It is so hard to get nice tourist shots of black dogs.

When we drove to Colorado a buncha years ago, we drove by this sign that said Goblin Valley. Maybe this was in Utah. It was somewhere hot. But how do you pass up a place called Goblin Valley? We totally went there. It was this giant desert covered with blobby little red rock formations that looked like little goblins. Possibly disapointing in that no actual goblins, but I do believe it was one of the groovier places we discovered on that trip in the scenic nature genre. It must have been 6 zillion degrees, but the dogs just went nuts in there. Tearing around the goblins in the heat.

I think Ruby was a newish friend for Timmy. Seems weird we only had 2 dogs, and before that just Timmy.

Black dogs driving across the desert in the summer. We spent a lot of time looking for shade in places where there wasn't a lot of it. It's just what you do when you have black dogs.

In this episode, cable tv helps us wax on wax off.

So we had to get this new cable thing at my house. I am not really the one in charge of these decisions. It is sort of like when a new bicycle appears in this special hut we constructed called the bike shed. There are many, many bikes residing in this palace of sorts, and it was not really my decision to purchase them. They just multiply and collect in there. Like are breeding and I believe the technical term for some of them is other than just bike. Is something like Bike. But you know how that old saying goes. There are too many damn dogs around here and people who live in dog houses shouldn't throw rocks at the guy on the bike.

The new cable thing was purchased due to sports. What happened was the Giants, who you can spot from the orange and black lettering on their uniforms that look like fluffy bunny legged pajamas, changed their channel. And lost Barry Bonds. The Giants are the favorite show in my house. But you are not supposed to call them a show. Even though they live in the tv and are on all the time on their special channel, are not a show. Are REAL. This is an argument that could go on for days, trust me on that one. Real or show, real or show? A show with a ball built on the backs of buckets of billions of dollars. Karl Marx would certainly have something to say about the baseball show.

But mostly, is a show that gets screamed at way more than bad dogs. Not normal screaming. Yelling, horrible brutal sounds guttering out of certain family members who should not be named but I will just say are actually my husband who is usually a perfectly nice guy except during his show on his special channel. During the show, these sounds come out of him. Like maybe they sound like elevators being cut off their cable, the loud hydraulic whoosh then screeching and sliding then plummeting and clanking. And smashing and breaking and slapping and flapping.

The Giants, we believe, are having a bad time on the Giants show. I do not think this is a healthy, glowing channel to watch and generally makes everyone that watches it cross and snitchy and drives the watchers to drink. Especially if someone turns off the sound tries to demonstrate how Snoop Dogg dances in his Long Beach ghetto cowboywear when he is channeling Johnny Cash. Also, fyi, apparently dog agility has nothing on the Giants show, even though one may be participatory and one may be directed soley at the consumer. But also dopestick pimpin on a one trick pony isn't neccessarily a nice thing to say or imagine and if you're not producing the culture, you're just consuming it. So there.

So anyways, along with this special Giants channel, we inherited a new one known as HGTV. Do you have this channel?

On any given time, you switch from the screaming channel to this channel, and you will be soothed by some kind of show where either a bald guy with earrings or a tall blond lady or a tall blonde guy with earrings will waltz around a house with some swatches, talk about the power of neutral, rich colors, and take some really crappy tract house house with R11 siding and make it look like a Pottery Barn catalog. It usually takes exactly one half of an hour to do this neutral, non taxidermy magic, and when it's over, a new bald or blonde or whoever person comes on a does it again. Or sometimes they are shopping for a house or trying to sell one but it's all about the neutral colors and rich colors and shuffling around the furniture.

No matter how smokey it was at your work, how much your back hurts from sitting on certain horses, or how late you stayed awake the night before watching out for an old sick dog, if you switch on this magic channel you will be soothed into a sound sleep on the couch. Pottery Barn catalogs used to be the thing of nightmares in my life, but now having a whole channel of them is soothing and perhaps a bit like living in purgatory. There are no shadows in purgatory, right? At least the coffee tables and classy candles bolted onto neutral toned walls and contrasting throw pillows don't make me wake up twitching and retching, now just send me into a trance when they break out the circular saw and start cutting something up to be the new shelving unit. Because all the blondes and balds tote around their own carpenter, who is usually a hottie if a retro and ironic t-shirts from Abercrombie dingle your dangle.

But I guess what we take from our different preferences in Spectacle, I mean show, are one might be sort of more real time, and even if it makes you scream and holler, is not a taped delay. And having your show in the real time might make you more in the present. Where you might have to look at who all is in their own little ugly tract house of purgatory, and where no neutral colors gonna paint you out of it. Isn't right to exist in a land with no shadows. You gotta actually take a cold, hard look at the unpleasant staring you in the face, or staring off in the distance at a wall with a panicky look. When someone's days are reduced to never, no more rainbows, they might have had enough days. Maybe then, they get the rainbows or their own special Paradiso. Rainbow bridge crap and all that.

Right? What was I getting at here? Let's just step away from that HGTV channel for now, I guess is what I'm saying. Let's just turn that cable off for now and come out of Spectacle and just come over here in the Real because that's what it's time for right now.

Sequencing and weave poles-a primer

Right-o. So yesterday I told you how Gustavo was just nailing those pole entrances as part of a sequence and flying through the poles like a pro. Never missed a beat. Had the sheep impressed if blank stares from across the pasture counts as impressed. He made me jump up and down and squeal with the joyfulness of it all until I noticed my pants were slipping down again in the back and sheep could see things best seen on plumbers and little harlots under the age of 19.

So today we did the same exact same little deal. Changed the angle of a couple jumps, but the same thing Generally Speaking. He is comfortably doing little sequences of 4-5 things, maybe more if they involve straight lines. And tunnels. God does he love tunnels. Oh. I moved the tunnel over to a new spot, I should mention that little, teensy, tiny clue.

So what do you want to bet that he completely forgot how to do the poles?

Did you bet a lot on the high quality of my quality dog training that I've been a good teacher and shown my dog how to teach himself to run through poles accurately and super fast? Wager all the money on the dog training genius of Laura. All those chips slide out to my roulette number on the black. Every single one. How many of you betting on that?

Or did you bet the other way? Because I call him a squirrel. And it took months to figure out if he really understood the word Sit. Because a tiny little short bus should pick him up in the morning with his lunchbox taped to him and a giant name tag that says GUSTAVO in puffy letters with a ladybug on it. And glitter. And I mentioned this little thing. I moved something. I moved the tunnel across the field. How many of you waving your big plastic cup of quarters this way?

Yes, I moved the tunnel. He LOVES the tunnel like I love my taxidermy. Like I love ipod and my green purse and navy blue slip on vans and the way my super oldest old lady horse says hi to me every morning. Screaming in delight joyful. Up and down jumping not able to contain the joy of it all. Dancing robots! As if the sky was not filled with smoke and no animals ever old and sick and goddamn rainbows hurling their way through my own personal big sky in the land of ranches and chocolate chips and pots of gold and where all evil drooling leprechauns have been eradicated by the Power Unicorns. And yesterday, the tunnel was after the poles. Today, tunnel somewhere else.

Yes, OK. Did you just win a bunch of money or lose it? Poles were forgotten. 3 times through, hi and goodbye and poles a nice thing to run alongside and maybe over to the fence a moment and is that a butterfly over there? Why would you want to fly through poles top speed if there is no tunnel afterwards? Like duh. Butterfly so much cooler! Run so fast and wild to the butterfly!

But, time number 4, HELLO and BONJOUR and ALOHA because here we go. My crafty little toaster oven you, you REMEMBERED which is HUGE as in my book of Gustavo. And you were treated to the joy of the exploding tupperware where I throw it so hard out at the end the lid pops off and there is as much cheese as you could ever want exploding there in your tiny little shrapnely toothed mouth. And then it was like, OH-just do the poles whenever you see them, no matter if it is the tunnel or the dogwalk or whatever thing. Like I think he might be getting it.

Here is where the sheep people all get mad at me.

