Team Small Dog fixes everything for Laura by just running around until she is smiling again.

Been a lot of ups and downs for me all having to do with land lately. Where I live, so beautiful with my ocean hooked to my mountains by my meadows, but less and less land for our horses and dogs. And I guess if you have camels and llamas and donkeys and huge, fanged cats, less for them too.


Unless you can buy it. But even for some folks that bought it a long time ago, or have some extra buckets, the biggest size, to buy it now, a lot of problems sharing the space with other people who are not neccessarily fans of dogs and horses. Or strawberries or apples or cows. They are mostly fans of their own houses.


Been going out to the forest more. Where indeed, not supposed to take the dogs. But still go out, find the paths that not frequented by the rangers, and be happy that it's a big forest, hundreds and hundreds of acres, where the paths are narrow and the redwoods shade the weird 70 degree January hot sun. And that I can still find ways to let my dogs run and run and run and run.

A very nice way to get pesky dogs to sleep away the afternoon.

I had this old friend, you may remember, it's name was dog agility. Like some other old friends, whose names may also be Joel Warner or We are Buying a Ranch, it vanished away, like Oprah's size 6, into the night. Never to be heard from again. But not willing to let this one get away, last couple days we found some time to get out to the practice field before work. Slow days at work, this week of old year and new year sandwiched next to each other so close, like beer friends nestled together in their 6 pack, not realizing the significance a digit makes when it swaps up one, trade an 8 for a 9 and instantly, everything is shinier and brighter, promise looking you head on like that wrong way deer in the freeway that you are Just. About. To. Smash.


Didn't really know what to expect, as I was unlocking the rusty old gate. Can't even recall last time me and the dogs went out for a practice. Who would remember any skills and style and flair? Well, wasn't really that bad. A little bit of mayhem, everyone obsessed with a patch of the field that smelled like fresh ground tenderloin, but after that, we all had some fun. Although. A few weeks of not running around with multiple dogs 3-4 days a week, took it's toll. I knew right away. Felt this big sloshing gut, lumbering out of shape legs, barely slogging through the wet grass. The sheep across the pasture, could certainly hear my heavy, sweatin' with the oldies breathing, each time I swapped out a dog, ready to run through our loops again. Because what's better to practice, when you're so horribly out of shape, than long loopy sequences around the field perimeter where everyone could get flat out speed to everything out there? For me, times 3. These were days to just practice running and funning.


Gustavo, like our frizzy Richard Simmons, out there wall bouncing manic in a star spangled leotard, remembered poles, and remembered contacts. A feat that impressed me to no end. Had some trouble hitting entrances on poles, coming in at the second pole a few times, but really stayed in there and fast and confident and slowly erasing those months when I thought I could never teach this one how to swiggle through those plastic poles. He got the most run arounds the field, was on border collie setting and he never wanted a break. Just back through the sequence, back on that teeter, back through those poles. Wants those lady dogs to run him to the frisbee again and again and again. By the end of it, all my jackety work layers shed across the top of the fence, doubled over, palms on knees, sweat welling up in new folds across new fat places, realized dogs are just fine. They forgot nothing. Me on the other hand? Have some serious holiday cheer to undo.


Later on, we took a real quick run down to the beach to watch the sun drop for it's first time this year. Lots of tourists, lots of dogs, surfers, saxaphone player, and what looked like an ancient old commune on a field trip with their didgeridoo and rabbit fur vests. As we walked back through the nearly dark field, you know who showed up. You know it. I just had to share. I am so totally going to read Moby Dick, once and for all. White truck, white whale, maybe Melville has the answer for me. This time, we all dove into the willow thicket where the creepy men sleep. Clipped on leashes there. Poor Ruby appalled, she is the good dog and she knows that No Dogs Are Every Supposed to Go Here, and is the only dog that every obeys that rule. Sorry Ruby. Because I drug you through the thicket and ran for it this time. Ran for the street as fast as we could, and we made it. I think we're going to be in good shape in no time.

Conditioning agility dogs based on their custom personality profile.

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

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

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

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

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


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

Conditioning of the Performance Dog-a primer.

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

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

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

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

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

Can I drop them off at Curves?

Because we are really, really religious. A happy Hanukah to our Jewish friends!

See, the real dog people, they have things like the dog treadmills or they make sure their dogs get at least 2 hours of hard running in mountains daily with one all day mountain hike per week. They have training journals with copious notes.

I feel like most of the time, I am all about exercise. Who wants a fat ass? Or chubby dog? Everyone gets a walk twice a day. Timmy's walk, very creepingly slow. The small dogs are supposed to have a hard run twice a day. For conditioning and my sanity of 3 fast small dogs bouncing off the walls in my tiny house. But a lot of days, I get home from the barn (where the small dogs sat in a pen all day) and it is dark and 7o'clock and freezing and I am lazy and starving and there is no place to run em in the pitch black. So I need to leash em up and walk fast, albeit on the beautiful West Cliff Drive ocean path, for 3ish miles. Fast brisk exercise walking. Makes us all skinny and healthy and did I mention the skinny.

So some days, not so much. Twice a week, we go to a genuine agility field and practice mad skillz. Gustavo learns his teeter and I set up drills for the good dogs. But man, we have to be in SHAPE, man. And that means the jogging or fast walking for miles and it is a hard thing to do on a cold night. In the pitch black, near the cliffs, past the meth dealers and thinking thoughts like, what if a small dog tumbled to their horrible death in the pounding sea? All dark and brooding and Captain Ahab.

In the mornings, we have multiple walks including the barely shuffling for one block for Timmy and fast for some kind of far distance, ideally on a long beach, for the rest of the team. I am like the freaky dog nazi in the park (this is illegal now, walking around in the park) of not hanging out to chit chat about things dog with other walkers but storming robotron fast all around it while my dogs dash around it, either running on top of homeless campers or frolicking or carrying large tree branches in their mean little Otterpop mouths. Making comments like, when the cell phone talking, sharpei walking lady, explains of her dog, who lay crouched and tensed before springing and launching itself badly but not using teeth, "She likes to do that!" for a moment with her cell phone talker still on the other end, my comment like "watch-your-dog" from my mean dog nazi all slitty eye glareful at her lameness. I was not volatile, since I didn't have Timmy with me and the rest of them can fend for themselves, within reason. Smallish sharpei, mean or not, within reason.

I digress. Yeah, so basically, I didn't walk the dogs last night. Can I use a Jewish holiday as an excuse when I'm actually Catholic, pretty much? Our whole celebration was to light some candles, and not use the oven so as no more smoke filled house, and just go about the evening. Will I want to kick myself in 2 weeks when we're at the big dog show in Santa Rosa and we all feel sluggo and unconditioned? Where's the damn See's candy? Do you see some of the reasons I am not voted America's Next Top Agility Handler? Is it blaspheme to mix a Jewish religious holiday with tales of dog conditioning? I leave you with those things to ponder.