A few thoughts on Dirt Nite.

Dirt Nite is fun. I was thinking, about the only way it could be improved was instead of the muddy, damp covered arena it's held in, with the sludgy black dressage dirt, if it could be in an old ballroom. Like the one in the Shining? And there's a wood paneled bar there, and we all have our own leather barstools, and a bartender in a little bow tie. Ever had pomegranate tequila? It's expensive. At the Dirt Nite bar, it would be cheap and poured liberally.

I have a whole bunch of new beginning students. They're gonna be good. I love teaching agility. I'm no all star instructor. I yell out lectures on the joys of holding those contacts and wave my arms and jump around a lot. I still make at least one enormous handling error every Dirt Nite, when I do my runs later on in the evening. Laura put a front cross WHERE? Crap. But I love teaching the beginners and helping them get their dogs fast and contacts accurate and feeling the teeter totter love. Maybe I am sort of the loud, hyper auntie of dog agility teachers.

Hobbes had all creepy tables. Like, bad, neurotic tables. Uh oh. I love Hobbes. And it's his birthday this weekend. He's the only dog I know with a genuine birthday due to not being found on the side of the road or picked up in Mexico. But I have a very sinking feeling about his ability to ever lay down on a table with me again. I think it means he loves me with all his border collie heart. Which I guess is better than him laying down on the table. If you look at it that way.

Otterpop ran around a little with one of my favorite dog agility pals who I don't even think is old enough to drink but I am sure sneaks beers just the same. Her dog was hinky and I always have spares in the car and off they went. I don't usually watch Otterpop run. Across the arena, far far away from me, she looked sort of like a zooming, vrooming, flying hamster with no legs. Is that what Otterpop always looks like? Jeez. Ruby didn't have any turns. She'll still love me in the morning.

Gustavo was fast and fast and fast. Poles. Contacts. Tables. Quiet between his turns. Because I put him in the car. But still. A few moments of distraction here and there, but basically his brain held together and I hope he can run like that on Sunday in Turlock. I'd like to think it's a result of our Focus Bootcamp. I'm just going to say it's a result of our Focus Bootcamp. He'd look so cute on his own little barstool. Jumping into the plastic thing where the limes are. In his crazy cartoon character gallop across that ballroom floor.

The team returns to agility, sort of.

Last night at Dirt Nite, tried to run Ruby. Set the jumps so tiny, at 8" and she was just careening around, knocking bars, launching herself crazy like onto the table. Train wreck. Ruby. Ruby. Ruby. She needs glasses and prosthetic legs. She sure wants to run, it's just a little frightening to watch.

Ran Otterpop some, with the jumps so tiny. Am a little freaked out to run her now, worried that left knee is just about to blow. Maybe she just needs to join a swim team. Her doc will look at that leg tomorrow and see what she thinks.

But little Gustavo. Who one year ago, could not do weave poles, and had his first ever agility lesson. I looked back in time, thank you blog! Ran around in the dirty dark like a champion star. I may be flicking away like a muthaflickah, a new bad habit of mine which we have just noticed which I do under the guise of rear cross. (No wonder Hobbes gets sad when I rear cross.) I may be continually late, as I struggle to dash into each new spot out there so he knows where to go. I am still figuring out how to run him, and not always figuring out well. But he ran like a star, then came home and fell asleep in my lap.

Thanks, Gustavo. Might not be the same as running up the path to the pond, but it takes a close second.

Dirt night rides again.

We've been on a little break from Dirt Nite. The arena got sprayed down with the special dirt polymer that makes the dirt oh so sticky and black and gooey and makes Dirt Nite what it is. Hella Dirty. So classes cancelled the last few weeks, and it was good to be back.

After I taught my class, I made sure all my dogs got turns running in the other classes. I tried to take the pressure off Gustavo, and just let him be who he is, and he had a bunch of super little runs. Not perfect, not trying to handle him through the hard master's courses anymore. I took all the pressure off, made things easy for him, and he didn't have to sit tied to the fence when the really fast, over the top dogs ran. Just did short easy sections of the sequences and he was great. And did a couple teeter totters. I can tell now when he's reaching meltdown point, and I have to know for him when enough is enough. Gustavo is who he is, and I'm finally getting it that he can only focus as long as he can. Then he has to have a break.

