK, sometimes I just say I am running fast just haul ass running but I am a Trained System User!

So let's meet my New Yorker magazine of dog agility. Hi Greg Derrett! Let's say he is my agility boyfriend. He is from England and has talented border collies and a beautiful agility wife. I know. Some of you are his best friend and with his wife too. And now you will go and tell him I said that he's my agility boyfriend. That's fine. When I see Gwen Stefani I'll tell her you told me she is your Rock Star Girlfriend. We'll be even. But here's how I shall explain his handling system to you, my non agility friends who think perhaps I should be spending more time doing activities that are not dog agility. Let's put out the Twister mat, shall we?


All right. Stand facing me. Right foot on blue, left foot on yellow. We see a discrimination-aframe on the right, tunnel on the left. Right shoulder bends down to yellow, left hand down at side pointing towards yellow foot. Give shoulder, not the finger people! The technical term for this move is called Special Occasion Hand. Save it for the special occassion of the inside thing of the discrimination when you are worried over crossing a refusal line!

Easy, right?


OK. Both feet on blue now. You are driving at that aframe and you want the tunnel! Left hand out, over blues now up towards yellow and over green! Nice job! Tunnel not aframe! You just used Damn Thing Away From Me Arm! This should work from far distances if you are a good subscriber!


Now. Stick your dog on yellow, yellow blue blue next to you. We are going to threadle. You are on blue blue. Ready? Left foot up to yellow. Left hand and shoulder move inward, down towards the yellow on the right. Rotate! Right foot to red, hurry! Shoulder not finger again, right? Don't flick away! Yellow! Get to Yellow! Wait, Blue!! I said rotate. We use this threadle all the time. Not to be confused with twizzle.

OK. I could go on for hours here but you sort of get it, right? Are you subscribing? I am actually going to Review My Handling System this month since there are no dog shows for us until Fourth of July. Staying home to get Ruby back to herself and have some more time with Timmy. Do some actual jump training with Gustavo. It is going to be Consistency Time for Real, a Journey into Better Dog Agility and I am bringing all of you with me.

The Satorialist has snuck into my yard and didn't even get bit.

Do you like this website, the Sartorialist? This guy, we believe he is very handsome and smart and extremely well dressed, he goes around taking pictures of people he says dress nice. Sort of like the fashion police but super classy. Sartorial, who says that? Usually he just stays in New York. But look. He showed up in my backyard this morning! He says, "Laura, I want to do a Style Profile on YOU!"

Thanks Sartorialist!

Job?
Visual Generalist, Horse Trainer, Former Artist, Semi-retired Design Professional

Best Sartorial advice from your parents?
You are NOT LEAVING THE HOUSE IN THAT.

Style icons?
Sort of Courtney Love crossed with Princess Diana crossed with Roy Rogers crossed with Keith Richards crossed with I Love Lucy.

Describe your personal style
Sunglasses: Hopefully not lost.
Shirts: This one has a gopher with wings!
Polo shirts: I gotta get one of those.
Knitwear: Lexi once knit me a cowboy hat!
Denim jeans: Oops. These ones are from the Gap. That's embarrassing.
Jacket: I have so many jackets! My favorite one I can't find and it is brown polar fleece.
Suit: Hmm. I am pretty sure I have some swim suits from Old Navy but I never wear them.
Watches: I lost my watch a long time ago. Just carry my phone around in my pocket and try not to sit on it.
Umbrella: ???
Gloves: I wear black ones at work all the time. Some horse brand.
Shoes: Navy Blue Slip on Vans. These are the best. You will love them.
Fashion shoes: Fluevogs!
Sport shoes: You know those red goretex ones and everyone laughed at them? Also my soccer shoes.

I build my daily look around?
It is on the top of the laundry pile.

Personal Style quirk?
Brown is the new black. And then wear them together.

Most cherished item?
I think dogs are a great accessory and are they items? But I cherish them. Clogs?

I feel best wearing?
A skort!

The first thing I look at in another Sartorialist?s outfit ...
Could they wear that for dog agility or at the barn?

I always break this fashion rule.
Hmm. I might be breaking a lot of fashion rules, Sartorialist. Could you go shopping with me?

Never caught wearing?
Teva sandals!

Most underrated item in menswear/womenswear?
Navy blue slip on Vans!

Dress to impress who?
Well, gee. How about all those Team Small Dog readers who are looking to ME to provide some nice style advice?

Shine your own shoes?
I hadn't thought of this. Shiney shoes would be nice!

Shoetrees?
There is a tree down the street from me that they hang stuff for free in. I have gotten a book on trains there and a fur stole with eyes and claws but I usually do not partake in shoes.

Favorite stores?
How about ebay and zapposshoes.com? Oh, don't forget Target! We are supposed to list our favorite stores in glamorous European Cities here but we really only usually go to Target and maybe Urban Outfitters, the house of chintz.

Your next "must have" purchase?
I think someday I would like a border collie but I would like to get one from a rescue and wait til I have a bigger house. I was thinking it would be cool to get a huge box of plastic bags to use for poop bags.

I skimp when buying ...
Cereal.

Favorite item of clothing
Jeans.

Guilty pleasure
Are dogs guilty pleasure? We have a lot of them. Pizza? Oh, I know, Cashmere!

Cologne, skincare?
Kiehls.

Most stylish city?
I think they always look way better than me in San Francisco no matter what I wear.

When I was high school I wore?
Things that were either too short or too ripped or too long depending on whether it was my stoner phase, punk rock phase, or hippie phase.

Sports?
Dog agility man!

Favorite fashion magazine?
We get Clean Run and the New Yorker. Sometimes they are like fashion magazines?

Favorite vacation spot?
Panguitch, Utah and Tonopah. Here I think we are supposed to list our favorite European secret places but really I have been to Paris once and Tiajuana and Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Nevada. Oh well.

