When you find out you might be somebody else.

The forest near my house has a pair of visible mountain lions in it at the moment so we have excused ourselves from that forest for a spell. When it's high tide in the morning before work that means waves crashing into cliffs instead of beach runnng, so now we head into the Big Forest that's on the way to work. The Big Forest is so big it's hard to do a quick loop, I always want to walk farther and it always makes me late. Sometimes we have to run back to the car on the road. Which isn't so bad.


In the winter, nobody gets to swim in the river on a cold morning before work. If I have to wear mittens, Otterpop has to stay out of the river. This is a non negotiable fact. We've been walking on different trails lately that don't involve crossing the river, just staying up in the trees. I don't think this is so bad.


It's so cold in the morning, and the Big Forest is so dense, that we don't see any people on the paths I've been picking. This is how I like it. When I was walking in the neighborhood a few mornings ago, just going down to check the surf, I had a long disagreement with a lady who stopped me because she thought I wasn't me. She was sure she knew my dogs but sure she didn't know me. She even knew where my dogs lived, but knew I didn't live there with them, No No No, it's a different lady, she kept saying. I've seen this lady around the neighborhood for years. We always say hi. She has a little black dog that looks just like a monkey. She kept trying to explain to me who usually walks my dogs and I tried to convince her it was me. But she was positively, absolutely sure I wasn't me.

I didn't win the argument. I looked in the mirror when I got home and I think I looked the same. A few extra lines around my face these days, and my hair is always extra messy, but nothing had changed so much that I could tell.

Nobody can see us when we walk in the forest. I think that's where we're going today.

Sleeping dogs just lying there.

Gustavo sleeps more since we've been managing his liver thing. Sleeping totally beats sitting around and staring at specks on the floor. If possible, he's a lap dog, if there is a lap nearby, he's in it. If not, no worries. He'll curl up on his tuffet or under the covers in bed and snooze until something more exciting happens.

Ruby sleeps a lot. Preferably in the bed under my desk or in the heater chair. Ruby snores. Loudly.

We love it when Otterpop sleeps. Life is a lot quieter when Otterpop sleeps. Please, no one wake up Otterpop.

Team Small Dog re-enacts the 3 recent Republican Presidential Primaries because political race re-enactments are way funner than boring beach stick.

"Hey Otterpop, instead of just playing some dumb game with the stick, why don't you get the dogs to pose as Republican presidential candidates?"

Otterpop is always game for something. I'm not sure she even knew what this meant, but all those guys all have slightly different hair, loud voices and excellent posture, just like Team Small Dog. So shouldn't be that hard to line 'em up.


From left to right: Rick, Newt, Mitt


From left to right: Mitt, Newt, Rick


From left to right: Newt, Mitt, Rick


This game made Ruby cry. She wanted to be Courtney Cox, not Mitt. Then Gustavo ate a starfish and Otterpop started telling everybody she was Sarah Palin and when I tried to tell her she's not even running she went and hid her stick in a sea cave and barked at it for like 10 minutes until I made everybody leave because, poor Ruby. We totally traumatized her. Big game fail. Next re-enactment we just stick with something easier like be whichever kid from Fat Albert you want or heroic nurses of the Civil War.

Team Small Dog goes to a dog show-Santa Rosa Bayteam January USDAA, with extra added bonus movies.

The only bad part of the dog show on Sunday was where I almost fell asleep driving home in torrential rain and had to pull over to find a double shot of espresso before I could go another mile. Usually when I drive home, I stop and get a Starbucks at the start of my journey but I was thinking that Zumba and Bootcamp classes at the gym might trump caffeine and my cores of steel would keep me awake.


No such luck. This is not the job of cores. I guess I'm not used to those 4:30am starts to long days of dog shows anymore, it's been quite a while since we've done that. Out of practice.

The dogs were awesome. Truly the best they have been in a long, long time. Otterpop FLEW off every startline, no weird stink eyes at the judge or paranoid backwards glances. Just happy running with fast, competitive times again. She had a GREAT time and nothing weird except some crummy handling on my part that caused a refusal on her jumpers run and sending her TOO FAR AWAY on a gamble. I was SO HAPPY to have my Otterpop back, and then some! Hooray for Otterpop!


Not sure why she was in such a great mood, but I'll take it. Maybe because they stayed in the car all day? It was cold and raining and we parked in a sheep barn. Sans sheep. We got sent home with a big fancy ribbon with her name on it from her PDCh last year. She just wanted her frisbee.


That's my shoe. I really like those shoes. They have big holes in them, though. But I still wear 'em.


Gustavo wins a freaking medal. We had listening and we had teamwork, all at the same time. He could not put a foot wrong. Well, not very wrong. He ran a beautiful standard, not perfect due to the table snafu, which is captured here in all it's Gustavoness. And a bit of a flakey teeter totter. But how could I be sad over those? He focused with all his might, every single run.


His jumpers was a thing of beauty. Also, doesn't it look like I'm wearing jammies? That's my sporty pants outfit.

He ran a perfect pairs, usually I don't even enter him in pairs thinking not to burden a partner with potential maelstrom of insane weirdo vortexes, but I am thinking 2012 is where I just go, whatever, and run him. So we did, and his partner E'd, not him.

His gamblers, lovely except didn't carry out to the first part of the gamble, so that was that. Maybe a couple wide turns, until the end starting into the gamble. Honestly, at this point in his life, if he is sticking close to me and making a tight turn, I just can't worry about it that much.

So was it the practicing we've been doing? Maturity? Stockholm syndrome from being held prisoner in the car all day? I dunno. But we sure did have a fun day running.

