Happy [Letter prior to C yet after A] irthday Gary.

Happy Irthday Gary.


He likes dogs too.


They like him too. Otterpop will howl for you as soon as we start singing the Irthday Song, during which we can actually use missing letter. What a relief.

In this episode, we learn how to type using 25 letters of the alpha-something.

I can't tell you where I took these photos. Not porque it is some kind of important secret, rather porque last night I spilled a cerveza on my computer and the letter located after A and prior to C, if you were singing a song that used those 3 letters, doesn't work anymore. You speak some Spanish, right? So I can still use my computer and type stuff, unless it uses that one certain letter. That's why I have to say cerveza. The real thing I spilled starts with that letter. It's also hard to make a space. I am pounding that spacing key very, very diligently here.


This secret place is known for sand and water and wind and sun. I go there a lot. Dogs run there. They might chase flying animals with feathers. It's a nice place to enjoy a cool drink made from hops and grains and stuff like that.


Oh yeah. And the little key that has an clover and an apple on it doesn't work. You don't have this if you have a pc.


So who knows how to fix malt liquid soaked computer keys? I am pretty sure I am going to need that letter soon.

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.

We are having an accessory crisis here.

What is the best thing to do if it's a Sunday and there is no dog show and your taxes need to get DONE like last Friday?

Go out to breakfast!

We went up to Davenport. It's a teensy town of population 200 about 10 minutes up the coast with 2 places to eat, and a beach that not a lot of people go to, usually just some drunk guys and marine biologist types, and where dogs aren't criminals.

We can't take Timmy anymore. Blind, demented, waves and high cliffs don't mix. We had to wait until he was asleep (easy) and sneak out of the house. Poor Timmy.


At low tide, there's even a cave. It was high tide at breakfast time. It's the time change. I have no idea what time it was. It actually may have been the afternoon. I forget what the difference is of new time and real time. I was hungry though.


The beach is a good place for dog games because the sticks are plentiful, and aka Seaweed. They are Otterpop's favorite size. The biggest size.


It is even like dog training to go to the beach. They are on a down stay so I can extract the stick from the jaws that are Otterpop and throw it again. No beach would be the biggest problem of Marfa.

Is it due to the sunshine?

OK. I know I was all cranky and not a good Sunshine Lady yesterday. But then I left for work, and the sun was out, and it was a day I had time to go practice with the dogs on the way to the barn, and time to go to the beach on the way home from work. And it was hot and I wore a t-shirt all day at work and no parka and no horses were bad and I had time to eat lunch. Nothing was irritating. Sorry. If you like the ranting. Actually, I was probably still curmudgeonly and mean part of the time. But today's story shall focus on the daisies and the rainbows.

The dogs were like phenomenal. Am I making you crazy yet? Ruby is back to the old Ruby which is actually a super fast, pain in the ass speed demon. We missed this Ruby! She was happy to do a little agility in her crazy freaky out of control mode that I love and run like a maniac with the other dogs on the beach. So what's been wrong with her, I dunno. I hope this Ruby is here to stay.

Otterpop practiced super fast and hit her contacts and weirdo pole entrances and attacked the frisbee like frisbee death. I encourage bad and evil behavior when they are doing agility and it makes them CRAZY. Small fast and kick yer ass. I think in dog training language Training in Drive. Training in insaneness of speed and attacking of frisbees and fast weave poles!

OK. Get ready to barf from the barfiness of the joy of it all. Gustavo. Gustavo I take it back everything I said because today you were a sharp knife, the super sharpest one that Dexter uses for serial killing! I might be a spoon but you are turning into a knife! A speedy knife who at this very moment is eating a cardboard box but anyways. We had a lot of knife moments.

He's still just running down the top of the dogwalk. But as fast as I can rev him which is Fast! And hitting his 2o/2o target position smashing wow!

My a-frame technique I am using is called the "Haul Ass Super Fast and Click for Running all 4 Paws Down to the Bottom Method." Perhaps you read about it in Clean Run. I throw treats in a bag so he is learning to not look at me on the click and out to his treats in a bag. He is getting it and so far he hits the bottom every time. The a-frame is way low. The buzz around these parts is all about Rachel Sander's running a-frame box technique but I am going to try to just take this one slow and see if I can teach a consistent hit at the bottom by clicking and running out to tasty snacks in a leopard print bag. He is tiny! Sorry Rachel Sanders!


His teeter method we are using is the similar "Haul Ass and Slide into a Down." It's just all about haul ass with him. And have a piece of cheese on the way down. I am trying to channel Silvia Trkman. I may never be anywhere near as adorable or good. OK. Not even close. But I am just channeling. And not eating so many donuts. So far so good.

Then they had to sit at work all day, on the deck and sleep in a chair. Life is hard. I actually have to work and they are lounging.


And for all my bitching, I can still stop down at Seascape beach on the way home, there's just enough sliver of daylight if I get done a little early (sorry horses and people that I run away from work do not say goodbye to you) that they can get in a quick run before driving home.

But hey! Global warming is still getting worse! Our city is planning for the day when there is No Water!

And Hilary's and Barack's health care plans don't sound very thorough!

And Patty Hearst now has dog show confirmation dogs for a hobby! Beloved Tania!

Opposite of meth people but just as bad.

That house from Sunlit Lane is back on the market! This was the one we thought about buying back in September 2006-I think there are some posts in this blog from then. It had the neighbor mayhem going on because of the horses and the no permits and we basically ran screaming from it. It's back on the market at $150,000 less-only $649,000, which is exactly our price range! Except that we have already run screaming from it once and don't need to do it again. Frantic and determined neighbors that speak of horses with this sort of meth addled look in their eye (except they are the opposite of meth people, they are baby owners, hemp wearers, volvo drivers) and the Flies, the Dirt, the Smells are not good neighbors. And they were everywhere. They surrounded us the second time we went out to that property. Like literally, we drove away in our own Volvo (ok, Gary's) fast.

There are no longer horses on it. It was an adorable spot-not exactly a ranch. Only 2.4 acres, with a 1 bedroom house. Small! But the house, (ok, unpermitted cabin with nice decks) was perfect and the property layout (ok, flattish 2 acres of poorly graded eroding dirt), with exception of proximity of the crystal wearing stockbrokers or whatever they were, made it frightening. You could walk right out to Fall Creek Park and trail ride amongst steep redwoody trails though. Likely full of serial killers. And, from my current barn, would be about an hour and 15 minute commute in good traffic. Let's say hour and a half plus in bad. I think that one was the rebound property from the Perfect Ranch of July 2006 in which the cocksuckers outbid us by the $200,000.

Um. Why don't we just move out of Santa Cruz? Would be hard to do in such a perfect June.

Ran the dogs yesterday morning in Watsonville. The other half of my life. Half beach, half ranch. Love having the agility field right there near the barn. Dogs were actually fantastic- fast and perfect contacts. Speedy weave poles. Only one dropped bar. Did a scientific experiment with Otterpop. Have been not taking her frisbee anywhere, it is a Special thing to Play with at Agility, hence making agility always fast because Frisbee is there? Yep. Super incredibly fast if it is in my pocket. Even trying to sneakily hide it as if it is still in the pocket or leaving it sitting with Ruby for convenient retrieval at the end of a course is not good enough. If I have that stupid, dirty piece of orange cloth, Otterpop is a speed demon. Frisbee anywhere else, she runs faithfully and cleanly around the course but not fast enough to Win. She is like an addict. I can't believe so many brain cells in my head have to think about dog frisbees. With an ugly cartoon squirrel drawn on it. Like, this is something Al Swearengen would never, ever approve of. Ever.