Favorite neighborhood restaurant?
We very much like taquerias and pizza. There are lot of places for both in our neighborhood.

Otterpop has saved the day.

So I had to decide today, what do I do? Do I just go to work all normal like Timmy is fine and dandy? I sort of have to. Work is work. Gary comes home at lunch and checks in on him, but I work 45 minutes from home. How about leaving early to practice agility on the way? Is that allowed? Doesn't really seem fair. He seems to want me around all the time and that keeps him hanging on. I'm going, I'm not going. I'm hemming, I'm hawing. OK. Life goes on. I leave early enough to practice some dogwalks with Gustavo at least.

Since it feels sort of dirgey and Adams Family at my house, we just haven't much felt like doing agility. It's really never been Timmy's thing, except for the treats part and the barking. Which is fine, Ruby's on rest time, Otterpop is Otterpop, but Gustavo. Our little Gustavo. This is what we know of Gustavo. I don't know why anything he does surprises me. Gustavo is just pants cut from some weirdo cloth that I forget every time the pockets are down at the cuffs and there is no zipper and you need to slip them on over your head. He is why we must try to practice. He NEEDS to practice everything a lot of times. Really a lot. And, to add frying fish to the frying pan, a friend was watching him the other day on the dogwalk, and noticed this little cute foot thing training flaw that I've created. If he flies down to the bottom and misses the nose touch, he slams on the brakes and backs up his back feet to get back on the board. Which technically, is an E. Not a cute thing to do with his hairy little feet at all. This was all me though, not him. I've gone and done it. Screwed up another dog.

So out we go, stop at the field and just gonna do a couple things. Left Timmy with some dog treats on the floor and hope he just falls asleep til the end of the day. I guess I don't really feel that into it, but I KNOW we have to fix that dogwalk before I am the laughing stock of the dog trainers for having such a sucky contact. I teach agility, for crissakes. The teacher cannot have messed up contacts. The teacher has to figure out how to train a Gustavo. Enough is enough. So, with a big sigh, I drag myself out to warm him up over some jumps, and he looks at me like I am a daisy or perhaps a carnation in a scenic yet boring way, and trots over somewhere and finds a gopher hole and just sticks his long, pointy nose in. Him, of usually weirdo antics, and monkey screaming and a million and one tunnels, is like, not today.

OK. Someone here must feel like doing agility. Maybe I don't, maybe he doesn't. But we always have Otterpop. Who sees me coming over and starts leaping around at the end of her rope like that thing at the Boardwalk that flies around in a circle and causes barfing no matter what. Flinging and flying and barking and bouncing. She sees I have the FRISBEE and just is crazy to do something. Anything. I see a little distance sequence of jumps for her, and with my morose, funeral director personality, can just stand there with a dour expression and stick my arm out and direct her through it no problem. "Jump," I quietly sigh with a roll of my eyes, like this is so meaningless in the big picture of old, sick dogs and earthquakes in China. "Tire," sounds kind of exasperated but off she goes. Hey, that's pretty funny. I can just stand there and barely speak and stick my arm out and Otterpop still loves agility. Let me go stand WAY over there and see if she'll still do this little sequence of 5 things. Out to a jump, jump, jump, turn away from me to the tire, serpentine back thru the jumps and I am WAY over there. Maybe I have upgraded to shouting by now and don't sound like I am bored out of my skull doing this dumb, meaningless thing of making the dog jump over some plastic sticks.

It's pretty fun. Otterpop cracks me up. She just cares about going super fast and doing all the stuff and getting her frisbee. Life is so simple. Which makes me feel like running and so let's see if I add the weave poles and run into it can I get that turn away from me from WAY over here, and I do and goddamn Otterpop, you are just cracking me up. She runs around with her frisbee and it is the giant frisbee someone gave us and she has to drag it over stuff because you know when she goes and gets it she has to come back over some jumps because she just has to.


I feel better. I go get Gustavo again and have him do some TEETERS which are his THING and he loves slamming down that teeter as fast as he can and he makes some monkey noises and then we do some dogwalks and I am VERY careful about what I am marking, not marking, and clicking, and where I am treating and the contact is looking better all ready so we do some poles and he is flying again and I run him through the little distance sequence although not with any distance because we have no mad distance skillz with jumps. His jump skills are weak. We don't have jumping at home. We have poles and contact trainer and you can tell. The teeter, I think I just made a big huge deal about that and he is a freak for it. And then he is going crazy for his frisbee, which he is totally clueless about actually fetching, he just tugs on it with his gnarled little teeth and tugs some more and then I am rolling around on the grass and Ruby is barking over there with Otterpop and now we are all having a grand time.


By the time we were done, everybody was in a good mood. Everybody just wanted to stay there and do agility and instead we went to work but we were in a nice mood when we got there because everyone was fast and crazy just how I like them (I even let Ruby jump some stuff very low and straight in a grid, she seemed fine and dandy doing that) and life didn't seem so crappy after all. Dogs just do that sometimes.

We have a winner of the contest now.

Well, hmm. That was some kind of a contest. Mary was the only one who could find any kind of sign from the tall husbands on the right, but Lexi was an excellent reader of signs and I do believe hers makes perfect totally insane sense. But that is the kind of sense that works for me so Lexi will soon be adding a beautiful portrait on a neighbor note to her collection of paintings from back when Laura Hartwick was an artist. Maybe this one joins the refrigerator art. My friends who enjoy Team Small Dog cooking shows would probably like her yelling and boozy cooking show, Marsha Hubert.


