In today's episode, me and the dog show photographer offer you some nice shots of my ass.

Found some photos from the dog show photographer.My non agility friends, here is a whole industry you didn't even know existed. You get a camera with the longest lense in the world, looks like you have a tube of salami attached to your face. Sit in a beach chair outside the dog show ring and click every time the dog comes by. All day. Why bother taking that beach chair to an actual beach when you could sit outside that dog show ring? Start at 8am, finish whenever the dogs finish. 3pm? 5pm? 7pm? Sit and click, thousands of time. When you're done, put them on the internet and maybe someone buys one. Or someone goes up and grabs it and sticks it on a blog. Not paying. Horrible little thief. I've bought one or two, but it's hard to find a photo I love. Very picky, I am. Little bit of a crapshoot for those tired and bored photographers.


The thing I don't so much get, the photographers are very careful to try to just get a nice photo of the dog. Don't get the person. Closeup on the dog coming through the poles, or the tire, or blasting out of the tunnel. Because we wear weird outfits and our hair askew and ugly shoes, never, ever include the human unless it's a tragic photography mistake. I love the tragic mistake ones. I want the shot of me screaming at the dog. Looking panicked. Doing the electric slide with hands making a shimmy shimmy shake your tailfeather Beyonce ass to get your dog onto that table.

I just had to show you this.

I'm not really a video person. I mean, I am not at all a video person. This is taken with my regular camera, just setting it on a bucket and using the video for dummies button. And don't mind me hiking up my pants. But I thought maybe you'd like to see what Gustavo looks like doing a little sequence. Not having an actual camera angle that could show you, he does that chute barrel out to a staggered line of jumps before the tunnel. Like stuff I do with everyone else! And every time we did those poles, hit that entrance no problem, and pretty fast through 'em, RIGHT? Like I think, little drumroll, maybe even faster than Otterpop's poles.

Yeah, the channels are a little open at the first couple poles. I really want him super confident about those entries, even though this may come back to haunt me at some point. And yeah, that's how I do his startline. Like we just GO. More potential haunting of the future. And yeah, that's Otterpop barking under the soundtrack. I am kind of from the what the hell if the other dogs bark school of thought when it comes to irritating barking dogs during agility. Just pretend they have little cheerleader skirts and are tearing up pom poms at the same time. Too loud for any haunting. Those barking short dogs scare the pants off any lurking ghosties.

But see here, my non agility friends. I am running really, really fast. Look at Laura run, insert your giggles now. I don't care. This is the whole point here. That tunnel is almost 100 feet away from the camera. My chubby and stubbly legs are flying. And those jumps you can't see are on weirdo angles, and he's just getting it. You run as fast as you can, you do what I show you, and you think it's the best day ever. It is starting to get really, really fun with him.

They're not exactly the cuddly wuddly types.

I thought this just sort of looked like a scene from Sid and Nancy. Except I can't tell who is Sid and who is Nancy.

In this episode, we had a nice dog show over the weekend.

So yesterday, we drove up to a CPE dog show in Petaluma. CPE dog shows, my non agility friends, are sort of like the flip flops to your vintage Frye engineer boots. Not to be confused with non vintage ones purchased at full price through some swishy online retailer that sells the Perfect Belt for $340. Sort of like the Mazda to the F-250 truck. Your basic tract ranch with wall to wall berber to your sculpturally restored Eichler. Like it gets you where you want to go. Just has sort of a different vibe than USDAA. Kind of agility for the rest of us.

So when kicking back in a tract house in your flip flops, 6 year old Mazda parked in the pretty clean driveway, there's not a bunch of cares in your world. Crack a beer, turn on the tv, flop back in the slightly stained couch with a polar fleece throw to hide it and you hang out. Sort of like at CPE. USDAA show, you got your boots that are so perfect broken in and you had to make sure to do the truck maintenance to keep that big truck running good and running strong and there's always stuff to attack on that Eichler at all times to keep it stunning and better than the other ones on the block.

So you get it. Just different strokes in these dog shows. I go to both. One way, not so stressful, one way more of by way of aspiration work in progress. I think that makes me a slip on navy blue Vans wearer driving a 1999 Honda CRV living in a vintage wood paneled 1940's beach bungalow that still needs work. We took our friend Mary and her dog who live down the street so we carpooled and how green is that and her big dog had to sit sort of smashed up against my small dogs. I think they all had a nice time of it anyways. Is fun to bring a pal to the dogshow! Thanks Mary! She tore up the Level 3 CPE stuff this weekend.

My dogs had a swell time. Really can't complain. I know that they were all Qs, all the time. Now it's all a little foggy, I know there were some weirdo start lines for Ruby in the morning that went away by the afternoon. Cost her some time, cost me some concern, but she never looked sore and by the end of the day was running like that finely tuned big truck I always hope her to be. Just tried to keep her out of weave poles where I could. One bar late in the day at a double jump out of a blasty tunnel. One bar, whole day. Hey Ruby thanks! Our big goal here was testing out her super fast and CONSISTENT running dogwalk contact we've been working away at but this was nearly a dogwalk free dog show for some reason of mystery not figured out by me other than CPE judges not dogwalk fans? Is somewhere in the rules? Dunno. The one she did in her Standard was fast and feet ran straight to the bottom of the yellow like we've been practicing practicing practicing but no way to tell was it fluke or fact.

Otterpop continued in her newly scrubbed off brain idea of it is not so bad out there in that ring. Loped around like in the hunters. Can't say she's looking like the fastest dog in town like she does when she practices in a ring she deems safe and sane. She only likes sheep and horses to watch her. And have beloved frisbee there. But had a nice working canter, like if they had a hunter division for scrappy little Otterpops she'd be right in there. Would have to braid her tail somehow though. But just a steady, confident dog out there and I see her getting nothing but better and easier out there and not searching so desperately for zombies at every turn. In the world of CPE, this means she wins prizes and such, although I still need to check and see what they were. I kind of don't actually care though, so maybe tomorow. Or the next day.

