Dirt Nite, under the full moon.

Gustavo just came flying across the room, did a rebound leap up off my lap, grabbed the paper towel accompanying my slice of pizza off my desk, and rebounded back under the couch to his secret lair. All in the bat of an eye, before you could say, Kumbaya Kombucha, Kumbaya.

That's right. Pizza. At the desk. So much for the mushroom juice revitalization.

But, I did not even deploy a recovery mission because he was so super at Dirt Nite. Let him have his paper towel and shred it to bits with gusto. Because, with the exception of 2 emphatic dogwalks without STOPPING, and a pair of missed pole entries off of a funny left handed lead out, what a Dirt Nite dog.

I will tell you right now. We run some very hard sequences at Dirt Nite. Rob does not mess around. And these days, in class, I think I can handle Gustavo through just about anything. Gustavo and Hobbes sit next to each other and don't bark together. Hardly bark. Not much. And I walk a hard sequence, and don't worry whether I can run this with Gustavo or not. I know I can. There are many nights now where he feels, actually, trained. A wearer of big boy pants. A sensational dog. Sure, maybe not a Hobbes, there could never be another Hobbes, but a dog I can run with the same confidence and smile on my face. How I would face a sequence with Otterpop. Who has a sore leg and is seething in the car over being excluded from the fun.

Without fail, after the merry making that is Dirt Nite, we always come home to Garbage Nite. The trash bin has been drug down the driveway, out to the street, to wait for the trash guys to dump in the morning. And, without fail, Gustavo runs out to the front yard, and barks at the can through our little picket fence. Then barks at the neighbor's. And the across the street neighbor's. Bark isn't really the right word. Monkey scream. Of shrillness. To him, Dirt Nite is the night where he runs around, does his agility, then has to get home to stop the alien invasion of giant plastic bins.

Whichever way you slice it, he is Gustavo. One of a kind, and I am the lucky one.

Team Small Dog brings you agility health and fitness tips-today we try rotting, fermented juice of champs and hippies.

I see everybody drinking this hippie juice. It's The Thing around here. This is Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is different than other places. I am pretty sure in New York City the thing is high boots with skinny jeans tucked into them and not hippie juice. My husband sees more empties of this in the recycling yard at the dump than anything else. He says hippie juice bottles outnumber vodka and beer. Could this be?


The label promises this: Organic and Raw. And that it will Rejuvenate, Restore, Revitalize, Replenish and Regenerate. And that it's good for digestion, metabolism, immune system, appetite control, weight control, liver function, body alkalinity, anti-aging, cell integrity, healthy skin and hair. And that it creates an elixir that immediately works with the body to restore balance and vitality, all in 30 calories. And that it's made in Beverly Hills. And is cosmic.


Body alkalinity? It is made by fermenting something. Something like rotten seaweed, named kombucha. Usually Otterpop likes rotten stuff. The kombucha, not so much. It is made to look less rotten by using packaging that screams, I HAVE A YOGA MATT AND AM NOT AFRAID TO USE IT. I am not fooled. It tastes like brackish mushroom swill with a fizz. This flavor offers unsweetened cranberry juice as a special treat. Special.


I had to hold my nose to take the first couple swigs. But I would like to have some better health and also I have gotten horribly chubby, which is not a good thing for fast running in dog agility. Not to mention skort wearing. So far I don't feel any different except for perhaps, a little foolish that I am drinking fermented mushroom water that costs $2.50 a bottle. I will let you know how this goes.

Practicing with the Team-Better weave poles to stave off the global warming blues.

Lest I sound too megabummer about Gustavo's runs over the weekend, let's do a little good vs. evil analysis here today. And being a real trooper, I also have included a course map of what we went to practice Monday morning following the trial. Because, goddamnit, I am one of those Train Don't Complain types and off we trek to practice to fill in the holes. And really. If we don't have that to worry about, then it's going to be starving whales in the arctic and polar bears floating on ice cubes and Arizona immigration laws. Goddamnit.

He had some nice moments. Each and every course was, on the whole, solid and focused. Twice he ran off course to climb underneath the score table. This is, of course, better than leaping on top of it, like he did once in the past. Either way, evil. I will chalk this up as training deficiency. 100 recalls a day has helped but obviously, a work in progress.

He had 2 pole mishaps all weekend. All the others, success! Dogwalk contacts-success! One table for the weekend, a success! I ran him in a limited, carefully selected group of classes. Scientific method. The first day, things where dogs do not have to STOP! Steeplechase. Jumpers. Snookers. Which all resulted in off course tunnels but no meltdowns or freakouts.

