The time that Mary missed Dirt Nite.

My friend Mary never misses Dirt Nite. Except for a really good reason. We miss her terribly when she doesn't come. And wonder, did she spend the evening drinking cheap wine and talking to her cat, while we were dragging dog walk planks through the mud? Or maybe drove down the mountain to the tiki bar for a round of zombies, while we slogged the heavy tunnel bags out to the storage trailer.

Hmm, what did Mary miss?

The fog slunk in from the sea with the dark, and wrapped up the arena in a hazy damp blanket. When the dogs were running the very tricky little bit off the dogwalk, far, far away, it was hard to see them through the cloud.

My usual dashing about finding serpentines. YOU GUYS! LOOK! You can SERP it!

The following dogs were in attendance: Cedar, Cayenne, Ella, Gustavo, Otterpop, Hobbes, Wings, Izzy, Trooper and Quest. I could not get Gustavo to blow a dogwalk contact, no matter what I did. Not that this is important information for Mary, but I'm just reporting on it anyways.

I did my usual one good crash and burn of weird handling with Hobbes because I just wanted to see if I could do something. People seem to find this very amusing. Tonight's comedy routine involved a surprising rear cross after the a-frame. It's the little things.

We did a lot of sequences with those tricky go to the backside and then maybe serpentine your way out of the pickle and possibly need an occasional over your toes kinda thing to get into the weave poles. Mary would have liked those.

The lingering smell of sewage that we smelled last week was gone, and I could hear frog noises coming out of the landscaping.

Instead of cookies or cupcakes to celebrate some dog titling victory, someone brought a basket of lemons. Lemons. Hopefully Mary did not need lemons, or now she would be really sad she missed Dirt Nite.

And, as always, after the clock struck 9pm, all the agility stuff does the whole turn into a pumpkin thing. We tear down the jumps and pull apart the dogwalk and dismantle the teeter, and swiftly and efficiently, the whole arena of dog agility once again goes back to just a dressage ring. By 9:30, you would never know we were there.