23 April 2010

Team Small Dog, masters of fiasco, bring their finely tuned sensibility of OOPS to their pal, the Agility Nerd.

Most of you probably know Steve. He's the Agility Nerd. Steve is also a man of action. I had a post a little while back, something kinda whiney about, "Ooooh this sequence from Dirt Nite was so hard I almost hurt my delicate princess feet running it."

And then I got very boasty because I was the only one able to get a dog through it on the first try. Although maybe or maybe not mentioned that I had screwed it up on my first first try with my first dog. Have you noticed that about dog agility ladies like me? We have like one nice handling moment and the we're jumping up and down with a big foam pointy finger going, "Look at Me! Look at Me!"

Steve took them as fightin' words.

Well, maybe not fightin'. Steve doesn't strike me as that type. He is very, very nice. But being a man of action, as opposed to me, a somewhat lazy lollygagger who wastes precious time jumping up and down with a big foam finger shouting at the interweb and crawling around under bushes to listen to grass grow. And being a man of action, he went to work setting up the sequence in his beautifully landscaped backyard, and even videoed all his attempts at it.

Because I drew the sequence out totally not to scale and used things like little pictures of moons to illustrate agility items, he had to do this over again because he set it up wrongish. And I told him this, because, hell, I'm not shy. And off he went and did the whole thing again.

So not a nerd.

So here. Go watch Steve do this. Thanks Steve!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I fired my daughter Meagan from running her seasoned agility dog before her baby dog in class. Things kinda fell apart when the baby dog went first:)

team small dog said...

Lately in class, I've been running one big dog, the amazing LAA Platinum Hobbes of Can't Go Wrong, and one little dog, the amazing Took One Year to Get Out of Starters Standard Gustavo of Holy Smokes OOPS.

I have learned to just suck it up, be confident, and if the jumps are low, just dive in and run first with Gustavo. And am frequently pleasantly surprised, lately, at how well it goes!

Although, I will admit. I ran the sequence we are talking about above that night with Gustavo first, and took the wrong side of jump 4 a couple times, and by the time we had the jumps up and everyone had a hard time, I had seen everything that didn't work and had my good plan and was able to get it with Hobbes.

Who rarely puts a foot wrong no matter how hard it is. So that's a little bit cheaty.

Celeste said...

Love your blog and today saw Agility Nerd's 'Further Adventures of Moon Tunnel Threadles.' My new agility goal - put video of tricky TSD sequence on my blog. Not soon, since my young dog isn't very trained yet and my old dog is laid up. And I don't have a yard. But...someday...

team small dog said...

Hi Celeste, I'm sorry your dog is laid up, we missed you at our trial today! I think the moon tunnel sequence would be very hard with a baby dog, it's weird! I hope your older dog gets better soon!

Steve said...

Laura,
Not your fault I can't read a course diagram!! I think if course diagrams at trials were drawn ala TSD things would be more interesting!

Thanks again for posting that sequence; it got me out and about training outside. It is nice to have sequences that break me out of my comfort zone.

Thank you Laura and Team Small Dog!

p.s. I'd love to buy a T shirt with a huge version of the TSD logo!

Steve said...

I just looked on hellotimmy and it looks like a bigger logo is available, so I just bought one!

team small dog said...

One of my to-do list projects is all new team small dog shirts. Boy is that a long list. Hopefully by the end of spring! Hope you like your large logo one!