An ode to a much overlooked niche profession, the dog agility photographer.

Photo credit: Erika Maurer

My friend Erika took lots of photos the other day at the trial. She sees a lot of things in her giant camera that handlers don't always get to see.


Photo credit: Erika Maurer

Like accessorizing. Erika styles her photos carefully. Genius styling of the cheery, spotty umbrella backdrop for the periwinkle blue dogwalk? SO Martha! You can totally imagine the spectators seated below, in little plaid rainboots and hand made Swedish smock tops with denim skirts and vintage 70's aviator spectacles. Because EVERYONE wears that at dog agility.


Photo credit: Erika Maurer

Erika sees things on contacts that we might not. Or that we might want to pretend we didn't see. Note Otterpop's super naughty teeter totter. You know what I am probably saying to her right there? "GO GO GO!" Because we loves us a super fast teeter totter and when it gets fast like that, Thar She Bails! Please ignore my non hand made Swedish tunic top. Also my hideous, yet spendy beyond belief, new shoes. I never, ever, in my wildest dreams imagined myself as a gore-tex running shoe person. Ever. Yet, here they are, for the internet to see. I am at the moment shaking my head in shame.

These are, by the way, Asics shoes purchased from Zappos.com. And if Zappos or Asics would like to sponsor Team Small Dog and send us free shoes, I promise to never, hardly ever, call them hideous ever again except for sometimes.

Oh, is she trying another business plan again? And how will this one fail? Susan Garrett, do you ever get sent free shoes?


Photo credit: Erika Maurer

Here, Erika's photos demonstrate an important dog training fact. So that you can say in the 30 seconds you wasted reading this today, you learned an important dog training fact so that counts for something. Not sure what. But something.

See how Gustavo goes all lip licky riding the teeter down, and then as soon as that toy pops up, smiley face? I think there is an important reason for this in official dog training mind reading language. Did you know that when dogs get stressed out they get chapped lips and since, without opposable thumbs, dogs cannot apply lipgloss or chap stick, and so they lick them? Which, as you all know, ALWAYS causes more chappedness. In this series of photos, you can see that producing the toy causes Gustavo to forget all about chapped lips and makes him go all smiley and then life is happy again.


Photo credit: Erika Maurer

And finally. I am so happy Erika took photos of my dogs because sometimes they look like pointy eared monkeys when they jump. And seeing this makes me very, very happy.