The time I did a photoshoot at the beach and the dogs looked totally emo in all the photos even though we were frolicking around all joyful and shit.

When it starts to rain, hardly anyone goes down to the beach. Except us.


This makes us happy. Look at those happy faces. Like little goth Smiths song singing happy faces. We heard it's going to rain for a week.


You'll know where to find us if you need us. Really. I'm not kidding. We are happy. Enough already.

Team Small Dog Public Service Announcement-Do not abandon your running dogwalk maintenance ever, ever ever.

In the fancy team training facility, otherwise known as my very short and very skinny driveway, I have room for one plank. Not a whole dogwalk. A single plank. It sits next to the garbage cans and slopes down towards the street. Cats sit on the fence next to it and mock us when we practice.

When I taught Gustavo a genuine running dogwalk, I was very methodical and obsessed. Would get up very early in the morning to go visit an entire dogwalk at a friend's field in the mornings before work. Over and over again.

He eventually developed a great running dogwalk contact. It took a long time. I was drinking a lot of coffee. It became very consistent and I was very proud of it. Running dogwalks are super cool and super fast. We might have 27 other things go wrong in a run, but Gustavo always had an awesome and fast dogwalk contact.

This was a hard thing to train. Mostly because of the not having a dogwalk part of it. To make it consistent, I found I needed approximately 40 million repetitons over time. To practice it right, frequently I 'd set up my camera to take a video to make sure I wasn't hallucinating either a good contact or a crappy one or a miss. Lots of camera fiddling. I used my robot. Lots of robot fiddling. A quick practice was like freaking mission control project. I am sure I wrote about it here. A lot. It's all a blur. Those were a lot of early mornings. I'm wondering, did I really do that?

Who does that? Who is weirdo enough to drive a box of mission control items around with them and get up super early to stop at a wet field and set up a box of crap and fiddle around and this and that and it's cold and the camera has no battery and the robot is acting weird and the dog just ran after some birds and it is late for work already and gotta look at the video and catch the dog again and the phone is ringing and I hafta go to the bathroom and the dog just peed on something and the robot is beeping out of control and I forgot my lunch and pack up mission control and the dog is all wet and my shoes are all wet and we are late for work.

Every single morning.

So my maintenance of it has been pretty haphazard. Less and less practice, just assuming that we now have a great running dogwalk contact forevermore. Using it nonchalantly in class. Recently noticing occassional misses and high hits, and shrugging these off as flukes.

This was an erroneous assumption. A grand fallacy along the lines of I am America's Next Top Model.

The occasional high hit morphed into out and out leapers at Dirt Nite last night.

Righty-o and onward, mission control.

Practicing with the Team-the ice edition.

Do you know where I live? California, USA, specifically near the beach. There is a reason I live here, and that reason is not drum circles and artisan gin distilled from organic juniper berries and herbs served in hand blown glass asymmetric vessels shaped by the spotted, leathery hands of an old C-list punk rocker who drives a Prius.

Nope.

Actually, sometimes I forget why we live here and why we don't just move to Marfa, Texas or Joshua Tree, Desert or Naturita, Colorado. All have been thunk on and rejected due to The Beach. We live by the beach and the redwood trees and meadows all at the same time, and all last week, in the middle of January, everyone was trudging around complaining about the heat. Was SO HOT. Shorts and racerback tanks for those with cores of steel not protected by a generous helping of what appears to be that pizza dough you buy at Trader Joe's in a squishy plastic bag. Personally, for this reason, I kept a jacket on.


And then it went back to fairly normal January except with extra added ice. I go to a gym now, and in my 7am exercise class the chippy chirpy cheerleader guy who cheerfully assigns sadistic hippity hoppity kicky exercises for our cores sent us on multiple dashes as far a manicured bush across the parking lot through actual, snowy looking ice. There were only 4 of us in the class. The others were very young with 6-pack cores and when they passed me and I was all, "Hey, you guys are PASSING ME!" they didn't even bat an eye my way, just kept running through that ice as I huffed my way out to that damn bush.

The cheerleader guy greeted me every time I sprinted back into the building with a high five. He's like one of those greeters at the Gap who totally loves boyfriend fit jeans on you, oh-mah-gawd. He may have just been worried I was going to pass out before we got out the kettle balls.

Do you know kettle balls? Like ugly little handbags that feel like they are full of 50lbs of sand. Like carrying sandbags out to hold down your tunnel. All of them, all at once, crammed into an ugly little round purse that you are supposed to lift as high as your head if you want cores.


We had ice at agility practice and practicing with visible icicles seems weird and wrong. Definitely wrong for Otterpop, she of the gimpy leg instead worked on one of her funny tricks, which are funny to probably only to me and her, we are easily amused by each other. This one she races in and out of my legs while I Frankenstein walk around. Can be done with or without hula hoop.

Gustavo didn't seem too bothered by running across crunchy freezing grass, except for when he inexplicably ran away through an invisible-to-me hole in the fence when I put too much pressure on his independent 180's instead of letting him just play for a while. I caught him by walking back to the car, getting in and starting it up. This gave him a real nice panic attack and he couldn't find whatever little rat hole he escaped through to get back to the getaway car so he let me catch him right after that. Oh, Gustavo.


After that we had a great practice and worked on our tight decel turns. And the ice melted right when it was time to go home.

Sunday walking with the team.

The weather turned today. We've been basting along under global warming skies, enjoying the high 70's during January. Creepy, but so lovely to be out in the sun. Today a breeze kicked in along with a cloud bank, and I think it means that the weather means to turn serious again. I had to dig out my warm clothes from under the short sleeves.