When we practice now, our friends the sheep sometimes come and watch. They're kind of a motley crew, those sheep. Their fur, or wool, or hair, what is that, hangs off in chunks. I believe myself to not be a sheep person.


They are getting used to having sheep fans. Or maybe fans is really not it. Bystanders. Bored voyeurs. Hanger arounders. They are the ones that witness these fabulous contacts but still sometimes dropped bars. And just don't appreciate how hard we're working on fixing our agility flaws. And treated to the sight of me running around, arms a waving, yelling, "Go Go Go Go Go Go!" For every dog, every turn. I try to make everyone have a fair turn. And each dog gets their favorite reward when they do something particularly cool. A big frisbee game for Pop. Ruby tugs on her new rawhide bully stick and gets to go chew it in a corner all by herself. Gustavo plays for a while then eats some cheese out of tupperware then has loveys. It's what works. The sheep watch and do not comment.


And then just go back to doing what sheep do. Which as far as I can tell (I'm sheep sitting this week) is just eat dead grass all day and walk around. And look startled. And stare but with this blank stare. I am glad I don't have to do something like give them shots. I heard that was an exciting day of sheep wrangling. They are so not horses. I just stick with the horses. My life would be fine without sheep in it.


Otterpop dreams that I let her out there to go move them back to their pen. Or somewhere. Maybe out into the busy road. Who knows where she'd put them. She watches them, making plans. I think we won't test this out, to see if she has any herding ability. We'll just let her think she does and leave it at that. Good staring, Otterpop.

So where's Gustavo? He doesn't really register sheep on his interesting scale. And can I just tell you this fact. It's a little braggy but you'll like this. I stuck the channel weaves out there, in a little sequence that was fast and open with a hard hitting pole entrance. Playing Gustavo Runs Steeplechase. With his channels a little open at the entrance. Steeplechase for dummies. And he kept flying through, collecting and hitting that entrance no matter where I was. And doing a rocket speed mini border collie single foot through the poles. I am not shitting you. Would likely be a loser at rounding up the stock. But is totally getting the hang of this agility business.

Timmy seems to be failing again. He just paces or sleeps and never seems happy. It is an existence that I wish on no one. Sometimes I grab him and try to steady him and hold on to him and this may or may not settle him down when he seems agitated. He reminds me so much of the elderly people me and Gustavo visit in the nursing home. Some of them seem ok with just existing, and others seem really not ok and not happy to still be in their bodies in this world and they're ready to be done.


But we make them wait it out. Keep them clean and fed and as comfortable as is realistic. Could you imagine, just having to pick out a day and time and decide that's the day when your life needs to be done with? Like scheduling a tooth cleaning. Because it's not getting any better and really only going to get worse. I don't know if is this a burden or a privilege that we can do it with our animals. I haven't picked out a day yet. It doesn't quite seem to be right.

I think about this old man we visit, who can still sit up in his wheelchair, and who tries to talk sometimes, but just breath comes out his mouth and tears always run down his cheeks. His skin has all these lesions. He can just move a hand enough to run it across the dog's fur.

I know one of these days we'll go to the nursing home and he won't be there any more, but so far, he is. Just sitting there. He has had enough breath to whisper me his name and that he loves dogs. Someone managed to get a clean shirt on him, and all day he sits there in his checkered shirt, waiting.

More future Junior Handlers.

So we spent a total of 2 whole days visiting my family, which now includes a new baby. I feel like I was there for a week. My nephew likes having an auntie who can run fast and appreciates every episode of Clifford the Big Red Dog and lets him stay up however the hell late that was to see them all. I dunno what time it was. I fell asleep. My family all likes dogs. Which is a good thing because I always bring a whole selection to add on to theirs when I visit. This trip just included Otterpop, Gustavo, and Ruby. Which is like bringing a tiny little furiously shedding hurricane of howling and trampling. But, compared to a new baby and a toddler, is totally nothing. You just sort of make sure no one is going to get run over and keep the baby off low surfaces that dogs may be using as launch pads to speed.


We repeat the phrase a lot, Otterpop is mean, and just save her for throwing balls at. Gustavo and Ruby, totally bombproof to and ok to poke eyes of, pull tails of, chase around with flying firetrucks full of robots. He was sad Timmy didn't come though because he has an invisible dog named Timmy.


What we found though, was that Gustavo was weirdly fond of the baby. Ruby, she likes babies because they taste nice. Otterpop, let's repeat again, kids, Otterpop is mean. But Gustavo was obsessed with the baby.


At first I was worried maybe it was because he wanted to eat the baby. My sister didn't seem that worried but I was thinking, what if he thinks the baby is just a nice chubby hairless squirrel?


Or maybe sort of like Ruby, who likes babies and little kids because they eat a lot and their food sticks to them and they are nice to lick.


But what it was was just he wanted to sit next to the baby and maybe throw a tiny little paw over a tiny little leg and then lay there quietly together.

So you dog agility moms do this how?

Good god. Isn't there this giant subset of blogging called Mommy Blogging? It's like what the modern mom Does. She blogs. Maybe she's a good writer and maybe she's a crappy writer, but she's always a blogger. I am not really sure how she actually finds a second to go over to the computer and sit down and type with 2 hands. Maybe one hand would work. But only for like 2 minutes because there is going to be screaming, hitting, biting, farting, pooping, dropping, falling, like anything that is a verb and you can add an ing, it's going to occur while you sit down to type.

Then if it involves the internet is broken or anything weird with the computer, forget it. Downloading the photos? HA! Ideally moms have some dogs, because dogs provide great distraction for toddlers so you could do something like change the baby diaper or what have you while the toddler throws stuff at the dogs. And hopefully the dogs are toddler friendly enough to get it that the throwing of items at their heads or the spraying of the hose on them is actually fun and that takes up a good 30 seconds of the very long day.

Oh yeah. And don't neccessarily assume just because the toddler said they'd only spray the hose on the grass that that's going to happen. When the back door is open. And there's a lot of dogs.

It took me all of 2 days to just get that typed out. There is potty training. There are diapers. There are dogs EVERYWHERE and one of them ate a diaper and one of them is obsessed with the baby swinging back in forth in that little swing, that used to have some little stuffed animals hanging off of it. And let's just say there was one epic walk with a toddler, a baby, a bunch of dogs and that last half an hour was really pushing it and thank god grandma and grandpa really, really, really like their wine.

Sort of glamorous but actually just hot and sweaty.

So I had these ideas, I would tell you some funny stories about Los Angeles and dogs because I was going there because sister had a baby and then there is ANOTHER fire and then I'm not going and then I am and then I'm not and then I am.

Oh my god. Too many long stories. Let's just cut to the chase. Fire controlled and out. Drive far Sataurday night. Someone has to go to the grocery store and there is no beer and she can't eat chocolate and where is that dog and did anyone get the fish out of the car and thank god the air conditioning got working again. Here's your top headlines.

Thank god they saved the house. We LOVE firefighters.

Thank god they saved the house. We LOVE firefighters.

Thank god they saved the house. We LOVE firefighters.

Found the other 2 horses at the fairgrounds and don't know who brought them in, but they were there.

It's a boy. But actually we already knew it would be.

Duh, you crashed into Jared Leto because it was the MEN'S pants rack dumb ass!

And then another huge chunk of skin from the chemical peel came off into her tostada and by god, that WAS Nicholas Cage in the booth.

Otterpop, that is NOT your tennis ball. GODDAMNIT!!!

I hate to do this but we interrupt dog agility for another fire.

Hi. OK. Yes. There is another fire. No, this one is not too close to my barn, but it is very close to many people I know barns. Some of who came screaming in the driveway with horses for an unplanned sleepover today for who knows how long because who knows if they even have a house anymore. No time to pack a toothbrush. Didn't even ask about her cattle. Dogs made it into the truck and that was about it. Because the fire on her property and just spreading like, well, wildfire. Like neighbor's house burning up as she is shoving horses into the trailers. This is fire no. 3 in Santa Cruz County this month. This one we hear 5 fires all started by maybe arson or maybe a vehicle being towed making sparks. We hear all kinds of things. Am I freaked out by it? Uh, yeah, you could say that.

