Practicing with the Team-Heat seeking laser missile drill you can do in 5 minutes even if you're late for work.

I have mentioned this before. Gustavo's weave pole performance lacks a little feature that we all know in agility to be very important. The aerospace one. The dog must lock on to their missile target from the launch silo and hit it dead on from any point in space, at any rate of speed, and kill their target with a ruthless, dead on efficiency each and every time.

We love this, right? You stand there, in the safe room, by the BatPhone, and when you push the red button, the one decorated with a tiny little skeleton face and lightening bolts, your dog blasts out of the secret mountain hideaway and pops into the correct pole no matter what, and flies through those poles in record speed.

There are different ways to build in this feature. Otterpop is implanted with a radar chip and I keep the remote device under my big toe. When I see those poles up ahead, I just hit the toe remote and she's in and I can run off anywhere else I want and never have to worry about what's going on in those poles thanks to the work of the satellite dish and government grants.

With Ruby, I don't know. I think once I fed her a hot dog sandwich near the poles and she just learned how to do this. She isn't so much heat seeking as hot dog sneaking.

With Gustavo however, we had a pole challenge. There was some artful training required at the boot camp levels. For a while there, I assumed I would have a dog that never, ever would do weave poles, and that he'd never have a use out there in the sea, swimming ahead of the ship, wiggling through the floating land mines with grace, speed and ease, and delivering the explosive devices like the other dogs.

I felt bad. My poor training meant he'd have a miserable office job and never, ever get to blow anyone up.

We persevered though, and I nearly have the carefully crafted death machine that we all dream of in our agility training. There are just a couple places though, that the timing is still off and at a high rate of speed, he blows past the first pole. And when the mission is critical, this becomes a life or death matter. Because, you know. Do not kill the civilians. It's not, TRY not to kill the civilians. You just are not supposed to do this. You only kill the guys that George Bush intended us to, so very long ago.

My friend Mary had a great way to teach her poles during which no one was killed or maimed or had to wear the Hurt Locker suit made of kevlar and steel. She just sat on her deck drinking a beer and waved over to the poles and her dog ran over there and went through them. No chips, hotdogs, or high frequency transmitters needed. I, on the other hand, just leave a little early for work, and set up challenging drills for Gustavo and we still are working on this. Because I like to do things the hard way. And you are not supposed to drink beer on the way to work.


In our little quickie drill today, we start out with some tight little turns from anywhere and everywhere into the poles. Once you are successful with each of these, ever time, and your dog is crazy mad to get through those poles because reward! reward! reward!, then you just back the missile off into the silo. And hit the speed button.


As you set your long range device unit, you hopefully, at those long runs in, at speeds of over 350 knots due starboard, eastboard and longboard, your little death machine is now complete. Shampoo, rinse repeat. From everywhere. All the time. Happy hunting!