Hey Goo you're two.

My friend Goo has a real tattoo
He always knows just what to do
He looks thru his hair like he doesn't care
What he does best is stand and stare

--Sonic Youth

You guys remember that song right? And Kim Gordon is getting the senior discount price at the movies now. Which is beyond creepy and weird and means we are all that much closer to dying. I used to aspire to being her. Didn't quite turn out that way. But if she's 55, means I've had Gustavo for a whole year. Can't really spit that whole name out much and mostly now we just call him Goo. He is still the fastest, happiest, and friendliest tiny dog I ever did meet. Didn't end up contaminating the whole agility community with his tainted blood. I think it ended up being untainted. We never figured out how old he was. We thought he was 1 or 2. Two rhymes with Goo. Hey you!

Might just be he's only two
for a long time hey Goo you're two
I know a secret or two about Goo
He won't mind if I tell you

He just likes to run everywhere
Cuz he's the fastest dog anywhere
Maybe he don't stick like glue
We don't care, hey Goo do you

Don't know how he'll end up at agility, and really don't care. He's really hard to train, but the better he gets the funner he is to run. But you know, just having him around is about the funnest thing I can imagine. Like on your worst day, you feel so bad, you just go find Goo. You get him to take a break from RUNNING and SQUEAKING the squirrel and just hold on to him for a little while and makes that worst day just kind of fizzle on back down. All the dogs have their things they do, they have their jobs. And he does that one better than any dog I know.

Let's try not to be such a bitch to Oprah.

Orpah: "Hey, how is your summer going?"

Laura: "First dog sick. Then a fire. Dog sicker. More fire. Dog still sick. More fire. Dog died. Watched a horse fractures skull/die. Got fat. Can't sleep."

Well that was a shitty way to answer. Especially when Oprah asks. She is so nice and everything to call and it's not her fault she lives in 4 giant mansions. Maybe next time when she rings instead you tell her about the 5 color rug yer making to replace the pee stained carpet. Gustavo's fast weave poles and sequences. 3 good dogs to take to the beach and who sleep in a row always in your view. Gotta nice husband and your very own house. A new nephew and yer mom and all yer pals remembered yer birthday in advance. And looking forward to a big fancy tattoo from Edu.

I'll watch Project Runway so you don't have to. Again.

So I dunno. Mostly it seemed kind of old and stale. But not so bad like something you throw in the garbage. More like some chips you might still eat, but the whole time thinking, "Why am I eating these?" Maybe what you are saying right now. She is watching that Project Runway crap again? Didn't she write this already? Well, what the hell else you going to read then? You want more about front crossing again? Yeah, I didn't think so.

But what was sort of weird and nice, right in the beginning, we met this little blonde fella that has classic alien eyes and puffy puppy cheeks and the first thing he wanted was a tanning booth. And he looks like somethng that was constructed on a government base and shipped out to Project Runway under the guise of fashion designer. How weird is that? Like a CIA conspiracy, but why? Curious. And the next guy we met was some dad from Detroit. Like sort of this plain, basic, guy. And then it was Stella Ramone who makes leather rockstar corsets for Sebastian Bach. And is like a super downer, bummer man, dyed black hair sad eyes. A bunch of them were over 40. And a bunch weren't.

The thing that was happening was it seemed like the alien guy was the Christian. A whole buncha the girls were the Kit Pistols. There was a Sweet P and a Daniel Vosovic and a Jeffrey. And so on and so forth. Recycling. Austin Scarlett even came back for a minute. Super-recycling. Tim Gunn just kept looking like he wanted to cry. His brow was so furrowed. Like he wanted a snack with some carbs and a ride home.

Suede gave us a new word though. Wackadoodle. I believe I actually have said it 4 times, making it my word now. And Stella Ramone has the candycane striped leather pants we can't figure out, and the little spiked raccoon eyelashes that maybe are tattoos? She is an enigma sent from angels for our perusal. And the guy that got voted off, irritating, but what a way to go off, with this chainsaw massacre bride. Exactly how we used to dress up the cats as kids! Chainsaw bride had a weird off with the maxi pad mesh leotard sent by the CIA to the alien. The CIA gave him the dumbest catch phrase to make him the new Christian. What's going on with network tv and covert government operations. CIA, you reading this? I'm not repeating it. So there. Wackadoodle. Catch phrase my ass.

A very good question from the mailbag. Mailbox. Emailbox.

So got this email the other day.

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Dear Team Small Dog's Captain,

I noticed you link to homespun yarn and/or knitting on TSD. So, it begs the question, do you spin your dogs' fur and make glorious TSD knitted creations.

Sincerely (not really),

Wishy

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Of course I emailed back not so sincere Wishy right away, not wanting her to fret another day, likely thinking how does she have the time to teach her dogs these amazing tricks and running dogwalks on an enchanted desert island, handspin dog fur, knit glorious creations, and cook fine cuisine, all in a days time? Bitch. Like I could be here, snoozing on the couch, and she thinks I am slaving away behind a spinning wheel? Just not right to mislead nice people.

So the answer is, first of all, the tricks and running dogwalks, I just used Kaki's video for that yesterday. Problem solved. So there's half an hour or so to just take my dogs down to the beach and throw a stick. Fine cuisine? We eat pizza, so I was able to fall asleep to a taped version of the New Project Runway, now on at 9pm when I'm not even home from dog agility yet. A promising beginning with a whiney reincarnated lady version of a Ramone and a guy named Suede. Spinning yarns and knitting creations?

I leave that to my friend Pluckyfluff. Pluckyfluff being a secret internet name for actual name Lexi. I can give her shameless plugs all I want because she is a member of my disfuntional little best friends forever family, husband to Joel Warner who won't even tell me how painful his giant arm tattoo was. Mom of the extremely cute kids you sometimes see photos of here. Marsha Hubert to some of you. And one of the biggest names in yarn spinning and knitting and crocheting around. She has 2 stunning yarn books out, and I highly recommend both. Her yarn is special cool yarn, not for those you you who want to knit a little rainbow throw for yorkies, more for you guys willing to take a brave trip to yarn bizarreness and knit yourself something that renders a massacre on the prairie or a drunken weekend of debauchery involving muskets on a wild horse ranch in the desert.