But I do thank all of you for the very nice ideas and emails and concerns. I know. We have all been here. I have with other animals too. It's always different and it always sucks. But it's Tuesday and Timmy is still with us and Lexi says his Spirit Guide is a Slug and we'll just go with that for now. They're slow, so Timmy is just slow. And all of you who are worried about him going in to the vet and such, don't worry. It's all handled. And I will not be taxidermying him myself. I swear. Timmy will not have to go to the afterlife stuffed and mounted or freeze dried or cryogenically preserved.


Have you ever been driving through Utah and there is the Hole in the Rock cave tour? I prefer visiting places like this over scenic natural beauty when traveling. The kinds of places that have their own bumper stickers and turquoise jewelry in a case and usually involve caves or snakes or things in jars that one usually doesn't find in jars. Albert Christensen, the man who made his home in a cave that he kept blasting and chiseling out of a mountain to add rooms, learned to taxidermy himself on his beloved pet burros. With visible stitching. When you go there to visit, you will see them. Albert was a man who knew what he was looking for, and he blasted and stitched his way to that thing until he died, back in the '50's when his cave turned into a roadside attraction.


I wish I had a giant mountain for Timmy. And I would paint on it, in giant white letters, HELLO TIMMY. And I would get Joel Warner to chisel a portrait of Timmy out of the mountain, with giant chisels and blasting powder, and the portrait would be Timmy except he'd be the size of a motorhome. Up there on the mountain. No. He would be BIGGER than a motorhome. He would be the size of my house. Exactly to scale. And I would drive by on my very own giant backhoe, and see him up there, every day. I would have skills in grading, and I would dig out flat paths and places for us all to dig up gems. Someone asked, would I save a lock of his hair? His collar and tags? Well, yeah. And figure out a monument for him that has the grandeur of a steamboat sized stone dog, careening down a mountain with boulders and white letters more beautiful than even the Hollywood sign or the biggest floating donut sign in the world.

Waiting for a sign.

Augh. It is too morose. And morose isn't fun. And you know I'm all about Fun. Life goes on. Jenna Bush got married! My mom's roses have something like slugs which is not slugs but seems like slugs! The whole former Burma debacle with cyclones and military dictatorships and such! And here I am. Just waiting for some kind of green light in a crystal ball that says, "Hey, It's a SUPER time to euthanize your dog RIGHT NOW!"

So, like I so dramatically told you I would do yesterday, I thought maybe it would be a sign if I took Timmy up to Pogonip, where he used to love to walk. And the sign would be that he'd perk up, and sniff the air, and a spark would come back into his eye and it would be a sign that he has a lot more days, rather than fewer days. I'm rubbing my hands together, I'm rolling those dice and I'm ready for my sign Now!

So we packed up all the dogs and drove them up the hill. Pogonip is a green belt of open space; redwood forests and old oak meadows. It borders on the University and some Nice neighborhoods and people with homes in the neighborhood run in there and homeless people make their homes in the forests there. Maybe you might remember the old Pogonip club house down at the bottom near Goodwill Bargain Barn from the Lost Boys. A big event when that was filmed in Santa Cruz back in the '80's. I am featured in it as an extra, although you can't see me because I'm in a car driving by and it's dark and the vampires are on the motorcycles and I don't think I ever even saw me in it. I still think vampires and Corey Feldman when I think Pogonip. So dogs go on leashes in Pogonip unless they don't then maybe they get a ticket. From the City ranger, not the State Parks ranger.

And we park up at the end of the Nice street, 20 yards from the trail head. In front of a Nice house. It's a Nice area. More square footage per garage than my whole house. Big front yards with professional landscaping. Milguard windows. No junker trucks and whole families packed into trailers in driveways. We get the dogs out, takes a moment because Timmy is slow and make our way to the path and start down the path. It's a sunny day and couples are out walking their dogs and the women all have sensible sun hats and the dogs are all golden retrievers. On the way there, Gary wanted to listen the to the Giant's game but I made him listen to songs from the Timmy playlist on the ipod because we are waiting for a sign and that seemed like a useful way to see it, me being knowledgeable of the gypsy ways for sign searching and all.

We make it about 20 more yards down the trail and Timmy has a panic attack. In front of golden retrievers and moms for mother's day and I have to grab him up and tell everyone walk is over after a grand total of about 3 minutes that's that. Back we go to the car. So much for a sign. So much for the whole Timmy standing in the meadow business and maybe a hawk will fly over in the breeze and spirit guide in a can anyone? I am restraining a squirming bundle of panic in my arms and people are looking and we just need to be back in the car and get home.

So there's this note on my windshield when we return to the car after our big 5 minute walk. Aha! It is a sign! Is my first thought. Or it is a fan letter of Team Small Dog! is my second thought. Or third thought is just some flyer about a fish fry. I have all those thoughts almost all together. Sometimes I think fast. Rarely when I need to. Gary has the small dogs and he pulls the note off and I am holding the panic attack and he shows me the note. Printed out from the computer in a stately Times New Roman, 14pt, double spaced. Which says:

Please keep the volume of your tunes down (and keep your dogs quiet) when you park in the neighborhood. We can hear the noise clearly from inside our houses.

Thanks for your cooperation.
The neighbors

Some f**ing sign and you know how I get when someone tells me what to do that is plain craziness from neighborhood facism. My mind gets this weird japanese animation image of thunderbolts and spinning teacups and speed racer and astronauts and robots hurling things all in red and black and giant eyes and screaming. That's all I see for a moment then all I can do is, swaddling my panic attack tightly in my arms, holler, "This is a public street and public land and this is normal neighborhood noise. This was normal neighborhood noise and now it is not because what kind of insanity comes from..."

I am cut off. Gary is shoving me and my big mouth into the car. I have Timmy on my lap. I can tell you exactly what Tunes I had on conservative volume when we pulled up. The Mescaleros Silver and Gold, a slow and quiet song with strumming guitars and HARMONICAS for gods sake. You know the first thing I did when we started the car to leave. Put on Led Zeppelin and put it on LOUD and put down all the windows and Gary is trying to get us out of there fast before I get in a fight with some neighbors because I stick my head out the window and start hollering something, I don't know what now, about crackhead asshole neighbors because the animae is still running in there and I am just mad.

