Did I really write a whole Wardrobe Essential post about being sweaty?
Here I am, trying to make dog agility the new brown or black or iphone and I am writing about sweatiness. This is an issue I sometimes have about editing. I have never been a great editor of anything. My mouth runs off into places it shouldn't. My house is so full of stuff that I just can't stop collecting. In the art show days the pattern had to be painted EVERYWHERE and I had to always add more tree branches. My sentences get really really long because I have to keep adding words. Don't even talk about my how long my paragraphs are. The subject matter runs amuck and makes weird tangential turns. Have you ever heard one of my riding lessons?
To make dog agility the iphone, I have to remember not to scare people! Have you seen an iphone? It would never scare anyone. It is like having your best friend turned into a tiny little, um, thing, and it goes on the internet right there in your palm and your favorite pictures and songs are there and you can be in ebay and the real estate listings and team small dog and then the phone rings and it is Santa! Or it could be a mom trying to reschedule her kid's lesson too, but it could be Santa or my nephew with a song. This is sort of like how cool dog agility is but the iphone had such good marketing and dog agility has so very, very little.
Except for my blog! And when it's on the Animal Planet. And when everyone tries teaching their dog to do it and they are so happy, just like they got an iphone of their very own. Not just using Karl's. An iphone is full of information, negligibly essential information. Is that a word? Like, you don't really NEED an iphone but you can convince yourself that you do and it is not just a cool little, um, thing, you worry about breaking and take out to check the weather. Dog agility, is it essential to our lives? Would be we sad if it just went away and there were no more dog shows? Yeah, we would be. We would get back to being a regular artist again, the studio would be less full of boxes and the couch with the BROKEN LEG and magnolia. The trees in the yard wouldn't be dead and the office would have been done by now.
But do you see how much we like it for us and for dogs that we actually take time out to go train the dogs so they will get good at it and exersize them? So here is what Gustavo is learning now, getting ready to be a good agility dog.
His contacts are doing good-nice and solid on the end of his little board and contact stuff.
He is hitting a fast down on the table and on the end of a stationary teeter. I am holding him in the down and getting him used to motion by moving it to a table.
He is solid on jump and tunnel and tire. On a straight line. We are working super easy patterns with front cross, no rear cross for now, go on and I am just starting an Out.
We probably spend 80% of our time practicing just doing tugging out there and close (come on over to my left side and do not do the tunnel 8 times) and side (come on over to my right side and do not run up the dogwalk a-frame and teeter while i blink my eye) just working on control. So the other stuff is coming together more slowly but we sure do need a LOT of control.
Since I am essentially a completely LAZY dog trainer (ala NOT Susan Garrett!) the control issues are being built out there on the agility field and not in the obedience world. A training flaw? Yes. Is it fun to do obedience? No. There, I said it. It is out. I am a bad, bad, bad dog trainer. But I do not have an iphone and I am not hardly being an artist and we still don't have a ranch so there you go.
Um, what was the point of what I was trying to get it here? Something about editing and not writing about sweatiness but good marketing? I can't remember and I have to go to work and there is no weave pole training (still open channels and cages on one side halfway through) this morning but OK! Have fun!
Did you ever dream that you were a dog agility super champ except then it switched and you were at some germy, grungy, derelict seaside park in the dark and the carnies were actually drug addled zombies that were shambling after you with hammers and their big teeth? And then as you're trying to escape your way out from under their oily, horrible claws by clambering up a rat infested palm tree, you're all, this is about dog agility like, how?
3 comments:
if you got an iPhone, you could put a good old fashioned headband on it to wipe off the sweat! Cyclocross has same issues w/ sweatiness AND you have to wear bike shorts. Buzz kill right there...which means CX will never be the new brown. There might be hope for dog agility??? But you should talk w/ Apple first to get sweatband on iPhone - imagine how cool!!! Tash
you do need to talk to iphone. instead of the ad where they have what's her face singing on the screen, then someone grabs the phone and the next phone under it is a different color and so is what's her face's dress? well, instead of what's her face they need a super cute dog doing a jump, then they grab the phone and the next one under it shows the dog going through the tunnel....and so on. basically....you need an in with something that is already accepted as cool...then get the dog agility on the cool thing. like the right movie star...if you could get the right icon to get into agility (you of course being their personal consultant)then people would love it. you need pixie from LA Ink- she loves dogs.... or Tim Gunn, he would make it very stylish and really raise the bar.
on another note- i had my spinning class in SF yesterday and i had another one of the Laura's!! I am now 2 for 2 with "dog-outs" in my classes. This girl had gone through graduate and post grad school for psychology and had a sweet internship and just needs to write her dissertation so she can get the "Dr." for her name and she just does not want to do it! instead she has gotten a job at a fancy doggie boutique in san jose and loves it more than anything else in the world. and she wants to stick with dog stuff and screw the "Dr." and the $200,000 school bill.
what is it with you guys? thank god we only have a cat or we would be seriously screwed....or maybe happier?
-lex
Tim Gunn are you READING this??? I BET you have Small Dogs-like Norwich terriers-right?? I BET you DO (remember the dog costume challenge) and you probably have an Iphone and you would love agility AND you can get Santino and Jeffrey to design our costumes! And then Lexi will get a dog too and the Empire will grow! Make it Work!
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