She taught me how to knit and crochet once. The knitting, didn't even come close to taking. And she got me sparkle knitting needles and everything. Way too much cursing in a 10 minute period to continue. The crochet? Enough to make one weirdly misshapen beenie that looks like of like you crossed a giant strawberry with something you might scrub a sink with and tear off an edge and shove it over your head. Sometimes I wear it. It took me like 6 damn months to crochet. I better wear it. I learned in that time I won't crochet anymore. Might be like some of you, my non agility friends and your dog agility. Just not gonna happen.

Maybe some of you dog people are yarn people? Although I have a suspicion most yarn people have lots of cats. That are not kept as mousing employees but have special hand knitted cat beds and indoor litter boxes. Just a theory of mine. Maybe I'm wrong. If you are someone with dogs who also walks in the handspun world, you enigmas of the yarn universe you, go buy her book. Because we're banking on Lexi to become the rich and famous one so we can all retire riding her knitted sweater dress/hand reconstructed vintage concert tee/conceptual scarf ends to a comfy retirement on a ranch somewhere.

In this episode, you can watch someone else's video and you just pretend it's me.

This is Team Small Dog training. Sort of. Doesn't seem to help deer chasing. Or cat chasing for that matter. But is pretty fun.

This is Kaki. Remember her? She lives on an enchanted island somewhere with her cute border collies that do it all and have perfect running dogwalk contacts. Plus she's super model. She keeps cranking the videos out. Thanks Mary, for sending that.

So maybe my island isn't enchanted and it's not an island. And sometimes at that beach, you have to walk by a sleeping drunk guy on the stairs. But you know. Could be a lot worse.

In this episode, we are all relieved that we own no firearms.

I'm teaching Gustavo to be a super stealth hunter in his own backyard. Who needs deer hunting when, right here, without leaving our own property, we can stalk all kinds of wildlife. Like the guy who plays the same Radiohead cd over and over and over and over. The guy who talks on his celphone on his deck and takes forever to decide if they are going to meet downtown or at his house. Super old Richard clear his throat, spit and tap tap tap on his old school typerwriter while watching a show about WWII on the History Channel. Turned up for max volume for the super old.

Maybe our yard exactly why we need deer chasing in the forest that we drive to. Just realized was 2 whole years ago we got outbid in the eleventh hour on buying the dream ranch. Which was really just a crappy house on a few acres of flat field with a good well. On the exact road we dreamed of our whole lives, with trail access out to the most beauty of it all and thousands of acres of deer forests. Our biggest reality check of the whole We Are Buying a Ranch phase of our lives. Which has turned into We Are So Living in an 800sf House With No Yard Forever phase of our lives.

Recall training-a primer.

Today we took the dogs hiking in the forest. You're not supposed to have dogs in the forest, but you know me and my lawbreaking ways when I want to walk my dogs. It's the forest that you get to by parking your car at the No Dogs Allowed University, then hiking through the No Dogs Allowed cattle pastures, then down a hill to the river, then up a hill to where the trails get more narrow and the terrain darker and more redwoody and far from everyone else. Where still No Dogs Allowed but no one around in there to really care.

We used to take Timmy there a lot. Gary remembers hiking in there with him in the pouring rain once, but I don't. You cross the river over a narrow log way high up over the water, although in the summer it's a trickle of a creek and we just hopped on rocks through it so the dogs could drink and splash around some.

So you remember I had some dog chasing deer problems up in Boonenville. Ending in Ruby getting kicked by the deer after it had enough of being ambushed by dogs the size of loaves of bread made of gentle forest gnomes. Bad dogs. Never had livestock or deer chasing dogs before. Skimboarders, yes. Deer? Sure they might go off on a short dash for a second, then good dogs always come back when they're called. I have trained dogs. I think. Right? They know how to get up on that table and lay still for 5 seconds, that counts for something doesn't it?


So while hiking, we saw this. Or heard it first. A scenic deer family quietly munching lichen or twigs or whatever it is deer eat in the dark forest.


And when the deer heard us, off they went. Up a vertical, steep slope that looks like it went on forever. Because we are deep in the forest here. If there were hobbits or enchanted woodcutter cottages or witches covens, this is the part of the forest they would be in.


And two bad dogs went off in pursuit. Straight up the forest cliff wall, like bolts of tiny lightning.


One dog was a good dog. Ruby seems to recall the deer kick incident as being somewhat of a negative experience and decided to not go off on the hunt.

The two bad dogs, seem to recall the last deer incident as the funnest thing in the world. More fun than joining the whole Love Boat gang on the Love Boat reunion tour with Isaac's bar open the whole time and free tattoos by acclaimed tattooers all night. More fun than any activity planned by Cruise Director Julie, even on Dog Agility Casino Nite. And in a flash, just like that, they were gone. Tiny little dots of black running up the redwood cliff and away.


I was not happy. I sat there and waited a long time, whistling so they would find the sound and head back. And they did. Maybe not even gone that long. Come flying down this cliff through logs and trees and brush and stickers, straight down the mountainside they did run. Roped 'em up and marched 'em out of the dark forest. When got back up to the meadow, let them loose again to get some more running done. Good dogs for a while, then heard another deer. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Same exact scenario, two bad dogs I believe chased them all the way back down to the river before running back up to us.

So I now have 2 confirmed deer chasing dogs. I believe I read things on the internet and in dog books about how good dogs, meaning trained dogs, always come when called. Even when there are deer or skunks or lions or elephants or goblins, pick your poison. I think my dogs used to do this. And now they don't. We don't visit the forest too often, so it's not like they chase goats and I have pet goats and I can implement a carefully planned, step by step training program about goat chasing. Shock collars likely take care of this but I couldn't bear the thought. So maybe I don't have forest hiking dogs anymore. So much for good dog training skills.

