3 on a Leash.

Is it weird? That you could turn happy on and off like a faucet? Maybe not the antique bronze faux farmhouse faucet from every single remodel in Sunset Magazine. But possibly the mid priced Home Depot one that isn't yet rusted and covered in scaley white crud. Just a faucet.

That something like sitting there on the couch, or should we say Love Seat since couch would indicate a living room large enough to hold an actual couch, with your dogs lumped around you can help that switch stay on, not turn off. Maybe doesn't make everything perfect and put a million bucks in your bank and switch your crumbly house into a dream ranch and save the polar bears and get that fat gut to tighten into Beyonce tummy. Hi Jay-Z! But can help enough that life doesn't look so crappy and the sky looks a little bluer and you can think that you are a-ok with what you got. Maybe don't try to look at the future like a gaping pussy black abscess but more like something that is going to happen tomorow, sun comes up in the same exact place as today and the dogs will still be there with you. Maybe running away to roll around inside a rotting corpse of a seal or monkey barking at each other as they completely shred the polyfill guts out of what used to be a taxonomically correct stuffed duck, but still counts technically as there with you. Just perhaps smelling really bad.

Not sure why a pack of funny looking dogs that make people laugh and point, aren't even as tall as your knee and climb on your head when you're asleep can have such strong powers of voodoo, but somehow they do. Do they change the fact that a whole bottle of water poured itself out in your purse and is slowly drizzling out all over the carseat next to you as you fly down the freeway at night in the rain, soaking your checkbook and papers and planner and all the items of you life in there? Do they change the fact that they're currently covered in sticky black mud which is about to get tracked over much of the surface of the newish carpet in your teensy, tiny house? Change the way the ice cubes for the polar bears to sit on melting and we're not sure how long they can swim? Change anything much?

Nope. Dog the opiate of the masses? Maybe. But I think Marx also said that dog is the heart of a heartless world, in his next breath. Right? Or brother Groucho Marx maybe said that? Or Otterpop? No wait. She is over there screaming her head off at the tiny yellow bus stopping down the street. Look out kids! Wait. Now are we promoting communism to the K-6 crowd? Naw. Just getting ready to start out another day. Suspect we'll be back to your regularly programmed agility nonsense soon.

Can you sort of pretend you are reading a book, then go think about it.

The shelf. It is overflowing with the actual books. For real. Also, can you see it is of a brisk temperature here in the room of books to preserve them to be better accessed by our ancestors of the future? It is just sort of a brisk temperature everywhere. In the house. Out of the house. January, you are trying hard to kick my ass. This is California damnit. By the beach.

So there was this article in the New Yorker a little while back called "Twilight of the Books" and it was sort of about how living in the googled world doesn't give time for concentrated analysis of stuff you read or the motivation to think beyond all the information sort of barfed out there. Sort of like if you read blogs and stuff and junk mostly your mind becomes jello-like and soft. Like maybe if you read blogs like mine. And ones that are even better. Or ones that are even worse. Written by someone of already questionable brain matter. "The digital world is the greatest threat yet to the endangered reading brain as it has developed over the past five thousand years," is what these nice, smart people have decided-one of them is a Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and one is a Director at a Center for Reading.

Now I am going to hell for sure. I am sorry polar bears. I am sorry Heath Ledger. Once again I am doing something that has a dark side when I thought it was all rainbows and marshmallow spewing cats in baskets. I spent some time yesterday living in a googled world and reading some blogs and stuff on the internet. Due to the weather. You saw. I was in my jammies. Mostly I was in dog agility blog world. Us dog agility ladies we sure like to write about our dogs. I could have been reading a book. And doing critical analysis. Here's one right here on my desk that I am even mentioned in the acknowledgements on About Species meeting. We've discussed. I've quoted. But instead I am clicking around on the internet reading about a bunch of dogs. Blogs freak me out.