We walked down to the beach, with just enough time for some sticks before it turned dark. We were bookended on each side by a pitbull, and something told me not to stay. I don't know. Maybe it would have gone fine fine. But I am trying to be better about listening to my intuition every single time now. So the dogs had a short run, then we walked back up the stairs to walk along the path towards where the sunset was spilling through a gap in the clouds. The air looked like frozen water, and the sea looked like chopped up ice. The weather sure turned fast.

And old French man rode up behind me on a bike as rickety as he was. He had a smart wool cap and one pant leg rolled up to reveal a very bony old leg in a long stocking.

"Zat eez quite a me-na-ger-eeee," he said to me.

I am used to this. Not a day goes by when someone does not comment to me that I have my hands full or what a collection of dogs I have. I am used to this. 3 black dogs in a row doesn't seem that surprising to me, but I am happy to be interesting to everybody else. Or maybe they just don't like there to be too much silence when they pass a stranger walking down the road.

"They are a menagerie," I replied.

He climbed off his bike, and began to walk next to me. His eyes were runny and pale, and he was wearing a faded teal jacket. Something about old men in teal makes me very sad. Old men shouldn't have to wear teal.

"Zey are a fam-ee-leee? All of zem?"

"Nope, all different. I just found 'em."

"Are zey, how you say…" He looked away thinking of the word. "You raise them, for the breeeeding? Zee puppies?"

"Uh, no. They're all different. Strays. From the side of the road."

He looked relieved. Not sure what he was going to do if I had said I was a designer puppy mill of funny little black dogs, him and his rickety old bike and jaunty cap.

"Zees is good. I am glad." He got back on his bike and pedaled slowly towards the sunset.

I walked as far as the bench where the Iraqi vet shot himself a few years back. That seems like a good place to turn around when you're walking towards the edge of town. They cleaned up that bench real good. You would never even know.

No one talked to me walking home. I saw another old guy in a teal parka walking 3 aging Beagles. All of them were old and gray, and they walked much slower than us. Barely even moving, the cold in everyone's bones.

Dirt Nite returns.

We had no Dirt Nite for an extended time through the holidays. We sure missed Dirt Nite, and now it's back! I couldn't run my dogs last night, no running allowed with fresh mouth stitches, but I did get to see all my agility students again. Of course they didn't practice very much over the break, but how could I be mad?

My students range from a 4lb chihuahuaesque wire haired teensy in a pink argyle sweater who garners applause when she sends to a tunnel, to a senior citizen English Sheepdog who had to learn what was balance so she wouldn't fall off the dogwalk. There is an uber sensitive, shy dog who is super fast and whose handler has learned the highest degree of patience possible to help him not freak out at things like teeters or dropped bars. A high drive, young sheltie with a low drive older person. A bar knocking, bounding, mayhem aussie with the most solid nose touch contacts ever seen in a beginner class, and a border collie with a teenage owner that didn't really understand til now why Stay is a useful concept. A mini aussie who was mortified of tunnels and now shoots around a sequence with ease. An incredibly cute cattle dog joined last night, and a schutzhund malinois starts next week.

There are other dogs and people who rotate in and out, as their schedules permit. The one thing they all have in common? Very dedicated, kind handlers. Even handlers that started on the first day hoping to yank their dogs by the prong collar up to the startline have all learned how to teach their dogs things by rewarding what they like and not rewarding the rest. Every dog in class, even though they may still be working out the weave pole bugs or the consistency of their contacts, is motivated and happy and excited each time they step up to the line. Every handler plays with their their dog and has a great time in class.

I'm not the agility teacher people serious competitors seek out. As agility teachers go, I'm a bit of a hack. There are a lot of amazing and far more qualified agility instructors in our area, for this we are very lucky. My class has many students who may never, ever set foot in the show ring, although I teach everyone assuming that they will. I know that when I started taking a beginning agility class with Ruby, I never thought it was going to become an all consuming lifestyle. And look how I ended up.

My class does have a lot of dogs who started out a bit mopey, and a bit nervous about doing things wrong. So while we work on great pole entrances and fast driving down the dogwalk to a stellar nosetouch, we also work on excited, fast running dogs. And I've noticed the happier the dogs, the happier the people. Even when a bar goes down or a front cross goes amuck.

Most of my students aren't on a fast track to their ADCh. Most of them don't even have weave poles to practice on at home. Not all of their dogs tug or bring back the ball. Recalls and stays are a big part of class. But I am very proud of every single one of them, for working so hard at being a better trainer for their dog, and for recognizing how they can teach their dogs by having fun. Hopefully, agility class is just as fun for them as it is for me.

The poor dogs of Team Small Dog have been somewhat abandoned and left to their own devices and chewies.

All I can tell you is that life is flying by again. For some reason it seemed a little slower around the holidays. Maybe that was just me. Was I even awake?

There is still work to go to. Horses need riding. Extra jobs need designing. People need meetings. Teeth need surgery. Zumba needs booty shaking. Online courses need attention. Drawings need drawing. Stories need writing. There is weeding. Who is doing the weeding?

It has all snuck up on me and the dogs are suffering. Don't they look so sad? They are overdue for working on so many things. Skillz drillz, a thing of the past. They would like to have some practice and some running on the beach.

Me, too.

Clearly haven't been pulling up my champion pants.

Here are some facts from the last couple whizzing by days:

I tasted clam juice. I would recommend don't taste this.

I stopped visiting facebook. Actually I stopped this last year. If you are trying to talk to me in facebook and you thought I was ignoring you, you would be correct. And you just thought I was a bitch. I wasn't even there.