In this episode, we attend a civilized dinner party that involves zero barking.

Last night, we had dinner over at our friends' house. They are good friends, their world is dogless by choice, but they have things like handmade cloth napkins. Unscratched up wood floors. Furniture not covered up with polar fleece blankets. No nose prints on windows. Easy to walk on floorplan unlittered with stuffed squirrel carcasses and contraband sticks snuck in from the yard.

Naturally, the dinner table conversation turned to dog agility. Naturally, if by natural you mean I hadn't had a buncha glasses of wine and just started blabbing about dog agility. Because EVERYONE always wants to know about dog agility. It's the new black. Or brown. Or something. Actually, I think they had been mightily amused by the dog agility videos from the other day including my floundering around in a skort shreiking and pointing at my dogs and at things with pointy finger six shooter mitt. I thought perhaps my foibles would have amused you, over here on this side of the fence, dog agility friends, but what I have found is that they are most amusing to you guys over on the other side of the fence, non dog agility friends.

So Maia, who I believe could become a dog agility convert very easily, if we could just get her to get a dog, (did you know I have you specced out here Maia?) asked the very good question, "So you get the dogs to just do stuff out there and go over the stuff by pointing at it?" Actually, she likely did not say stuff. I don't remember what exactly she said. This involved wine. Does blog have same rules as personal memoir? Not trying to James Frey you guys here, I swear.

Anyways, Yes! You guys, you non agility friends, yes! I know. I get all technical here and I am talking about systems and crossing and this and that but really. If you just run, like the wind, like you are chased through the alleys of an abandoned amusement park at in the pitch black by alligator weilding zombie rapists-oh wait, wrong movie-and you point at stuff in the nick of time, you are getting the basic idea here. Maybe we have to practice some, like I watched the Tour de France guys on the new channel which has been discovered our tv has, which is a biking channel to add on to the Giants channel and mistakenly assume, well all you guys you bikers, you could do that! And everyone laughs heartily at the non biker in the room and talk of spokes and chain rings and sprinting ensues which now in my mind I possibly am switching movies again and thinking about underground gopher caves and tunnels and what they would look like to me if I was as tiny as a thumbnail wart and could tour them on a miniaturized racing motorcycle and would this be as popular a ride at Disneyland as I believe it to be right now?

This whole dog thing, just for fun, I think, right?

The entries just went up for the big dog show called the Regionals. Five rings, five judges, sure to be mayhem. This is the one that many, many giant motorhomes come to full of fancy winner type dog agility people. You know them. They win and make videos and write books and maybe are sort of hard to beat. Maybe wear little spandex pants. Is a dog show that maybe seems a little bit more like a horse show than a dog show. Maybe a little bit stressy and people get a little bit worked up over stuff. Little bit hot and bothered. Soon we need to start bringing our golf carts and walkie talkies and look out for the Big Fight with the gate steward. Knock-down drag-out at the warmup jump. Catty, hushed yet not hushed conversations about who sold her that dog. Horse. Dog. Horse. Wait a minute. Is this my work or is this hobby?

I am not sure what days I'll go. Ruby is on limited runs now to keep her sound, Otterpop sort of just trucking along currently but I don't think she needs to do a lot at this show because the mayhem of it all it might blow her little cork right off her gourd. Like let's just say no to DAM team. Let the dogs rest and be a nice helper around the ring. Fluff some chutes. Set some bars. Are going to be a lot of bars to set. Don't need a motorhome because not too far from my house. A huge plus is it's close to my work so maybe I can enter Saturday Grand Prix and no horses suffer in the name of dog agility hobby. Grand Prix judged by a team small dog reader! Wow! A small world, dog agility is.

Maybe attending Regionals based on timing of classes times drive real fast down the bumpy farm roads from my ranch out to the park in time to maybe walk the course but maybe not, sort of weird way to base your Regionals dog agility experience. Maybe not good use of mental management techniques. But any other way, maybe not the Team Small Dog way. Just am hoping, this year, if I mess up in the Steeplechase Finals, the snitty ladies, you keep your snitty comments sort of low and more quiet whispery so I they don't burn up my sensitive little ears on my sheepish shuffle out the ring.

America's funniest dog agility videos and they are me.

Here's some videos from last weekend. They are humbling. I sound like a dork, I look like a dork and I handle like a dork. I guess it's official. Now I am seeing why all my friends steer clear of this whole agility thing. I am going backwards in the making it cool department.

Watch Ruby almost get stepped on, have me do the lamest crackhead thing I've ever done to pull her out of the poles under the guise of "Front Cross" and just handle like a weirdo maniac. Poor Ruby. Why, why, why, do I do weird shit to her in the show ring? And I wonder why we just can't get it together. She is MORTIFIED by me is the problem.

Then watch Otterpop sort of lope around her Steeplechase course, with me going Pop! POp! POP! like every second. Shriekzilla. Just shriek a little louder lady. She must think I am the biggest freak. I think, someday, she will figure out it's just not that bad in the show ring. Until then, enjoy some amusing dog video.

Quit laughing. I can hear you all the way over here.

I am not kidding about the dirt.

Dirt night takes on a whole new level of dirt in the summer.

On hot days, I spend all day at work sweating, and getting coated with layers of dust and dirt. It goes along with the job. On Wednesday nights though, I run straight over to another barn to teach agility class then run my dogs once it's dark and cool at the end of the night. So this barn is a dressage barn. The dressage people, they see dirt different than us hunter people do. Instead of good old fashioned water to keep their dust down in their arena, they use this Stuff.

The Stuff gets sprayed down over the arenas and the dirt road. I guess it's a polymer, it feels like oil. Like salad dressing, is a good way to think about it. Spray down salad dressing over your black dirt that already has nice black and oily tire particles in it. The dressage people, they don't have to walk around in it setting jumps, they just sit up on the deck to teach their lessons and for the most part don't have to walk in the dirt. Must scrub the heck out of their horses' legs every day. So don't have to deal with sprinklers and water all summer because of the miracle Stuff.

