The time that Laura did the blind cross in agility class.

Doing a blind cross in front on Nancy Gyes is sort of like farting in the presence of the queen. Like if some royalty from another country blows gas during a royalty board meeting, everyone lets the vapor waft across the room unnoticed, like a lavender cloud, and everyone keeps murmuring about corgis and the labour party and drinks their tea.

Perhaps the spider has just barked. Royalty ensues.

If, on the other hand, the blind cross is done by someone like me, poorly, and in a blue state, this is a problem. A red state move best practiced in the privacy of one's own bathroom.

"Was that a blind cross?" Nancy yells across the field.

"Yeah! Right! Cool! Like a party trick? Sort of international?" I yell back. I had just totally screwed up the rest of Otterpop's sequence due to the blind cross actually being a bonehead idea and instead of sending me to the position of my dreams for the rest of the fast running bit, backfired and left me behind in disasterland, resulting in an ending with a massive, insane flickaway. Oops.

My rememberance of blind crossing physics disregarded the part of Daisy's video where she says that if you could just do a front cross, you should just do that. This was that kind of situation. Mostly I just thought it would look rad and what the hell. This is not good decision making or mental management, both important things to work on in dog agility. Not just Euro radness.

Nancy kept standing out there in the dark, shivering in the freezingness of the night, waiting for me to do it again. And again. This time with the front cross.

Afterwards, I asked my friend Jen if I looked like a rad European handler doing my blind cross.

She just looked at me like I had three heads. "Uh, NO?"

The selection of what moves to handle a course with is best derived from your consistent handling system that you have carefully and systematically trained your dog with, as opposed to fancy style points. Dogs do not need bedazzling and bling. But in a class of big, fast border collies, sometimes I think my little dogs need some flair. PIzzaz. Dramatic interpretive expressiveness.

I confessed to learning this from Daisy's internet blind crossing school. "Only with Otterpop. Never, ever with Gustavo." I didn't tell Nancy how I practiced mostly with trees, not dogs.

Nancy said blind crosses are ok if we just do one. Per year.

"Um..."

If Robert Downey Jr. is like Santa and totally KNOWS about stuff like this, then I think I lose my dog agility handling license and thugs from the orphanage come and take away my dogs tomorrow. Does he have a hotline? I might have to flee across the border to Canada. Where Greg Derrett Handling System is also practiced.

Maybe Mexico?