Just a little coffee break. His union demands it. It's taken me a long time to be willing to accept that his work ethic is a little bit different than everybody else. He's kind of the minimum wage guy around the office. Sweeps up the hair off the floor. Runs downstairs for a smoke. Sends the faxes, maybe to wrong phone numbers. Has a little more coffee, and he totally knows all the good gossip. Might not get around to getting those copies made. But he is the guy that EVERYBODY wants to hang out with after work. Party on, dude.

I gotta just keep his little square peg in the square peg hole. Let us all learn a lesson from super mega breeders Jon and Kate Plus 8. Kate, I believe tried to shove square peg Jon in the circle hole and then he left and had an affair with the 20 year old and then she had an affair with the bodyguard and my god. Hair plugs. The man has hair plugs and got a motorcycle and now, they're divorced.

The lesson we've learned? His inner championness will come out on it's own time schedule. And if it never does, PARTY ON DUDE! Like it's 1999. Hair plugs!

Ruby jumped low and she just seems so happy being an agility dog again. And Otterpop was Otterpop. Just doing her thing and like a hunk of zucchini bread on wheels zooming around and not a care in the world. I tried to make sure to take care of all my dogs and give them breaks and have a couple walks and let running be fun and stress free for all of us.

Wasn't I quitting agility just a few weeks ago? Something about a succulent farm? What was up with that?

This is because we love dog agility even more than cocktails.

Dirt Nite started again. Oh my god. Just shoot me now. Night starts off with my giant, "mixed level" class which means I have beginner dogs, not beginner dogs, mean dogs, hyper dogs, dogs that do contacts, dogs that don't, dogs with weave poles, some dogs without, experienced handlers, brand new handlers, teenage handlers, mobility challenged handlers. I can see your faces now. All the dog agility instructors are like, "Yeah, that kind of class." I love my agility students. Hi Students! But this group, gonna keep me hopping and creative.

Then I try to do agility office hours, so people can get extra help. Then it's time to dig out dogs. Find 'em in crates. 4 dogs, and my poor sluggy legs haven't run this much in weeks. Run, run, run, run. By 8:30pm, I've gone off course like 3 times, slammed dogs through bars, screwed up discriminations, uh, anything else? Gustavo has barking freakout meltdowns any time a speedy black and white dog is running. Guess how many speedy black and white dogs at dog agility class? And if I try to get him to shut up, then Hobbes is barking. Stereo irritation! By 9:00, when someone else tries to throw treats at them to shut my barkers up, Ruby the GOOD DOG almost takes off someone's hand trying to get a treat. Yeah, blood spurting. OH MY GOD. And there's still barking. And Gustavo now has weave poles but has lost serpentine arm reading skills and not sure what else. Instead of cocktails on the veranda to end the night with, drag the whole course back through the dirt and into the trailer. Does ANYONE'S agility ever end with cocktails on the veranda? Does anyone even have a veranda?

Basically, unbridled mayhem of fiasco all night. This is what I go flying out of work a the crack of 5pm and drive fast to get there to drag stuff around and do this and dinner on dirt night equals banana? For the crowning ending, someone brings the dirt from the night into my house and it somehow puddle water activates dirt nite paws and all of a sudden everywhere, tiny black paw prints because the guilty party is running and running and running through the house with a squeaky santa in tow to make up for all those screwed up serpentines and did I ask you to just shoot me yet?

The dog phobiaizer.

I think I finally figured it out. I had a birthday a few weeks back. I got older. And wiser. And I think I have figured out that I am a dog phobia giver, so sort of like a parallel universe to the dog whisperer. The dog phobiaizer. Dog whisperer, he whispers or something, things to make the dogs perfect and act with manners and grace. The dog phobiaizer, let's just say something along the lines of opposite of whispering. Last night at Dirt Nite, it all became clear.

I have Gustavo who has developed an aversion to the icky polymer coating that makes our own dirt at Dirt Night so charming. Who's dislike of coming out into that covered arena is getting weird and he twitches and itches and scratches and looks like a little phobia nutcase out there with some kind of condition. Sort of like tourettes for tiny little dogs.

I have Otterpop, who has developed a freakish aversion to Hans, one of the nicest agility husbands in the history of the universe who sits on the deck near where she stays parked. My non agility friends, we have parking places for our dogs, just like you do at your office. We park them and tie them up on ropes to a pole and Otterpop's phobia now causes her to bark her head off at Hans if he moves a muscle.

