The dictatorship of the proletariat-A short history of oppression under a cruel and evil and heartless dog agility lady.

When we went to practice yesterday, there was a stiff criteria for anyone that wanted to do stuff like this. And trust me. EVERYONE wants to do this.


However, under my heavy iron thumb, behind my iron curtain, anyone named Gustavo that wants to do fun agility has to prove a high level of responsibility, a level that never, ever runs off into the forest to chase critters. And, he must demonstrate zero meltdowns of monkey screaming, ripping apart of soft crates, pretty much anything that makes my blood presure rise, in my guilty until proven innocent, fascist regime.


When we go to practice in the beautiful forest field at Heart Dog Agility, Gustavo now needs to demonstrate rock solid crate games on a 20' long line before he gets to do any agility. As far as he's concerned, this is probably about the same amount of fun as running around the field. He can blast in and out of his space pod all day. This was one of his first party tricks from way back when.


Running around in a forest, whether there's an agility field there or not, is now prefaced with wholesome activities such as More Recalls Than You Thought Possible. Either In or Out of Space Pod, But Nowhere Else. Heeling Like in Fancy Dog Show Except While Running. While he's dragging along his nice long rope. The goal is that these activities become as cool and dangerous to him as chasing deer or racoons or smurfs or zombies or I don't care what, through the woods.

Today, proved himself innocent and got to practice a little bit of agility at the end of it all with that blasted black long line finally unclipped. And he was only sentenced to jail in the car once all morning for a single monkey screaming incident during Otterpop's turn. A benefit of this seems to be he's channeling the critter chasing drive into his agility. He was insanely fast. Yet, with more and more control instead of just flat out mayhem. Hopefully we're on the right track here.

Because I didn't write up Our Year In Review (barf)?

So, KNOW my blog is a little different than the other agility blogs I run across. This tends to happen in whatever walk of life I end up. Maybe just one beer short of everyone else's sixpack. Close but no cigar shop indian. But I was feeling sorta left out today. I tried to sign the guestbook of a very well known agility person. She is a screener of guests. No auto-guestbook feature for her. You know, just click here to say "hey." Very web 1.0. Old school, before the Friendster evolved to the Facebook evolved to the YouTube evolved to whatever is next with the bluetooth and the camera phone uploading podcasts to our robot dog chip.

But I got rejected! Not sure why. I know she visited TeamSmallDog.com and everything. My webstats can tell me these things. And decided I was not the sort of agility type who should be viewable on her Guestbook. Not naming names here, but if you are an agility super star I just want to say hey there and go on your guestbook. That is a big reaching out from yours truly, with the dicey social skills online and offline. Customer Service! Networking like the Leo horoscope said to do! Working on building that brand. Teamsmalldog.com in 2008 is Great!

In most ways, I am your basic agility lady. I give my dogs some cheese when they do it right! I clicker train! I tug! I compete in the the Masters Level of the USDAA. I go to some CPE trials. I have my own weave poles (2 sets!) and a contact trainer. I have dog crates in the car and my car smells! I have sporty pants! I take agility class and I teach agility class. I watched a Susan Garrett cd and sometimes at night stay awake pondering running contacts vs. 2on/2off. You will trip on xpens in my garage, which used to be an artist studio until filling up with things like canopies and those xpens.

I just want agility to be, you know, sort of more lovely. Like this vision in my mind where everyone is always really nice and not crazy and there are super models populating the background in cork soled wedges. Keith Richards drives up in a black jeep and starts passing out old school xerox flyers for the party at his house. The guys with the skateboard ramp out back bring everyone a nice cold Bud and their pitbull goes clean in Jumpers and a pool party is thrown later in the day at the horse ranch and someone actually invites me to carpool with them and asks in such a nice way and my dogs don't growl at anyone. Santino brings his little dog for his first trial and has sewn a stunning canopy out of hand dyed chiffons and we all admire it and he grills hotdogs and skewers of matching vegetables in jewel tones on a tiny hibachi while my artist friends talk about Miami Basel in an inclusive fashion and no one has to sit all by themselves or starts weeping in a corner. Or is shooting heroin. The vendors sell flea market items instead of embroidered breed clothing and Beck often runs his friend's border collie. The weather is nice, and if it isn't, we're in a covered arena wearing team colors. Lots of kids too, and teenagers, like how there is at a horse show but not just for the rich and powerful.

So we'll see. We keep working at it. If I make it nice and lovely for you, all you people out there not doing the dog agility, will you come?