I got Ruby to be a friend to Timmy. I had always wanted to get him a small, flat black dog and name it Lassie. When I saw her, she was this sort of feral thing that was at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter. I was thinking chihuahua? jack russell? I asked my friend Charlie, is it a bad thing to get a jack russell that's feral? She thought it sounded like a great idea and I brought her home. She was probably something like 6-8 months old.

Things were odd from the start. Clearly she didn't know about houses. She was able to get her 13" high dog body to the top of the refrigerator for food. Leap to the counter and steal a piece of pizza as it was removed from the box to a plate. She was agressive towards other dogs and faster than blazes. At home, she had a weird habit of gathering up all the dog toys, putting them in a laundry basket and sleeping on them.

Right away, I put her in a training class. It was traditional yanky yank obedience with a choke collar, which didn't seem right for her. I stuck it out, got her heeling in little figure 8's and kept her away from the brutal claws of the teacher. She didn't want to lay down in the class. The teacher wanted to yankety yank her down. I taught her to down using positive reinforcement training, which I didn't know what it was but was how I had always taught my dogs. You go down, I give you a treat. They did have a tunnel there, and someone told me about agility.

I went to Just for Fun Agility in a tiny agility yard and this changed our lives. We learned about clicker training, and Ruby had something to do that kept her occupied and was able to learn to be near other dogs, and get tired enough to not be insane at the house.

Her weird streak is still there. She is a worrier, and concerned about everything. She allows not a single error from her agility handler. It took her years to be able to sit comfortably at the starting gate at a dog show. Loud noises like fireworks and trains make her lose her mind. Flies in the house are the worst-it is like the witches seep into her brain and make her go crazy until she can hide under a bed in a corner and shake it off. She's an aloof dog, sometimes she wants to be with people, sometimes not. She is a great ranch dog to have around the horses, and never leaves my side when we hike in the forest.

Had I been a better trainer, and if Ruby didn't have so many ailments, she would have been a world class agility dog-I'm sure of it. But she was my first dog and I made a lot of mistakes. She was few legs short of her ADCh in 16" when I moved her down to Performance because of a lot of soundness issues that, for a while, were erased at a lower jump height. She knocks bars hard. She has chronic tendonitis in her front legs, an immune disease that attacks her eyes, and progressive retinal degradation, which means she is losing her vision slowly but surely. She does a little bit of agility when she can, jumping 8", but her competition days are pretty much over.

She has moved into being the best dog. We call her Sister Mary Ruby. The fact that Ruby turns into this, blows my mind on a daily basis. I gotta say. Every dog is special. Especially mine. But this is one REALLY SPECIAL dog.