Ruby, I gave her phobias long ago and she is just one big walking bundle of phobia no matter what. They wrote the book on phobia on her. OCD, hypersensitive, you name it, she is totally phobia-ized. It is a wonder she can function at all. Sometimes being out in the cool night air and fog at Dirt Nite bring them all to a head and she runs around and has to pat the same place on the ground, sniff it, circle back and do that 2 or 3 times once she's started. Totally weird and obsessive and becoming clearer is a genuine phobia.

Even Hobbes. Rockstar among border collies. Who are known for phobias, indeed. Likely a perfect breed of dog for me. He is getting a new one for Dirt Night caused by my weird phobia handling and started some weird and spacey things last night. And then other dogs I didn't even handle, I start seeing them do weird things out there. When I am standing out on a course to set some jumps or fluffy the chute. And I realize it. Uh oh. I am giving out phobias even when I'm not running the dogs.

So here I am with this pack of phobia dogs, and have had the realization now that there is some kind of perhaps astrological tie in to the correlation between dog phobia and voodoo and dog handling and is possibly more than a voodoo curse but actually where the stars are all lined up. And I have this feeling that when I changed ages a few weeks ago due to my birthday, I kicked in this retrograde or gatorade of something due to planets and now I give dogs phobias. And Dirt Nite is also on Wednesday Night, which is also Project Runway Night, when Heidi Klum haunts my tv. And I have long ago wondered about the connection between Heidi Klum and Ruby's weird obsessions and maybe has something to do with the astrology? Does that work, even with the magic I hear of On Demand tv so she can appear at ANY TIME on your own television?

I dunno. A theory. A lot of question marks floating around here. Certainly couldn't be handled by flawed dog training, right? Some of you astrology in the know people, you check for me. Do I need to just go bury my head in the sand for a few weeks or what? And aren't the big dog shows coming up JUST AROUND THE CORNER? Oh boy.

I only took pictures of dirt.

If I were to qualify the success of Dirt Nite by how many collective bars I caused 3 dogs to drop, or wrong discriminations I sent then into, I would have to say it was somewhat of not a success. To the point of rattling my cage somewhat of how did I become such a train wreck of a handler overnight. But you know, part of The Secret says think positive to get a new bike or your millionaire mansion or your ranch. So I would say last night, there was a huge success in amounts of dirt! Also, someone brought a cake. I'm no Stella Ramone doomsayer over here, magic Secret of millionaire ranches.


And having nothing to do with dirt, the lady who fostered Gustavo before he was mine, all mine, called me and said she has another one Just Like Him! Except actually is blonde and weighs 8lbs and has short fur and is a chihuahua. And a girl. So maybe not so much like him. But is fast and a spit fire and loveable and sweet like him. And, we keep this on the down low, very obedient and possibly a teensy bit s-m-a-r-t-e-r. She's in Santa Cruz. Email me if you're interested.

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.

Dirt Nite-What it Really Looks Like.

Here it is. It is your proof. When I talk about dirt night, it really is that dirty. That's Ruby and Otterpop, and Fate and Hobbes. All tied to a post together in the dirt. Hobbes isn't my real border collie, he is like my practice border collie. He belongs to my instructor. I run him in class and in some stuff at the dog shows because I only have little dogs. If I had my own border collie, I would want him to be exactly, completely like Hobbes. He is my favorite dog in the whole world besides my dogs. I am like his stalker. Hobbes thinks I'm ok. I think anyone that can run fast and will tug on a thing with him is ok with him. I am supposed to not hit bars with him. In theory.


Here's the thing with dirt night. Everything lives in that trailer until dirt nite. Then we get there before the students come, take everything out of the trailer, drag it up to the ring, set it up, have a bunch of classes, then after our late class, drag it back to that trailer. We're good at it. We've been doing it a long time. Every Wednesday night. We are like Teamsters. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. It is the pain we do in the name of dog agility. This is why we have advil.


This is a pretty utilitarian shot. You know I am allergic to the flash on a camera, right? Hate it. I have a thing about the flash. Just gives me the creepies. I would rather take a picture in the dark and hold real, real still for a long time. So I tried to take all these before it got too dark. Because now we have the daylight savings, which also means we are like zombies in the morning and have to have extra coffee. Because we just taught agility, ran agility, and dragged thousands of pounds of agility stuff in and out of a trailer as a neat after work activity instead of something like, oh say, dinner. We can unset a course and stuff it back in that trailer FAST. Usually it is a panic to get home before Project Runway starts. Now there's time to sit back and smell the dirt since Season 4 ended.

