Team Portrait.

So while you are your Christmas parties this weekend, or the beach, we will be at a dog show. In Santa Rosa, where the dog show is in a loud and freezing covered arena that drips when it rains. And the internet says it's gonna rain. So we're gonna be dripped on. And freezed. Yet still brimming with excitement over this information!

Because this is actually a super festive and fun dog show, my non agility friends. My agility friends, many of you will be there! You know. Festivus! Because it is Team, and Team means a lot of hanging out hoping other Teams crash and burn and you can huddle together, trying to stay warm, and look for Teams getting E's. Which might be your own team, in which case you go to the ladies room and weep. But not for long because it's cold! And I don't think it's heated in there. Buck up, get over it, and look to the future is what you do in that case, a future where you can go back and time and remember that once upon a time you did a good job and didn't get an E and it's highly unlikely anyone has ever been killed by Teammates over an E. Unless a really tense moment in the big finale of 3 Dog Relay Race of Stress. Possibly people have lost lives over this but not trying to spread any rumors or anything, just conjecturing.

E=Eliminate. BTW. On Teams, this is a very bad thing. See above.

Is Team Small Dog a Team? They just play one on the internet. Different people need to run different dogs in real life dog shows. We could be a team somday. Ruby will run for anyone that gives her a treat at some point in her life. Just have to be a fast runner. Would be quite an event, running her at 16" again. Otterpop? Maybe runs with me. Gustavo? Suspect he would run for anyone too, someone ready to run the Goo. He's still like running a little ziplock of crazy. One day though, with the help of my friends, Team Small Dog could be a DAM Team

For freezing/dripping, Ruby on a team with my friend Vici and her sheltie who has been known to do weirdo things here and there. Their team, the Bi-Polar Express. Christmasy, yet borderline personality disordery. Perfect!

Otterpop's on a team with my friend Mary and a lady named Jennifer we don't know. What if she doesn't like us? She has a border terrier. Those are those scruffy little brown dogs, always very cute yet always seem to look alike? Sorry, border terriers. Start the hate mail. Our team is called Ariel and the Dreamsicles for reasons I don't remember anymore, mostly because we could not think of a name. No one usually likes my team names. Offered up lame, obscure punk rock references and outdated feminist cliches. Festive! Yet poor branding for a dog team.

Gustavo, no team. It's a big committment. He's only run in 4 USDAA classes ever! Not going to expose him to potential heartbreak yet. Or teeters in a freezing, loud, clanging metal building. He is doing Steeplechase, of which I am more excited than anything. Kind of forgot about all the Team stuff, thinking about running Gustavo. This will be his first time doing 3 whole runs, though, spread out over a period of 2 whole days. Big stuff for him.

2 whole days of dog show? I think I've done that like 5 times exactly my whole dog agility career. I have a small business which is small enough that I need to micro manage every speck of it and it is just too hard to leave it on Saturdays. But thought we would be having bad weather this time of year and it was my holiday special thing to come to Team. Ho ho ho. No Christmas tree but I'm going to a dog show! And spend all my stinkin' money. My dog agility friends, who regularly go to 2 days of dog shows, OUCH! Even with Ruby only running a few classes, and Gustavo only running a few classes, only Otterpop running a buncha classes, youch. A lot of dinero goes into taking 3 dogs to the dog show. This has Steeplechase and Grand Prix , besides Team, which we don't get to run a lot, and those cost extra to enter. So we dumped out the money pot into this dog show this month.

See you there!