I did enter him in Gamblers, just to get him on a dogwalk and teeter. We just did an easy loop involving the dogwalk then to the teeter. Fail on teeter. But, I think he realized that it wasn't going to kill him, and had stellar teeters in Sunday's Standard and Grand Prix. Sundays runs included a lovely Advanced Standard and a Masters Jumpers. 2 days, limited classes is the way to go with Gustavo. Too bad we won't see 2 more days in a row of trialing for a while. Unless we get early retirement. Is that offered to the self employed? Anyone want to sponsor me?

Monday morning, off we trekked to the forest, to practice some of the deficiencies. Train don't complain. Just don't wear a t-shirt that says that. Embarassing. Otterpop stayed in the car. She don't look right still. I set up a little sequence where we could practice various ways to get into the poles-at a distance, with a lead out pivot, running from a loop. Lots of teeters. We started with his friend Robot at the end of the teeter to build some value. Worked swell. Success.

Most important, I set up 3 distraction areas to act as the siren call of scoretables. A patio chair with some tupperwares full of treats. His treat bag laying in the grass. Robot. He had to stick with me and complete his course to visit the reward center of his choice. Success. We will continue this project.

Download a Clip-N-Save version of this to try.

My own personal scoretable is the forest near Heart Dog Agility. Just like Gustavo, the siren song sucks me in to walk in the big trees. The steam train is running out there now, climbing Bear Mountain and hooting a spooky call through the redwoods. I can't help wandering aimlessly down skinny little paths looking for something that I don't see. It's a bad habit I have, and not a good thing at all for Otterpop's leg, and someday I will get us hopelessly lost. If I go missing, send search parties in there, you'll see my car parked in that little pull out off the road.

It's this thing I can't help, following a different path every time I'm in there, even if I have no idea where they go. They wind through the mountain and into the chapparal, and Gustavo drags his 20' rope, so he doesn't go off on his own trip. It's old in there and no other people. We walk and walk til we wind our way out. When we're in there, we just think about trees. Nothing complicated. No hard turns into poles. No whales run out of crustaceans. But you know. Can't stay in there forever. And that's how it goes.

A report from the trenches of Northern California USDAA.

Every dog show I attend, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that we will never be invited to be on any fancy world agility teams. It's sort of like the profound disappointment that settles in halfway through a rockumentary about any band you were obsessed with in your 20's, in which the members are grown up and have become mediocre or dead or hack magicians working the suburban birthday party circuit. The answer is, just because that's the way, for some people, things turn out.

Still we certainly have a good time and strive to be the best that we can be. And wish that we could burn as bright as Joe Strummer did, but since he's dead and we're not, we party on like it's 1999. And bravely man the gate for classes like Master's Pairs and face the music head on. And know that yes, once again, it is possible to step on the line in Gamblers and hear the whistle of bummerness blow in your ear.


Otterpop had a crummy weekend. She had some Q's, she won her Steeplechase, but I pulled her from most of her runs both afternoons after seeing her gimp along on Saturday. I am worried about her. When the dog that can be so fast and accurate looks miserable and trudgy in the ring again, it's a mistake to ask her to run. I will rest her this week, and see if she is back again to run next weekend. I suspect not after how she looked yesterday.

Gustavo had his ups and his downs. He did have 2 runs where I couldn't ask for anything more, an actual Standard Q and a Jumpers Q with what I recall now as being flawless runs. He loves running jumpers, where there aren't weave poles or contacts that make him stop and pause. He had some low moments, veering off course to run underneath the score table, missed pole entries, his now signature off course tunnels. I guess being a better trainer and a better handler are the only things I can do to help him. But I'm not really sure, with him, how much he cares.

Ruby always comes with us, and sleeps away the day in their pen, which was set under trees and really not a bad way to spend the day. There were a couple frisbee breaks for her and she's used to this.

Hobbes had a sore foot and after a couple not right runs, he was pulled from Saturday's classes. But he came back looking sound and ready to go Sunday, and had some super runs. I worried about him, on Saturday. But Sunday he was back, and since we all understand he does not lay down on the table anymore, we're all good. We had a good time together anyways. And a great time in Grand Prix and Jumpers.


This thing is the most spitfire, hellfire, rubber burning bad ass of a little dog I have ever seen. Her name is Zuma. She belongs to my agility pal Wendy, ace handler of blazing fast border collies, who thought she would get a nice little old lady small dog. Ha! When she starts trialing, watch out. Take cover. Run away and hide, but then peek out carefully and watch. We thought she would be a nice girlfriend for Gustavo but he is terrified of her. Talk about small fast kick yer ass.

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!

Team Small Dog's favorite things.

This is popular. We call it "That Skanky Gross Thing."