This one is hitting too close to home, in an area full of small ranches and just spreading fast through the hills. Where cars and firetrucks can't get through and roads are blocked and where the police at the barricades are not letting you in with your horse trailer no matter how hard you are screaming to get in because you have to get your animals.

Or you are in Lake Tahoe on a nice vacation and you still don't know if anyone pulled your horses off your property and your dog was in the house and you can't find the house sitter.

Or you are at work an hour away and your 10 year old is at home with the horses and gets the mandatory evac call and you have to get home. Somehow magically through all closed roads and not knowing what does a 10 year old do if she has to get out fast with the horses? And a mean dog that bites?

Or the fire is flaming in the trees in your yard and your dog is inside and you leave your car at the roadblock and just start running with police chasing you but you get to your house and get the dog and the firemen are saving it. And car is gone when you walk back down, towed off somewhere. But you tell me that you don't really care right now.

All these, phone calls I fielded today, trying to handle all of them with calm and grace and smarts and maturity when really I was just like totally freaking out.

I believe this scene comes from when I was just entering the bright new world of dog agility.

Do you have a friend, maybe a friend who you like pretty much, but she has a way of saying something that is Just So Wrong and Inappropriate in many situations? And once something like that is blurted out to the world, you maybe want to crawl under the seat or maybe she does and maybe you do not hang out with her so much anymore? Like you feel she expresses herself so much better in an artistic way and should stick to interpretive dance or painting with tiny brushes or whatever it is she does all the time that makes her such a weirdo loner crazysounder when she does go out in public and tries to speak the English language with others? Maybe just stick to talking to the animals, of which she likely has loads of, like a nice doolittler, and sort of just not speak to other humans so as not to cause irritation?

Hi! I am that friend! And actually, I do not go out in public all that much anymore and spend more nights at home watching the new tv channel we got where they just repaint in a neutral color and remove excess furniture and then just watch that house sell and my days running around with dogs and riding around on horses. So I am a lot safer to have as a friend because I am a lot less likely to wrongly open my mouth at the wrong time. But not completely immune friends, so it's ok for you to keep your safe distances as long as you need to.

Usually this personality flaw comes up in contexts such as the Art Opening or the Cocktail Party or the Having Drinks at the Swanky Bar. Sometimes around people that, in my old career as Artist, before I became Former Artist, sort of mattered that you did not say weirdo things to so as not to mess up Relationships and Networking. Or really, just plain old not offending someone. Like if it was the right kind of weirdo thing you just said and you had super cute tattoos with halter top, you were a Character. But if it was the wrong kind of weirdo thing and you can't really wear vintage, you were just a weirdo. So I would usually sort of stand in the corner most of the time stirring a cocktail with the little straw until I decided it was time to bravely come out of the corner and march up to someone to use conversation and then stick my foot straight down my own ugly gullet, wearing something completely inappropriate to boot.

I used to spend quite a lot of time in Los Angeles some years back for non horse work related stuff, and as it happened some of my friends in LA were like people that were kind of glamorous and once dated people that were just in the Whitney Biennial or were in some band or maybe they used to date someone from tv or maybe they just said they used to date them. Or were their agents. Or drove them somewhere. Or got them coffee on a set once. I don't know. That's just how it is down there. Like I didn't know any Vincent Chases. Probably not any Johnny Dramas even. Maybe some Turtles.

So one night I was for some reason I don't even remember sitting in a car with a Friend of a Friend and as it often goes in LA, we had to drive somewhere far to pick up her girlfriend before we drove back up to Hollywood to have drinks with some other friends. It's like just to go get drinks always is this maze of car trips and meeting so and so here and driving around. I was getting dragged around and was likely horribly, wrongly dressed. I had one small dog, Ruby, with me and Friend of Friend had one smaller dog, let's call her Fifi with her. We were going to have drinks at a bar at a hotel where there was bright blue astroturf and weird chairs and it was no big to bring your small purse sized (ha, sorry Ruby) dog to the pool area to have your $15 cocktail in a big and unwieldy glass.

Because I was terribly uncomfortable and fish out of water with this Friend of Friend who had a lot of Important Friends I was doing nervous running off at the mouth about all the celebrities that I knew which is zero actually but included my laundry list of friends who dated nearly famous people. Trying desperately to work it into normal Industry conversation. We finally got to the girlfriend's house, who was a lovely and powerful Hollywood agent type person. And sort of mean looking. Like all Prada wearing, severe haircut looking. She gets in the car and we head to another part of town, off to the swanky bar. So she mentions a famous celebrity name, one of her clients. Not sure why. She just does and I have to rattle off how this other friend of mine, let's call her Paula, used to date her. Which is actually quite true although was sort of a messy, sordid story, which I sort of recall a teensy bit late as I am blabbing on. Am not understanding how the Hollywood lesbian clique works here and is like 1 degree of separation apparently. And behold, freezer cold silence in the car. Like not even a hum from the smooth riding Beemer driving back up towards Hollywood Blvd. Westside to eastside. Uh oh. Mouth has opened to wrong file is what I can tell has just happened in a flash, in a burst, in a no do-overs kind of way. And I am SO not dropping any names anymore so just you forget who are any of these names I am not dropping anymore. Because probably you dated her too or YOUR friend did.

So Girlfriend of Friend of Friend with The Haircut grabs her phone and calls celebrity. Just like that. Because as it turns out, Girlfriend of Friend of Friend not only is the agent or manager or something like that of famous Hollywood lesbian but ALSO used to date her and definitely knows my friend Paula because I do believe that Paula somehow was the monkey wrench that screwed up that whole thing and is maybe very Not Popular with this carload of ladies and Prada wearing lady who is now on the phone. OK. Not that I actually can tell that she is wearing Prada but I just have this feeling that it is Prada. And girlfriend passes me the phone, and tells me that Celebrity Ex-Girlfriend Now Client has a Mac at home and her printer is broken and I need to help her fix it. Now. Because the sinner in the car that just started talking about an elephant in the room is like total Mac geek digital media type and knows about the computer and damned if she isn't going to fix it for free over the phone and do a little squirming. And I'm like, "Hiiiii. Ummmmm. We need to look for some printer drivers I guess. Do you know where your control panels are?" Because that's always easy, helping a celebrity fix her printer over the celphone.

I don't remember if I actually helped her fix it or not. I do know that I was in a car with one Celebrity Ex-Girlfriend who was all stinky eyed at me over bringing up some ugly old dirt, and with a Friend of Friend who is current girlfriend of the Celebrity Ex-Girlfriend who maybe wasn't so amused by this whole soap opera story brought up inside the air conditioned BMW. And then we all had to sit at this really expensive poolside bar and Ruby wanted to attack other dogs and did not sit quietly like all the genuine purse dogs and we sat there a long, long, long time. Like a place with big white walls and columns and uncomfortable chairs and lighting bouncing off the nighttime pool water ripples. And boy did I keep my mouth shut. Maybe a couple times talked about how I am teaching my bad dog to run around the jumps and in the tunnel. Weirdo. Pretending to enjoy scenic water ripples. Until we got back in the car after a long, quiet night for a long quiet drive back to my car and I do believe that was the end of those friends.

Really hardly working.

Team Small Dog hard at work. Life is rough. Mostly at work, they are required to Stay on the Deck and Do Not Chase the Cats. Do Not Bark at the Porta Potty Guy. So much for the busy life of a ranch dog. Due to the feral cats and the lawyers, they stay tied up. There's a couch on the deck, which they have to share with actual people some of the time. Frequently those people are eating lunches, which is a pretty big highlight of the day for the dogs. Mostly they just sleep in the sun. Or Ruby stares and trembles with every feral cat sighting. They take walks whenever one of my many helpers decides to take them strolling around.

That's their new cousin, a 4 month old giant black part Catahoula puppy. Who they are very mean to. Because she gets to sleep on the deck all day too. THEIR deck. And she is very, very sweet and very, very mellow, not at all like most of Team Small Dog. And they are old stuff, and she is new stuff, and she is a puppy and everyone goes CUTE! At her. Not them. And she gets the bone.