So we got him home. Back down to our neighborhood where you can have your Tunes on whatever volume you want and everyone is ok with pretty much whatever you want to do until it involves guns. Or leaving their dump truck in front of your house for a week when they're on a surf trip using up all the parking spaces. Timmy was ok after I got him back in the house and let him bounce off the walls for a while and pumped some treats into him. I'm not really sure if I got a sign or not now. I kept looking for one the rest of the day and you know, he just slept and paced and the only thing out of the ordinary that happened was I went to the grocery store, and the husbands of people I know kept appearing to my right, saying hi and how you doing and they were all really tall. By the third time this happened. I was sort of dumbstruck and just stared at the guy like I am in a fog and tell him how the tofurkey is on sale and he meanders off and I'm like, HELLO, maybe that's the sign? The husbands and their tallness and always appearing in a grocery aisle to my right, peering down into my basket and asking hows it going?

So here's what I ask you, if you made it to the end of this story. I never know if you do. If you can tell me if THAT was a sign, and what it meant, I have a nice note from a neighbor for you, with a hand drawn by a former artist portrait of team small dog for you on it. Comment me your thoughts, and if you win you send me your real and genuine address and I send you some real and genuine former art. Maybe was worth something once, probably ain't worth nothin' now, but you deserve a prize for being a better gypsy than me.

I don't have words to give this a title.

When Timmy walks, his legs don't bend anymore. So the reason he shuffles is he moves each leg very slowly at the shoulder and either slides it across the ground or lifts it an impercetible height, brings it forward, and lowers it down and ahead. This takes a long time to do, and when he is doing it to spin in tiny circles for no reason I can figure it out, gives the impression of a little toy bear that is short circuiting in some kiosk at a second rate mall with dirty tile floors but no one can figure out how to turn off so they just let it stay on. Not great advertising for those little toy bears but it's that kind of mall. He spins, gently bumps in to a wall or piece of furniture or a planter, redirects like a pin ball in the slowest and most broken and dusty pin ball machine that no one ever uses tucked into a corner at a desert roadhouse under the taxidermy, and begins to spin again. To lay down, he finds a patch of slick floor and just lets his legs slide and fall, and he goes down with a thump. It's almost graceful for a moment, a short legged ballerina covered in pee stained black fur, then he hits hard, and sighs, and rests in a heavy way, eyes open but we believe to be asleep.

We saw a movie last night called the Visitor, about a depressed and lonely man in New York who becomes a really good friend under weird and sort of improbable circumstances. The man's name is Walter and he reminded me a little of Timmy in his quietness and politeness and slow, robot ways and I think you might like this movie, you will look the other way when it gets shallow and contrived because you like the characters. It involves guys sitting around drumming in the park which, if you are driven crazy by all the guys drumming in the park and the street in Santa Cruz, involves a suspension of reality and irritation for a bit to make sure you like the drummers in the movie because they're the good guys, not the irritating, balding hippies that make your ears bleed here. I liked the movie, drummers and all, and didn't come anywhere near to falling asleep in it, even though I was stressed out about leaving Timmy alone at night since he had never wanted to get up to eat dinner or take his walk to the corner and back.

The movie didn't have a happy ending, I'll tell you that now because I'm that kind of person, but I won't tell you why. Our friend Walter, who is bald in a very touching way, doesn't die in the movie though. No one does. Not that kind of ending. It was one of those hard endings with a bit of redemption and renewing, but in a saddish way because of US government immigration policies. So a bit of happy but a bigger bit of sad. A great shot at the end sums up that kind of ending neatly and elegantly and then the screen goes back and you go home and make sure Timmy is ok. Which he was. I got him to eat some dinner and he had not had an accident and seemed content to be left with all his dogs.

I guess I should tell you I am trying to make sure Timmy does as many things as he used to like right now. I will take him up to Pogonip today and carry him out a ways into the meadow and let him stand there. He'll have some pancakes. I just sit with him when he rests and put my hand under his head. I guess I should tell you I don't believe that his life is measured in years or months any longer. I believe that it is measured in days right now. I can't count them, I don't know how many there are. But it is probably a number that we will count to a lot quicker than we ever believe is possible.

A fun announcement for you cat fans!

Cat lovers, you will love to visit Lighthouse Field now. Let's use a mathematical formula to show you why. Take one 33 acre field. Subtract all the dogs. Subtract a bunch of people. Which equals the Hordes of Feral Cats! Come and meet the new wildlife that the State Parks Rangers want to protect. I am actually not protecting the feral cats due to I have dogs that enjoy chasing cats and I am oh so contrary to the wishes of the State Parks. These cats are BOLD, show their dirty little cat faces right in front of dogs. My dogs? Hello. Ruby is a terrier. Do the cat math some more. Otterpop, always in for the chase. Gustavo? I suspect he has terrier somewhere in his missing DNA.

This morning, a nice lady walking her white, speckly on a leash, seeing my Ruby send a kitty cat right up an ancient old cypress, hanging on to the wide trunk with feral cat claws stretched out like Jesus, had the insight to point out to me that if I kept my dogs on leashes, they wouldn't chase the cats. She had the cutest jacket on, the lady did. She looked like a nice lady and had a good color of lipstick. You know what I said to her, don't you?

