The slow timing is worse than the Fast timing.

Ok. We are back to agility. Last night we had agility in the polymer coated dressage mud. Mud filled frisbees for dogs. Mud coated clothing by the end of the night. I wear work boots to run in instead of sneakers. I had a great time with my dogs, and ran Hobbes, the big fast perfect border collie machine. I am learning how to have non sucking timing with him. He wins everything and is super high in Lifetime Achievement Gold points. So I know, if I drop a bar with him or send him off course, I have clearly made the huge error myself, because he is the closest thing to a robot agility dog there is. We did ok. We could have done better. I did let someone else run Ruby, which was cool to watch. She isn't a robot dog yet, but she sure went around fast and did exactly what the handler I loaned her to asked for. Which most of the time was correct. If you give Ruby a piece of cheese at the end, she'll do most anything.

I had one student complain about my class last night. Happens sometimes. Apparently my teaching style makes her dog not a perfect agility dog. I like to teach short drills to work on specific handling moves. We chain them together at the end of class usually. She is, um, an inexperienced handler, and her dog is nervous about everything. Which is a tough combo. But she is nearly ready to kill me because she thinks it's my teaching that makes her dog that way. Anyways. They are kind of held captive in these classes because there aren't tons of agility trainers around. So I'll work with it. I think where I could be more flexible is realizing not everyone in class is going out there to become a polished and capable competitor. Some people just want to run around with their dogs. I feel it is my duty to prepare them for competition, which is what I do with riders. I can't teach shoddy skills, I have a perfection complex. But that doesn't work for everyone. In riding, they can find a new trainer that lets them ride poorly or put troll dolls in the horse's mane or with their thumbs turned down or whatever it is that my somewhat facist personality disallows. In agility, they are a little stuck without driving an hour farther.

Hey there is no contractor here and it's almost 8am! What a luxury and we have not even started ripping things up yet. We haven't even taken out the loan yet. Yesterday Jan the tile lady was here at 7:30 to tell me how expensive the tiling would be and by just making it not as cool and beautiful as I want, I can save lots of money. Thousands of dollars really. So I will have less cool tile but save thousands of dollars.

Also the porta potty research went poorly. Who knew. Here's the thing. It has to go in our front grass. Yes, if we want a porta potty, we have to take apart our front fence, and put it right in the front yard. Not only does this just Suck, theoretically, but the first permit inspector to take a leisurely drive down our street will see the porta potty, know something is up, go snooping around, and give us a big fat red tag for not pulling the super expensive and bullshit permits. So I am now researching the Neat idea of making my garage into a camping bathroom and the Even Neater idea of hauling the non theoretical but very real shit to an RV place on a regular basis. This is going to be such a Fun Adventure!