I became addicted to expensive artisan pizzas made by mandolin playing organic slow food bakers with beards. Does your city have these bearded wonders? They tend to drive vintage trucks and make ice creams in flavours like bourbon persimmon pistachio.

I have a mouthful of stitches again and lost a whole day due memory sucking amnesia drugs. The clam juice was real, though.

iPad forced me to quickly speed read 4 books about interesting women including a suburban widow waiting to die, a groupie from Frank Zappa's performance art girl group in the '70's, Tina Fey, and one of the stars of the Blair Witch movie who became a pot grower in Willits.

I borrowed a beautiful plank to go back to dogwalk driveway maintenance, because running dogwalks require maintenance. I have not yet even set it up. Maybe while you are reading this me and my swollen face are out there right now setting it up. Do you know where robot's remote controller is?

I'll see if iPad has it.

Who knew just figuring out when to stop running could be so complicated?

Here's my friend Ashley. You might also know him as Ashley Deacon, big agility world champ gold medal winner. He's teaching Susan about Decel in this picture in a seminar in San Francisco. Inside a building. This fact alone was a trip-agility inside a building! I know that's how some of you always do agility, but this was a first for us. The floor was made of lovely blue mats that were like running on spongey clouds. Many walls everywhere. It was a little weird to be indoors with no grass or trees, but we had a great time and turns out, dogs love doing agility in buildings as much as outside.


The whole thing was very high tech. Does everybody in agility everywhere have iThings crawling around everywhere now? iStuff were everywhere. My friend iPad took notes for me and videos. This photo is not me though, in case you thought that was my new hair.


Actual note taken in iPad. I have lots and lots of these with little drawings of stick people standing quietly and not running.


My videos are hysterically funny to watch, in a dog agility geek way, since you can see and hear Ashley patiently explain to me where I should be running to and why, and I'm all nodding my head and, "Right!" and then do it wrong.

Over and over again. I guess I am unteachable. But now have endlessly more ways to entertain myself with my iPad.


Ashley did have us deceling in the right place by the end of it all, though. So not totally. I just need multiple do-overs. Who knew just looking slow for a minute was so complicated? I always have thought decel means run fast to get somewhere and stop, or slow down. It sort of does, but there is a bit more precision involved in selecting where you need to do this. The when and where are more key than the slow.

Agility is hard.

Something to keep working on. No matter, Gustavo ran great. Otterpop ran just a little and she ran great too. I guess they like indoor agility. Doing the decels in the wrong places most of the time just meant lots and lots of agility, the dogs liked this part. So we all had a great time, and Gustavo's wide turns should be gone sometime in the year 2021 at this rate.

Ashley will be teaching seminars like this in San Francisco every few weeks until the big AKC Nationals in Reno trying to tune everybody up. Or just anybody that wants tuning up, AKC Nationals or not. He could teach a seminar near you, too, just ask him! You will have very much fun and I know he'll help you as much as he helped me.

Zumba, in which the front cross footwork is just faster and a little more salsa.

Last year, as part of my champion program, I found fitness in a weekly class with the trainer of rock hard cores and by trudging to the church down the street to boogie to the oldies, or something shivery creepy like that, in the auditorium/basketball court/feed the homeless room with a bunch of slow moving older ladies with weird hair and pastel colored track suits.

What started happening though, the jazzercise, it was sucking my soul dry. Bad. Jazzercise has all the character of limp flooring material. The volume was weak, the dance moves excruciatingly, mind numbingly boring, and the music was indescribable. It makes me weep to think about it. There were jazz hands to country versions of Frank Sinatra songs and ball changes over and over and over again where we were supposed to sing along with J-Lo. And go WOOO!

I am so not a WOOOer.

While jazzercise was exercise, VERY cheap, and half a block from my house, it also started to corrode my brain until I couldn't go anymore. I just couldn't. I am still shaking off the corrosion. Now any time I hear a Britney Spears remix through a warbly voice distorter, tiny metallic flakes come sifting out my nose.

I liked my personal trainer class with my friends, but it grew a little repetitive and a lot expensive. The days grew short and dark and the spare tire around my gut grew over the nice cores that had been living in there.

So guess what we found instead?

Zumba.

Total upgrade from Jazzercise. What was I thinking, doing the sashay across the church auditorium all those months? This is more like being in normal dance class again, how I used to spend a lot of hours, back in the day. When those days had better knees and a presentable belly button. Salsa versions of Snoop Dogg songs. Loads of bass. Much shimmy shimmy hip grind. Fast little merengue steps way better for flitting through euro course footwork and rebuilding the cores again at the same time.

And way more fun. My people are in there, all kinds of people go to zumba. And it's pretty cheap. And close to my house. Not jazzercise close and cheap, but not too bad. In a gym, so I can go to yoga and get all healthy and cardio if I apply myself. Which champions are supposed to do.

The dogs might have to stay at home during zumba, but I think they will like a happier, zumbafied person much better.

Team Small Dog's useful dog agility handling tips that are possibly useful in other situations besides dog agility except I'm not sure which ones.

Instructions for running a tricky bit of our course last night (where Spain is 2 and Germany is 3, for our purposes here):

Cross quite close to Spain.

Get to Germany.

Yes. The jumps are supposed to be that close together.

Ready with that stripper move, and stripper move to Germany.

Germany! GET TO GERMANY!

Stripper Move! Stripper Move! STRIPPER MOVE!

If someone isn't getting it, just yell STRIPPER MOVE again, but louder.

Repeat.

The team's first practice of the year 2012.