Gustavo, normally the sweetest dog in town, is awful to her. She is the new kid on the block and he isn't and he is a butthead and bites her on the nose even though she is already a gazilion times bigger than him. I suspect someday payback will come and he will be very, very surprised and feel his 12lb little size on that day.

Get out all your weapons and you can build this course too.

All right. We have been really and truly practicing again. Like organized, sequence setting, thinking about, practicing. Actual Planning! With something for everyone, and trying to leave Timmy earlier in the morning so I'm not freaking out about how late I'm going to be to work. Because the dog shows are coming! Crack of dawn everyone. Sort of. Not really. Early enough!


OK. This one. Every time I start muttering about what am I doing training a squirrel to do agility, he makes some kind of breakthrough and he did that this week. I'm not showing you. I can't take pictures and run him is what I'm learning. Like not even a second can I lose focus to go fiddle with a camera button. I know. You thought my reality tv production crew takes these stunning photos. Is just me and my dad's camera and my greasy fingers, my friends. Plus, he didn't do these grown up dog sequences. Although he did little parts of them. He is still on the little yellow bus doing his own special poles with channels open at the entrances/exits, and a lower a-frame, and a lower teeter and the dogwalk with targets out.

And sometimes running around big black buckets because he likes that and considers running around a bucket an agility obstacle. When someday the gamble includes trash cans or buckets out there a million miles from the tape line, he's my main man. But I gotta tell you, his little sequences are getting confident and coming together and as they get more consistent, SO FAST, and I am glad I'm taking it so slow because I see these glimmers of greatness in him. Before he dashes in that tunnel again. Or goes looking for a hole in the fence. His training mantra is Repeat, Rinse, Repeat.


So here's an exercise you might like. My course map maybe not really to scale. Who's ever seen a bullet bigger than the gun? Make a figure 8 with some jumps off on one side, poles down the middle, and a dogwalk to jumps and a chute barrel off the other side. So there are a gazillion ways to come into the middle pole section off the jumps part, and you can change up your turns to the dogwalk each time. Like I would go Gun-Knife-Bullet-Poles-Dogwalk-Cup-Knife-Bullet-Knife-Poles again. Or you go in reverse order. Or Gustavo can do it without the Grown Up Poles but still do all the knives and bullets and the gun.


So you could front cross between the bullet and the poles, which was Ruby's preferable way for me in there. She likes me to RACE her through those poles. So I try to beat her. She's actually been looking pretty good, and now I sort of wish I had decided to do a DAM team with her in July. But I think she doesn't need long days of a lot of runs. So I'm just going to keep her workload light and see if she holds up.


Sometimes just let her wrap the bullet and either rear cross the poles to dogwalk, or just handle them on the left and rear cross the dogwalk. A lot of ways to get onto that dogwalk and work on those contacts which are looking smashing! Making actual concerted effort to place delicate little dog paws on that yellow paint.


Otterpop hates that front cross to the poles. So picky. She likes me far away from her going into the poles. Needs her privacy. Which is fine when she's super speedy and practicing, but not so fine at a trial and she's slower. Problem being, I can't get her to practice slow. She attacks poles with a vigor that I believe she would like to try out on cattle. You can't see but there are actual cattle off camera here, across a couple fences. Boy does she give them the stink eye. A new thing to watch on the new field. They don't notice her, tiniest cattle type chihuahua in town. They seem to sleep a lot.


She prefers I hang back and let her into the poles from way back and rear cross or stay on that side and rear cross her dogwalk. Ruby hates that. Otterpop loves that. I have been trying to teach Gustavo every possible way I can think of to get him in the poles so he is not so damn picky as these two.


So typical of Otterpop. Just likes to do it her own damn way. Of course wants me to be around desperately, but always gotta look like she's the one running the show.

This will have something to do with dog agility but just give it a few years.

So I was noticing that Pixel has some future dog agility in her. I am sizing her up to be Ruby's future Jr. Handler sometime soon. Because she has the whole pointy finger down. Aiming at her brother like a pro. And she likes all the same stuff as Ruby. Treats. Hot dogs. Tortillas. Cookies. Princesses. And she is really fast. Totally get why many people pick between dogs and kids and don't try both. Except the Very, VERY brave and tireless among you.


I know, lots of you have both. Damn, we always had dogs growing up but we didn't actually train them stuff like Round the Clock Weave Pole Entrances and 2 On 2 Off. And there are even some of you who have fleets of border collies and have small children too. And probably work full time as an attorney and you are also the trial secretary for your dog club every single time. You exhaust me, thinking about your lives, my friends. Just a couple kids around for a couple hours is like I have just pulled an all nighter in the go-go cage under the glitter ball at the big wild and crazy disco dance party and am all ready for nap time. I am like a total bar setter that way, you my chief ring stewards of life. Look at her, working on screamy face for when she's a big girl and can run a border collie. Start stretching those face muscles early. She maybe doesn't do a great job training Atom yet. Is he peeing in my bushes back there? Where the hell is Joel Warner?


Um. There's no actual dogs in these pictures because the dogs vs. toddler situation still is a work in progress. Luckily we are past the Kicking the Dogs phase, but the dogs are not past the Let's Totally Swipe All the Kids' Food Out of Their Hands phase. No one has great aim with the tennis ball yet, so the dogs would rather just stalk them for snacks. Lots of good stuff left over for some speedy weave poles, while the kids are hopefully not whining all the way home in the car. Shoveled into their crates car seats in the back. Everyone has to pee first. No one whines, hopefully just sleep until they get there.

It seems like this Monday could use a soundtrack.

I am not really an album kind of person. I am sort of a song kind of person. Which makes all my more music-y friends cringe, not that they weren't already cringing at my musical tastes. I just consider my taste Broad. I am not a purist. You guessed that. I have a husband who is Very Serious about music and I let him be the informed member of the family. I guess I do this with most things. Generalist.

You probably heard these all already. But they're the ones that are my favorites today. You know how Elvis Costello once said that writing about music was like dancing about architecture? I think that blogging about dog agility is like painting about vintage typefaces. A nice thing to do whenever you can. So here. Here's what I say about these songs. Which I listened to while choreographing a log cabin cheerleading robot routine. In honor of these perfect weave poles sets Gustavo has started just knocking out, no pops, no wart, no slows.

Nosebleed. By Illinois.
I do believe that is a banjo in this song, a little bit of banjo that goes over and over. It isn't complicated. Like if you could only play the tiniest bit of a banjo, you could make a song. "HOld On Baby, Let's Sing it Again." The singer just sounds raw and like maybe he was singing into something weird. I'm not really exactly sure what this song is about. But when you listen to it, you might wish that you could sing just like him. This song reminds me of weird gnarly late nights when you could have been doing something actually productive. It seems like it involves ash trays and bottles and big stinky dogs. But in a good way.

My Medicine. By Snoop Dogg.
Dedicated to Johnny Cash, a real American gangster and features twangy guitar by Everlast. Grand Old Opry, here they come. OK. So Snoop Dogg is a problematic character. A real slimeball in some ways, but a nice Long Beach dad who is just a big, tall, lazy stoner by other accounts. Who has this freaky effortless way of rhyming like B.I.G. that has always held me in awe. And it's not like he hides being a hazy, befuddled pothead who just stays high all the time. Sort of like Johnny Cash before he cleaned up maybe. Keith Richards and the borrowed blood. Everybody has their habits. If you ever see the video, he looks really great in cowboy gear, and the rhyming with the Cashy style guitar and it's Willie Nelson and Whitey Ford! Like super genius crazy. You'll see.

