The water, it won't stop falling from the sky.

The storm banks keep moving through. When there are breaks, there are horses to walk, poor things much worse off cooped up in their boxes, their only break in the monotony, dreary walks around and around the road throughout the property. The dogs make due. There's always something for them, they don't much care if it's rain or wind or sun.


I stood out in the middle of the field, waiting for dark to hit and waiting to see how long it took the black storm cloud to move on top of us. I stood out there, not moving at all, facing in to the wind. Blew hard enough to keep me propped up, and so loud, moving by my ears. No one else out there. Generator drones and rattles from a shed out by the buildings. The Who song Teenage Wasteland swells up all operatic in my brain. Sometimes it's creepy, when you get a free soundtrack you didn't even ask for.


The dogs stayed occupied, digging through the underbrush, in the soft dirt. Frantic for something that was just beneath the surface. I let them dig so long, trying to see if they caught whatever it was tunneling away from them before the black cloud hit on top of us. Worst thing that would happen, we get really wet. Worst thing that would happen, the one inch diameter hails the lady on the radio told us about pelts our skin. Worst thing that would happen, was a lightning cloud like the ones in the morning, would appear and strike me dead.


The cloud, it's winning, and I turn my back to the wind and slog through what is now a slough, boots to my knees, sometimes slipping. Call in the dogs and they need to leave whatever it was they have now gone feral for, digging as if posessed, each in their hole. Sometimes they swap.


It's Gustavo and Otterpop who whistle in right away, and when I get through the field, out to the path, I turn into the wind again, and can barely see Ruby out there, a pouncing little speck. She has gone to heaven. I don't know if she can hear me through the wind. I doubt it. I wave my arm, turn my back, and keep walking up to the road. A minute later, she's alongside again, with a spark in that bad cloudy eye. I gather them all up, just as the first heavy drops start to fall from the sky.

When the magic of water falling from the sky just makes us all go kind of freaky.

We have been waiting for this bank of storms to hit us dead on. They come and go in waves, with thunder and pounding rain that floods the streets, then stop for a while, leaving the winds to dry everything quickly, in time for the next set to rinse and repeat.


Between the surf noise and the air noise, you can only hear noise from your mouth in your very own ears.


The beach is a bad, dangerous place. The surf hits the rocks too hard, and there are no patches of sand. When the water smacks the rocks, it sprays up top, sending showers of pebble and water and kelp across the road. At low tide, this is where my dogs run in the morning and evening, but during winter storm season, we head to the whale skeletons, on safer, higher ground.


Nothing much to do, but wait it out, and take advantage of every dry patch that comes through.

Project Runway-The Product Placement Years

Still life with sopping squirrel. All things sopping.

It's still raining. Who wants to go to work when you work on a ranch without an indoors? Luckily, Project Runway might repeat itself when you are dragging your heels to go handwalk the horses that have been locked in way too long. Let's take a closer look.

They start out in their Product Placement Apartment. Victorya thinks Sweet P is Kit. All those blondies look the same to her. Bitch. Have you noticed that Christian's tote keeps growing? It is almost the size of Chris now. Maybe Christian is shrinking under the weight of his pineapple hair and the tote is staying the same size. Maybe it's just from seeing him with the giant ruffle tower last week. We will still be able to hear him though, even if he shrinks to only 4" high. I'm not worried about Christian.

Heidi invites the team to do a model swap and gives them the horrific field trip news. There is a brief shot of Rami with his arm around Sweet PKit's shoulders on the way to the field trip. Was he in the Israeli army? Is that where he learned his powers of the hypnotic mind? What is he doing to Sweet PKit? The designers are fabulous but have to ride in a janky old ford econline van not befitting of their Designer Status. Hopefully Sweet PKit makes it out alive.

The big surprise is they must run (they are horrible to Chris-they know he can't run and this is the second time they've done this) through a filthy warehouse to grab a bunch of jeans. The theme of this week's challenge is Product Placement for Levi's 501 which just isn't cutting it with the kids today. Who have endangered reading brain and no time to buy Levi's. The levi's lady talks flat out about branding. Don't you remember when branding was supposed to be secret unless you were the branding expert and the marketing people? I used to do that and get giant checks because no one knew branding was just tricking people into buying stuff by coming up with a clever idea about why YOUR COMPANY was unique and special and cool. Once it involved a talking pirate parrot. I had to quit. Now everyone knows so maybe we are ready for a post-branded world? Get ahead of the curve and out of the box Project Runway. Sweet PKit gets a dirty foot grabbing her denim. How many times did Tim have to say Levi's?

Jillian is making the same coat again as last week. For me! But I am not sure if I will wear a denim coat. Sorry Jillian. We liked the black one with plaid lining. She will be sewing a lot of crap all over it too. Jillian's whole face is botoxed I think but with the weight of fashion, not actual botox. Every time you see her face it is pained and troubled but in a creepy terminator way. Rami is too european to work with the denim but he will Make it Work. But he does know about cartoon characters because he thinks Christian is the pineapple that sponge bob lives inside.

Victorya is stealing her idea from Jillian. We know one of them will be going down. It could involve blood! Ricky keeps saying the word lingerie, lingerie, lingerie. There's a whole drinking game right there with Ricky and crying and lingerie and hats. Too bad we have to go to work.