2012 is supposed to be the one of universal apocalypse, when the calendar blows itself up to smithereens and aliens take up residence in backyard sheds, disguised as bloated rats, posed to crawl across suburbia consuming the eyeballs of the unfortunate ones still left alive. Go figure, and prepare as best you can. My own personal year got off to an auspicious start, with a dog walk fiasco involving a sea chicken carcass and a perilously high cliff above a raging, churning sea. I restarted it though, within the requisite 12 hours of midnight, and am hoping to ward off the whole apocalypse thing by learning this year to fire a handgun and keeping a close eye on polar bears, Germany, and the skies above the desert.

I am superstitious about how the year starts, and those few minutes of mayhem where dogs were nearly swept off wave slick rocks because of the sad demise of an innocent sea chicken weren't in the plan. Part of being a champion though, is rapidly dusting off one's ass and moving on quickly so that disaster quickly becomes what happened in the past and looking ahead to a fresh start, just like how all the cupcake places frost the tops of cupcakes now, in a generous, buttery, smooth glop, smack in the middle in any color you can think of.

I have big plans for this year. I have code words that I am playing over and over again in my brain. I think it would jinx them if I spoke them loud enough for you to hear, or wrote them down where the internet could see. Everybody should probably have some secret words.

Me, Mary and my friend ipad practiced together on Monday. I have been sick, and my brain had no ability to plan drills. Thinking through a cold is hard, and running even harder. But we ran some courses anyways, and practiced videoing them. Here they are, far from perfect, but a good way to start out the year. We are ready for you, Year 2012. Here we go.


Otterpop on her course. I don't care if she starts out naughty, I just don't.


Gustavo runs his. Shame you can't see his flawless table, hidden for 5 glorious counts behind the a-frame.

2012, you are our Champion year.

2012, we are ready for something new this year.

We are really glad to say goodbye to you, 2011.

I would like to think about the good stuff that happened in 2011. Ruby was able to walk and run again without hurting. Gustavo got medicine to make his liver work better and keep ammonia out of his brain. Otterpop earned an agility ADCh, PDCh and a bunch of other shiny metallic colored titles with a leg that doesn't bend at the knee. My family is healthy and we all have a roof over our heads.

2012, I think that you are the year that better things happen in. I am going to make sure of this.

2012, I think you are our Champion year.

Team Small Dog wraps up 2011 and will be outside waiting for you, New Year.

Me and ipad say bye to this year a little early.

Poor dogs. I just want to sit and draw on my new pal ipad.

Almost the end of the year.

We vanished a bit this week. We're actually still here, me and the dogs and everyone, but there's been work, and I am sick. The dogs got rabies shots and didn't get sick this time. I had no rabies shot, but inherited a sore throat. And there were some low tides.

Oh, and I got a new pet.

It's name is ipad. Gary got it for me for Christmas, and it's a pretty cool.

I know. I am one of Those people now. Sorry about that.

The other dogs hate it because they think I love it more than them. But we're just establishing our relationship, it comes out of it's box knowing the tricks and I'm the one getting trained. Luckily I know a squadron of teenage ipad pro's, and have met my new favorite thing called drawing with my finger instead of my pens.

I should resurface soon. Do you have an ipad?

A Christmas without 70 degrees and sunny skies and views clear across to the Hollywood sign just wouldn't be Christmas.

It has come to Otterpop's attention that some people celebrate what the radio continually likes to call, White Christmas.


Otterpop is unclear whether this term speaks to snow or the leanings of racial supremacist organizations. Whichever it is, Otterpop hopes that you had neither.


And that your Christmas trees were large and had monkeys in them and that you did not get stuck looking for monkeys on a high limb and have to be lifted down out of them.


Otterpop wishes it was Christmas every day and every day had sun and palm trees and many cookies and walks, walks everywhere and all the time. And the beach and it's spectacular low tides.

Otterpop would also like you to know that Otterpop did nothing wrong at Christmas, nothing at all. That Gustavo barked a lot due to his divergent beliefs about the hostage situation of the xpen and that Otterpop was nothing but perfect manners perfect everything for all of Christmas.

Otterpop would like to put in this information to Santa now. Because, really. Perfect manners. Model dog. Otterpop would request genuine, live monkeys for next Christmas.

Holidays are now officially over and we embark upon the Month of Salads that follows and return to your regularly scheduled agility programming shortly.

Feliz all Yer Holidays from yer pals, Laura and Team Small Dog.

Merry Christmas! We are spending the weekend in the land of palm trees, malls, and no sweaters or jackets or mittens or hats or long sleeves even, for Christmas. Happy Holidays to all our pals and we hope you have a great weekend with your friends and families and dogs!
xox, yer pals Laura and Team Small Dog.

Boring dog agility handling post that has nothing to do with Christmas or Hannukah, except maybe the bean dip.

Photo credit: Rob Michalski, World Team member and world's best most excellent agility photographer, capturing what goes up and what goes down on old skool FILM. Handheld light meter. Rigtheous.

I think I prefer real agility class to online ones. I am a little bit behind in the Derrett's Ultimate Handling one and Canadian John Cullen's Winning Process one. A lot behind. I like the classes, I think they're interesting and I am learning things. Notably how HARD I should be practicing and taking things more SERIOUS if I'm going to be a champion. But nothing beats just doing some dog agility.

Sometimes I run big dogs. That's my friend Soja in Rob's photo. Running big, fast dogs that aren't your own is one of my favorite hobbies. I make errors. I'm not perfect, and I can't guarantee a winning round. But I am very lucky my friends let me run their dogs anyways. I handle them the same as little dogs, but different.

