Hello and welcome to my birthday party.

So I was going to replace my carpeting in the spare bedroom/office/storage unit with these Product Placement cool carpet tiles. Fast and easy. Looks really good. Urban. Modern. Cool and hip. Instant good taste. Come sponsor Team Small Dog carpet tile grand poobas. A Sunday with no dog show and time for fun and breezy home improvement.


First had to pull up the old rug. Got pee stained during the last part of Timmy's life. Was just some beige carpet, covering circa 1968 grody vinyl. Who needs that in a house when you can have carpet tiles in a plethora of colors evoking mossy woodland clearning and build a taxidermy room? There will be branches. I envision a squirrel shelf running the length of the room with taxidermied squirrels in realistic and threatening poses.

I thought maybe a nice job for one day. Tear out and install. Happy Birthday to me and I'll have a new floor. So all the stuff stuffed into that room, I stuff in all the nooks and crannies and all floor space of all our other rooms. Which are a bedroom and a kitchen/living/dining speck of space. So you walk in our house and you are sure the crazy have landed as you squeeze past STUFF. Have I mentioned once or twice our house is the size of the cupholder in your Ford Explorer? Like one Labahoula puppy laying down takes up the entire living room and kitchen and no one can walk even a single step?


So how did I end up with a pile of sheetrock and insulation and a truck full of wood and the surfer guy from next door standing in there sort of shaking his head but luckily out of work this week? Hope there's no swell. Trying to put the lid back on all the cans of worms me and my crowbar opened up. Involves walls. The topic today was the forest carpet and now I am missing a wall. And am embarking on a journey named A New Closet.

How's that carpet look you ask? Mossy woodland clearing? Ready for the squirrels to come home to nest?

Can you see that? It's my stink eye. Stinking right into your eye. Let's just not talk about carpets right now.

Do chows like agility?

What can you do with dogs in the rain?

I know there are some people, I read this, that bring their agility stuff in the house. I love reading articles that start out, "I just brought 6 weave poles into my kitchen, and every time I am whipping up nine thousand batches of cupcakes with hand drawn portraits in powdered sugar on each one, I just send my puppy through the poles. Worked great!"

So there are like the Martha Stewards of cooking and phage, and the Martha Stewarts of dog agility. I am neither. I have tried. Sort of. I have wished. But I am no Martha. I sure like the design of her magazine though. We like to look at the pictures. Thanks Martha!

I think it's sort of an overachiever thing. Like, obviously, the Martha people are overachievers. You've seen their Christmas snowflakes. You know who you are. Some of you are my friends. You still love me even though I am sloppy. I know there are a lot of agility overachievers. This last weekend, people were talking about how they are training their puppies. I am hearing how people have their puppies already discriminating scent articles! (My puppy chews on pens!) Their puppy can be on a down stay while 2 border collies are having a frenzied tug game. (My puppy is outside with his head in a hole he dug barking at squirrels under the grass!) Their puppy can speak 3 languages already! (My puppy may not even be a puppy, he is an untrained adult dog!).

I have never been known to be an overachiever. I'm always busy, and I work real hard, but I am also sort of a slacker at heart. Remember the movie Slacker? Some of my friends are in that. Really. I have so many things to do and I have focus issues. I need to work on my website! I need to draw some pictures! I need to take some pictures! I need to clip the horse! I need to sew a purse! I need to rip open my roof! I need to buy a ranch! I need to do all of these things at the exact same time! And then my wheels spin. Somehow the bathroom gets remodeled and the dog gets trained but maybe they don't happen as good as the Martha's. Martha Stewart, you have a nicer bathroom than me! That's just how life is. So I shouldn't complain when I am not the USDAA Rockstar Champion. Perhaps the term is Quirky. I am the USDAA Quirky One with Somewhat Unfocused Dogs.

But look, there's Gustavo on his contact trainer, which takes up much of the backyard. That was his idea to get up there. And we did do some targets in the rain! The weave poles are under a tarp, so didn't do those. I'm sure not bringing them in the house. I did a load of laundry. I figured out how to make crummy little videos. So I have hope. Don't write me off yet.