22 July 2010

Dirt Nite festival of rear crossing.

My dogs and me were a little meh at Dirt Nite.

You know the word meh? I think it is invented for the internet. It's the only place I've ever seen it. It's a word that you would say while you shrug your shoulders and look sideways with your eyes and kind of grimace. Meh. I have a sore leg right now, an inflammation in my psoas, and there's another fancy new word for you. Used in a sentence, Meh psoas makes meh meh.

Fast running? Meh. So my dogs, sort of meh.

I was VERY excited though, that I finally came up with a one hour class for all my lovely agility students that has a series of progressive drills where EVERYBODY can do rear crosses on both sides by the end of one hour. With fast running and non confused dogs and handlers. Like, I'm no fancy, big time dog teacher, but I am VERY excited that I finally figured out how to teach this topic in a way that freaks no one out, dogs nor handlers, and the end of the story, if the story is the end of each one hour session, everyone rear crosses like a pro.

In another universe of lots of time, I will write out my series of drills. And the fun little drill course I set up the other day for us to practice before we had a sore leg and meh.

9 comments:

Kelly said...

Please share your brilliance! I am yet to figure out a way to teach a rear cross without either tripping over the dog or freaking the dog out so he stops doing anything at all. I need to be able to do rear crosses as when he gets his groove on, there is no way I can get in front to cross....

Teamgracie said...

After last nights class, all I can say about Gracie, and myself is Meh. We have degenerated into *no* recall. Meh. We have decided after months of fast weaves that we are wildly frightened by said poles. Classmates probably think I beat Gracie with said weavepole at home. Meh. It is a handy word. Sometimes it is the only word that will do. By the way, I loved your article in SF Gate. It was in no way Meh.

call us team low drive said...

Yes, please share with us fabulous rear cross drills! I need a nice long blog post (with diagrams) so I can get my agility geek on and spice up my very meh workday....

andrea said...

Meh is a fabulous word :)

and sums up so nicely that in between AWFUL and AWESOME

Deb said...

Yes, it WAS a good class, one Kacie needed. I also have a fun "turn tunnel" drill I can practice in the kitchen. Thanks, TSD. You're a great teacher!

team small dog said...

I thought long and hard on a way to teach people to teach their dogs to do rear crosses without anyone's brains exploding and causing an untidy mess.

I was wondering if I sold my secrets for the low low price of $147 and $349 if you want to call me in person, would anyone would buy them?

Probably not. I'll just write it down and put it on here. Soon. Soonish.

Anonymous said...

I had thought meh sort of evolved from feh, which is a Yiddish word that means disapproval: what did you think of the course? feh.

Lynn Ungar said...

I would just like to say that while Susan Garrett is the Queen of Dog Agility and Marketing, you are far more entertaining, and she doesn't even have delightful drawings with captions. As I am too cheap to pay for her e-class I would probably be too cheap to pay for yours, but I'm guessing you're more of a hoot on the phone.

Elf said...

Meh--I always associate this with my friend Betty, who was the only one I knew who used it except for other friends imitating Betty. And she died in 2000, before the internet really got going. I don't have a clue where she got it from. On this site one person notes that in a children's book from the 1940s, it's the sound a goat makes. Since Betty was very well read and since Flying Goat Graphics was her corporate name, I could see that she might have picked up the sound a goat makes and used it as her trademark word.