I am a little bit mean to my dogs. I don't really buy them toys. They all share this. Provides hours of fun.

Are we having fun yet?

Sometimes we drive by the covered bridge.

As a rule, I think that you should stay away from covered bridges. Because of: headless horsemen, zombies, ghosts of long gone bandits with gold plated watches on a chain, drowning victims in long black veils, and throat slitted pioneers. Oh, and ghosts of loggers who died when they cut their own legs off with chainsaws. All of them hang out in covered bridges.


This one was built in the 1800's, and sits across the river by the big redwood trees. It is spooky indeed. You can sit on it and listen for something. Echos of plodding hoofbeats maybe. Muffled screams from from the riverbank. Interviews with Goldman Sachs guys on NPR. Sounds that come out of the forest at night. Creepy, crackly, dark sounds.


I have an Otterpop, of course. When you have one of these, you can't be too afraid to walk across, and look out of one of the window slits at the river.


Everybody needs an Otterpop.

Discrimination training the Team Small Dog way.

OMG. We are resuming our dog show career this weekend.

I forget when we last had this career? It's like one of those things from days gone by that pops into your head, like you are driving down the freeway and in pops the time you were at the picnic with various members of the Dead Kennedy's and a Dead Kennedy wife got all crabby pants over Timmy being too close to the picnic spread and her toddler and said something mean about Timmy and then maybe you said something mean back and then poof, it all goes hazy and you missed your freeway exit?

And you can't remember when this was, or if it was even real, except that there is a deja vu floating around behind your eyeballs and you just KNOW you are supposed to stop somewhere to buy rubber gloves because last time you were the Garbage Lady at the dog show, you really wished you had a good sturdy pair and that's what you were thinking about the dog show.

And, not to beleaguer a moot point, but Garbage Lady spelled sort of backwards and mixed up is almost the same as Lady Gaga. So if you see me hauling around bags of trash this weekend, just think of me as Lady Gaga and not the Garbage Lady. Sometimes she wears gloves and other items of clothing made of rubber and latex, too.


Which brings me to the important point I was actually trying to make. I noticed that Gustavo was rusty on tunnel and a-frame discriminations. Namely because with the other dogs, I don't even think about this. I use the right cue, and get the right behavior and it is kind of a no brainer. I thought this was the case with Gustavo, but when we were practicing yesterday, oops. Gustavo needs to practice things. A lot. That's just how he rolls.

My non-dog agility friends, let me refresh your memories. A discrimination is when you have 2 enticing obstacles right next to each other, say a tunnel and an a-frame, and your dog must have the discriminating taste to know which one to take. Rarely do you, the handler, actually want to have to run over there and tell them. So tiresome. You probably want to run somewhere else and your dog should know via either magic or training which one to do.


We have a secret handshake that tells them this. Which sounds much cooler than a distinct training cue meaning, Arm Out-Go to the Thing on the Outside and Shoulder In-Take the Thing on the Inside. A foundation skill, kittens. When you're running fast, you use this with various degrees of obvious. Otterpop just KNOWS. Ruby wants you to be pretty obvious. She is spot on with her verbals, though.


Gustavo needed a short refresher course to refresh things. Things smelled better in a flash. I did forget to stop and buy the rubber gloves though.

In the spring, sometimes I wear my checkered grandma blouse when we walk in the breezy air.

Racial, gender, class and breed based profiling and why I do not work in homeland security.

So we're heading down the stairs to the beach at Mitchell's, and I look down the cliff and see 2 dogs, 1 people down there. This is important to count, because if the ratio of pitbulls sans recalls is too high, we keep walking. Just one scruffy Jack Russel based dog, and a cropped ear, BIG dude of a pitbull. There's a skater guy with much visible tattoo action down there in a black work jacket and long shorts, leaning against a rock and having a smoke, and some ladies in fitness wear running up and down the stairs. Admirable, ladies. Later, I will view them doing pushups and special exercises with rubber bands, in full view and full sun. Rock on.

The 2 dogs look like they're chilling, no mean pitbull vibes, and I send down the dogs.

When we hit the sand, I approach big guy pitbull first, because we're going to all walk right through his personal space zone and he appears highly interested by Team Small Dog coming down on the beach. I figure, skater guy, he's right there, and big guy isn't eating the terrier dog, so chances are good that he's not a terrorist. But, because of homeland security and all, he is somewhat guilty until proven innocent.

I don't get the best vibe. Not the worst, but enough that I am walking backwards to keep eagle eye on him and my dogs as we walk over to the end of the beach. I am walking backwards so well that I fall ass over tea kettle on to a giant exposed beach rock.