A walk around my block in haiku.

homeless guy with your
big growling rottweiler
wants to bite my dogs

girl in your white car
drives way too fast on my street
loves playboy bunnies

you are gardening
and your ass is in my way
i guess you can't move

drunk guy on his porch
AA pamphlets on view
will always say hi

shiney land rover
grateful dead stickers on it
don't know who drives it

this part of the block
has many cats and squirrels
small dogs scream and pull

abandoned old car
spray painted bright neon green
no one will tow you

we have lots of time
to think about syllables
timmy barely walks

Otterpop spent dirt night all alone next to the dreaded border collies.

Usually she has Ruby to sit with and protect her. People in dog agility class tend to have pairs of matching dogs. It's sort of a Thing Us Dog Agility People Do. Have sets of matching dogs. Pair of border collies. Another pair of border collies. Another pair of border collies. Pair of labs. Pair of King Charles Spaniels. Pair of aussies. Pair of little black dogs. I think even when I've had Ruby on other vacations for other aches and pains I've still let my set sit together. I was trying to think, have I ever had Otterpop do a lesson or a class where she doesn't have her Ruby sitting right next to her for moral support? They usually look like a scarey little matched set of gargoyles. No one can tell them apart.

So last night, I left Ruby in the car and pulled Otterpop out solo. Parked her in her spot right there with the border collies. Hobbes doesn't really register Otterpop. They take walks together sometimes and he doesn't even know she's there. Oh, that was Otterpop's frisbee? Who cares. He spends class barking or staring at whoever is running. Ruby doesn't really register border collies on her radar and they don't really think about her. But Rob's other dog, Fate, her and Otterpop have a thing. Otterpop sits there miserably next to Fate. Fate creeps as close as she can to her to STARE at her. Otterpop has this look on her face, like I believe it to be somewhat scrunched up muzzle and eyes all wrinkly with a look that says, "She is STARING AT ME." She'll give her a careful stink eye, but it's the special border collie stink eye. That is very aware that this dog could just get up and start chasing her in circles if it wanted and it is the Boss. Border collies live in a special place in Otterpop's hell because they DO have the ability to get the FRISBEE WHENEVER THEY WANT. What border collies want, border collies get is what Otterpop's learned. I believe that border collies represent an inevitability for Otterpop that she doesn't run the universe and she probably knows that someday, we'll have our own. I believe that border collie and Otterpop will have to like go into therapy or just learn to work out some issues at that time.

Fate moves closer and closer to Otterpop every chance she gets. Sort of pulls her leash along the deck so she hovers and can be closer to STARE RIGHT DOWN AT HER WITHOUT BLINKING. She's never done anything to Otterpop, I'm not sure what's on her mind. She's sort of a herdy type border collie. Is that an oxyclean? At some point during class, Otterpop moves underneath the deck into the shadows. She disappears from border collie sight. Maybe this is a good thing for Otterpop to do sometimes. Character building. She still had nice, fast runs all night so she figured out a way to deal with it. They're maybe like her State Park Rangers and news headlines. They're there. There will be confrontations and ramifications. But most of the time, we just try to block them out and ignore and keep our own reality the way we want it to stay in our mind.

This was a day involving some Serious dog training.

Right? They look pretty serious. Sort of. Gustavo, that's about as serious as he gets. I know. You were like, is she still trying to teach Gustavo agility? Did she just give up?

I am happy to report we practiced on the way to work, and he remembered everything. Remembered it good! I was sort of worried, because last time we didn't practice for a while, he just forgot a bunch of stuff. He learns so, um, differently than the other dogs, and sometimes he just doesn't retain information like I'm used to dogs doing. But he retained today! I made everything super easy-jump grids, jump to a-frame, tunnel to dogwalk, jump to teeter, jump to open channel poles. Didn't do any sequencing, weirdo turns. Super speedo little freak of correctness! His dogwalk contacts are a little frantic from all the tupperware training, so we need to beef those up again because his preferred contact is hit nose quick on target then just self release and RUN for tupperware! Which will be good someday like 2 years from now but not yet.

Otterpop got to practice. Ruby, being on vacation, had to sit there. Super dog torture. But I thought, how about seeing if she does obedience? Like when you WALK around and your dog prances next to you and listens to your every word like you are God although I think you aren't allowed to talk in it? Would not have been quite the right sport for me. Sport? Did I call it a sport? Activity? Hobby? Thing to fail at? But that's what Ruby got to do. Is no leaping in Obedience as I understand it. Get rewards for prancing which I believe is called Heel and then just sit there and not move or shake and lay there still? She bobs her head up and down and then starts doing roll overs when she lays there because she did not get the memo this is called Obedience and it is Very Serious. And then I had her sit and come when I called which was a bad idea because she just made a beeline for the closest jumps in a row assuming I was doing some kind of cracked out snookers leadout.

Clearly, we stick with agility. Obedience totally not our thing. She looked pretty normal though. I'm still keeping her on vacation but hopefully she isn't as broken as I was worried she was.

This is sort of like a really quiet musical theater production but not really.

Well, since I said Ruby could be on vacation, it wasn't really fair to make her pose for pictures. And then, if I wanted to show you what we did on my day off, it wouldn't be fair to do that without Ruby. So I just hired actors to stand in for the whole team to show you and so I wouldn't be playing favorites between dogs. That's not good pack management. You can see how many training opportunities I have to work on good manners just in a basic day off around the house. See, I am a good dog training example! But, as a disclaimer to all those dog training students out there, I don't recommend always using hired stand-ins for training the real dogs. Just for special occasions.


So you know, they all eat breakfast together. Everyone has to wait patiently until all the food bowls are filled to eat.


Timmy has to get all his pills. He doesn't have to do any tricks or anything for them.


Ruby and Otterpop totally climb on the little foot stool and do tricks while I give Timmy his pills. They are operant dogs. Gustavo is somewhere else. Maybe not so operant.


Took a walk. It would be neat if everyone walked quietly on a leash and didn't pull.


Then Timmy just goes back to sleep for the most part.