Sweet PKit freaks out Tim with her dress! She always does this and he says the actual words, "Happy Hands at Home Granny Circle Hippie Dippie!" Thanks Tim. We still love Tim just because he said that. That's our old Tim of the horrified look. Maybe he will quit working at Liz Clairborne or Donna Karan or wherever that was that made him leave academia for fame and fortune and bigger buckets of money. A talking pirate parrot could be just around the corner Tim Gunn.

Jillian really is bleeding! She is freaking out too. There is just a lot of whining happening with the designers over the branding challenge. The designers look like the little Wal Mart slave children behind their machines, except for that they have a lot more tattoos. Don't you wish they would just show us all their tattoos one morning in their Product Placement Apartment and we could read Ricky's lettering and see the whole Pineapple octopus arm and is there is rhyme or reason to all Sweet PKit's flowers scrolling all over her back and her arm.

The next time they go to Product Placement Apartment, the boys are all spraying themselves with stuff and we can also see that they have all Ikea furniture. Poor designers. We always have to see them in their underwear. And Ricky has another hat, this is the mesh one, I think that it is his dress hat for the firing squad lineup. Maybe is kevlar mesh. It is his branding. Just be done with branding Ricky, or maybe it's just they've done this branding to you and you didn't mean to be the hat wearing crybaby lingerie guy.

They are all glueing their models into their denim. I feel bad for them. Ten Hours! To make outfits. Project Runway is like more evil than 100 grad schools all lumped together. They can do that to you when you are lured into the prizes and the money and the fame. The Saturn car. All the Treseme you can drink! I would have been a bad contestant. Aside from the way I sew, which is completely lame. Also that I shouldn't ever get dressed or shop without a stylist. But also my reaction to stress in an art type environment which causes me to lay on the floor and go to sleep. Sort of like when I go to see a band. For some reason, dog showing does not bring this type of stress to me and I never lay down and sleep at anything dog related. The dogs are so soothing. Too bad they do not have dogs running loose in their studio but then it would be like UCDavis or CalArts and I am pretty sure they don't do that in New York City.

The skinny models trot their skinny gangly limbs down the runway. There's a lot of strapless type dresses that I am not sure how they stay up on all those anorexic little chests? Christian made skin tight size negative jeans out of jacket sleeves that are completely cute if you can wear a negative size. Someone that is in tip top dog agility shape could wear these but that someone is not me. Our demographic means most of us are over 40 and it is the over forty weight which is hard to get all the way down to size negative. Junior handers, take note. Then Nina is so excited because Sweet PKit makes a slimming voodoo dress that makes her model actually disappear off the stage due to becoming a negative waif. But that is a good thing so she will not get voted off. And she just happens to be wearing a non slimming tap dancing costume, and we are not really sure why. Because her husband's name is Sage? Ricky will not get voted off. They are laughing at him, he thinks it is with him, but the Levi's lady likes his hoochie mama dress so they can only send subliminal messages through their sharp shark teeth and wait til next week. He is still crying anyways. Michael Kors just wants to chew him up and spit him out all over the stage and keep his hat as a trophy.

Victorya and Jillian have a final smack down and thank god Victorya is finally kicked off.

Hello and welcome to Success With One Jump!

Today's review is of Susan Garrett's DVD about dog jumping! Why did I sit around and watch a DVD one day? Due to our Storm Watch! Hurricane force winds! Giant rain from the side of the sky! Even INSIDE the barn it was wet. I made sure all the horses were dry and safe and fed them some lunch and drove home avoiding tree branches flinging about the roads and big floody puddles. A part day off due to weather! Thanks weather!

I tried to take the dogs down to Lighthouse Field early in the morning but being right on the ocean, there were actual hurricane like winds that wouldn't even let us walk. Like I am not kidding here-you cannot WALK! I had to turn backwards and take tiny little backwards steps thinking, maybe this isn't such a bright idea? There were trees in wrong places from falling down and blowing far across the field.The 3 little dogs were possibly going to just up and be flown away, and as I'm thinking, perhaps I need to tie them together to avoid their being blown away, we just ran back to the car. How long can dogs go without going to the bathroom?

But back to Susan Garrett. This DVD may not appeal to you non dog agility people. I would say perhaps rent the Wire instead. Unless you really want to see Susan Garrett talking a lot and practicing jumping with her perfectly trained dogs. Including DeCaff who Ruby used to try and beat in the Grand Prix and Steeplechase and never did. And then we moved down to Performance and so we will never know, could Ruby beat DeCaff? Probably not. Because. Well, just get the DVD and see why. It will look different than when we practice agility. Does Encore ever take her toy and lay down on it like a big fat goose guarding the golden eggs? Does DeCaff ever start flinging herself over the nearest 4 jumps you didn't even ask for and then look for a squirrel? And then run over to the picnic table, look for the treats, and back in a flash to her sit position as if all that never even happened?

Susan Garrett is like the Martha of dog agility. Except who sometimes you bump into in person. And she's Canadian. She's not going to be your friend. She might have bad hair, but she can work the tennis skort and have good ideas that are just going to come out better when she does them than if you tried them. I have been to a couple of seminars of hers and I learned a lot but she made me cranky. She gives a look that has a tone. You can't tell that from the DVD. She just looks like a sporty, dog training Suze Orman. She lives on a giant Canadian ranch of dog agility. She may be a little passive aggressive. I was afraid of her in real life. If you follow her steps of Success With One Jump, perhaps your dogs can beat hers when mine can't.

Can you imagine if a genie turned Martha and Susan and Suze into 3 border collies and those 3 were staring at you all the time?