Over the weekend, we moved all the stuff from my friend Dee's agility field to her new agility field. ALL the stuff. My non agility friends, you would be surprised at the amount of shlepping that goes on for agility. Just to practice, you shlep around the stuff to make a new course or to put the tunnel here not there, and set your jump exercise, or change the a-frame height like you are a turtle being crushed to a pancake by your horrible, wooden death shell.
And to have a dog show, you get all the stuff out of trailers and put it out and if you are nice, you stick around to help at the end of the day and carry it all back into the trailers. We carry a lot of stuff, us dog agility folk and we sort of look like the kind of people that maybe are not good carriers. But we are actually strong and burly and I guess for us ladies this is super for preventing osteoporosis and probably forever deterring having pretty fingernails and will someday will give us all old hunchy backs of pain.
Maybe I rephrase. Weight bearing osteoporosis preventing strength training usefulness! Actually super healthy, out there in the fresh air and blood pressure lowering too!
I had the Big Truck, and we put all Dee's stuff in it and made about a million trips back and forth down the lane until everything was out of Old Field, Future Home of Mobile Home Park, and into New Field, Also Future Home of Mobile Home Park but hopefully very far future. It's a long story. It sucks to not own your own flat land for your horses or for your dog agility around here. Another story for another day.
I let Otterpop come help. Ruby and Gustavo, maybe not so helpful. Ruby just goes off in search of feral cats and gophers and is so not into working unless you want critters killed. Which, if it's just the gophers, actually is helpful but maybe not everyone used to her kind of help.
Gustavo, don't even ask. Not a real helpful sort of ranch dog. Not his calling. He frolicks and gets in the tunnel and likely takes himself exploring out open gates because it is more FUN that way. Like he is the Hardy Boys and solving a crime? Like he is Justin Timberlake and is a dance machine? Let's say not a big work ethic on our little warty face Gustavo. Not in the genes and spends his days on the ranch laying on a nice deck or sitting in people's laps on a couch and wants to Go To the BEACH!
Otterpop though. She knows how to work. Dog is a real ranch lady of a dog.
When she sees we're driving in the Big Truck, she knows we're doing something important. She likes to help by laying in the shade under the truck, and watching carefully, eyes all narrow and head stuck out long at the end of her stumpy neck. She won't come out of the truck til you tell her, and then she stays under it. I never really taught her this. It was a skill she came pre-programmed for and doesn't get to use enough. Doesn't work with regular cars in a neighborhood, just in the Big Truck at the ranch or like at Home Depot where there are other Big Trucks and other dogs like her. Because in her mind she is tank sized and rides up on a toolbox, even on the freeway. Like she wishes we had some giant ranch of thousands of acres in Marfa and had to drive around doing things like feeding cows or checking fencing and she would ride in the Big Truck all day. Waiting in or under, until something needs it's ass kicked. In her mind. Is convenient she can do all her work from a shady spot. Who am I always saying is the smart dog?
This was the last load. Equipment moving had degenerated to just throwing everything left in the field in the back helter skelter. Otterpop did not do this ass kicking. I swear. I swear is the last load. I swear.
2 comments:
That wart STILL hasn't fallen off?
We fostered Beep's brother Ben last summer. Beep and Ben are Hangin Tree Cowdogs which equals mostly Border Collie with some Catahoula and Kelpie thrown which equals super rancher type dogs. Beep has been a foo foo agiltiy dog all his life and will hang out in the house waiting for a little agility action. Ben was a workin man before his owner decided to chase fish in Alaska instead of cows. Ben thought we were a bunch of softie lazy butts. He'd get up in the morning and wonder when we were getting in the back of the truck to go chase some cows. You could so totally see the this is soooo boring look on his face:) Ben found another job on a ranch away from foo foo city dogs:)
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