All the time I used to write about agility and then I didn't and so I thought today, how about if I do again?

You know we still do agility, right?

We practice, I try to train better. I work on handling, and the dogs work on what they work on. Otterpop loves practicing. Otterpop hates a lot of things. Here are just a few of them: trucks with weird suction tanks on them or car washing brushes for sweeping the street, UPS trucks, motorhomes, most other dogs, most people, human beings touching her skin, mailmen, squirrels, the mailman who looks like a squirrel but who is really a robot and lives on our block, and trick or treaters.

Otterpop loves doing agility though. I know that something is going more wrong with her wonky leg, but I still let her run. Because it's one of the only things that makes her happy. Even happier than running courses is the learning things. She loves to have do-overs and do-overs and do-overs again. I set up very hard things to do and do-over with Otterpop when we practice and I have to get better at showing her how to do it and she gets to do it over again and again and AGAIN!

Pretty much right now that's weird bits from international courses we do running as fast as we can. With blind crosses. And gambles. Oh, the gambles I make her. We get into many gamble pickles, me and her, but then we get out.

I've entered her in a trial in a couple weeks. A rare 2 days. I'm afraid to run her in more than a couple classes each day, and I have no idea if she'll even run in a trial anymore. But that's what we're going to do. And sleep in a motel, too.


Practicing with Gustavo is so very, very different. Couldn't be more different. Like opposite-land down under across the equatorial divide bi polar ying yang different strokes kriss kross backwards pants from how me and Otterpop practice and how Otterpop and Ruby learn. He's entered in a couple of classes each day at the next trial, and I have no prediction on how he'll run. None at all.

His performance in trials is like everything else with him. Very unpredictable. He has been awesome practicing for the last few weeks, focusing and recalling and finding very difficult pole entries. But you never know when he won't be. Any time this can happen. That's how it goes with him, and is why I know his runs in the trial could be a bust. But we're trying anyways, because, tenaciousness and tenacity get you at least somewhere. Somewhere like a night in the Travelodge. An upgrade from Motel 6!

But just so you know. We are still out there in the field, trying very hard. Yes indeed. There is a fabulous, fantastic, far out irony that Otterpop's body is giving out while her brain wants to do agility, and Gustavo's brain is barely holding on while his body wants to do agility, and I am just out there, frisbee in hand, hopping up and down and yelling, "YAY HOORAY!" a lot.