So when us dog people show up on Wednesday, first thing we have to drag the stuff out of the trailer and set up in the dirt. I teach class in the dirt. Beginners have dropped out because of the dirt, now salad dressing coated black tire dirt. We're used to it now, just slog through it, clumping on boots and coating pants legs. White legged dogs? Black by the end of their class.

Last night, it was muggy. We don't really have muggy as a season usually. Was kind of muggy all day. Ran my dogs at the beach on the way to work, in the muggy. Got nice and sweaty before work. Rode too many horses at work in the muggy and dragged too many jumps around in the muggy and got nice and sweaty and coated with dirt layer number one. Regular dirt though. Went to agility in the muggy and did the fun begin. By the time I was ready to run my dogs and Hobbes, you could barely see who I was through the dirt coat. All clothing now dirt colored. Ran 3 dogs on a bunch of runs, they were all nice and fast so I was running nice and fast in the muggy and sweating up a storm. Getting coated with more and more dirt by the minute. Every inch of skin somehow now coated, every inch of clothing sticking and dirt coated.

Topped off the evening by tearing down the course and dragging the black salad dressing tire dirt coated equipment back into the trailer in the nice muggy evening, now turning foggy so a cooling version of muggy. You've torn down a course. You've made salad. Imagine tearing down the course inside a salad bowl which is black ooze while you're standing in the black ooze and dragging your heavy stuff through the black ooze.

Salad dressing coated dirt stays nice and oily like this for months. Gustavo ran around in it for a few minutes between classes, ran a few steps, clumps attached to him like velcro within seconds, he has some nice dirt attracting fur apparently. Doesn't clump up on the other dogs. He's so little and the dirt oh so close. Sort of what happens to him in burrs and stickers. He kind of ran, clumped, sat down, declumped, ran, clumped, like that.

We all drive home like that. Dirty and clumpy and it's dark so you can't see. Considered taking off dirty sweaty work ensemble in car to drive in underwear then can't bear the pain of this thought. All options equally bad. Walk in the back door and black, oily footprints immediately dancing everywhere on the laundry room floor where I don't even care because all I can do is tear off the dirt clothes and consider burning them then just try to forget about it until next Wednesday night.

In this episode, we relive one of the lesser fun moments of the dog show.

Masters Gamblers is our albatross bird hanging off our earlobes. Neither dog got the gamble this weekend. Non agility friends, go draw a line in the dirt. Now go stand behind your line. Then look out about 100 miles across the horizon to some things like jumps and tunnels. You will have to squint to see them glimmering, miragelike in the distance. Now just tell your dog to go out there and do this jump and then do this one the other direction then run into that end of the tunnel over there and then when you come out of it go over that jump that is 100 miles even farther away and then bring me a cocktail and don't forget a pineapple slice on the edge of the glass.

Yeah.

So I went to practice this morning before work and set up the exact gamble from the weekend. Was the first thing we did. Let me just see if they can just get out of the car and do that gamble from 100 miles away.

Yep. No problem. They are like, what's the big?

So I make some harder ones. With the dreaded weave poles. Weirdo turns. Coming in from weirdo angles. Throw a dogwalk in. Yep. No problem. That all you got for us?

You wacky little dogs.

When one of them just vanishes.

Someone asked me today, do the other dogs know Timmy is gone? I wonder that too. He was such a big part of our life, and really, so much of our life revolved around taking care of him. He was our clock. Not that they did anything to help, but they could only eat or walk at certain times based on Timmy being awake or asleep or up or down. None of them had a life with me that was a life without Timmy. We were a package deal. They never got asked, "You want fries with that?" No choice. You got what you got. That's how it goes when you're a dog.

So I made sure they all saw him that day. They were in the next room, locked in crates with chewies, the whole time the vet was over. I wanted it calm and quiet and no spontaneous howling events or frantic chases after stuffed squirrels. The other dogs, the vet, they all were subjected to my endless loop of slideshow on the computer that I made for Timmy. Come to my house, you will be sat down and perhaps tied to your chair through this parade of the endless photos I have of him while a special song loops over and over. It's sort of high tech moody teenager with a mix tape and photo wall, but you know. I may have sort of stunted developmental personality disorders.

Afterwards, his little chest no longer rising and falling, not moving in my arms, Gary let everyone out and they all came and saw him. Don't know what they thought. Actually, probably they thought, where did my chewie go? I got them really god chewies.

Gustavo? Um. His little world didn't much revolve around Timmy. The Timmy he knew was always old and sick and not a whole lot of fun to play with. Timmy was no Otterpop when it comes to bitey face and chasing and attack missions. He was just the dog that had the slimey food and the best food bowl to lick clean is maybe what he misses. Is the dog that got cheese for treats! Is the dog that walked so slow! Is the dog we needed to jump over because blocking where I would like to be running! Is what Gustavo knows of Timmy. Which is ok. Gustavo was my birthday present last year when I was worried I'd be losing Timmy sooner rather than later. Gustavo was got as a friend for me, not for Timmy.

Otterpop seems crabbier and a little meaner. A little quicker to trigger at stuff that bugs her. It's hard to tell with her though. She's always like that. But did have one helluva dog show over the weekend. I asked her at one point, "Are you doing this for Timmy?" Not sure if she comprehends sentences that don't have the word FRISBEE in them so I'll never find out. Maybe there's a secret competition going on I don't know about for someone to fill the position of Best Dog? Like going to be like Hilary vs. Obama, making Gustavo a John Edwards? Do I have to go through a year of dog primaries? Timmy was important to Otterpop, she could guard him against evil. I hope she's not mad because she thinks she failed him and he vanished. I didn't really get Otterpop to be anyone's friend especially, found her and kept her because was afraid to unleash her on anyone else. She became Ruby's evil other half, if a dominatrix loudmouth who won't let you have the tennis ball counts as that. But ended up as Timmy's protector, the one who was ready to kick some ass at a moment's notice if anything threatened her fragile charge.

