Finally, Team Small Dog returns to the agility practice field after their vacation.

Didn't do much agility the last week. OK, didn't do any. Because we had important things to do like drive around LA in a car. So when we went to practice this morning on the way to work, it felt like it had been years since we actually practiced. One week feels like one year. Which I think in blog years is actually 7 years? Or wait. 7 minutes? How does that work again?

Anyways, I set up the teeter totter a little low, set up a little sequence with some poles and a pinwheel that could also be part of a serp and a discrimination chunk. In non agility english, my non agility friends, that means I dragged some pvc jumps through the dead grass and kind of shifted them to and fro and would step back and admire, then step in and shift until, Voila! It looked so lovely. Like say you have just arranged the fruit platter to look like a tiny little Stonehenge and you carry it in and everyone goes, Voila! Or else they go, Goddamn stupid ugly lemons. But they probably don't say that in English. It's just in their head. Unless they're one of those people who thinks they are just thinking it but really they're saying it and stuff like that just comes out no matter how nice your fruit Stonehenge looks to everybody else.

So anyways. Otterpop practiced first, this is a nice warmup you can do, the whole pinwheel. The first part of a pinwheel and a pull through. One part and a pullthrough. Then backwards through part and pull through and back to non backwards. How many ways can you wear YOUR pinwheel? And I am highly impressed by Otterpop thinking, this Otterpop, she sure may be pain in the ass who thinks she can just bark at the Coast Guard, but this dog, she GETS the agility. We are a team. Mental illness aside, and completely freakish, bizarre behavior at trials not counting, this is one trained dog.

And I'm all pat pat pat on my back and throwing her frisbee and just gushing on, "What a gooood guuuurrll you are," and she's all just getting the frisbee and frothing at the mouth due to frisbee joy or else rabies. I'm pretty sure it was frisbee joy and eating some grass by mistake.

And then Ruby practiced the same Pinwheel–Like a Legwarmer you Could Wear on Your Arms and for a Cap and a Bikini Bottom Exercise, and it made me think about how different they are. Ruby is erratic but so fast but you really have to get in there and SHOW her what to do, whereas Otterpop, just gets it. Is like psychic and knows the Greg Derrett rules, which is actually not psychic but trained. And Ruby is trained sort of different, sort of hands on and just needs you to handle, and they are so different yet both so cool.

Pat pat pat on my dog trainer back and throw some more frisbee for Ruby now. Who only brings it back to get some cheese but so what. I have highly motivated dogs who love to play and I should win the Susan Garrett Award today!

And then it's Gustavo's turn and I am ready to feel all super dog trainery some more because I know he'll be all ready to go and pinwheel mania, except he sort of trots over to the fence and is ambling around and doesn't want to play frisbee or even chase his gross furry thing tied to a leash toy.

O M G. I have to turn in the Susan Garrett Award. She sends a Say Yes Instructor down from Canada on a broomstick who snatches it back. Off to Canada it goes. That didn't last very long.

This and that and this and that, he finally does a couple speedy pinwheel to the poles, and a couple teeter totters. He loves him his practice field teeter in a nearly obsene way. Like, now he runs across the field to get to the teeter because teeter totters mean biggest awards. Bigger than the Susan Garrett Award. The Vice President Joe Biden Award! Supreme Justice Sotomayor Award! Slammo! So did a little agility, although didn't have that back patting best dog trainer award winning feeling anymore because he seemed sort of off.

The successful dog training day, sort of just so so after that. Goddamn stupid ugly lemons. Did I break my dog again? Now he doesn't want to play and can only do a smidgey widgen of agility? This is the thought that is sitting in the back of my mind as I drive out to work and get on with the rest of my life.

This is the question though, that keeps answering itself now, over and over, in the form of dog barf! Dog not broken. Dog just barfing. Dogs sick enough to be barfing all over the couch and the rug and the bed and the car, should not be agility dogs. Should be white rice eating, sitting around dogs. Not cheese eating, teeter totter riding, running dogs. All dog trainer awards totally turned in now. PETA probably showing up on my doorstep as I speak to file a full report on dog sport abuse of sickly little dogs. Those evil, old agility ladies. Make their dogs run around chasing gross old furry things tied to leashes and pinwheeling until they barf. And barf. And barf.

And dog barf, might be one of those things best left unsaid. Might have violated one of the 7 deadly sins of blogging. Do not mention the barf or the diarrhea. Or fungus. Or fruit platters arranged to look like Stonehenge. See where a little too much back patting can get you?