Some of them like to hang out in the bathroom when I take a shower. I'm not sure if that is good or bad dog manners or not? Does Cesar Millan do that?


We had to do errands. They ride nicely in their crates. Thanks Susan Garrett's Crate Games!


I had a bunch of office work to do so the small dogs all just slept quietly on the couch. Until it was mailman time.


Otterpop has a total mailman fetish. She waits here like a stealth assassin.


And when he comes, she sounds like she is going in for the kill. I wish you could hear the barking.


Augh. This is a bad habit. Good dog trainers do not let their dogs bark at mailmen.


At some point during the day, I realized, wow, it SO MUCH EASIER to work with the actors than the real dogs! Like for stuff like toenails!


They spent a lot of the day outside. Hey is that their border collie pals Hobbes and Fate? Of course not. They live in Salinas and Otterpop hates border collies. Can't hire actors for every dog I know. Those are just fake deer.


Otterpop won't give anyone the tennis ball.


And they all start digging holes again. Bad, bad dogs.


For agility practice, I LOVED working with the actors. Like look at Ruby and Otterpop just sitting so quietly while Gustavo practices his contact!


Gustavo worked on his poles.


Everyone did some tables. And we called it a day.

Somewhere in here, is a moral about being a degenerate handler at the USDAA trial.

Well. Today I learned that some of you are using the techniques and methods of dog training brought to you by Team Small Dog instead of methods by agility luminaries such as Susan Garrett because I told you she is a witch. And perhaps some of your agility instructors are dismayed. That's right my friends. They have tattled on you. And come to me, pleading, "Laura! They say 'But on Team Small Dog Laura says just run really really fast to the teeter and that's ok!'" Or, "On Team Small Dog not all her dogs have 2 on/2 off contacts! And she says that's OK!" And they may compare their agility trainer's car to the Team Small Dog messy car because we all have too many dogs and xpens.

Well. Let's use today's USDAA trial as a little story for you. The kind of story with a little moral at the end where you go, "Ooooh. I see the Danger in My Ways and Perhaps Susan Garrett, albeit a witch posessing voodoo powers, may have a point in some of her methods, whereas the methods of Team Small Dog may be more akin to the MTV show about the skateboarding dude with his giant body guard that live in LA with a pony in their house and do stuff like teach their dog to skateboard down hills on busy streets." Which they do preface with a little note in fine print that says, Don't Try This at Home.

For instance. Did you notice the focus of much of my little posts all week had to do with Ruby being lame? Ruby kicked by a deer and dragging herself half dead, out of bushes. Ruby lays in her crate all day. Ruby came up lame halfway through last weekend's USDAA trial. Ruby has done nothing but sit around and rest all week. From these statements, it might be reasonable to draw the conclusion, perhaps not run Ruby this weekend at the trial. Perhaps based on the facts, Ruby would be a lot better of with a little vacation of her own that has no deer or agility equipment.

And that was sort of my plan. Until I woke up the other night thinking, I should go to the USDAA Nationals this year! I should pay buckets of money, lose buckets of money at work, take a week off and drive down there and let Team Small Dog represent. Because 5 faulters should get a chance to get whistled off the course just like everyone else. For my non agility friends, USDAA Nationals is a hulking heap of a fancy dog agility show in Arizona at Halloween time that all the cool people go to and it is time consuming and expensive and hot and you do like 2 runs and maybe get whistled off. And everyone is like, "You are so LAME! You NEVER go! You SHOULD GO!"

And I am like, muttering..."Oh too expensive and hard to get off work and what a pain and my dogs are inconsistent and Otterpop would freak out and blah blah blah." But instead of doing something useful like sleeping, I am thinking, Oh What the Hell. Maybe we should try to go this year. My dogs should be qualified, they always get Grand Prix Q's, and Ruby at least has the Steeplechase Q's, Pop has her Team. Non agility friends, you need some special scores to be qualifed to go. Without losing you, my non agility friends, let's say it is like you are going to a party and the only way they let you in to the party is you are required to bring 2 bottles of tequila, 2 bottles of vodka, and one box of donuts. None of which you can just buy at Safeway, but must earn them through the voodoo powers of a magic genie.

So, I looked up our scores. Ruby is fine on her vodka aka Steeplechase, Otterpop has her donuts aka Team and both dogs have a bunch of Tequilas, aka Grand Prix Q's. Because you can hit a bar and get tequila. Earning tequila is easier than earning vodka. You need to rub the genie tummy on a Saturday to get vodka. Donuts are a whole other story. But no wins in Tequila. And it is better to win one, not just earn through voodoo, because it is like getting a free no hangover card at the dog show. So I am thinking, if she is a good dog like she was last week, maybe we could win today. This is planning of insanity since it has been a sleep deprived kind of week. Because see all of the above signs that are screaming, DON'T RUN THIS DOG.

So, of course I run her. Duh. And it looked like a run of the drunken, bloated kind of sugar infested alcoholic who would mix tequila, vodka and donuts. I did her pairs class first, just to see how she was. We had a kindly grandma with a poodle for a partner. Who is competitive as hell and doesn't like to lose. And she goes around clean, and Ruby follows with her bit which, halfway through includes a teeter fly off (never, ever, ever has happened with Ruby) runs around some jumps, runs out of the ring. Um. I am like, oh so sorry, don't know what happened, apparently dog gone insane. Sorry, kindly grandma.

And should have figured there, perhaps dog is insanely sore, even though not limping and may cause erratic behavior? But in my greedy mind, I am thinking, let's just try one more time for that Grand Prix win. Can you see where this is going? My poor dog does 3 obstacles and just goes insane on the Grand Prix course. Runs around the a-frame, runs around a tire, runs around me, just running frantically around everything out there but not going over or through anything and did I mention at some point I am just standing there still, muttering to myself, "My dog has gone Insane?" And when I finally called her in to me, had her jump up in my arms, to excuse ourselves out of the ring, the screech of pain she makes sort of says it all.