Hog of the Forsaken. By Michael Hurley.
I used to feel bad for this hog. And sometimes Michael can't sing all the notes which is why I love him. This song talks about bogs and pie and this hog who just sits there and I believe waits for the forsaken and eats them all up. He is the pork of crime. Then I realized I think Michael wants us to feel happy for this hog. I'm not sure. I think you will see when you hear this song. This would be perhaps a nice song to play at a wedding and people could come out to dance that might not otherwise. I always want to sing this to the old people on therapy dog visits, but we are not there for singing. The accordian lady in the sunroom does that. For a minute you might think about a bayous, but really it makes me wish my house was far, far atop a gentle knoll, looking over the plains, and not visible from any road at all.

Don't you Evah. By Spoon.
This song makes you feel like a dancing robot. It's just kind of a dumb song. Spoon is a dumb band. If I were easily embarrassed, I wouldn't even tell you I had a Spoon song in my ipod. But you know it's a good song when every time it comes on you need to stop doing what you're doing and start dancing like a robot. And you get a dog to dance like a robot with you. And another. And another. And now that is a fine thing to do on a sunny afternoon.

Is even better than the blind leading the blind.

So one of my agility friends is a scientist. I believe she is the only scientist I know! Isn't it weird when you find out your agility friends are things like important scientists or famous professors or Jeremy Piven? OK. Maybe Jeremy Piven is not an agility friend. But wouldn't he be a good agility friend? I think he would be one friend I would be able to actually beat all the time is what I think. And would tell me when my legs look to fat to squeeze into my skort.

Leslie is a lab coat wearing (I think) molecular biologist (maybe I got that wrong-a genetics scientist for sure), and her company is one of the ones that can test dog DNA. So when I got Gustavo, she gave me a packet with a swab so we could test him because he was such a mystery pup.

This was back when we thought maybe he was the tiniest shrunken border collie in the world, that I had a authentic border chihuahuallie. He was the toast of agility town for a bit, Welcome tiniest border collie in the world! Well, after a month or two of teaching him to Sit, I was pretty sure that he was NOT a border collie type. Still feel some pressure on me when people at the dog show ask me, "How's the cutey mini border collie doing-ready to start trialing him?" and I am like, "la la la la la" and change the subject to his extreme cuteness. But we were still excited to see what kind of DNA he'd come back with. Maybe it would be a clue to his unique learning style.

Test numero uno came back nada on 38 breeds of dog, but the scientists said, Hey, we'll retest with the NEW test which tests over 100 breeds! And we'll even have you do another sample in case the first one wasn't quite right since he came back as a nada. Pretty much most breeds of dogs on the big test. Some I've never heard of. And definitely all the ones maybe you would guess Gustavo was. Chihuahua. Border collie. Sheltie. Papillon. Mystery Terrier. He looks like none of those, but they are always people's guesses. Does he act like any of them? Um, not that I can tell. I don't know much about papillons, or shelties so who knows. Do they take 3 months to teach a trick to that every other dog in your universe learned in 3 minutes?

So anyways, cool. Definitely the retest would show us what mysterious Gustavo was, our Mexican Pet. Gotta be one of all of those breeds. Gotta be some DNA in there somewhere. Prove Gary wrong that we do not have a squirrel mixed with cat for a dog pet.

His official certificate came in the mail today. Of these 100 breeds of dogs, he came back as an Untested Breed. Yep. His primary breed DNA is the variety of Untested Breed. With no secondary breed characteristics. Nothing In the Mix. 100% untested. Like untestable? The unteachable teaching the untestable dog who is hard to teach. Honestly, it seems like almost too cool to be true to me.

Where you didn't think there was danger before.

When I got home from work last night, the house was really empty. Some punk rock show on the college radio station I leave on for Timmy to have a friend all day. Even though he's deaf. But no Timmy laying on the floor or pacing back and forth or dancing in a puddle of pee. We looked. You can tell Ruby to Go Get Timmy and she always does. But she didn't. Was like he was gone. Not a peep anywhere. I worried maybe Gary forgot him outside when he came home to take care of him at lunch, but wasn't outside either. Started looking under things for stuckness. He has sometimes gotten stuck at night under furniture and it is a sad thing to happen to a dog, mistakenly wedged under a couch or a cabinet where dogs don't fit and where dogs don't belong.

Yes. Was stuck. All the way wedged under my giant heavy armoire in the bedroom. Couldn't see much but little tufts of fur that maybe came off in the tussle with himself to undo what he did. Must have slid out on the slick hardwood floor and slid right under then that was that. Stuckness. It's a beautiful old primitive armoire, heavy distressed pine boards, roughly painted white and holds all my clothes just about. Sits a few inches off the ground and he was just flattened under there, on his side, soaked in pee. Like was quite a million evil clowns in a volkswagen trick to get under there but tricky he is. Started pulling and could feel he was still warm and breathing. Pulled him out enough to see his eyes, just kind of vacant but maybe a glimmer of relief. Pulled the rest of him out gently, not sure what I was going to get, but he was weirdly calm, had a eerily calm bath, and sat with him outside under the creepy orange light from the latest mountain fire up the hill from my house so he could dry off in the air.

If you are here to hear about dog agility or something might as well keep moving along.

Have you ever split your fattest pair of fat pants at work jumping onto a pony's back then had to make a special trip to the Gap 15 minutes before it closes to dig through sale stacks of pants ($18.99) that the guy with the Gap Bluetooth BritneySpears-a-phone for talking to God just arranged and had them all come falling down onto your dirty head and start saying potty words and fling your purse down so the keys and sunglasses and apple core and tampons and unmailed father's day card and pens and change go skittering across the floor as Bluetooth guy come floating back on his I HEART Gap cloud offering to pick them up and starting in with some crap about he is here to help you and Allow Him to pick up the four thousand unstacked jeans from the tidy stack you just decimated and the only thing that comes out of your mouth, eyes all narrowed and ready to shoot a poison eyeball dart right at his summery Gap ensembled little self is, "I can't f***ing believe I'm buying size 8 pants at the Gap."

Maybe you say this in a particularly spiteful way when it happens to you, like the word G-A-P is hissed in a spittle sound with a pronounced P like Puck and bless his little Bluetooth Gap Guy heart, so well trained in customer service, Cloud Floater just gives you a wry smile that could be interpreted as "It's OK, fattish lady," but really probably really meant, "I hate these goddamn closing shifts as much as I hate having a barbed whisker catfish burrow it's way into my ear canal instead of my Bluetooth and Damn Britney Spears and her spawn and these LAYDEEEZ coming in here shredding my pant stacks."

I am so busting that criminal.

So, when I left the house last night to go get some dinner, on my desk was my friend Bluetooth. Who was a present from my friend Tash. Who I am going to really need soon so I don't go to car jail because I am a total car phone talker. Is like my office hours, during my drive. And it is going to be The Law soon that you use Bluetooth. And you know me. Never breaking any laws here.

So when I got back to the house, Bluetooth was gone. There is exactly one suspect who is the type that would climb up on a desk and snatch a Bluetooth. Let's use our detective powers here. Because I am one helluva good detective.

Timmy. No. Not even possible. He has been doing pretty darn good for Timmy, like somehow got a new lease on life, a life that involves sleeping all the time and spinning donuts in the front yard. In his blind and dementia-y state, he is off the hook instantly. He hasn't done something naughty like that since like 1999 or so. Like so previous millenial. So nineties. Did you know music from the nineties is classic rock now? Yes. I heard Social Distortion on the radio then Built to Spill then Elvis Costello then the giggling college girl radio DJ said something how they are oldies. Crap.

Anyways. Ruby. I think not. She goes for food. Bluetooth is made of plastic and computer parts. Bluetooth is my cyborg maker, my robot friend that talks to my phone with little blinking red and blue lights and helps me hang up on people when I am supposed to be answering the phone. Bluetooth has no food. Were Bluetooth made of sausage or catfood or pie, we would suspect Ruby. Sister Mary Ruby, you are off the hook.

Otterpop. Has been known to chew items but only chews items made of wood or stuffed animals. Did have that phase of chewing all the vintage plastic skeletons and deer I had stuck in my plants because what is a potted plant without a skeleton and deer. But that was in her puppy days as I recall. Otterpop is four years old now. More of a howling bad dog when we leave her at home. It was very nice and quiet when we pulled up. Possibly was a good dog during our dinner. Otterpop, you are off the hook.