Fitness lady comes RUNNING down the stairs, presumably because I am fitness challenged, except it's to corral Snickers. Who is the big dude gangsta style pitbull. Who she has been yelling at from on top of the stairs except I figured was the scruffy dog. Because, you know. Lady in pink Nike top? Terrier, and black Dickies and neck tattoo? Pitbull. He gets tied up at the top of the stairs. Skater guy is just leaning against the big rock that sticks up in the middle of the beach, finishing his smoke. He's with the little dog.

We climb the sea wall and are off doing our thing at the other side of the beach, by the sewage waterfall and where the good rocks and sticks are. Doing our thing can be a lot of things. There is stick throwing and rock climbing and jumping the run-off river and if I was in a good enough mood, I might have been singing Courtney Love songs in my best Tom Waits voice. Watching the seal swim and thinking about pancakes.

Ladies are doing their fitness thing on the stairs, skater guy and terrier are on the other side of the beach playing with sticks, and I see a new pack of dogs come down. Older guy in that sort of normal guy you might see at the natural foods store way, with a pack of little fluffy dogs. Bichon and lhasa apso based. Fluffy short moppets, running around. Never seen them before. Precious. If you like those low to the ground, barrette needing, little fluffy dogs.

We're heading that way because our expiration date of must get to work is near. As we walk into the moppet fray, I am still throwing Otterpop's stick for her into the sea. Ruby is meandering near us doing one of her mysterious projects. What that dog does, I can't really figure out. One day, Ruby will totally have the secret to the universe, and when she tells me, I'll only be able to say something like, "WHOA, DUDE! Awesome!"

I am so lame, compared to Ruby.

So I look up, and the little dog pack, that I figured would be oh-so-safe, hello. An angry pack of running short legged mops has packed up on poor Gustavo, and I can see his panic button has gone off. He's such a little weenie, which I mean in a totally nice way. He gets scared of stuff. And right now, he is scared of a horrible little flock of fluffballs that are chasing him, barking, up the beach stairs towards Snickers the tied up pitbull. When I call him to come back down, he can't get down because they are planted all over the stairs, the army of them, yapping. They look like yarn. Riled up, dangerous yarn.

Somehow they all turn around, and run back down the stairs. In his efforts to run over to us, he is again pursued by the lot of them and they pin him up against the sea wall. He looks terrified, but they're all really, really tiny. If you like to wear wigs to Star Trek events, then you know about Tribbles which are fluffy little hamsters that travel in a pack and take over space ships. Just like that.

The older gentleman starts plucking them up, and silently tossing them on top of the sea wall. One by one, each yapping chunk of curls. Until Gustavo is free and we are free to leave and there's a seal wall full of these horrible little dogs.

As I start up the stairs, the skater guy walks over.

"That guy," he goes, eyeballing towards older gentleman and tiny little friends, "and those dogs, wake me up. Every morning. They love next door. Awful."

Who knew. Next time, I'll take the bad vibe pitbull.

Consolation prize for the working stiffs.

If, you are like me and you are missing the big 4 day dog agility trial this week, you are very sad. Everybody else is sleeping in RV's and not going to work and hanging out with their pals and running their dogs for 4 whole days. Around these parts, it's called Haute Tracs (pronounced Hot Trax) and it's a 4 day trial in Dixon. Maybe you have one of these in your parts.

In my parts, I am like the ONLY one not going. EVERYBODY else somehow gets out of work for 4 days and can pay for this many days of entries while not working. An incredible and impossible feat, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe you are up there right now and reading this in your iphone.

Hi!

Do you miss me? Did you even notice I wasn't there?

I didn't think so. Sigh.

If you're staying home, here's a fun little bit of a sequence for you. We ran it last night. The moon is a tunnel. I think that looks nicer. Everybody screwed it up, although I got it right the first time when I came through with a second dog. I have a really good way to run it. People tried different things, but I think my way was the only way to make it work on the first try. Set it up. Try it. It's a fun one to practice.

The soundtrack edition-there is a point to this and it involves This Blog has Moved so keep reading even if you're all, huh?

The other night I watched a documentary about the Runaways. Because I wore all the same outfits as those girls in junior high and tried to get my hair to do that. And played guitar. And let's not forget the eyeliner. Where my neighborhood was all predictable sprinkler systems and station wagons sparkling in the sun, they were smokey Hollywood nights and unreliable motorcycle guys with tattoos and leather hair. I was sort of insulted I was never invited to join the Runaways, back in the day, but it's probably better in the long run.

The thing I like about rockumentaries is seeing how everybody turned out, later on. Seeing how the past designed the future. Sometimes things later on turn out better, sometimes worse. Jackie the Runaways bass player became an attorney and if you google her, you can read an interview she did about rescuing cats with Susan Olsen who was Cindy Brady and now they both really like cats. Joan Jett became Joan Jett. The other Runaways have husky voices and look a little weathered and don't sound like the happiest ladies I know.