I cheerfully yell at my friends, "Don't mind me, dog just gone insane!" as I try to collect my leash and shaking dog and many people offer advice as to numerous causes of insanity. That course so twisty! Perhaps I was unclear with a signal? Um, perhaps I am just an asshole and tried to run my lame dog.

Moving on. Maybe I should have started on a more positive note and told you how Otterpop Q'ed in everything and was relaxed and had good times and was placing and just clocking around like a happy Otterpop and didn't even flinch when the judge giving her the table count was like seriously right there next to her. Although I had to scratch the afternoon stuff anyways to go out to work where we were holding an event that I had bailed on. (Oh Laura and her Dog Shows!) So didn't get to run Hobbes in Steeplechase finals. Did get to run him in Standard, which wasn't so smashing. A bar. Hello 5 faults and a pretty ugly table too. My friends that are agility students, listen to your teachers when they tell you to not call your dogs over the jumps.

Always listen carefully to them, blossoming students on your pathways to agility greatness. They want to help you be a clean runner and not a 5 faulter. There is a method to their madness. My friends who are agility students, maybe even at Nunes Agility Field in Turlock, let this sordid tale be a lesson to you. What have we learned? Do I need to spell it out to you? Just because you have trouble rubbing the genie tummy on Saturdays doesn't mean you need to be a greedy tequila hog. Tell that one to your favorite trainer this week. Just say it's the special agility code you learned on Team Small Dog.

Conditioning of the Performance Dog-a primer.

If you have a USDAA show on a Sunday, it is probably Not a good idea to Not let the dogs do anything fun or exciting like training or running or even walking briskly or even walking slowly the 2 days before. We will call this poor conditioning.

We will call running their asses off for 2 days prior to the 2 days of sitting around doing absolutely nothing, running including but not limited to: near impalement on objects, falling off ravines, potentially getting kicked by deer, eating carion and general mayhem, perhaps not the best conditioning either.

Handlers should attempt to not stay up late and get up super early. Try not to have giant Work Events the same week as vacation and dog shows. We will call this also poor conditioning.

And then, just to make it a little more complicated, add in potential unsoundness due to residual lameness and potential deer kick to one dog. Add in one dog is young and generally bouncing off the walls. Add in one dog just nutso all the time anyways. Add in maybe dogs have to stay at home on days of giant Work Events. Add in phone calls from home to work that you can hold up for all your students, saying, "Listen to the howling at my house, you guys!" Phone call maybe not intended for amusement of students.

This could be called conditioning of the Performance Dog. Team Small Dog style.

Taking 4 dogs on vacation-a behind the scenes view.

All right. Yesterday, you got to hear about running and soaring eagles and ponds and million year old oak trees and so forth. Blah, blah, blah. Nice, nice, nice.


That part was all great. But, you ask, was it really that special and fun, and easy to take 4 dogs on a vacation? And one of them has dementia and can't really walk and is blind and you are going to a giant sheep ranch? And the answer to that would be no. It was not that easy. It used to be. It used to be super easy. But now with Timmy, who I can't bear to leave with someone because I worry about him, is not easy to travel with. And probably shouldn't travel. But travel with Timmy, we did.


For instance. Let's start from when we are leaving Santa Cruz in the car. In a car that looks something like this. Jam packed more than usual. Because traveling with Timmy means we need extra stuff like an xpen and a baby gate, and he needs to take a really big dog bed to sleep in, because it's the only way he can rest comfortably. And he needs it in the back so he can sleep comfortably in the car. The other dogs ride stuffed into crates.


Ruby and Otterpop, perfect travelers. Throw 'em in a box, they go to sleep. Gustavo is usually an ace traveler, however apparently now not with Timmy in the car. He whines. He seems to feel if Timmy is riding in a spacious dog bed, he should not have to ride locked a box. Sometimes he whines a little with Gary and Timmy in the car. For like 20 minutes, then he stops. This vacation, he does not stop. Is a horrible, grating, whine like someone pulling out the eyeballs of monkeys. And I am screaming stuff into the back like, "If you do not SHUT UP NOW I am going to pull this car over and you are going to be SORRY!" I am throwing items back there. I have now turned into my dad 20 minutes into our vacation.


And this is stressing Timmy out. Who starts trying to pace in his little 1 square foot of space. Which is going to lead to a panic attack. I am driving, Gary is on dog handling, not a good thing. Timmy panic attack results in insane flying around like atoms and molecules having fission or fusion or whatever makes them fling themselves around until they blast open and create, um, whatever they create. Gold? Uranium? Nuclear War? I am stressed out. Everyone is stressed out. So in San Francisco, we stop and move things around and little Diva Boy gets to sit with me so he shuts up and Timmy can ride without a stress induced panic attack. I am muttering stuff now like, "This vacation is going to kill me." Total and complete muttering and silent cursing. Gary is being remarkably calm and not commenting on any of our behavior. We turn the ipod up to LOUD and proceed on. I proceed to torture all car occupants with singing Dwight Yoakum and Buck Owens songs the rest of the way there. LOUD. With Bakersfield style yodeling.

So, we make it up to Boonville. It's about 3 1/2 hours up there. The road down into the Anderson Valley has the cute and whimsical nickname the Car Sick Road but because I am completely starving since certain members of my family may suck at time management and we left way later in the day than I wanted, I have an empty stomach and feel barf-free. But Timmy starts moving around in his little space again and Gustavo is whining again but lightly and thank god Ruby and Otterpop sleep through anything in the car. Over the 27 miles of Car Sick Road we go. But we made it. With no panic attacks or screaming or barfing. By any of us.