So here is my question to you. Yes-I am talking to You! Did you read all the way to this sentence? Because you thought I was going to tell you of some magic of how to make some running contacts spectacular and fast and a thing of breathtaking awe and you could wear ballet flats whilst running them? Or you were searching for small asses or dead rat toys and you found this little ditty? Or you just like looking in someone else's living room at dusk when it's light inside but dark outside and you can see all their stuff. Even their antler collection. Or maybe you thought I was going to tell you Project Runway things but I am not today, even though it involves denim. Or you were just ready to wish dog agility was the star of your life but you were just wishing it was happening in a better way because your life just seems to be getting so Specific? Cuz I welcome you! You is my people!

Even though the song says to I never smack my bitches up.

It certainly was a black mood day yesterday but it was also sunny at work and the horses were all good and except for a clipper blade fiasco, I forgot about the bacteria and polar bears for a while. I also got to practice with the dogs in the morning.

It was House of Pain day at dog practice. Whatever happened to those guys? I think some of them became Limp Bizcit. Oh well. So sorry. The theme was Jump Around. I set up grids and that was all we worked on. Ruby, she of the mos def stay, was all a twitter to GO and when I'd walk up the grid* (*here, let's define grid for you skimmers, wake up Joel Warner! A grid is just a series of jumps that I customly space apart so that, in this case, there was one stride between them all but some one strides longer and shorter than the others. Makes the dogs think and balance themselves to, ahem, avoid knocking a rail). Yeah so I'd turn my back, walk up the line to put out a toy for her to drive to, and badabing. She is up the grid, swimmer turn and back down it to the stay place, 10 jumps all together, in a flash, like-HEY you don't see me RIGHT but i JUST Want to JUMP AROUND JUMP AROUND.

Otterpop, IN THE HOWSE, she has a less than mos def stay. Mos Weak. She wiggles here and there and lays down and likes to start from this weird I am a Lounge chair position. But eventually LOVE for the frisbee overcomes her need to not stay and she barreled up and down her jumps fantastico when she figures out the frisbee vanishes if you split the start early. She didn't hit anything. Did I mention on Ruby's turn she was wacking jumps right and left until she got it that she couldn't have a treat til she went thru without wacking stuff? That worked.

Gustavo is just learning to stay and drive down a line. You know that B.I.G. song "biggie biggie biggie can't you see, sometimes your words just hypnotize me?" He is little but he is learning the hypnotic spell of the WAIT W-A-I-T WAIT so I can walk down the grid and put a frisbee out. Even though Susan Garrett says I shouldn't need to do this. Sorry Susan Garrett! My training is flawed. We spent a lot of time at just a single jump too, driving out to a toy from a stay (Hello Success with One Jump-Say Hello To Success!) and then down the gymnastic, which he got fast and easy and good. I study the technique of Rami Droopy Turban of dresses too, because this is how he has become the powerful winner of ugly dresses-the hypnosis of Heidi and Nina and Tim! These are the new ways I find to train a Mexican Pet.

Yeah, in a perfect world we would all start out day like this. With old school hip hop and morning jump grids with everyone holding their stay followed by a run in the mountains and a wholesome breakfast I guess. In a perfect world those guys aren't all singing about ho's and smacking bitches up either and the polar bears have a big chunk of ice to sit on, not just a tiny ice cube they are balancing on one paw until it melts and they swim to their death.

Crusty.

I already had one of those moments where I actually looked at the paper and had to see about the lethal new bacteria and they were talking about climate change and everyone got murdered the other night and you know, how can I top that? OH yeah, we're all avoiding that! Ha HA! Just because I am truly wrong at heart and why should I try to hide that with all my lying about customer service, here you go. So you can be in a black mood too!

Lethal New Bacteria is Spreading! Watch Out! It is Lethal and it Could Spread to YOU!

Climate Change! Hopefully we will all be Dead before it starts to Kill Us All! But you will Always BE Thinking about the Polar BEARS!

Many People Were Murdered Recently but Also Died Random and Sad Deaths.

There are Not Enough Police to Take Care of the Horrible Crime!

Not enough Nurses to Help you with the Lethal Bacteria!

Housing Prices Actually are Rising Unless you are the Ones Getting Foreclosed on! And have the TAX BURDEN of the Short Sale!

See? Now don't you feel crummy too? This is why we have the dog agility. Total denial of our Real Universe! I'm going to go practice right now.