Ruby is different. She is definitely acting weird. OK, she always acts weird, but it's different weird. She spent the longest with him after, sniffing and noticing that he wasn't really there anymore. Before running off to go look for her chewie again. She was with Timmy the longest, she is 7, almost 8 years old and had Timmy in her life all those years since I found her. I brought her home with the specific intent of a friend for Timmy and got that and so much more. This whole Team Small Dog stuff, we can blame that on Ruby. My introduction to dog training and aggression and prey drive and agility. She has never been a snuggly wuggly dog. Doesn't need a spot right by me on the couch, rarely wants a lap. Kind of does her own thing, is aloof, likes to sleep in a dog crate and not up on the bed. So ever since, she's up with us on the couch. On my lap. A better friend for me. She is the one I feel a difference from. Sticking closer. Knows he is gone, maybe that she could be gone too?

I have this video a friend took, of the one actual dog show Timmy went to with Gary to watch me and Ruby. One dog show forever was enough for Gary, and Timmy didn't need to sit in an xpen all day, could be at home with Gary on dog show days, eating pancakes. In this video, every time I call "Ruby!", you hear Timmy off camera start wild barking. Then you see Ruby start to run over towards the wild barking. Then you hear me holler "Ruby!" again. And she comes back over and does a jump or whatever as you hear Timmy start barking again, and you see Ruby start to run over there again. And so on and so forth, as we sort of stagger our way around a Starters course. Halfway through the course I was laughing so hard almost peed my pants out there.

A couple of days at the USDAA.

Since I had paid a bucket of money, and orchestrated the mission control project known as making a Saturday off of work possible, I decided life goes on and just go to the dog show. So off we went, for 2 of the 3 days of the Bayteam USDAA Fourth of July Fiesta. Am glad I did. Lots of kind words from you all about my Timmy, and lots of people who know exactly the way you feel when you lose the best dog. And with my attitude of just enjoy the dogs because they won't be here forever.

So where do I begin? Since our theme this week has been heartbreak, can I tell you a new tale of heartbreak? Perhaps not scrawled with tattoo guns and thick needles, or a fiery cowboy brand seared across my heart, but maybe a Sharpie writing in medium bold strokes. The thick kind of Sharpie. Total tagger graf kind. Not a skinny sharpie, my friend Hobbes. Who was knocking out a stunning standard run, tight turns and speeding along when the rest of his day was maybe a little slow. And we came to the Table. The dreaded. The evil. And for the first time, Hobbes, with the beautiful tail and bellowing woof, brown gold lizard eyes and big chomping teeth, didn't even blow me a kiss. Not a peck on the cheek. Considered for a second, teaser, then stood there. Eyes staring straight at me, then diverted, and just said, No.

Not sure if he wants to break up, dear diary. I don't think it's someone else. I missed his next standard run from a holdup in the Gambler's ring with Otterpop, and a highly qualified ringer took my place and he just danced around up there like she was shooting a six gun at his toes. Is it him, not me? Is that what he would have told Rob had they gone to counseling? Old patterns hard to break and replicating themselves? I'm just the rebound person and I'll just have to accept groveling at his feet while they stand up straight on that table from now on if we don't break up? But I told him I loved him. We always have a great time on Wednesday nights, where he runs like rocket and flies into his table down in a heartbeat. I guess he just thinks it's some casual thing. Did I get too serious on him? He needs his space? I just can't deal with this right now, Hobbes.

And Ruby. Talk about couples counseling. She's my steady and true dog at home, watches me, listens to me, sets an example. With me on every walk. Plays and runs like the wind when we practice, and has been knocking out the stellar dogwalk contacts. So we had 2 runs that I loved, she loved, we both loved. Was like running a tiny bullet around. I have to be one of those screamy handlers with her and it just makes her fly faster. And I made an error at the very end of each that cost a Q, or in the snookers, a Super Q. A little handler screw up from my giddiness of a kick ass run. But it was ok. Because it's about the joy and the dog and the fun and I am trying to let go of ADCh envy. Learn to love the lifetime achievement points perhaps we rack up with useless, extra Q's in things.

But on some runs, we just disconnected. Is she trying to tell me something? She didn't seem sore, I think she was as sound as she gets. The weather, was nice. The running surface, within her realm of acceptable. But something just didn't click with us, ships passing in the night, and we had some weirdo runs with offbeat timing that threw me for a loop. A bar in the gamble. Dogwalk contact here, slow startline there. I went off course in the Grand Prix I was so rattled. A horrible jumpers.

I dunno, Ruby. I have never been quite able to figure you out. We got you through the fireworks and everything with our booming Classic Rock party in every room of the house fireworks night, we do that for you. I thought we were tight. I thought we were through this phase in our lives. The patterns repeat. What would they tell us in couples counseling? We need better communication skills, us both? I know there are tiny witches that talk to you in there, they tell you weirdo obsessive things, but I thought they weren't coming with us this weekend. Maybe they didn't, I offended you somewhere? Front crossed too close? Let Otterpop play with your chewie? I dunno, I dunno.

So, ok, anything nice happen at the trial? Maybe won a dog toy in the workers raffle? Got a good parking place? Got to the porta potty right after the suction truck sucked it clean and added fluffy new toilet paper?

Well, let me tell you about my Otterpop. I'm calling her Otterpop 4.0. I can't believe it's my Otterpop who couldn't be near a truck. Or a man. Or couldn't take a step without a frisbee glued into her mouth to keep her from going postal on all of the above. With a hair trigger temper and no self control. Otterpop 3.0 got over that stuff from Otterpop 2.0, but creepy creeped around the agility field, feeling naked maybe without her frisbee. And exposed to all the prying eyes that could shoot poison darts through her heart. Otterpop 4.0, maybe not the fastest 12" dog out there, but maybe not the slowest. Maybe starts off the start line a little shakey, scopes the venue for judges, zombies, you name it, then settles in, focuses, and makes up time best she can. Didn't put a foot wrong. Had some bobbles here and there, one ring had a scarier judge and a dreaded loudspeaker system actually attached to the judge so she could call out gamblers points which would have sent Otterpop 3.0 right into a tizzy then and there, but this Otterpop just trucked along, maybe didn't get the gamble, but still.

