Do you think when your computer is making a constant clicking sound from inside it's tiny little guts, it is a bad thing? If my blog disappears soon, you may know why. Send help.
I read this on the newyorker.com, "Loading up an empty elevator car with discarded Christmas trees, pressing the button for the top floor, then throwing in a match, so that by the time the car reaches the top it is ablaze with heat so intense that the alloy (called “babbitt”) connecting the cables to the car melts, and the car, a fireball now, plunges into the pit: this practice, apparently popular in New York City housing projects, is inadvisable."
Last night at Dirt Nite I had a little break between teaching my beginner's class and running Ruby, Pop and Hobbes in class. Yes. I run a lot in class. I set jumps a lot too, so I just pretty much am out there run, run, running for an hour and a half. I like running. Only when it involves dogs.
So during the break I took Gustavo out and practiced him on some of the equipment that no one was using. Did some dogwalks, some teeters, that kind of thing. There was a little sequence set up with a straight tunnel that I had used earlier for my class, having them threadle out of the straight tunnel to a jump. So I ran it with Gustavo. He's never done a straight tunnel. Or a threadle. Duh. Oh my god. It was like a teensy, tiny 12" cannonball coming out of the tunnel, and with no threadle, no way to pull him to the jump. He was just blasting away and out somewhere else. And I could tell he thought this was the coolest thing ever.
Like a kid who discovers a diving board. Or how to skateboard down the steepest hill. Or setting fires to Christmas trees in elevators. And he kept sending himself back up to the teeter so he could release off it and into that straight tunnel. I think he would have done it all night. If I was a good dog trainer, I could have used this opportunity to start to teach a threadle arm. But since we only had a few minutes, I was a bad dog trainer and let him keep shooting himself through the straight tunnel because it cracked me up. Perhaps inadvisable.
Maybe if they had some dogs and some tunnels in the New York city housing projects, it would keep the elevators from being turned into fireball pit plunging tubes.
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?
2 comments:
I'm new to your blog, and I LOVE it!!! I keep telling all my agility friends about it. The picture of Gustavo running over the teeter, then the tunnel, repeat, repeat, repeat, made me laugh outloud. I think you did the right thing in letting him have fun! How could you dampen that unbridled enthusiasm!
It's amazing how most people with dogs don't realize how smart they are. Sit/beg etc are considered "oh wow".
Remember when we laughed when someone told the story of telling their dog "Left" and "Right" in the park... And a bystander saying "It almost looks like the dog understands" ...and we all laughed because it was so funny that someone might not realize a dog reallly could understand "Left" and "Right". Or that their border collie really can have the intelligence of a 5 year old.
Now that all said, there's a lot of things our dogs don't understand. But that's okay, they seem to be content with their limited understanding of the world.
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