Otterpop's soundtrack has always been the Runaways song Cherry Bomb. I think things are easier to remember and are tidier when they have soundtracks. Like instead of filing stuff to organize it, I make sure that I know what it's soundtrack is. This way of dealing with business records and tax papers and so forth is probably questionable, and less tidy in the long run, and if my accountant knew this was one of how I did my bookkeeping she would not be so nice and give me proactive weeping kleenex when I come in to pick up my taxes. Because instead of using QuickBooks I have soundtracks.


Here's one. I think that the difference between Greg Derret Handling System and Linda Mecklenberg Handling System is David Bowie vs. Stevie Nicks. I believe that the songs Queen Bitch and Rhiannon illustrate this perfectly. This makes perfect sense to me. I think it does to you too?

This blog has had different soundtracks. It used to be The Eels song Packing Blankets. Then for a while it was Black Mountain, in my Canadian rocker period. Last week, it was Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown. I change it a lot. I probably don't always tell you.

But here, today, I'm telling you this. Not only does it have a new soundtrack, but it has MOVED! Wow! Thank you Ellen, most efficient and easiest blog mover around! If you're reading this, you figured it out but what you can do is if your blog bookmarks mine, change it, right now, to http://blog.teamsmalldog.com. Change your readers, too. And for just today, since it's a special occasion, YOU get to pick the soundtrack. Over and out.

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Reboot, restart, refresh, redo.

At least they hold really still when they sleep.

Ruby, always the optimist although she sometimes hears witches in her brain and I'm not sure you really go on what she says, would tell you yesterday was a lovely day of napping in the rain.

I would say otherwise. In fact, I am stamping my foot and declaring that this blog is closed until Gustavo and Otterpop feel better. They both got terribly sore legs from their rabies vaccine. Monday is our day off. Instead of fun, dogs limped and whimpered, then slept, making funny noises. Many checks were written to US Treasury and Franchise Tax Board. It rained. My pants were too tight. We would like a day off do-over, please.

The hippie doc comes down off the mountain.

I don't like to go to the doctor's office. Neither do the dogs. When it's time for them to get a shot we wait for the hippie vet to come down off the mountain. I don't give my dogs many shots. Kind of a minimalist vaccinator. 3 year program. Today, everybody went to see the hippie doc for a rabies. She sets up shop in a closet at a local dog wash, and carries the vaccines in from her beat up old car in an ice chest.

She wears purple tie dye scrubs and a helper that looks like she used to help Dr. Frankenstein in the castle. Cloris Leachman but way taller. Hippie doc has scraggly gray hair, and is a little stooped like she lives under a tree, her helper is briskly efficient and seems like the type of person that doesn't put up with idiots. I actually like this doc very much. I'm not sure what her business plan is, she charges just $10 for each shot. There's always a line to visit her in her closet, you take a number and sit in a chair, where you can watch people wash their dogs. It was raining today. No one washing dogs.

There was a cat in a cage on a greasy haired lady's lap. A guy with a pitbull. A guy with a lab. Some ladies with puppies, each with a posse of kids. I was sitting there dogless, holding number 5 in my hand. The dogs stayed out in the car until number 4 went into the closet.

I asked one of the kids, "Te amo su perrito?"

My Spanish grammar sucks. Probably right at 5 year old level. But he got it and head butted the baby lab, laying in his mom's lap under a pink baby blanket. The mom had eyebrows that were just thin painted lines and tall hair. The kids ran off to play by the empty dog tubs.

It's not medicine for everyone. I go in and tell her what the dogs need, hang on to them while she sticks them, and hand her over some cash. Fast and easy. Good for ferals. There are bags of dog food stacked up in the closet, Ruby climbs on top and contemplates opening one. It's a little less stressful than being in the vet hospital. Just everybody hanging out together in the broom closet. Next year our big trip to the broom closet is for a 3 year DHLPP. She's a minimalist too. But also realistic. There's a lot of vaccines out there, and I just don't think that every dog needs them. Hippie doc, not trying to make sales.

I've never asked my vet friends what they think of the hippie doc. Not even sure if they know about her. She's a DVM, but I think she flies a little low under the radar. It's pretty DIY. Works good for me.

Cloris Leachman stomps out to find number 6. The dogs are done with standing around in the closet, we'll see her again next year.