Last night in my class with Nancy, I was trying to do excellent LISTENING. Even though there were perfectly frosted high end cupcakes and a hot bean dip made with sour cream and cream cheese and oodles of gooey cheese on top. And the thing with our hats, we have a very specific fashion trend we've set in our class.

That's one thing with agility. Only in dog agility can odd cone shaped beanies with strings hanging down the sides like Heidi braids become fashion trend. Not sure if these are agility fashion trend everywhere, like where you live? If you want to be cool in California, this is the hat you need. Now. Today. That's how trends go. Tomorrow it might be something new, I hope it's maybe little taffeta or plaid skirts worn over our pants. But for right now, Holiday Freezing 2011, you need a hat with ear tails.

I would show you a picture but it's the darkest longest days of the year at the moment. Agility is in the dark. I don't like flash. No photos. You know these hats. Use your visualization skills, good practice.

So my listening is trying to be excellent, but I am also in a class with very large, very fast border collies. And I need to take into account that many things we learn have to be scaled down to shorter strides for those of us with littler dogs. Gustavo is very fast, he did the whole class last night because I am a little wary of Otterpop running late at night in freezing cold when her leg is running completely without bending, which it her own winter trend, but the size of his strides is nothing like a big dog.

Last night, I would get to my position and try to turn just like the big dog handlers and get some very wide turns. Goddman! I would get to my position and rotate just at the right moment, and goddamn! Not the tight turn of my dreams! In fact, various off course options taken by the G-man because WHOOSH! Off he goes.

A definite problem we have trialing, which is a definite thing that makes him go kaplooey. He needs to only run exactly right and not make errors for his brain to continue to function. So in some ways, this is a good problem to have in live class, not online class, where Nancy who watches everything like a hawk can usually identify the problem in like one second. I am scratching my head, all HUH? and an excellent instructor can point out exactly where the problem occurred.

Super boring dog agility minutia follows here. Sorry. Good bye, non dog agility friends. And my mom. Scroll back up and admire the arty dog photo! Pretty dog! She's a terv!

Some of the time, when I am really listening, I need to downsize the Rules somewhat for scale. When I rush out to a positional cue, I am very many strides away from a little dog. Very fewer strides away from a big dog. I can panic a little bit when the dog is going very, very fast, and rush to my position, showing too much motion before a decel. Or also just being too darn far away from a little dog to clearly show the thing I'm looking for. I do the opposite running a big dog, panic rushing away from something too fast to get to a new position that I never showed the dog exactly what to do.

(And then, upon realizing this, overcompensating by coming in too tight somewhere else. Poor Gustavo. He was being so good, too. My errors and watching many border collies over and over for a whole class fried his brain a little by the end of the night.)

Big dogs I tend to pull off things early, little dogs I tend to send to the wrong thing in advance. Nice.

Sorry I just lost all my non-dog agility friends. Boring. But agility pals, the couple of you that are left, this might apply to you as well. Maybe it can be something you work on if you get any time off work over the next couple weeks for your agility in the snow. With your heidi hat.

Just means, there is so much more practicing I need to do, and much of it needs to involve breaking very specific habits that I have and rehearse on a regular basis. So practicing more BETTER. I love to do agility but if you keep practicing the same things that make you a crappy handler, you get really good at them. I am really good at the panic-rush-don't-point-feet-arm-correctly-long-enough-in-the-right-place-enough-not-being-clear-enough move.

So listening is good, but actually applying the listening to own personal good handling, needs very much improvement. I think this is like reading about de-cluttering and organization, but then walking into my house and immediately thinking, Hoarder. Somehow, you have to actually fix the problem. Personally. I have some of the best agility instructors and handlers in the world pointing this out to me over and over. I am learning on the internet from some other world bests.

And I still do the same old stuff out there. So it goes.

Holiday cheer and so forth-shopping and shouting and lessons people in feather boas teach us in how to train our dogs.

Me and the dogs had an awesome practice yesterday. Really, really fabulous. All listening all the time, fast running, contacts hit, hard skills worked on, sequences run, frisbee played, really, I could go on and on. A practice like they all should be. I did write down notes, but I won't bore you with the details, because it's holiday time and we're all in a hurry.

We had one of those days where my dogs were shining stars and I was a shining handler and nobody could do any wrong. I had to just slip that in. Sorry if you were in a hurry.

My friend Mary brought her dogs down for me to run. It went ok. It got very complicated with one of them, a dog who I need an instruction manual to figure out. I am a simple person, and I'm used to simple dogs. Run fast, yell loud, point straight. Very basic stuff. When things get complicated, I have a hard time. I like simplegility.

One of the problems I had was that I was wearing my nicey nice voice. I have that smalldog chirpiness when I run dogs. I say Yay a lot. I call them Sweetie and say Good Dog! all the time. I reward, reward, reward. I play ball. I give treats. I like to be the fun auntie. Works with most dogs, but not all.

Some dogs like things a little more rough. Gruff. Grough? And speak French.

Something to work on as I expand my horizons. Be a little meaner and a little more French.

After my great morning of agility, the penalty was, I needed to go Christmas shopping.

I am a bad shopper. I hate crowds, I don't know what to get, and mass consumption in all it's forms exhausts me. My husband, ace shopper of excellence, coaxed me out downtown and used his high tolerance, voodoo consumer magic to do most of the Christmas shopping on Sunday. Everybody needs a Gary. But there was a little bit MORE that required a trip to the mall in San Jose.

I live on one side of the mountain, agility practice is part way up the mountain, San Jose is on the other side. It's like another country over there over the hill. There is immense bravery involved in Christmas shopping over there, but me and my awesome dogs were up to the challenge. All they had to do was sit in the car. I was the one that had to enter the mall. Thee Mall. It's that kind of mall. Where palm trees glisten, and drivers listen, to screaming and honking and horror instead of carolers in the snow.

