It's all about the points.

OK. So I LOVE Snookers and Gamblers, because you can use your cunning and shrewd skills of strategy (not that these are things that I posess exactly, but I like to imagine I am cunning and shrewd just like I like to imagine I can sing Nirvana songs like a beautiful angel) to come up with point laden courses to Win With. And in the USDAA, you gotta get good at winning the Snookers so you can get your Super Q. Which sounds like something you could also get at Dairy Queen. But you can't. Only in Masters Snookers. If you win or come in close to the winner. And the winner is going to have A LOT of points.

Like you are figuring out, now that you all love learning Dog Agility Rules, in Snookers, you have a sequence out there, labeled with numbers 2-7. You want to be able to finish with this, thus getting the points 2+3+4+5+6+7. But you also want to do your opening sequence, which is 3-4 "red" jumps worth 1 point each, followed by something from that closing sequence. When you are a big fat point hog like me, you want to make sure to get all 4 reds and ideally, (4) 7 point things as well. But, the snarky hook is that the 7 point things are usually far, far away from red jumps, and you only have so many seconds to do this in before the whistle blows and you better be at the finish line.

So you gotta go out there and figure out, what is the fastest way from point A to point B, getting your points, not making too much of a crack head insane course that freaks out your dog, and still getting thru that closing. Before your time is all done. The super fast border collies can do some pretty crazy Snookers courses. My dogs, not so much. They're fast, but only so fast with their tiny little legs! And I try not to do the poles with Ruby in them. Poles are FREQUENTLY the 7 point obstacle. In the run from the video yesterday, the poles and tunnel combined were the 7 point obstacle, so you had to do both. So Ruby did (1) 7 point, (1) 5 point-that was the first tunnel at the beginning, and (2) 6 point things-that was those 2 jumps in a row. If you watch the video, knowing these rules, it all makes sense, right?. Otterpop, who didn't get videoed was able to do (2) 7 points, (1) 5 point and (1) 6 point, since she doesn't have the poles thing.

Wow, ready for more rules? Did you even know you ever wanted to know so many dog agility rules? If you knock over a red jump, you have to go to a new one before you do a thing with more points. If you are out of fresh red jumps, go on to the closing, sorry about the points! And if you mess up in the closing, run to the finish. If you mess up the beginning, run to the finish. Hope you got as many points as you were dreaming about. And I hope in your dream you were also wearing leather pants and Johnny Depp was there in the eyeliner but not the pirate hair and he had a kelpie. You know, dream big.

One full gas tank and 2 travel mugs full.

The Rio Consumnes Prison at Sunset.

To get to where the dog shows are in Elk Grove, get up at 4:30am, drive past the freshly smashed deer on Highway 17 in the dark, go over Altamont Pass where the Hells Angels killed someone during a Rolling Stones concert during hippies, go through Stockton, turn where you can barely see the sign, pass the prison, hit a bird, make sure to turn after the little horse sign, drive REALLY REALLY slow down the driveway next to the cows, and you are there at 7am! Try not to stay up amost all night the night before because you were drinking margaritas at Palomar.

The big kudos today goes to Otterpop, who won Every Single One of her Good Sized Classes, and rightfully so. She was running like her frisbee was buzzing around in front of her. She was slamming contacts like a tubby little machine. She was racking up points like a, well, like a point racker. Their gamble equivalent in CPE was sort of oddball, and gave small dogs something like 50 seconds to rack up the points in a sort of snookery way and we found 60 points. Which is a heckuva lotta points for a shortie. We did an aggressive-ish Snookers and made it. (I did a HIGHLY aggressive Snooker with Ruby and got whistled off when she back jumped the last red jump in my attempted insanity of making it work. Thanks Tim Gunn.) Flew through Standard and all her other classes. This was the Otterpop I practice with! Thanks Otterpop!

Ruby was actually awesome, but so wild that we had errors every so often and didn't do as well. Even though it's CPE. She is challenging to handle when she's so, um, crazy. But she cracks me up because she is so happy to be out there and SO FAST! She did Q in almost everything, but also hit a couple bars, had the wild Snooker, and had one of those nutso Standard runs that just made me start cracking up at the end where the last error (there were a few others) was totally her and not me, because she was so wild and so far out (thanks all my gamblers practicing!) to the side and we had a wacky comedy run that had me running to the end cackling of the hysteria of it all. After stopping dead in my tracks, just standing there, in my nice rear cross position while she was like halfway across the ring because she wanted to be doing the non existent gamble 30 feet away. HELLO it is STANDARD Ruby!

So it was actually very fun, even if Ruby didn't win all her classes too. When she is like that, it is a good problem to have. Everyone was pretty cheerful there and no griping and freaking out and complaining. It is sort of a nicer crowd there I think. Not a bad way to spend a day. In Elk Grove. Where it's so flat. And we were treated to a stunning sunset over the prison yards on our drive out. One full gas tank from home.