Everybody's got an opinion on dog vaccines. I've been getting emails about a bill in California about rabies vaccines marked URGENT but I'm not sure what it's about. Is it forcing Californians to get rabies vaccines? Or it's sneaking something else up on us? Like making us get rabies more than every 3 years? Going to make us keep giving it to old dogs? I stopped giving it to Timmy at some point. Maybe I was breaking the law. I guess I should have asked hippie doc, but she had a row of dogs and cats waiting in the pet suppies section for her.

I know it hits the small dogs hard. Does the same thing with ponies. Gustavo and Otterpop are both limping around and just enjoyed some baby aspiring, gave them some last night as well. Hate to do this to them. But would hate someone to ever get rabies. Maybe you can enlighten us?

If you listen carefully, you can hear when the monkeys start jumping all over the snare drum.

Gustavo has a soundtrack. Imagine mariachi surf music, except played triple fast by a marching band made up of very talented monkeys. With go go dancers. When you see him coming, he's always got his soundtrack on.


When he stops, there's little brake sounds like from the Flintstones. Like when Fred has to scrape his feet on the bedrock to stop his rock car. Eeeeeerrrr.


And he's all, "I LOVE YOU!" Even if you are a lizard.


He loves to harass Otterpop.


She might be just laying there, guarding a hole in the ground.


The dog rules are, everyone should just dig up their own squirrel hole. One dog per hole. Do not steal someone else's squirrel hole. Unless you are Otterpop, in which case you can have anyone's squirrel hole. But do not steal Otterpop's squirrel hole. There are penalties for this.


Gustavo tends to ignore rules. This drives Otterpop crazy.


It can be quite a standoff of the wills. Someone has a very stubborn will and someone has mariachi surf music played by monkeys. In little bolero jackets.


And so we go.

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!

A few things that might be nice to discuss.

Speed traps. IE, like when a cop sits in the bushes by an apple packing plant where, yeah. The speed limit MIGHT be posted as 35, but EVERYBODY drives way faster there. How do we feel about groveling? IE, "Please please please please pleeeeease Officer, PLEASE do not write me a ticket?"

Leaning out of the car window. "PPPPPLLLLEEEAASSEEEEE!"

The officer was a stout lady with a very, very short, and might I add, unflattering haircut. She said, "I'll see what I can do." And then walked back to the squad car and wrote me a ticket.

I have learned not to take pictures of cops.

Tarantulas. I think one of the nice things in my life right now is that I do not have to worry about tarantulas in the house or falling from the sky on to my head. Or the heads of loved ones. If I remind loved ones of this fact, sometimes loved ones are not as impressed as I and turn the sound back on the guys playing tv sports.

Dog agility. I do not think I used to wheeze and huff and puff from running dogs like I do right now. I believe that there was an exercise program and it has fizzled into nothing. Into shambling, actually. Susan Garrett said we should get a little round trampoline and bounce our ways into size 4. I am pretty much just trying to stay pleased about lack of tarantulas (see above.) There isn't much bouncing or running, just huffing and puffing. To this I say, hell's bells.

The lazy bum in me keeps thinking, every day as I rush out the door, life is too short to work this hard. What happened to all the fun bits? The doodling? The painting studio? Huh? Huh? HUH?

Which do you think is worse? A boring, whiney blog post, or Kate Gosselin and hair extensions having a new reality show with her pack of something something tuplets?

This also, could be a nice thing to discuss.

Hello from Dirt Nite, wish you were here.

Dirt Nite was swell. I let Otterpop and Gustavo run last night, Hobbes had to stay home with a sore fingernail problem. We missed him. Ruby took one for the Team and stayed out on the bench. It was fun to trade off little dogs back and forth though, real fun until Gustavo who has been so good at sitting quietly in his soft crate ringside decided to claw a hole through his door with his decidedly non sore fingernails while I ran Otterpop. So much for all my well behaved Gustavo in class project.

His friend Wings sits quietly in her crate and doesn't chew holes in it. Actually, I take Gustavo out for a little walk when Wings has her turn because Gustavo monkey screams just as loudly for Rob running Wings as he does when I run Otterpop and Hobbes. But then again, Wings is going to the Czech Republic in July for the European Open of Dog Agility and Gustavo was not invited to this. A coincidence? I think not. But we are VERY excited for Rob and Wings.

Pop and Gman ran great, speedy and pretty much a-ok, until their very last run when both had little teeter totter moments. Did Otterpop watch Gustavo freak out and jump off? I dunno, because she did the same thing. Maybe it was me and some weirdo handling? Entirely possible, and I will go with that. First Gustavo, some post traumatic teeter stress thing, then Otterpop with an abandon ship right after.