Let's watch everyone stay on the table.


Mary and Ariel. You met them once when I went to CPE and I took their picture at 4:30am. Be nice to Mary about her new blondeish hair.


Linda and Jazper. They were my performance DAM team with Ruby in December. Jazper barks a lot. Doesn't this weird no flash, covered arena fluourescent lighting make Dirt Nite look mysterious and other worldly? Yeah. It's just like that.


Rob and Fate. There was an article about him in Clean Run that called him Agility's Mr. Nice Guy. He is pretty nice, even when I make Hobbes hit a bar. At least he still lets me run him. He has gotten used to it that one of his dogs has their own stalker.

It was a good Dirt Nite. A few bars from Hobbes due to a couple late front crosses. I am SO SORRY Hobbes! I HATE it when I do that. I love running a 26" dog. If that dog is Hobbes. I love running really, really fast to put in front crosses where others say, "but that looks dangerous." It's like a disease. Hi. I am Laura and I am a Front Crosser. Ruby and Otterpop were super speedy and no weird antics, thank god Project Runway is done with for now and Heidi is locked back into her box. It was a 3 dog night for me. Maybe I am skinnier today? And I ran with a frisbee to keep Otterpop fast and frantic. Maybe someday they would have Steeplechase Where You Get to Bring Your Toy in the Ring. Yeah. And maybe it would actually be at the dog show in Marfa.

Did you get the license plate of the truck?

So I know. I didn't tell you about Project Runway for a while. I even was going to, and it just was so lame and it made me sad to try and write something about it so I probably just wrote some dumb thing about a dog.

So then last night, it was the one where Tim Gunn goes to visit everyone to see their collections! He drives around to all their houses in a Saturn Product Placement. We get to see their houses or their studios. Or in the case of Chris, besides seeing his studio where he is making these total Dexter Show Me The Tiny Shrunken Scalps Attached Oscar outfits with human hair (Like teeth too? No. Just hair.) we also go to his friend's super coolest NY apartment ever where he has built it out with insane moldings on every flat surface like the most overmolded Rococo yet sort of Spanish inspired Versailles thing ever. Tim Gunn almost loses his shit over that one.

We visited Jillian's parents' Long Island house which isn't really what I was expecting and Jillian and her parents all have the same Christmas decorations that my parents have too. Even though Jillian is a tights wearing under formal shorts person. We visited Rami's house in Silverlake and his storefront design studio which sort of was what I was expecting. Christian lives in a super tiny closet with roomates in NY and makes all his giant, fluffy neck clothes in the tiny closet and sleeps in his tote bag under a table.

So I was going to tell you all about this episode but here was the thing. During dirt night, we had this sequence where we had to get them in the right side of the tunnel, after this super fast loadup of a couple jumps, the chute, and another jump. It was basically like the dog rocket shooting them to the left side of the tunnel and we had to pull them in the right side. I had 3 dogs to run. Who were all really wired last night, like I was yelling at dogs all night, BE QUIET! SHUT UP! And first time through it with Hobbes, augh he kept running in the left side of the tunnel and back I'd go through the whole loadup sequence to get that speed and get him in the hard pull side of the tunnel. And it took me a few times. And then it's Ruby's turn and same thing. And back through the fast loadup and pull and maybe too a few times. And then it's Otterpop's turn, she's not as fast right? And I think it still took me a couple times with her.

And then we had another course that had a similar thing and I think I had to go back a couple times with at least a couple dogs. And I was just running, running, running. It was a pretty fun night. I would not say that I ran error free last night. I would say I was cracking up a lot because the dogs were just flying and I'd make a mistake and it was cracking me up and I'd be laughing which makes my dogs faster and maybe not really Hobbes because he wants me to do it right so he can tug on his shred of a thing but I was laughing at him too. So a lot of oxygen being used by my running cackling shrieking run style, perhaps less effective than a good DOG'S NAME COME COME PULL SHOULDER INTO THAT SIDE of the tunnel. What is so funny about making errors during agility is what I'd like to know?

And then when it was time to finish watching Project Runway all I can tell you I woke up to see Heidi give Chris the double death kiss of auf weidershnicken and off he went. Um, I guess it repeats some night, right? And today, this morning, I feel like a truck just hit me. Next time I run that many fast runs with that many fast dogs, I am seeing a little advil for a nitecap.