As usual, not one bit of this story is a lie.

Here is the story of our adventure to Woodland!

Woodland sounds like a place where there are elves dancing around in leiderhosen with bunnies. It is really a place near UCDavis where the roads have numbers instead of names. There are a lot of fields there. We used to go to a bar with a number for a name on a road with a number and drink a lot of beer and shoot pool in a very Johnny Cash way back in the wacky MFA days. We had a reputation to uphold, us UCDavis artists.

We were headed for Motel 6 of Woodland. A place with on the Google map , with reviews (I am not making this up!) like, "My room had a sticky carpet, and what looked like blood spatters on the walls and ceiling, and a room so tiny you can't turn around. Try to avoid this place at all costs. ..." and " I stayed in this motel 6 and was followed around by a drug addict ( I was alone with my son) and when we got in the room the bed was damp with fresh pee, it stunk to the highest ...". An adventure!

For even more big night out on a road with numbers with small dogs, we stopped at Dos Coyotes on the way. My favorite food of UCDavis. I counted years as I rolled in there and realized I graduated from grad school in 1994. Making me really, really old! And Dos Coyotes looked not so different inside and the super adorable guy behind the counter asked me if I had a daughter named Bridget. He was probably a college student, so I now look like a lady that would have a college kid named Bridget. It was sort of weird and creepy and the burrito was so good. Like weird nostalgia deja vu. Last time here, all skinny artist with Timmy living in a warehouse wearing the boots with shorts look before it was in, now here with trio of small dogs and capri pants and bad hair on the way to a dog show. Life rolls on.

We went up to Woodland (the old home of Karl Ewald! Where he lived with a wife in a giant old house where the band practiced down in a hole under the floor or something and he had chickens!) and the Motel 6 had no blood spatters or drug addicts or pee soaked bed and we had a very nice night out on the town, me and the 3 dogs. Gustavo slept in his first motel room and no one even tried to pee anywhere. Great fun for all! I brought alcohol! The tacky kind.

So at the dog show in the morning. First of all, my teacher of dog agility Rob had a very tragically sick puppy at home, so instead of just running Hobbes in Standard, I was awarded Hobbes all day. A sad thing for Rob, an exciting thing for me. Hobbes is a great big border collie and I love him very much! I was very nervous to not make a huge fool out of myself running him and also I had a new top that was sporty and what I feel may be flattering. A good day about to begin.

I knocked a bar with Hobbes on his first run, a minus, but he did a very lovely table for me, a plus, and I ran him out and he got a giant bowl of dog food. Much fun for Hobbes! Ruby knocked a different bar on that one, a minus, Otterpop had a refusal at the same bar, a minus. No Q's in the Standard. It is so tidy and neat and easy to run everyone in the same classes!

Hobbes got a Q in his pairs, but I did knock a bar. But in pairs, it doesn't matter if you are fast and we were very fast. My partner was another dog agility trainer and I was nervous I would screw up and perhaps she would say snipey things about me (I don't even know her. She might not be a snipey thing lady at all. The dog agility ladies seem to come in snipey and non snipey varieties).

After that, I sort of got the hang of it. Hobbes is very sweet and he liked small dog camp and walks with small dogs and Gustavo loves him now and Otterpop does not like Hobbes to play with her frisbee. I let him roll around on the dirt before he ran! I am not sure if he is supposed to roll around and bark before he runs but we just kind of went with it. The theme was I will let Hobbes feel the love and he will be a good dog!

And then, here is the big News, we Won the Steeplechase (money for Rob!) and we Won the Grand Prix! I am not usually a winner of these things. Actually I am never a winner of these things but with Hobbes I was! I just tried to go around not making mistakes. The courses were very hard and I watched where others made mistakes and tried to not make them and then we won! Many people seemed shocked by this news and I felt like a big huge movie star. Target=Disneyland now and I get a prize in dog agility=Movie Star. Hello new life of dog lady!

And then Otterpop got a 2nd in the Grand Prix! Wow Otterpop! She wasn't the fastest but she was fast enough and clean! And Ruby had a curious Grand Prix, as part of our Grand Prix curse. First missed the dog walk contact. I really tried too but she was flying and then she just flew off out of the sheer joy she feels of that every so often flyer off the dogwalk. And then she flew in the green tunnel. And then I think Gustavo was barking in his pen somewhat near that green tunnel, so she came out the same end, then went back in. Bizarro! Hello Gustavo, good bye Gustavo, I hear you and now I go back in the tunnel! Good bye Q in Grand Prix. Because her time, even with that little extra tunnel style move, was so fast.

Jumpers, nice and clean with Hobbes and a little slower so he got a 3rd. Otterpop had a refusal where I just didn't pay enough attention to her, poor Ottterpop has to feel like she is the center of my universe on every run and I need to do a very good job of showing her every single obstacle. Ruby was clean but on the slow side, I didn't check but I doubt she won any prizes. Maybe we were all just slow pokes by the end of the day.

It was a sad day at the end of the day to say goodbye to our friend Hobbes. A nice lady delivered him back to Rob in Salinas. I would have liked to bring him home with me. Where would Hobbes fit in our house with all the things from the office everywhere and small dogs everywhere? Not sure. Timmy might bump into him.