So Timmy's been up to this house before. I am counting on his radar kicking in so there is no wall bumping into. It is all very dog proof-it may have an Ikea-esque charm, but those Scandanavian Moderns sure get fleas and ticks and ez-clean surfaces. Tile floors. Lacquery finishes. Not much fabric. Open floor plan. Windows where you can be inside and watch to see if any dogs are shuffling off a mountainside. We are on top of a giant hill, and if Timmy picks up any speed it's going to be like one hairy black snowball of unbridled mayhem rolling down the side of the hill. Bad, bad, bad. I have visions of this.


Otterpop and Gustavo, I just let em go. They're fine. "Don't come back bleeding, lame or impaled," I tell the 2 of them as they tear off after some unknown wild animal. What happens on the sheep ranch can stay on the sheep ranch. Ruby, I try to keep more at whatever pace I'm at. But Timmy must be watched with eagle eyes. He seems to like shuffling laps in a little circuit around the perimeter of the house. Me and him are sort of like monks shuffling around a meditation maze. But I am no monk and I am cold and don't always feel like shuffling in circles. This is f***ing vacation. But I can't just stick him outside and not watch because one turn around from losing direction and that's it. And it's cold. And I'm tired. I did have this great idea of tying him up on a long rope. Which was a great idea until he hogtied himself and almost melted down into a panic attack in the dark. Not such a great idea. So instead, I watch him or go out and shuffle with him in the light, and when he has to go outside at night, I put him on a leash and go with him. Did I mention it was freezing and windy most of our vacation?


Most nights, he paced and paced and paced instead of sleeping. And I would get up with him, and put him back to bed, or take him out to shuffle and pee. All night long. Pretty much on 3 hour intervals. Even tranquilized. That's my Timmy. So I didn't really sleep much, and was up every morning at 6 to get him out on his usual schedule. So pretty much I am still exhausted from my vacation because I stayed up almost all night every night! It was sort of like being out at a wild disco in New York City except actually nothing like that. Did it suck? Kind of. Really though, mostly because he's in a state where I'm just waiting out the inevitable. He didn't love his vacation, maybe he had moments where he realized he was out somewhere he loves. But most of the time, he just lived in his fog, and was waiting out his inevitable too.

A visit to the sheep ranch.

It is sort of funny place to go. Once, a long time ago, it was a remote 500 acre sheep ranch, way up in the hills of Boonville, a little pit stop between Mendocino and Cloverdale and wine country. Old timey farmers and eccentric ranchers with their own language. Then wine started creeping in and the landscape changed. Pot growing hippies, the kind of artists who might have giant kilns and weld found objects and perhaps weave dream catchers. Wine tasting. There's a fairground and a taco wagon. A lot of migrant grape guys from Mexico. The guy cackling in front of the grocery store had on ropers and a buck knife and an alligator hide vest and big fluffy mustache.


The current sheep ranch owners came from the big city and converted a couple old ranch sheds into country-urban weekend rentals with giant panoramic views. And people come up from the big city up the long dirt road with their dogs and marvel at the nature of it all. Thanking the new owners with cash for letting city folks have some open space. The marveling is done inside decor that would be easy to architecturally digest if you were a lesbian patent attorney decorating your South of Market condoloft in 1998 with Ikea product. Can I just mention the colors goldenrod and eggplant and use of glass bricks? Whimsical art which may include a pastel drawing of a dog with nipples juggling fruit. Indeed. That and $190/per night is the price we pay to have a few days of nature for us and the dogs.


I am not even sure I am a big huge nature fan at all times. I can bring my computer and books and sleep in a bed at this nature, even though there are ticks. What I want to do is to spend long days walking around where I can't see people with my dogs running fast. And this place is where I can do that, even at the price of eggplant tiles and a huge bill at the end. You know when you are looking out the windows from the car at rolling oak hills and you wonder, what's it like to be up in those hills and live in them and walk around? That's the whole thing.


A pond. Massive old oak trees. Large moss covered stones. No one else. It's pretty simple and boring. We cover as much ground as we can. 550 acres is a lot of space. Up and down steep ridges on pig trails and into muddy ravines. Down a cliff to a river with a swimming hole. To the pond to throw sticks. I walk, the dogs run, and my husband can sleep and putter and drink and bike. We are simple folk.


I can hike with my dogs for hours. Ruby stays right at my heel at my pace, most of the time, the other 2, of freakish metabolisms, never stop running at top speed. Usually, right about when I'm thinking, My Dogs are so Good, is when the 2 non stop dogs take off down a hillside after something. Maybe jackrabbit or deer or pigs. Gustavo and Otterpop learned they can take out 2 turkey vultures and steal their dead prey, a neat trick for city dogs. Or when Ruby, who normally sticks like glue to my side, ran down to a ravine for a moment with the 2 wild dogs. Within seconds, I hear Ruby screaming horrible sounds, see Otterpop and Gustavo flush out a deer, and then here comes Ruby, dragging herself out of the brush, looking nearly dead. She stayed in her crate all day, and came out pretty ok but with sore ribs on one side, and never leaving my side again after that. Something happened in nature and I don't know what. As long as the giant birds that fly their menacing selves over us while we're walking don't pick up a small dog up in their claws, no one is bleeding too badly or limping too horribly, I'm pretty ok with it. They sleep some back at the house, then it's off and running again.


Timmy must be monitored at all times. It would be too easy for him to get lost and roll down a hill of high grass in nature. Our little house has about 4 fenced, steep acres of grass and oak trees around it. If he got out in the dark, we would never find him again. He is ok just sleeping most of the time and meandering near the house, on careful watch. I tranquilize him at night so he doesn't have panic attacks. He is happy to be out in the wind and grass. He can stand at the top of a hill and look across the blowing foxtails and flowers and remember back when he was a dog and this was where he was supposed to be.