Does one spend a Sunday where one has to holler out the word, "Purple!" super loud?

So I entered a CPE show for this Sunday. Mostly for Ruby. She won't ever get her ADCh. Doesn't look like she'll finish her APD now. But in CPE, that we haven't even done so much of, she is 3 or 4 stupid Colors classes away from a CATCH. The ADCh of CPE.

Oh, confused already, my non dog agility friends? CPE, the Robin to USDAA's Batman. CATCH, the Miss Artichoke Festival to ADCh's Miss America. I thought it would be nice for Ruby to finish some kind of award before she's totally retired from agility. Miss Brussel Sprouts Festival.

Colors my friend, is a class that I avoid entering like the plague. So much so that she finished all the other requirements for the CATCH but needs to just do this class a few times that is like entering half a class. It's like pairs but without a partner. And you need to call out to the judge before you start something like, "Orange!" or "Purple!" and if you forget, off with your head. It just makes me crazy, this whole Colors thing. Remember Colors the movie? It was the '80's and it was the Bloods and the Crips and everyone is shooting everyone else in Compton. I think Ice-T and Sean Penn, then husband of Madonna, were in it. I am pretty certain that Colors the Stupid Dog Agility Class not named after the film. No gang violence, crooked cops, youth murdered, redemption at the end. No Madonna. Just shout out "Purple!" run around for a few seconds and that's the end.

Yeah. It's that dumb. Like almost insulting to enter it, except for when you want your doggy award. One of those things about CPE that makes me just scratch my head. But sent entries pre-lame dog. Wanted Ruby to have her some nice letters to add on to her name. And she's still lame. Looking like will be a while. Just doen't seem that fun to go to CPE and not let Ruby have her turns. Miss Tomato Festival.

The other dogs? Otterpop has used CPE as a place to try stuff out. Really the reason I started going. Pretend you're at a dog show while actually at a dog show. I've done a lot of partial runs with her, strategically hiding a frisbee outside a ring to where if she gets over an a-frame without a judge freakout, or back in the day of her teeter issues, a good teeter, or just anything particularly outstanding, can run out and get rewarded more quick. A fine training method that I hate to use on our precious few USDAA runs. Gustavo? He probably won't do much CPE but it's a good thing to practice I guess. Hello and it's time to meet the CPE weave poles! Except they also have the smooth dogwalk, no slats, that I think looks like a teeter totter to little dogs and makes me wonder, sort of confusing to the poor dog when they think they're running up the teeter and it never totters?

Oh what? You think I'm talking myself out of not going? You can hear my feet dragging already? Because it was going to be Ruby's gig and I'm too lazy to use it as practice for the other dogs? How about if I told you it was in a giant old rodeo building with metal roofs and walls. And you park outside where there's mud with the dogs locked in the car. And outside, it should be a cold, wet, central valley rainstorm with winds and hails and cows blowing by in the breeze? Thick gray air, every direction you look with just sticks for trees every so often across the horizon. And that I'd have to drive so far in the dark of the 5am to get there? To make the dogs sit in car jail all day to do things like Colors? With Ruby just along for the ride like a mascot?

I dunno. Have until 4:30am Sunday morning to decide, I guess. Team Small Dog, except when part of the team has to just sit on the bench. Where the bench equals very nice, long snooze on a nice, soft dog bed in a nice, warm car. Dreaming of the day when maybe wears that Miss Bacon Fest '09 crown and sash.