This is a love fest, but like the kind they had at Woodstock when it rained and everybody flipped out on the brown acid.

All right, we will begin today's lesson with a video from a July trial, where Gustavo does a Team Standard run, the kind WITHOUT a table in it.



We breathe a sigh of relief, and watch it again. Sometimes, he knows how to do agility. And looks like he loves doing it. To our credit, at this weekend's trial, he hit every dogwalk and a-frame contact, had perfect weave poles, and excellent listening and watching of me skills.


However. The dreaded teeter totter fear, which had been gone, came back. That one has a solution. Back to bazillions of teeter totters again, as many as we can do, jackpotting first successful attempt, all the time. Because we have all the time in the world to drive around and road test strange teeter totters. But we'll do it. Again.

Because I'm insane.

The table is a problem I can't re-create. We do lots of tables when we practice, and it's a normal, fun piece of equipment for him. But in about 50% of trials, he goes into a vortex that sends him down under the table, back up, and back under, until I finally drag him off the field. Like my favorite border collie ever in the whole universe, Gustavo won't lay down on the table in trials.

Hobbes, at least, stands there and stares at me. Gustavo goes into the vortex, and stars a cycle of jumping off and crawling underneath, then jumping back on and back underneath, repeating as necessary until I drag him off the field. Those vortex moments, freak me out.


Otterpop. How you vex me, let me count the ways.

1. You are one of the most awesome agility dogs I know. You are crazy fast. You are crazy accurate. You know Greg Derrett rules like a sunnuvabitch. You are a mofo, spot on, gamble queen. You step to the startline, barking and ready to go. And, in an instant that is shorter than an instant, you go squinty eyed, and turn into some Stepford dog that only shows up on startlines of USDAA trials, and start off slow.

2. When you do this, you give the judge the evil eye, and get on top of the a-frame and look like you are about to launch into the judge's sensible sun hat and make a nest in his or her's hair. Or do something worse than hair nest making. And then somehow, after a few obstacles, you snap out of it, and off you go like Otterpop the Not So Evil Again.

3. When this starts happening, I lose my cool and my handling goes to pieces and Houston, we have a trainwreck out there. It's was like shock and horror to see her doing slow weave poles on Sunday. Otterpop. Slow weave poles? I am tearing my hair out here.

Otterpop, to our credit, came home with Q's on Sunday. She racked up another gamble. But it's not Q's that I'm looking for. She has loads of those. Someone told me she made it into 8" Top Ten in something or other last year. I don't care about this with her. I am just looking for my super awesome Otterpop who lives to do agility everywhere else, except for at the startline of runs in select trials.


When I think about my dogs, my heart swells up like a big, bloated, beached whale that is self inflating from noxious gases and about to burst through the thick, rotting whale blubber due to the swollenness of it all. BTW, make sure that if you tell your sweetie you love them this much, that they are like my best ever Valentine's husband and rotting whale blubber exploding all over the place doesn't really phase them. Me and my dogs love practicing and training and running around together. But the secret to getting the same dogs to show up in the show ring, still, after all this time, eludes me.

I seek enlightenment.