Gustavo. Who was Overjoyed when we walked in the door. Who leaped onto my legs like a short person with tiny long legs, like a little dwarf penguin with a skinny little body and the legs of a shrunken colt. Who thought the party was just starting, and had no idea we were enjoying frosty margaritas in festive large cups without him. Hiatus from Dirt Nite means margaritas, baby. Gustavo. Who enjoys eating my glasses. A book. A credit card bill. Money. I am ONE HUNDRED PERCENT SURE you have eaten Bluetooth.

PS-Speaking of cyborgs, my friend Blogger is kind of an asshole and doesn't always work. So don't panic when you come to read about another exciting chapter in the life of Team Small Dog and we are not here. You just throw a rock at Blogger when you see it. Um, but not THROUGH your computer screen, OK? Gustavo totally ate the wrong technology but that's just our Gustavo.

More information about carrying heavy items than you wanted.

Over the weekend, we moved all the stuff from my friend Dee's agility field to her new agility field. ALL the stuff. My non agility friends, you would be surprised at the amount of shlepping that goes on for agility. Just to practice, you shlep around the stuff to make a new course or to put the tunnel here not there, and set your jump exercise, or change the a-frame height like you are a turtle being crushed to a pancake by your horrible, wooden death shell.

And to have a dog show, you get all the stuff out of trailers and put it out and if you are nice, you stick around to help at the end of the day and carry it all back into the trailers. We carry a lot of stuff, us dog agility folk and we sort of look like the kind of people that maybe are not good carriers. But we are actually strong and burly and I guess for us ladies this is super for preventing osteoporosis and probably forever deterring having pretty fingernails and will someday will give us all old hunchy backs of pain.

Maybe I rephrase. Weight bearing osteoporosis preventing strength training usefulness! Actually super healthy, out there in the fresh air and blood pressure lowering too!


I had the Big Truck, and we put all Dee's stuff in it and made about a million trips back and forth down the lane until everything was out of Old Field, Future Home of Mobile Home Park, and into New Field, Also Future Home of Mobile Home Park but hopefully very far future. It's a long story. It sucks to not own your own flat land for your horses or for your dog agility around here. Another story for another day.


I let Otterpop come help. Ruby and Gustavo, maybe not so helpful. Ruby just goes off in search of feral cats and gophers and is so not into working unless you want critters killed. Which, if it's just the gophers, actually is helpful but maybe not everyone used to her kind of help.

Gustavo, don't even ask. Not a real helpful sort of ranch dog. Not his calling. He frolicks and gets in the tunnel and likely takes himself exploring out open gates because it is more FUN that way. Like he is the Hardy Boys and solving a crime? Like he is Justin Timberlake and is a dance machine? Let's say not a big work ethic on our little warty face Gustavo. Not in the genes and spends his days on the ranch laying on a nice deck or sitting in people's laps on a couch and wants to Go To the BEACH!

Otterpop though. She knows how to work. Dog is a real ranch lady of a dog.


When she sees we're driving in the Big Truck, she knows we're doing something important. She likes to help by laying in the shade under the truck, and watching carefully, eyes all narrow and head stuck out long at the end of her stumpy neck. She won't come out of the truck til you tell her, and then she stays under it. I never really taught her this. It was a skill she came pre-programmed for and doesn't get to use enough. Doesn't work with regular cars in a neighborhood, just in the Big Truck at the ranch or like at Home Depot where there are other Big Trucks and other dogs like her. Because in her mind she is tank sized and rides up on a toolbox, even on the freeway. Like she wishes we had some giant ranch of thousands of acres in Marfa and had to drive around doing things like feeding cows or checking fencing and she would ride in the Big Truck all day. Waiting in or under, until something needs it's ass kicked. In her mind. Is convenient she can do all her work from a shady spot. Who am I always saying is the smart dog?


This was the last load. Equipment moving had degenerated to just throwing everything left in the field in the back helter skelter. Otterpop did not do this ass kicking. I swear. I swear is the last load. I swear.

Weave pole tug clinic-a primer.

Well, we took a bit of time off the campaign trail to practice some driveway poles. Where are these getting us? Not sure. But all these trials are coming up, and I feel like we should be Actually Practicing and not just Thinking About Practicing. These are Different Things! As Team Small Dog reader Ellen put it, "Only on Team Small Dog, where reality is only one point of view." Yes! Because let me first tell you when I got dressed today, I decided to channel Nancy Botwin! You all know her, right? She lives in the planned community of Agregstic, and last we saw, was in a spot of trouble with the gangsters and the Christians and all the while, slurping her $4 coffee in a plastic cup while tackling the day to day realities of being a full time hot suburban lady and a drug dealer. Because I just have been feeling Nancy Botwin lately. I have no pool. Would be a terrible drug dealer. And I never buy the $4 coffee. We use the actual stove and sink water that does A-OK for us but sometimes I still just wish things would flow out of my mouth like hers. I guess she has writers. I guess I need to work on my craft.

Um. But Nancy doesn't wear skorts actually. Or navy blue slip on vans. Or polyester cowboy shirts.

Anyways. Carry on!


So the idea today, get everyone all crazy with a tuggie then speedy poles.


Ruby, check. Can I tell you what tuggie we are using? Is perhaps cheating, Greg Derrett. It is named Bully Stick and it is made from a part of a bull that is shaped like a stick. A sort of wide, longish stick. You guess what part, my friends. So not vegan. I will make the hippie tofu for dinner tonight and repent and my yoga teacher said be in the present so that's where we'll be, and the bull that lost his stick part for our weave poles, he is likely long in the past.


Otterpop, you are going to have no frisbee and just the tuggie stickie dickie thingy!


Works great!


Gustavo, you are why we have a skort, so I can sit in the dirt with you, on the driveway and we can PLAY! I am more fun than even Otterpop, think about our can-can days of high kicking, the day we showed our underpants to Barack Obama in the name of Getting Bush and his People out of the White House. We were so wild and drank Jagermeister and joked about the days when maybe you had less focus for agility for reasons that allude me, since good god, we're doing shots, red faced and nosebleeding and everyone is shouting ALOHA at the top of their lungs and just keep me away from those power tools.


And here's the poles. And here's me.


And there you are. You are so cute and you sit on my lap. You wake me up by climbing over the pillows standing on my hair and pulling it out at the roots and you run like the wind at the beach. Sometimes I wonder where have I gone wrong? I did not do the Crate Games enough? I did not tug enough? I need Control Unleashed mat lessons? A personal trainer? All of the above? Probably not debuting in the Starters this summer.

Team Small Dog is not afraid to show their panties for Barack.

I realized we didn't weigh in on the Barack vs. Hilary thing. We were so torn between them. Sorry, Hil. We can't wait to see you out there on the agility field though, if you retire and get Bill to sherpa the canopy and all that.

Also, I guess the REAL reason being we sure didn't like being shown up by Jef and his video. Border collie envy. So let's see your border collies do this, Jef.

Things you might see driving down Highway 1.

This tale is just here for telling you about the road I drive on, every day. It's name is Highway 1, which seems like a fine name for a road that is as far left as you can be, looking at our United States from straight ahead or maybe up above hovering in a space ship. It's a long road, stretching from the very bottom of California, up to nearly the top. Maybe it goes down to Mexico, and maybe it goes up into Oregon, but I couldn't tell you that as I never, ever go there. But I do drive from the beach town of Santa Cruz down to the farming town of Watsonville almost every day, so this is a road I know very, very well, as well as the messed up caulking on the new tub in my bathroom that you view from sitting on my toilet. It is scenic, and wraps near the coast in a bunch of parts, scenic vistas where maybe a car commercial would be filmed of the car's smooth handling around a curve near a sweeping bridge and some cliffs over the sea. You would never see a burned up motorhome in one of those commercials or guys with long baggy shorts and white knee socks up to their knees peeing off the side of the road. In the morning and at night, it becomes a freeway everyone hates and curses while they talk on their phones in the traffic jams that grow meaner every year. At the Santa Cruz part, Hwy 1 becomes mostly a very busy street known for it's bicyclist killing abilities as motorists fly by the Taco Bell and the falafel place and the Greek place and the Brazilian place and the surf shop and where the dog washing place was that recently became a hookah lounge.