Did you hear me out there? About all I could ever exclaim was, "Otterpop I am So Proud of You!" Over and over, run after run. I am so not a screamer when I run Pop. More like a chatterer of words of love. She has to feel the love when she runs. Lots of Q's, her first super Q, second in the Grand Prix. Won a standard. Flew around the Steeplechase finals, even though Jack the sheltie beat her by a good chunk of seconds. But hello. Otterpop in Steeplechase Finals? Right? Yep, because it's Otterpop 4.0. Never got tired, always happy to go out and run. Maybe is like how you feel when you win a Pulitzer Prize. Your kid graduates medical school and moves to Africa to stop aids. David Lee Roth picks you out of the groupie lineup. Whichever. How I felt after every time Otterpop tried her hardest and told me she never wants to stop.

Sincerely yours.

Thanks everyone, who sent kind emails and put in comments, and who had a kind word to say about Timmy at the dog show this weekend. You guys are a class act.

Yeah, I forgot to tell you we had a dog show, even did all the scheduling to have a free Saturday to go to 2 of the 3 days. Sort of forgot about it this week, but it was nice to go and do something with the other dogs. Maybe would be more useful to like, help stop global warming or something, but whatever. I'll tell you all about it later. Honestly, Q's and Super Q's sort of seem not so important right now. Just spending time with my dogs, a fine and valuable thing. Dogs don't have enough days in their lives.

Hypothetical conversation that you could have when your dog dies.

Husband is puttering around the kitchen shuffling stacks of paper about perhaps. Putter, putter, putter. Wife enters house.

Wife opens up refrigerator for a nice cold beer refreshing glass of anti-oxidant health juice.

Wife: Boo hoo hoo hoo blubberyglubbery sobsob a weepy sobsob huhhuh huhhuhhuhhuh.

Husband: What? What? What happened??

Wife: The dogfood glubblubsnifflewhiffle I see his Dooooggfooooodd snifflegliffleglubhuhuhuhuhuhuhhh.

Husband: Whaat??

Wife: The dooogfooood blubberysobsobsobsob I can see his Dooooggfooooodd huhuhuhuhuhuhhhsniffsniffsniff waaaaaaaaaah.

Husband: Huh? What the hell??

Wife grabs a can of dog food out. The special expensive senior kind that her voodoo belief thought perhaps would keep dog alive longer and give strong teeth and bones, etc. and also that dog would actually eat.

Holds up. Tears streaming, running, eyes a-red, sniffling, glubbering, making noises very unpleasant to hear and also make.

Then everyone is crying for a moment. The dog food even makes the husband cry! Or perhaps is just rubbing off of from wife. Weeping all around. Then everyone looks at the dog food can. Goddamnit. This is a dog food can and dog food should not make one cry and weep and so forth.

Wife: Oh my GOD! Dog Food. Dog food! Weeping caused by dog food! (Note to actors playing this part, assuming role of wife played by Courtney Love here, have to make sure to use correct inflection which mixes sort of SoCal surfer accent with ranch lady voice ala Luz Benedict from the movie Giant. Not really sure how to explain that accent in writing. I think you have to actually hear. Is an accent inflected with random and useless "likes" and "totallys" and I think you go, like, UP, at the end of the word when you say it? But also sound a teensy bit mean like you can kick some serious bad horse ass.)

Then everyone starts sort of giggling for a moment. Goddamn it. Nothing is funny about dog food and nothing is funny about the best dog in the whole world dying. On cue, add howling starting sort of quiet then all of a sudden, the sound of 3 tiny and loud jackals or perhaps coyotes swells up like in a sort of orchestral way if orchestral can involve tiny, piercing banshee sounds which are pretty funny for a while until Wife goes over and starts yelling at all the bad dogs to shut up and can't you guys be more like. Oh shit. Like Timmy.

Husband: I'll throw it away.

Wife: Like hell.

Now I'm like a CIA conspiracy ranter.

I had a dream. I won't tell you all the details because it was, you know, crazyland.

But long story short, Timmy had made it back home. So I woke up explaining to Gary either angels or zombies delivered him home to me or could he have woke up at the vet's office and escaped and walked home even though he could barely walk?

Also I was slightly worried in the dream, besides the possibility of all of the above, a terrorist plot had organized his safe delivery home and then Timmy and I were embarking on some kind of new adventure as CIA covert special agents and we were going to have to go on the lam. That is exactly the kind of mess Timmy would get me into. So in the dream part, I couldn't tell anyone he was home.

You never know. CIA, zombies, angels, miracles, everyone says those are all real and actually exist, even though you never meet them. As far as you know. Like this lady I saw 3 times walking around my neighborhood yesterday, I'd never seen before. My first thought is she's lost. My next thought is she's shifty. But like, maybe a zombie? Or miracle granter? Or CIA agent? And like, the whole zombie angle, bummer man. Flesh-eaters.

Gary says it's just a dream. Because I miss him. I still had to look for him all over the house. But he wasn't there.

Timmy Best Dog

I got Timmy when I was 26 years old. Kurt Cobain and Princess Diana were both alive, and I wished they were my friends. I ended up with Timmy instead. Walked into a dog pound out on some country road identified with only a number, and picked him out. Scrawny and unsocialized and shivery in the back of the cage, I crouched down there and he slowly came forward and sniffed my finger. Was probably wearing paint splattered cut offs with black Converse one stars, same shoes they found Kurt dead in when shot himself in the head a couple years later. Opened the chain link door on the big dog cage holding a little dog, and that was that. Was the kind of dog pound that didn't care I was a grad student without an address, didn't need to know I lived on the sly in an old metal building that was supposed to just be a painting studio. Walked Timmy out of there and never looked back. Who knows you're having a day when you just picked out the best friend you will ever have?


