The time Team Small Dog visited the AKC agility trial, except actually the team stayed home with the pancakes and just Laura went on her own.

The agility club who sponsors Dirt Nite, where I both teach and take agility class, puts on a yearly agility trial, their dedicated flavor being AKC. People stick to their flavors. I prefer USDAA and ones that smash up the cookie dough inside with a ripple of fudge and caramel. They are an AKC club, and I am not a member of this club and we all get along just fine.

I am like that. My friend Mary says I am like Pollyanna. I saw this movie, it stars Hayley Mills and she wears a striped dress and has a positive attitude, but I think gets eaten by a witch at the end. Does everything end in cannibalism? Susan Garrett teaches us to be like Tony Robbins and think positive to attract laws of attractivism, but I pretty busy thinking about the oil in the gulf eventually leading to apocalyptic global collapse and cannibalism. But I still love dog agility and sunshine! So this is positive, right?

Every year, when my friendly local AKC club put on a trial, and I am asked something along the lines of, "Do you want to come work your ass off at the trial which is a mere 10 minutes away from your house even though your dogs are banned from competing due to racist breedist policies?"

I am paraphrasing here.

And every year, my answer is something like, "Um, beloved agility pets banned due to dog racism, so actually, not."

So, yeah, a bit of an Us and Them vibe, just because that's the way it is.

This year though, I decided I would certainly come over and help out, since, hallelujah, the ban has been lifted, and AKC says we are all just We. In most cases. But possibly not all. I will now see what an AKC trial is like!

Because that's what Pollyanna would do. Before her horrible death being eaten alive.

I've never been to a genuine AKC trial before. But you saw the picture up top there? Can I just start with this? Let me get it off my chest. I did not shoot her, that's not a gun. But she felt really guilty and handed off my camera to my friend Mary who, probably having seen a million photo shoots on America's Next Top Model, knew exactly what to say.

"Look really MAD!"

Because, here I am. A visitor. A spectator. Albeit one that got right away pulled into course building and manning the gate of an endless standard class full of more shelties than I've ever seen in one place. A word of advice, do not joke around with the sheltie ladies. There can be miffiness. I was not from there, I did not know the customs and there I am, thrown to the sheltie ladies. Next time, just the facts, ma'am.

But the gun? OK, finger gun. Look at my thespian mad face. That prisoner down there? Just confessed that HER AKC dog club, another local one from the progressive Bay Area, decided to still ban the mixed breed dogs the weekend before. Her, being the Them, still bans the Us. Except They would say that we are the Them, and they are the Us.

To which I would say, uh, they're dogs.

And you know who the cannibals are going to eat first? Before they turn to people and babies? The dogs. Purebred and mutts alike. So there, AKC purists. Maybe instead of worrying about someone confusing your Belgian Turvuren with Otterpop, you worry about that. Skewered on the barbie.


So how was AKC? Cannibal free, to start with. Yay! Everywhere, there were small dogs. Come visit us in USDAA, small dogs. Terriers and poodles and minpins of all sorts. A Puli, with dreadlocks and blue scrunchie hair ties. Way less border collies, way more shelties.


A better reporter than I would have been interviewing these small dogs with a notepad, asking why they don't visit us in USDAA. And not getting much info because, hello, dogs. Then switching to talking to handlers. This reporter though got sucked into course building and gating and that was that.


There was jewelry. Mary got a pin for getting a TripleQ. It was ugly, I have to say right now. Mary, do not wear this out on a date. Awkward. Handlers received personalized envelopes with stickers and secret information. The club gave me a tie dyed t-shirt. It is blue. I am not sure that I will ever wear this. But it is the thought that counts.


Some of my friends were there. And some of my students, competing with their dogs! I never even taught them how to do a sit on the table. Does this make me a bad person? Just not something I even think about. But mostly there were people I have never met before. A whole other universe of dog agility people, same blue tents, same sporty shorts and ballcaps, same dog stickers on SUV's.

They were we. We are us. Us and them, just running around with the dog.