So is this thing on? Can you hear the soundtrack here? I am channeling Black Sabbath and singing you the classic rock tune Paranoid. You guys all know that one. Think of me as sort of a folk singy Emo girl wearing a stain resistant skort instead of pegged pants and silver stud belt with creepers. With some liver treats in the pockets. How did I go all emo girl? You know them, they are like the myspace version of Morrisey girls from the '80's, of which I never was. Late bloomer. I feel all these new tattoos coming on. Like a new hobby! Folk singing of classic rock hits and tattoo getting. Perhaps because to take the place of dog agility which, to quote Ozzy, you will laugh and I will cry. When you hear the kind of weekend I had. A weekend that has me reverting to quoting Ozzy Osborne. We may be hitting some kind of rock bottom here.
I mean really. After watching a bunch of runs, my agility pal and role model of good dog trainer, and who is a genuine doctor of PhD, says, scratching his head, "Maybe it's not your dogs, maybe you need to go into therapy?" Sort of sums up the whole dog show weekend. And makes tattoo collecting sound better and better. And has me brushing up on my guitar strumming in hobby change preparedness.
Like let's take Ruby. How about 1 run manic speed with no control, 1 run frozen can't move off the startline, 1 run lopes slowly around, 1 run half slow, half speed and speed crashing through jumps. Cannot do a-frames anymore and runs around them. Like no pattern. No reason I can find. Nothing we ever seen in training. Just this whole bipolar weekend of insanity. I doubt any Q's. Have no idea.
Like Otterpop. Who reverted to judge staring, freaking and barking. Until I HAD IT and with one last little bark, pulled her out of the ring and marched her to the car and stuck her in there, jail time. Which sadly worked and she ended up with a bunch of Q's but still. That's just no fun. Dog punishing by locking up in a car because she hates a judge? I could be at home practicing the chords for Foghat songs and drawing tattoos of frozen in the headlight deer standing in line art landscapes. That take up whole, entire backs.
Otterpop at dog shows is not the dog I usually do agility with. Same with Ruby, at least at this dog show. Agility is super fun with my dogs. But these weirdo Stepford dogs, 26 faces of Eve dogs, creepy girl twins out of the Shining bloody elevator dogs, I could do without.
So I dunno. Hi all you Bayteam and SMART pals that come and say hi and hope I don't go to jail this week. More on that later. You guys all see my dogs. Usually I'm like, whatever. My dogs are weirdo, I dunno, life goes on. This weekend, closest I ever got to dogs making me sit down in my portable dog agility chair from Target and go all weepy and and write bad poetry in bic rollerball on my sneakers. Drama queen. Frustrated over a stupid dog show when polar bears are floating around on tiny ice cubes and John McCain is counting his houses on 2 hands. Like I'm not crammed into the Superdome forced to drink my own urine. But still. When I sent Hobbes up there on that dogwalk instead of in the tunnel, just wanted to crawl in a gopher hole and turn in my soccer cleats to either of the Crew Chiefs Mary. Trade them for some raffle tickets to win a shrink wrapped basket of biscuits, and leave that place, barefooted and off to the tattoo shop.
6 comments:
It's not that bad! We all get the sniffles ourselves (mine 2 weeks ago at a trial, alone in the ladies room.) Get together with Brisbee's mom... (http://brisbeethewhite.livejournal.com/) I thought of you when she wrote this today: "...I'll admit that training Brisbee can be about as fun as a root canal sometimes." Brisbee The White, sort of the antithesis to Otterpop, yet strangely similar. :)
Remember when it's all said and done, the dogs had fun. We just write the checks for it. :) Hang in there!
Debbie Nosse
and the short legged crew
Man, OK, this sounds so "it's all about me," but I am so glad that someone else who actually pretty much knows what they're doing still had a crappy weekend this weekend and begins to doubt their ability. (OK, with "someone else," I'm including that maybe I pretty much know what I'm doing but in fact maybe that's not true. You know.) But amazingly the only place where I really had to work hard not to start weeping on the spot, despite all the knocked bars and runouts and popped Aframes and missed Steeplechase Qs and so on, was where I did two stupid things in a row with Tika in Snooker right at the beginning and so she didn't get to run more than 2 obstacles even though she did nothing wrong. I was so angry with myself and felt so badly for her.
But somehow I managed to pull it out without even hardly wiping but one eye before anyone noticed and went running back to play games with her and go back to my score table and tried very hard not to whine to anyone, most of the weekend anyway.
And posted a TSD photo on my blog. I'm not stalking you, really! (At least not this weekend.) You were serendipitously just there when I was taking pictures!
-ellen
Yeah, I usually have ups and downs at trials, but rarely just one crappy weekend like this weekend. Dogs gone wild.
I have Ruby today who is pokey and limpy, and I wonder if she hurts herself on her first manic run of the day, and that blows it for the rest of the weekend? She has been sound for months now, but is it possible 1 run of manic insanity makes her hurt and then causes the rest of the weekend of bar crashing and not doing an a-frame and or in some cases not running? A dog who practices regularly and runs fast and turns hard and hits a-frames hard on a regular basis?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I don't know if the dogs had fun. Otterpop isn't having fun when she gets on top of the dogwalk and freaks out at the judge then has a barking meltdown at him on top of the a-frame. Ruby isn't having fun when she has a bipolar episode. No one is having fun on a day like that.
These are dogs with lots of letters worth of titles. Not like they're new to the show ring. They have all the mastery titles you can get without gambler's Q's. But both decide to meltdown together. I didn't feel melty downy, I thought we were going to have a swell time.
At least now I know what I look like walking a course! Thank you for that!
Interestingly enough, I ask myself "why do I do this?" Then my dog, out of the blue will "Q" in something that I haven't been able to "Q" in for 2 years and I'm addicted all over again. I walk around with a silly grin on my face and tell myself I'm one lucky person.
There are people that practice with their dogs once a week, don't obsess where their arms are, don't talk to people constantly about where a proper front cross should go, don't access online videos analyzing runs, don't read clean run cover to cover, don't have blogs devoted to fashion and agility, and those same people will brag about how they "Q'd" in all 10 classes that weekend. I feel sorry for them.
They do not know the joy of just getting through a course where your dog takes all the obstacles without having a meltdown, where karma is correct that day and aftr 3 months of no "Q's" your dogs decide to have a somewhat normal day!
That my dear is pure joy and is as addictive as crack! We are not like those people that walk back to their canopies thinking ho hum, got another "Q". We run to our canapies with joy and people around us think we just won the Nationals or made it on the world team.
Oh well, I've had plenty of weekends like that. Best not to dwell on it too much or you will go crazy.
Well, I got mine for dwelling on it. See laundromat post on the law of karma. I guess we'll still be there at Regionals. I hope I get to bring along my real dogs, not the Stepford ones.
If you see me running leashes somewhere, singing Black Sabbath songs quietly to myself, you know which dogs came. Throw me a cookie and ask me how that new tattoo is coming.
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