So as I was flying by on the way home from work, going too fast but at the same time looking very carefully for bicyclists because they just die like flies on that road and damned if I become the next bike rider killer, I am seeing stuff that makes me happy to see and I and wonder, does everybody see stuff like this when they are driving home from work? Because I never run out of stuff to look at when I drive down this road that I've driven down maybe almost every day since like, well, since we were worried Ronald Reagan was blowing us all up to the moon and there were no tattoo shops on it and my friends had bongs almost as tall as they were that had names like girls that maybe lived in boarding schools in a place like Vermont. Back when people had time to dye their hair purple and sit in the driveway on a sunny, Sunday afternoon and drink beer and listen to talk about Marxism that didn't make a whole lot of sense.

On the corner by the tattoo shop of the super famous tattooer that makes you wait a YEAR for a tattoo, was a giant, fluffy red bird, a Santa Cruz Cardinal mascot waving a big sloppy painted sign for the car wash down the street at the high school. Accompanied by a sullen flag holder in her flag twirling skirt who isn't twirling her flag, a drummer pounding away, and, I kid you not, a teen bagpiper in a kilt that matched the flag twirler skirt. The bird, the bagpiper and the drummer all looked pretty chipper to be there, on the corner of Hwy 1, waving their sign for the car wash, while that poor girl looked like she would rather be dead than stand there with the stupid bird and those guys who maybe play D&D at night and know how to download anything you ever wanted off the internet.

But I can't stop because it's Hwy 1 and seconds later, I pass some Mormon guys, and one of them has no chin. They have on little backpacks, and they walked together, like the Beatles on that Beatles record where they all walk in step except Paul because maybe he was dead. There were only 2 Mormons, they always travel in pairs, and you always know it's them from their clean white shirts and their clean, pressed pants, and their friendly, smiling faces even when they're just walking down the street and maybe had to step out into busy traffic for a second to get past that giant red bird. And I was thinking, who did they visit with today and did they have a nice time and save any souls?

But I only had a second to wonder because then all of a sudden I am driving by the tall hot pants guy. He has these long giraffe legs, like the most impossibly long, tan legs I've ever seen on a man, but he only wears cut off jean hotpants. Super short cut right up his ass. And leg warmers down at the bottom, over his high top Reeboks circa Madonna Like a Virgin years. Like I know my sister BEGGED for those shoes and I think now they are back in again because what was in was out and now it's in. He has a frightfully colorful woven beanie thing over his long blonde hair. The overall impression of the hot pants guy is like a horribly misdirected tranny hooker but that hoofs it too fast to ever pick up a guy. He has to be old now, the hot pants guy, because I've seen him off and on for so many years. It feels like the same amount of years as I've been driving down this road, but could he have been wearing those hot pants this whole time? Like I think he's one of those fixtures about town like the screaming white haired lady who hovers over her bike, huddled in a building doorway screaming at the top of her lungs then staying there without moving for hours, or the other bike riding guy who decides you are the Devil and starts biking after you, screaming that you are an Asshole and Must DIE and you make sure not to make eye contact and keep your head low. The hot pants guy is taking his big long steps down the sidewalk just barely ahead of the Mormons who would maybe be able to talk with him but not sure what they would talk about? I always have this idea maybe he is really, really quiet, but I only see him from the car so that might be false, wrong to even think that.

But then in seconds he's gone because the traffic is moving and I pass the giant lady. Like Diane Arbus type lady, walking down the sidewalk, she isn't with the hot pants guy but half a block ahead. He is always alone, and I have never seen this giant lady. How could I have ever missed this giant lady? She is so very, very tall, maybe the tallest lady I can ever remember seeing just walking down the street. She has on sweatpants and has the whole eco friendly canvas tote business going on, which looks so shrimpy against her giant body. I could only see her for a second because the traffic was moving at dead bicyclist speed and then it was time to turn to drive down to my own street, you get off Hwy 1 at the hookah lounge and just drive towards the sea and then you'll be there in a few minutes. That's the spot where Otterpop starts to whine and sticks her snout with little vampire fangs over the gridded metal bars of her crate, and all the dogs wake up and move around because if we're almost home it means we're almost at the beach and life is better for dogs that have been just sitting in the car this whole time, locked up in boxes, not looking at anything that I can tell.

Yes, you have already seen this but just in case.

Some of you alerted me to this video right away. Likely, this means ALL of you have already seen it because I am known to always be slightly behind the curve. I don't know our friend Jef here, I googled him and it looks like he is a pretty shrewd agility competitor, but he is a man Team Small Dog's can relate to. Although I suspect his training laziness is feigned and not so much Actual like mine. I do like it when he offers his dogs puppy treats and they run away to do other frolicsome things. And his potty mouth gets bleeped out a whole bunch when he starts yelling at his dogs who are so highly trained as to know how to feign frolicking away!

And all you guys are trying to fix me up with him! I already HAVE an agility boyfriend you guys! But I think all of you will like Jef's video and you guys can be his new fans because he is pretty funny. It was nice knowing you. You can come back to me for cooking shows I guess.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAUHqIWilrw

Cookin' With the Team-Good God, It's Vegetables.

All right my friends. I rarely ever do this. But I was at the store and I felt unhealthy, and I went to the vegetable section and purchased vegetables and announced to my husband, "I shall cook a healthy dinner and it will involve vegetables and we will be healthy for once in our lives, goddamnit." He protested, but I believe I may have started doing a crazy robot dance and a super fly rap crazy chanted something about how the taqueria is killing us, so he said maybe, just maybe, just this once he would eat something cooked by me involving some vegetables.


So the other thing I snuck in there is the tofu. Sends shivers down many spines, but it is so very, very healthy. This being Santa Cruz, this would be what we can eat and get away with around here. I believe we refer to this as Regional Cuisine.


I also selected some more green things like green beans and broccoli, for no other reason than I don't hate them and they are easy to cut up.


Don't cry when you do the next part. If you were on Top Chef, it would involve your knife skills and I would have a closeup of my old, dull knife trying to hack through an onion while I try to hold it together and do not weep. Luckily nothing happened today that would incite the weeping. No Timmy almost died, no pitbulls tried to eat my dogs, only one dogwalk contact was missed collectively when I practiced with the dogs. It was a pretty boring yet non traumatic old day.


Be careful because this is real cooking with the heat, and if you happen to forget you left the oil heating in the frying pan it will SIZZLE when you fling the onions into the pan. Flinging is really the only exciting part of all this, so fling away and enjoy. Let's not start oil fires, OK? You try to remember when you put the olive oil in the pan and turn the heat to high and decide to go look for paint in the garage instead of slicing vegetables.


Oh yeah. This might be the other OK part of the cooking. If it is refreshing cool wine, drink on up. Especially if you had a hot, sweaty day out in the dirt at your office. The vegetables will taste better the more wine you drink.


The garlic never hurts either.


And then might as well splash some wine in with the green crap because what the hell. Right Marsha?


Wave at Timmy. I caught him pacing by the kitchen door there. He goes back and forth front door, back door, front door, back door. It's his hobby I guess. Far as he can tell, some drunk lady is catching him and dragging him over to the cooking show set.


Now I was like, what the hell else could I add to this so it looks more like food and not a big pan of green crap with some wine in it that no one is going to want to eat? Canned tomotoes? What the hell.


And I already had some water boiling for the WHOLE WHEAT spaghetti noodles. I heard these make your thighs petite and no gut busting carbs that are like the equivalent of one stick of butter per bite. Like uber healthy. Have to lie to get Gary to eat this dinner for sure. He is so sneaking out for pizza later.


