When doom and gloom enter the room.

I went up to Power Paws for a lesson with Jim yesterday. Haven't been in a while, in a long while. Don't even remember my last lesson. Last time I was gonna up there, I went out and bought a bunch of succulents and tried to start a succulent farm with my lesson money. Not sure if Jim knows that one. Uh, Hi Jim!

So I gussied up the demented homeschoolers in their best prairie dresses, brushed their bangs up sky high, and we took a field trip off of the compound. Ran them hard at the beach first, low tide and thought that might help a bit. Woke up when they got to their road. Boy do they like going down that driveway.

I unpack mayhem out of the car and we sit down in the fine plastic agility chairs and Jim's all, "How's the Team? What are we working on today?"

Isn't this sort of how therapists open up therapy session? He thought I was just going to say, can we work on sending out to weave poles? Some 270's? I get to watch Jim's eyes go all wide as I unleash the horror of horrors of what's been going on with Team Small Dog. Actually, I don't because he's wearing sunglasses. But I'm pretty sure they're going all wide. Or maybe that was because someone started to dig a hole in the grass. Have you seen Jim's grass? You just don't do that.

Horrors. Actually, if you want to have some even more horrific horrors, go see the movie Food, Inc. Holy moley, that will get you freaked out. It's about the politics and industry of food. Basic old food and really, there's no aspect of food that isn't completely messed up, possibly beyond fixing and even if you've read Fast Food Nation and the Omnivore's Dilemma, you would want to go see this and then figure out where you can plant a garden, although you might be afraid of seeds. And Monsanto. Just ask Indiana seed cleaner Moe Parr about them.

There are graphs and animations and interviews and ammonia washing beef. I mean hamburger meat filler. I don't even eat meat, and I was freaked out. I won't even say I watched this one so you don't have to. I think everybody who likes to eat them some food now and again should go see it. I mean corn. Because almost all food is made from corn now. Except for the mutilated chickens in the dark that can't use their legs. Tractors dump their chicken bodies in the manure heap.

So actually I didn't tell this to Jim, instead just unleashed all the Team Small Dog traumas from the last few months. Although he would have liked the movie. There were tons of tractors.

I tell him about Ruby and she can't even jump or do any agility, anxiety and lame lame lame, then miraculously I have lowered her jumps heights to 8" and she's back doing agility. That's the good news.

And no one here has E. coli. There's some good news.

He gets the earful about Gustavo and the teeter totter whip and the blowing tarps and the sounds and the scaredyness and going back to foundation stuff and the horror of it all. Although I kept my mouth shut about the immigration sweeps from Tyson chicken processing plants and how they bring up illegals from Mexico, use 'em up then throw random folks back at immigration for deportation, just to make some numbers. Happens in pig factories and cow slaughter houses, too. That's the labor force and woe to any union organizers that step in.

I do tell the Otterpop story of her mental illness and weirdo aggression and freaking out about Ruby and can barely run in the show ring.

Basically, I'm like, "Jim, Team Small Dog is just really messed up."

He's sort of squirming in his plastic chair. Jim is super nice and I can see he's kind of like not sure how this lesson is supposed to fix all of that. Thank god I didn't start talking about bacon.

He's says, "Maybe you need to start having your lessons with Nancy?"

Maybe I need to start growing carrots.

Doom and gloom is sitting on his field and bumming out a sunny day when he could be riding his mowing tractor around, cutting the grass. Doom and gloom brings bad dogs that sometimes try to dig holes in the perfect grass. Doom and gloom can't help thinking about the specter of Monsanto, measuring the wind for currents that blow the genetically modified seeds across a fence line, into some unsuspecting farmer's fields.

Oh. And now doom and gloom's boy dog just peed on a post. Probably because I said I made him wear a prairie dress. And he's going to have to start eating carrots.

Doom and gloom trudges out, head hanging low, and sets the jumps really low so Ruby can have a turn.

"Sounds like Team Small Dog is just in a slump."

He gives us a pattern and Ruby just knocks it out like she's been practicing every day forever.

Give it a try with Otterpop and she's flying around like a rabid bat zeroing in on the vampire blood bank. No problem.

Jim's all, "Uh, they look pretty good? Wanna try it with the rear cross?"

Augh. I know! Right? They always do this to me. Perfect little beasts.

So then I bring Gustavo out, he's holding his start line and does the same sequences as those two. Some pole entry issues, not a surprise since we've kind of abandoned poles for teeter fixing the last months. But he's back to crazy fast and is actually handling well and actually not doing anything wrong. Listening! Much listening happening! Not much to get scared of up there, on the Power Paws mountain.

Jim's all, "Should we do some teeters?"

Doom and gloom all hemming and hawing. Maybe they'd be ok. Maybe not. Dark, windowless chicken farms. We've been working hard, it could be a backslide, or it could be time to move up and just get over it. I dunno.

"I dunno!"

We do some teeters. Start slow, just a teeter, not in a sequence. I tip the first boards for him. We build it into a sequence. His poles are actually a lot worse than the teeters. Those are just fine. We work on some stuff with the poles. They fix up just fine. It's just that old too fast to hit the first pole thing, which was why I went back to the 2x2 method and has clearly deteriorated recently. A proven fixable problem.

So we're back on the plastic chairs, and Jim says, "Not really sure I helped you much today?"

I'm not really sure how, exactly. But I think he did. Maybe everything's not fixed, and stuff could go wrong again. The cows will multiply and stand knee deep in shit, the corn subsidies stand in the way of affordable broccoli. Victoria Stillwell fixed the attacking Jack Russell in an hour, but Otterpop is still crazy. Later that evening, she leads Gustavo into a homeless camp deep in a willowy thicket and they pretend not to have recalls and guzzle down whatever was on that guy's foodchain. Probably some corn product.

But I'm just saying. Maybe not so much doom and gloom as I thought.