There was traffic insanity. I used patience. There were cops directing drivers into the parking lot. I used patience. They had gloves and whistles. I had my dogs. There were a million cars looking for spots. I was but one with the flow. There was a car in front of me waiting for a spot forever. I used patience some more. There was another car in front of me waiting for a spot forever. I used totally even more patience.

Then a girl comes running across the parking lot and stands in the middle of the parking spot that the car in front of me was about to pull into. It was one of those tight parking lots, with barely room to breathe. I was breathing, and the dogs were sleeping. Well, except for Gustavo, he doesn't sleep in the car. I think he was working on his breathing with me.

The car pulled up to the girl, and the driver motioned for her to move.

The girl clutched her arms around herself, and shook her head. She looked up and down and sideways, and didn't budge.

The car in front of me REALLY pulled up to her, like an inch away, and motioned for her to move. Girlfriend just kept shaking her head and stood her ground. Her spot.

Mutha-flicka.

That car-less girl was owning the parking spot. She was pudgy and had on nice jeans and a fluffy scarf kind of thing wrapped around her neck, those kind some people use for dog leashes, like a feather boa. Even though it was 70 degrees. Festive Christmas shopping-wear. A serious contender. She just stood there in her spot in the parking lot of mayhem chaos, shaking her head until the car in front of me, that had been waiting and waiting and waiting for that spot, rolled down it's window.

I rolled down mine, too.

The girl called out to the driver that she saw the spot first. I couldn't hear what the car driver said back. I am going to guess something like, Uh, You Have No Car. Parking spot girl held her ground and shakes her head again, and says, "No way."

Cojones!

I don't know who she was saving it for, she was out of her happy ho ho gourd if she thought she could stand there and let irritated parkers squeeze by in the procession of hell lot until whoever she was saving it for rolled along.

I pulled up closer, and yelled out my window, "HEY!"

She looked over.

"SWEETIE YOU ARE HOLDING UP TRAFFIC MOVE YER GODDAMN ASS OUTTA THE WAY NOW!"

I might have said it sort of mad. A little meaner than normal. It was very, very easy to do this, and I think this was how I was supposed to get Rocket to give me his toy. "OUT!"

Sweetie pie looked at me freaky bug eyed for a second, then scrammed. Just like that.

Not sure what it was exactly in my Tone, but it was enough to send her trotting away from whence she came, somewhere in the vicinity of Macy's or Safeway. The car in front of me got the spot. You are welcome, car.

And then instead of parking and shopping and ho ho hoing I drove straight out of the parking lot and fled straight home back across the mountain and didn't go Christmas shopping at all.

The end. With added bonus moral of the story, maybe this will help me running Rocket, and at least I didn't get out and start moving towards her and possibly face Christmas season arrest for parking lot chick fight. I think remainders of the holidays I stick with happy chirpy voice. Really the end.

Team Small Dog Awesome Stuff that would make Awesome Gifts-The gift of art.

I stayed holed up in our secret team clubhouse yesterday to finish up this painting. It's WAY too late to order paintings now for Christmas, you'll have to do them yourselves. You should probably use bigger brushes than I do if you want to finish in time. But maybe for next year, remember this and you order nice and early, and voila. No last minute shopping for you. All done. Everybody likes a nice painting of their dog. I like making paintings of dogs. I like getting money so I can go last minute Christmas shopping. Everybody wins.

Team Small Dog Holiday Edition in which Santa, the baby Jesus, and dog agility unite and form a lifelong bond of friendship.

Oh look! It's Christmas, right there on the corner near the river levee. Baby Jesus is being born while the light up reindeer snack on pine boughs stolen from a state park. It warms the heart and says, "Do Not Enter or Turn Right" all at the same time.


It sort of looks like Mary is praying for her log bomb to stay in it's Down on the table for the full 5 second count. Santa is counting away merrily, jovially, loudly, in the background while also giving Mary and her bomb 5 faults, and Joseph is praying too, because he is a Holy Course Builder and if this log bomb of a dog finishes, the class is over and he can go on to build the next course or perhaps even pack the trailer.

You know how this ends. Baby Jesus grows up speaking about compassion and integrity but from such a Christian point of view he's murdered on a totally separate holiday in which Santa plays absolutely no part. This all takes part in the winter when it's just a huge pain in the hiney (cannot say ass in this post due to it also involving baby Jesus) to even do dog agility due to way too many jackets which constrict movement (Actual Proof-I had on 3 coats in class the other night and incurred many faults I blame on encumbered limbs) and the days being so dark so early that people have to use glow in the dark reindeer just to see, let alone try to run dogs.

So December marks when everybody not in Florida sits around and drinks and quietly asks Santa and baby Jesus for presents like a new house with a big yard or pajamas with a colorful chihuahua pattern or a handbag made from vintage upholstery of a 1977 Chevette or a black and red striped tunnel with glitter flake sandbags. And then Santa says something like, "No Way! Because you are probably drunk and really not a good person and will get an itunes gift card instead." And baby Jesus says something like, "Peace on Earth and thanks for being nice to your dogs!" And dog agility looks tired and asks to take a little break until after the holidays.

Next time you see Ruby, make sure you say hi.

I still take Ruby with us everywhere we go. She's the one at home that lately watches me very carefully, and makes sure always to stay near. I am touching her with my toe right now. There's pretty much no way I can easily split apart the team so we always do everything together. She's been the reliable one for so long, nobody has to worry about Ruby. Rarely wears a leash, the kind of dog you don't even notice because she doesn't do anything bad. Just trots along at my heel and goes along with whatever the plan of the day is. No problem.