OK, Come on. I made this. I am not kidding you. I ate it too. Gary, maybe not. It wasn't so bad. Tasted like vegetables over some spaghetti noodles. You could try it too. You might even like the tofu part. And no dogs bug you in the kitchen when you make this! They are like so over the whole thing of green things on the counter. Not even trying to get a scrap thrown. You go on and eat your pizza dinner tonight or you try this. I am pretty sure you will thank me when you are so overcome with the healthiness that you can serpentine where you thought not possible before, and put in the most daring front cross due to your new found speed of health.

It is how you have a nice evening at the beach with dogs.

Last night I had the small dogs down on the beach, doing the usual thing of frantically attacking each other over a stick. It's just what they love to do. Sometimes people have commented to me that it looks like they are having a fight while they are running, but I think it's mostly herding behaviors from Otterpop as if the other small dogs are giant cattle needing to be moved somewhere which is away from a stick, and also they all just really want the stick BAD. Even Gustavo has learned that the stick is incredibly important to get to first and it's every small dog for himself and it's pretty funny to watch is what I think. They just play rough. I dunno. It gets them really tired I guess. Maybe I let tiny dogs do things that might freak me out if they weighed something closer to what giant cattle weigh.

So in the era of State Park Rangers, my trips to the beach and the field are usually pretty solo these days. I frequently have a whole beach to myself in the eveining, sometimes a couple other dogs, sometimes some drunk guys or some tourists from India. Sometimes I take a tourist picture for them with small dogs attacking a stick in front of the scenic sea as their background. Last night there were a couple people down there with pitbulls, so a small herd of small dogs at one end, and a small herd of pitbulls at the other.

Some of the pitbulls I knew, have known them for years. Good dogs, with a foxy girl owner who runs up and down the beach with them. Very sweet and well behaved dogs that like a tennis ball for some good fun. The other ones, never seen before but didn't give me any cause to think Maybe Leave the Beach Now, which is something I have done a lot, because when your dogs weigh like 14lbs, and other dogs down there start attacking things and obviously have no clue about the word Come or have an owner that obviously isn't ever going to use that word, you just pack up and move on somewhere else.

So I am down at the far end of the beach, throwing that stick, when I look up and at the other end, 2 pitbulls attached to each other and 2 owners holding pitbull legs like wheelbarrows, standing there and pulling and pitbulls just attached like glue, mouth to head. For a long time. My one thought was, they probably need some help because there are 2 other pitbulls just hanging out and those things are not coming off each other's heads, but my other thought was, I am not bringing my tiny dogs anywhere near where there are already pitbulls attached to each other like that.

In the end, one of them had a bloody but not ripped off ear. Still attached. Never saw the other one because the owner got it off the beach. The foxy girl, she just started running down the beach again with her tennis ball, and the old fetching pitbull just trotted after her for a while, bloody ear somehow still stuck on his head.

I watched Sex and the City so you don't have to.

Where do I start, my dog agility friends? These were my old friends, we used to drink Cosmo's together and totter around the city on our super high heels. We went our separate ways for a while, grew older and got some wrinkles, some of us got more dogs, and now we are back together in a sparkly and shiney movie FILLED WITH SUPER EXPENSIVE YET COMPLETELY INSANE CLOTHES!

How do I explain it to you, in terms that are clear and consistent, and we can all relate to? And no more Derrida. Ever. How about, let's pretend we are at a dog agility trial, it is the USDAA Nationals. And we all have our own motorhomes, the biggest, fastest, wood paneled and air conditioned motorhomes, with little pools for the dogs out front and we park them all together and we have butlers to fix the dogs snacks and spray them down with cooling mists. We actually have minions of servants to do everything for us and bring us frosty margaritas on gold plated trays. We might fret and fuss about not getting a Q, we might get cranky, but we can always retire to our motorhomes, have another cocktail and a good laugh. And we are there for each other, that's what's important, Right?

Then, one of the popular dogs who is supposed to be in the Big $10,000 Steeplechase Finals gets a sore foot, and we are all boo hoo hoo and some people are like, so what? And there is a lot of crying and weeping but you know what, we are there for each other. And that dog dies a slow and awful death. But we go on vacation and shopping and buy tons of new Skorts! And goretex shoes and slip-on Vans with every pattern known to mankind and have a cocktail. And we have flat stomachs! And then there is some more shopping and some of the friends get in a little fight but then we go shopping again. And eat in a lot of restaurants that only serve food on large square plates and order not one but 2 bottles of wine whenever we want! And buy new motorhomes that are decorated inside by Ralph Lauren with orignal Hopi woven fabrics and furniture made by glueing millions of tiny sticks on things.

That sort of goes on and on. And then, there is what some of you might think is a happy ending, because the dog didn't really die, HA HA on you in case you were weeping over that sore foot dog. It is all BETTER now! I was thinking the end was sort of all wrong and Carrie should have turned out to be a heroin addict. And Samantha gets terminal cancer and is an alcoholic and Miranda becomes the defense lawyer for some members of the Bush family and has to write briefs about how they have Nothing To Do With The Oil Prices, and Charlotte, she is just Charlotte except maybe her kids have horrible behavior problems and she becomes inconsolable with her beautiful, popping brown eyes and she starts getting fat and becomes addicted to a seedy chatroom and never comes off that computer.

Oh Carrie Bradshaw. You are so beautiful and you wear so many things we could have worn for dog agility. And you used to write such neat little voiceovers for every episode where there was some kind of moral for every little story about shopping excesses and love gone sour. You are my writing inspiration, you sit there typing on your silver laptop computer just like mine, in your argyle thigh high stockings stretched over your long ballerina legs. And you have long and messy hair which looks artful, even when you wear a turquoise bird on the side of it. But you kind of pulled a stinker here with this one, like we live in an economy today where we think it's funny to watch 4 rich and vapid ladies the exact same age as me frolic around, flaunting your riches and excesses and partying like it's 1985 and you love Ronald Reagan. Or like you are all Scarlett Ohara's, you and your friends, before Atlanta burns, and you are really nice to what you heard was the "hired" help, and on a special occasion, you buy them a special handbag, one that you already have to keep your dog treats in.

Our Consistent Handling System, Part 3.

All right. Today we were going to work on directionals in the yard using the tunnel with Gustavo. And he found bugs in the tunnel. And I am supposed to be more motivating to my dog than the other things on the field and than the frolicking border collies and then we hit this snag with crawling pincher bugs. Something was not clear enough to him. And he really, really, likes those bugs.


So we decided to come inside and watch the basic Foundation Video some more because clearly we need that. Today's section was on Wait and Stay, while the computer played the DVD with more tips on Front Cross timing.


And I was thinking how weird is it to be a sunny day, and my day off, and I am inside with the video machine on? Doesn't that seem wrong, like sort of lazy? Is dog agility a leisure activity? Is it a hobby? A sport that mostly ladies like, although here I am watching a video by my agility boyfriend, a Man? Making one or the other of us the Other? Should we be reviewing this from a feminist perspective? Wasn't it just yesterday I used I tried to explain it and might have even been using signs and signifiers, which are very, very, SERIOUS tools, not for a hobbyist ever to try. And are of course, from the French, not even the English. We don't even know if Greg Derrett likes stuff from France like post structuralist theory. I betcha he likes french fries at least.


And the whole crux of this involves play. Getting the dogs to play but in a very, very SERIOUS way so that they do not screw up at the Dog Show, which is really a trial, which again sounds very SERIOUS, because there is a Judge, who is in charge of the scales of justice, making sure there is a balance, usually a balance between good and evil but really a balance can be any kind of dichotomy. Crap. And wasn't it Derrida that always was talking about dichotomies and pairs, but NEVER Master's Pairs where you get to run carrying a dog toy? And how come I keep running into Derrida who is like the MOST confusing guy ever, when I am just trying to explain easy and clear and consistent handling? Like I can't even read Donna Haraway's new book, which even quotes Derrida but always in the context of dogs and Donna, she's a wicked front crosser, whenever she can with that speedy dog of hers.


And then after all that, this is what the real dogs were doing.


And this.


Oh boy. Are you guys beginning to see why maybe it is we don't quite have those ADCh's for everybody yet