After that, never went anywhere without Timmy. Maybe never really trained him, he just stuck with me. Rode in a crate on the back of my bike, next to me on the seat of my old truck, and if I needed to go somewhere no dogs allowed, just shoved him in a duffle bag and in he came. That's just how it was with me and Timmy.


Was Timmy perfect? Far from it. He would bark with the best of them. Sort of his signature. Bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark bark and then some. Could sniff out a rotten burrito in the street a mile away then scurry away with it and could never catch him til it was scarfed down his little garbage swilling gullet. Sometimes walked slower than everyone else just because he wanted to, creeping like a turtle. And had a wandering gene. But pretty minor things and his real name was always Timmy Best Dog.


Timmy didn't go in dog shows, didn't have fancy toys and accessories. Liked to chew on pens and little sticks for a hobby. Once I had to duke it out with an old homeless dude on Market Street who grabbed Timmy up from the sidewalk and started running with him, screaming at me that I stole his dog. I did, man. I pounced on that old guy and grabbed him back into my arms so tight and ran with him running after me, lunatic screaming I was stealing his dog. Ran fast and far away from him. Once was walking him down some other street in San Francisco, late at night, and a drunk got throw right out the door of a bar, right into me. Timmy went shutzhund on him, barking and lunging and biting and all 20 some pounds of him keeping that drunk guy at bay. Guy never knew what hit him. Me and Timmy, we did stuff like that for eachother.


Don't really know what else to tell you. Timmy has been everywhere I have in the last almost 16 years. Been through a slew of careers and back again. Lived in cities and forests and ranches and by the beach. Ate a bunch of pancakes and tacos and burger and fries the last few days. I know he needed to be all done with this life but doesn't make it any easier yet. I hope he finds Princess Di and Kurt and my sister and Anthony whose triple expensive Italian couch he peed on once and they all hang out together sometimes, walking up a long beach somewhere at low tide, watching him run in the water and chase birds, barking like a maniac, waiting til I get there too someday. That's what I need to believe.

RIP Timmy. Our Beloved. Best Dog
February 14, 1993-July 2, 2008

In his world, we are the ghosts and he is trying to be.

Timmy walks up to the open back door, I can see him from up on a ladder where I'm painting a ceiling out back. I am so weirdo obsessive about painting and stupid underpainting colors with plaster and I don't know when I'll ever get the damn thing done. I hate these colors now. He walks up to the back door, and stands there and looks surprised for a moment. Then blank. Looks to his right, his eyes open wide again, just surprised for a moment, then keeps standing there and sniffs the air. Then lets out a big sigh, only sound he really makes now, and eyes go back to cloudy, not seeing. Stands very, very still in the doorway, not moving for a bit. Not sure what he was seeing there. Could he see out the door to where I was on the ladder? Did he just think of something and smell the air?

I sort of wave my arm, sometimes he can see motion. Maybe playing with fire because sometimes he just without warning flings himself down the porch steps. Lands in a roll and always finds a way to stumble off. I wave my arm around because it's been a while since he's tried a step launch, now just waits to be carried down. So he just stands there without moving, except sometimes the head turn. Always turns right, standing in the doorway. Remember Timmy, all the time I used to spend up on ladders with a paintbrush? We both always had paint in our hair. And you would just lay there and wait for however long it took to finish. Days, weeks, months, and you were so good about not stepping in paint. No dogs since have that concept that you don't step in the paint. Sometimes chewed up the ends of paint brushes is all.

I go over and carry him down the steps and let him spin around in the yard for a while, he bumps into plants. You can't let him do that for long because he'll get stuck and the get anxious and the spinning becomes frantic panting which might start up a panic attack. Have been trying to keep those from happening. At night, when they seem likely, instead of tranquilizing him, now I try to stay up, carrying him in and out, trying to figure out what it is that thing that would make him happy. Sit with him, or just sit near him to send psychic brain waves that I'll keep him safe and wake him up from this shadowless world he inhabits now. It doesn't seem so bad, sleeping a couple hours then getting up at 1 or 2am and staying awake with him, just me and him while everyone else is asleep. But I think he doesn't see it like that. Even my touch makes him twitch and recoil, like we're all ghosts and he's not sure where we're coming from. He see's dead people and maybe they are me. I think all he knows is he is lost inside our house again and can't find his way out.

When Timmy was young, every morning we walked to the duck pond and along this landscaped path near a creek. I didn't think much that it was a bad thing to let him chase the ducks. I am pretty sure this wasn't a sanctioned acitivity at the duck pond, but no one was every around there as early as me. He'd pull and bark and run all the way down the duckpond. "High strung" was how some people described Timmy when I first got him. And every morning, off we went, down the grassy lawn, possibly was a no dogs allowed grassy lawn, and off he ran, down to the manmade pond, and all the ducks flew up in a burst and he'd run around and around and around. Sometimes couldn't catch him, would just sort of hang out and wait til he was all run out and hope no duck lovers show up til ducks all flown and then we'd walk back or down that path a ways.


Today we just walked up to the corner. Past super old and deaf Richard's who still drives house, past the house that looks like a mobile home but isn't with people who have a baby but we never see, past the vacant rental house with the nice gardener and a jaguar statue on the porch. Real slow, brought along just Otterpop. Takes a while to walk past those 3 houses. He walks a few steps, stands there and looks around. Like he's not on our street anymore, I don't know where he is. He stopped under this low tree shaped like a lollipop they all like to sniff around and just stayed there. Eyes vacant, was sunny and breezy and not too much smoke in the air. Stood still a while til I turned him and walked back the 3 houses or so to our driveway, where he stopped, turned toward the street. Everything so hazy until I slowly walked him back up the driveway and carried him into the house.

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.