Monday is always team practice day.

The weirdest thing about Gustavo is, as rotten as it is to have days where he escapes through rat holes and jumps off cliffs, or can't look at me or stand still or lay down on a table, he can just as easily be supremely awesomely amazing, and not put a foot wrong, no matter what we do. There is a level of inconsistency at work here, sort of akin to the unpredictable mood swings of the unmedicated bipolar. Or the overmedicated unbipolar. Except that Gustavo doesn't go homicidal or screamy, his special brain voice tells him to flee over a cliff so as to run apeshit through the latticed underworld of a mobile home park. And some days he's a trained dog.

Yesterday's practice was one of the supreme high glitz royale days. They have those days at toddler beauty pagents, too. The Discovery Channel tells me so. The winner gets a sparkly crown and a discount therapy coupon for the day they hit the puberty wall. The beaming mommy feels like the best mommy ever, and promises the toddler a brand new fake teeth that look just like the mommy teeth, except not quite so sharp and pointy. Everyone is bedazzled, then drives home together in a mini van.


Gustavo just wins some string cheese and a game of frisbee. I don't even know why I still wonder why he can be like this on some days, and so out there on others. How these kind of days, not even a moment of unfocused blurry brain wavering. Not a millisecond, not a one. These are days when I win the dog trainer jackpot and all the other blurry unfocused areas of my life sharpen up for a bit. I do have a trained dog who wants nothing more than to do agility with me.

A dog lady's dream come true. We are simple folk, us dog ladies, yet complicated in other ways.

This meant we were able to practice sequences, blistering hard weave entries like the dreaded soft sided 90 degree whammy, and tables. Beautiful, fast, all laying down all the time, tables. I can do a little dance in the grocery store on the way home, a little shimmy shimmy tap dance, because of awesome, kick ass agility.

I know. This is like a broken record. An endless loop. You are bored with hearing it and wish I wrote about exciting things, like Spanish movies or large real estate purchases or Frye boots. Me too.