To my teeter bailers, I say life goes on. Teeter totters are part of the big time space continuum, and you got your ups and you got your downs and some days, you go with it and other days, good god. You just want to fling yourself off the side and lay on the closet floor drinking a mai-tai, listening to Wilco really, really loud. Really though, you have to learn, even if you are just a dog, to hang on tight and the second it hits the floor, go running fast on to the next thing. It's a blip on your horizon. Just deal with it.

So then we just ran around some more again and everything was fine and we dragged the stuff back into the trailer and called it a night. There's always something. I was happy to have fast, focused and generally error free dogs. I look past a gaping hole in the crate door and some deviant teeter behavior and am happy to see them, right now, all bitey facing each other on the couch.

Right on, over and out.

In case you ever had any question about Otterpop's hobby.

We all have these things to do we enjoy. Me, for instance? I find it relaxing to type out little stories. I also enjoy dog agility, wandering around, taking photos, and walking briskly in solitary venues. I like to draw things with pens or small brushes. I have some collections, mainly, but not limited to vintage deer and squirrel statuettes, paint by numbers of horses standing still, naive paintings of small black dogs, old commemorative plates with decorate state maps, and sub standard taxidermy.


I'm a simple person, these things amuse me to no end. Dogs, I think, also enjoy hobbies, although I am not sure if they view them as such. Otterpop takes what at first glance, seems to be a hobby, very seriously. Likely for her, somewhere, deep inside, is genetically hardwired for her to MUST HAVE STICK. It could be worse. Like the people who wear wigs to Star Trek conventions?


Stick can be a seaweed, or a tree branch, a chunk of driftwood, or a fence post. She's not very picky, as long as it's the biggest one. Her eyes go glazey, and if you take it from her and throw it more than once or twice, her pupils upgrade to total screwball, and the manic demon inside takes over. Stick can send her over to her dark side. That's Star Wars talk, if you are wearing a wig.


Fetching Stick is fine, but the main draw of the fetching part of hobby is the possession. She's a collector. This is something that she has to have. She knows it when she sees it. One Stick per day is how it works. This particular stick pictured in today's photoshoot was drug up and down the beach, up and over the sea wall, pulled up the high rocks, and even yanked out of her mouth and thrown in the sea for her to retrieve by a brave, wetsuited surfer. Otterpop does all of her own stuntwork, by the way.


I know obsession with things is a pretty standard herding dog behavior. Not sure what Otterpop was designed to herd. Sticks seem to work well for her. Because once she has collected, she likes to spend some quality time chewing on and barking at. Do border collies enjoy this with sheep? Is this why we have agility, to keep sheep safer?


It's not really a hobby for the whole family. I would say, me and the other dogs, we all like sticks ok, but not to the degree of obsession that Otterpop has about Stick. We are all, on the whole, less obsessive types than she is. That's ok, everybody has their own thing. Gary shouts at gentleman playing sports on tv. Ruby goes to bingo. Everybody needs to be a little bit different. We do other things together. Agility. Walking around. Hell, most of the time I am just going to work and don't even have time for hobby. So have at it, Otterpop. Enjoy.

That stuff, back there, would be the agility stuff.

OMG. Team Small Dog got to practice. This is not a tall tail. God Bless America! No one was lame. No one freaked out and ran away into the forest. No one flung their body through any jumps. No one leaped off yellow paint. Then I ripped out the caulking in my shower with a sharp thing and no one can take showers at my house. Can I just say it again? God Bless America!

Team Small Dog's Easter Picnic at the beach.

From what I recall about Easter, Jesus died and is the reason we are always VERY careful when using the nailgun, and then we might be able to go to Heaven unless we neglected to go to confession with a priest that may or may not be a pedophile, and then a secret rabbit hides eggs layed by chickens, and the day cumulates in See's candy and a canned ham.


Oh, and bonnets. To do Easter right, someone is supposed to be wearing the bonnet. We have one somewhere around here, but we call it scurvy monkey bonnet and it's really just a dirty chunk of polar fleece.


And now I'm already a liar, we didn't even exactly have a picnic. I better not be going to Hell. We just walked down to the beach like we would on any old day. It WAS Easter though, and it was low tide. And we did stay down there long enough that the other dogs all left, and we watched the sky go from cloudy to sun to here comes the storm on our own private beach. So, I think this is sort of like having a picnic. If it isn't, then for now on, it is.


This winter, the beach closest to my house, affectionately known as Shit Beach, for it's rancid sewage smell of rotting seaweed all summer long, has been tiny to nonexistent, with winter tides and the sand being washed south to the new sand bar at Cowell's. Some days I can boost the dogs and boost myself up the old sea wall to find a patch of running sand, but that's the closest thing to actual beach it's been for a while. The first low tides of spring have brought some sand back, albeit about 10 feet lower than it used to be.


