Where there used to be blonde streaks, now there aren't.

The best part of driving to Santa Rosa at 5am is seeing dawn eeking up over San Francisco and the Bay Bridge. If you're brave enough to look over your shoulder driving over the Golden Gate Bridge. Do not drive off and into the bay. The worst part is not having an IV mainlined straight to my jugular vein for coffee. Really hot and delicious coffee. With milk, not half and half. But that's how it works in the glamorous agility commuter lifestyle. You use a drippy travel mug and look back a lot and still try to stay in your own lane and DO NOT FALL ASLEEP and the coffee is lukewarm and not much kick. These are the sacrifices you make, to get there in time for a nice parking spot and to get a dog measured to be short.

I like driving up to Santa Rosa. It's beautiful up there, near SF, not like driving though desolate central valley cowlands. Actual city lights. Can do errands in SF and stop and visit friends. Maybe. Unless you are just too tired and you don't. But you could, is the point here. Could even go get highlights or buy shoes. Unless you are too tired and you don't. And it's chilly there, and there are shady little pig stalls to park in and dogs can just sit in their luxury vehicle, albeit in a pig stall, all day and what nice exercise it is to run back and forth from the ring to the car the ring to the car the ring to the car for all the runs for all the dogs.

So to skip to the high points of the dog show:

Gustavo super star contact getter and just knock out runs. Did two dogwalks, and I would say his dogwalk contact was stellar beautiful gorgeous on the first one, and barely there yet still a contact with one toe on the second one. Insanely fast times. Every time I run him I can't believe how cool he is and how did we do this. He pulls you down the crate gauntlet to get out there, just bounces around on his own adrenaline, and yet holds a startline stay! For reals. Then flies around and follows directions and just looks like he's loving it. All streamlined and full deerchasing speed ahead. He did 2 classes, and yes it was CPE and yes the courses were super easy, but he just did them so well.

Can you tell I like Gustavo? Various people informed me he is a papillon dog of the flutterby ears. I am not convinced of this, but just nod my head and say, "Yup. Could be." I'm glad I'm starting him slow. Not entering him in a full menu of runs where he could lose a dogwalk contact in a day or lose the poles. Just a couple, for maybe a long time. Make it easy and don't let him miss anything. He's no papillon. Maybe a relative. He's just Gustavo.

Otterpop. Not weird. Not stressed out. And super fast! No judge meltdowns, just sped around like a champ and knocked all her runs out of the park. A good citizen all around. Although led everyone in howling when we got home. And kind of mean to everyone about who gets to play with the duck squirrel thing. She is still on stress watch but every day seems healthier and less weirdo. Our normal, happy family of dogs is coming back.

Ruby. A couple lovely runs, one out of control first run of the morning with a total flyer off the dogwalk and crashed right through the triple bar. One of those point hogging classes, let's just say ran through it with many points to spare. But still. Very last run of the day, knocked a bar, refused the a-frame and I just pulled her. That's never a good sign with Ruby, was one of those weirdo CPE classes where I didn't love the course for her, and if she doesn't want to get up on that a-frame at the end of the day, why. Yes, she got one of those Colors Q's we were looking for.

Some low points, because what is a ying without a yang.

Black Beauty. Poor Black Beauty. Spent a lot of time in the car, in a crate. Dog agility runs with other dogs, important things to do such as sit in a cold metal chair in the ring righting wronged bars doesn't leave a lot of time for chihuahuas. Poor chihuahua. Agility trials kind of suck for the non agility dog. Great for napping though. Black Beauty, very well rested. Took a couple walks. What can I say. Sidekick.

Bitching, sourfaced, crabby shit talk. OK. This was a memorial trial for a popular agility guy who tragically passed away. Maybe didn't run like clockwork. You get it, right, that the Management here, not getting paid? Not like the management of Carnivale who was mauled by a Russian bear and has no legs and lives in a puppet house. CPE seems to run different anyways, with all those different levels and some classes long, some short. But what the hell. A beautiful sunny day, and was even a special memorial award and touching presentation with a toast. Don't come crabbing to me with crab appley faced whining about sitting around and waiting. Go learn to work on a score table. Walk your dogs. Dust out a trailer. I dunno. Make yourself useful, crinkly faced complainers.

People with mean dogs. Sort of tight quarters at this trial. Not big wide open spaces everywhere. But HELLO. Never have I had so many dogs come nearly lunging out of owners hands at one or more of my extremely short little dogs. A cool thing of CPE is many, many breeds and many levels of people there, a lot of beginners. But seemed like a little extra in the cluless department of managing issuey dogs in small spaces or just remembering to do this. No one got nearly bit or anything. I always keep eyes peeled for scarey dogs because my dogs are single servings in one bite for a lot of dogs. But I always think of CPE sort of groovy, mellow vibe and a lot of so not groovy dogs patrolling the area.

I had this moment where I looked around at all the messy, unhighlighted hair, sort of rumpled. Wait. Didn't I used to get mine highlighted? Cut? Standing out there together, in the dirt. And saggy jeans. And weird shoes. And then I looked at mine. And my shirt that used to be my favorite but now has some kind of gum stuck to an arm and dog paw stains and jeans all stretched out in the ass. And totally realized. I am just one of them. Us. One and the same. That's how it is. New shoes? Let's talk goretex. There is not time and money for nice hair because of practicing dogwalks and teaching weave poles and spending the day off driving to the dog show. Maybe someday, we can have it all. For now, we are taking the dogwalk contact, please. I guess. That just pained me a little though.