It's easy to not notice Ruby. I'm not yelling at her to shut up, I'm not doing 4 million recalls with her and trying to get her to play with me or take a treat in the forest. I'm not taking away the giant stick she's dragging around and using as a weapon or trying to get her to swim back across the creek. She's not doing awesome leave-it and focus when we see another dog, she's not trying to crawl into a stranger's purse and go home with them. Ruby's just right there, and she's just being a good dog. Quietly. Just because.

She wasn't always like that. Ruby is the dog that took me down the dog training road and it's her fault I wear muddy pants everywhere and select clothing based on excellence of pockets. All this agility is definitely all her fault. I learned about positive reinforcement with her out of of sheer, freaked out necessity. I learned how clicker training and tricks can turn a wild, little animal eating, top of the refrigerator reaching, feral thing into a really good dog. Keeping her busy in agility class somehow translated into her being a dog that didn't want to growl at other dogs on leashes or chase skateboarding kids. Practicing for agility class made us best pals. Ruby made me realize not all dogs just fit into the category of Regular Old Dog.

She's always had all this stuff wrong with her. Never really that sound. Chronic tendonitis in her biceps, one theory. One of those jumping early dogs, who spent her agility career crashing into stuff until it freaked me out enough to stop. Her back and hind legs can go wonky. She has a permanent immune something something in one of her eyes and progressive retinal atrophy in them both. She can see, but I don't think very far. And now, not very much hearing.

I don't think Ruby is even all that old. Maybe about 11. She's always had that wise old owl vibe. A bit grizzled and leathery. The Mrs. Grandma of the team. You know that when you meet her. Stares past you like she's thinking about cosmic, philosophic topics. Contemplating string theory. Even though she might just be scoping out potential locations of cat food.

With her sight and hearing loss though, she's starting to get lost. She got lost just hanging out at work the other day, on her pleasant, grassy knoll. And in the forest the day before. Not lost-lost, but lost enough to her that she couldn't see or hear us, even though me and the other dogs were right there. This is what breaks my heart. You see her just over there, look up, not see my waving arms or hear my yelling and do this panic look around, twist her head all ways, then run off some random direction so she really gets disoriented. You've seen it if you have an old dog. I saw Timmy go through this.

You see this happen and you feel the panic stab you in the heart just like it does your dog. And you know maybe you have to start keeping them on a rope now, tied to you so that never happens bad enough they get lost-lost. Not in the woods, not at work, not in the neighborhood, not somewhere they run off into the water or somewhere they can get hurt.

I think that's where Ruby's at now. I could never let anything happen to Ruby.

Champions and mental management of mental health-the team watches out for you this holiday season.

This is a time of year when things can seriously go to shit if you don't look over your shoulder and both ways before you cross the street. Cookies in tree shapes with icings and red wine and gatherings of more than one person loud talking coming at you from from all sides. Things require genuine money and there's a constant string of steaming agro headtrips in every car park. There goes all your mental management you were working so hard on, hurled up in the gutter with the lowfat greek eggnog and all those sparkly ribbons you stole out of the work party gift exchange.

Not to worry. Here's some cheerful holiday tips to keep everything running above water this December as you count down to your holiday of choice.


Try to keep moving, don't get into any crawl spaces and not come out. Make sure the house is stocked with cereal. Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not watching you. Even if you only have a couple minutes, it's fun to sit down for a few repetitions of seated twists. Cat food. There are video games you can play in a phone for 20 minutes if you are in an airport, or 4 hours if you're watching a Real Housewives of Orange County-athon. Use pens. Hoodies, hoodies, hoodies.


Telegraph good cheer and blend in with mainstream culture with a sparkly holiday sweater. If you don't have one, at least brush your teeth when going out of the house. Actually, never ever wear a sparkly holiday sweater if it blinks or has tassles or trees or Santa. Don't wear a holiday sweater. No one should buy holiday sweaters. Sit in the dark with the curtains drawn and wear the one that looks like a bathtub rug.


If you like to do agility, try to keep doing agility. Truthfully, I did not even go practice yesterday. It was drizzling some and there were too many people around all weekend and I drove up to the forest and let the dogs run around up and down the spring hill in there for a couple hours instead. This counts for something, righty-o. It was probably not a champion move, necessarily, but maybe it was.


Mental Management Freebie of the Day: Click-n-print these helpful affirmative positive self talk mantra greetings, tape inside your purse. Read and repeat to yourself before you leave the car anywhere you are going where you have to speak to others.

Mental Management Big Spender thing of the Day: Buy this original signed ink word drawing with actual money through the paypal and keep it for yourself or give as a rad gift. Email your bid to laurah@plasticdisaster.com.

Team Small Dog Awesome Stuff that would make Awesome Gifts-Hooping.

My friend Wendy got me this hoop.


It matches my favorite shirt.


You need to use it outside. Unless your house is bigger than mine. Then you might be ok indoors. Like you live in a house with stairs and a couch and rooms. Maybe even a basement and one of those big ass tv's that are hooked up to the wall. Hoops are bigger than you remember from when you were little.


I think it's useful for many things that champions need. Cores, for instance. And you can hold it up and get the dogs to take turns jumping through it while you hum Italian circus tunes.

Also, it's a tube that just goes around and around and around til you stop it. Cosmic, dude. You can stand there on the deck and think about your secret code word while it goes around and around and around and doesn't stop. All mystical and shit. Maybe this is meditation? Circuitous thought? Sacred prayer wheel? I just call it hoola hoop.