Later on Easter morning, the girl behind the register at Trader Joe's had skeleton tattoos on her neck. I was buying some pancake syrup. Her eyeliner was as thick as my thumb, and I right away hoped she would still be happy about the big skulls and crossbones under her ear when she was 40. I wonder if she was looking at me thinking, I wonder if I'll ever turn into THAT, when I'm 40. She smiled at me when I left and said, "Have a good night, dude."

Where a little wind, and animated fox puppets help clear away the fog.

This week I went sort of brain dead for a too many days of busy-ness. Work gets busy and life gets busy and I am sensitive to busy. It affects my constitution. My brain pores get clogged, and anything of lofty, empirical value becomes foggy and congealed, sort of like you are looking at things through a coat of pineapple jello in a haze of finely shredded corduroy. I like to have blank spaces in every day to think about important things.

I can't think of any of these important things right now for an illustrative example.

Maybe, like, where are my sunglasses?

No. More important than this. FOCUS. Big picture things. The delicate relationships between human and animal behavior. Nostalgic reflection, Chloe Sevigny and do the people who write little poems for Hallmark cards wear those really high heeled platform shoes and pencil skirts? FOCUS. Can dog agility handling systems be described using words from French deconstructionism and which is more relevant if you just feel like making cupcakes? Why didn't I think up the Fantastic Mr. Fox?

These are poor examples but I am still brain dead so if you have any better ideas just let me know. Like this but better. And really, where ARE my sunglasses?

You get the picture. It's still foggy in there. Where was I?

Also, I left the dogs home for a few days. I felt bad for Gary. He was held captive of knee surgery and no driving or walking or anything good, so what would someone held captive need at home? Their own Team Small Dog! My sidekicks got lent out for their therapeutic value. He didn't ask for them, but it is my belief that the presence of these dogs make everything certainly better.

Usually, I take the dogs everywhere. Even work. Even the grocery store. Because you never know if there could be a detour to the forest or the beach or just a walk down some railroad tracks somewhere. The feral in me is easily called to distraction, and missed opportunity, so sad. Opportunity, fizzled, shizzled down the drain. So we just go every place, together. We are all attached at the hips. I am never alone with a whole Team Small Dog riding shotgun, as we roll from one sunset to the next.

Driving down the freeway with empty dog cages in the back, I tried the car stereo on really loud in the back speakers with that little button you wiggle under the volume. Something I wouldn't ever do with the dogs in the back of the car. I am not one of those free range, cage free, dog drivers. My dogs get held captive in plastic airplane crates in my car. Ruby and Otterpop share the blue one, and Gustavo has the bachelor version. I put stickers on them to make them look cool, like skateboard decks but actually this doesn't help. My car is hopelessly full of geeky, plastic dog cages. But the dogs like them ok. Maybe not Gustavo. He stares at the back of my head through his door all the time. Ruby and Otterpop just sleep.

Listening to a Meat Puppets songs blasting out from behind empty dog crates, it didn't really sound any different. My car is missing one of the speakers anyways, so stereo is sort of a misnomer. The mono. Have you ever heard David Bowie songs played mono? It sounds weird. But it's how me and the dogs enjoy our music, all the places we like to go in the car. From the front speakers so sensitive canine ears, that usually twitch at the tiniest sound from far away, don't get blasted out; I like to listen to music really loud in the car.

When I got home every night, there were stories about Otterpop and the mailman, and dogs sleeping outside on the sun, and everyone together during knee icing on the bed. Big happy freakouts when I got home. I sat on the floor, throwing Ruby's ball for her and tug of warring with Otterpop with her soggy Christmas doll, and throwing bits of fluff in the air for Gustavo, which I suspect he stole out of a couch pillow which is something I should be cross about except actually, I kind of don't care. Did they miss me? Did they notice I was gone? Gary thought yes, but we aren't really sure.

The next blank moment I had, we had a walk to the whale skeletons, where the North coast winds are already drying the green grasses into foxtails. Gustavo turns into one of the animated foxes out there, like they modeled the puppets on his face. His eyeballs quiver and spin, running through the scrub brush, under delicate bridges of tough old wood and tiny spring buds. Those North coast winds, slam loud into your ears when you walk straight into them. If your ears are sensitive like dogs, you have to drop your head and maybe walk sideways. But if you get down low, crawl on all fours down into the brush, and just lay low for a while, all you'll hear is the prettiest sound of grass blowing. Much better than one stereo speaker chugging out Dark Side of the Moon from behind empty dog crates in a car. For a while, we all just sat out there, where no one could see us, under the bushes. Listening to nothing but the wind sounds. And this helps clear away the fog.

The slim window between mud and foxtail.