A very long weekend of dog agility.

We're just back from a 3 day USDAA trial in Santa Rosa. This is up north, past San Francisco, past Marin, far north towards the tundras.

3 days. Correct and right on. I drove up for the evening classes after work on Saturday, because my excellent predicting had a feeling it was going to be a long day. Night jumpers! Each dog ran a couple classes Sunday, and Gustavo ran on a team on Monday.


While the rest of the world was listening to inauguration hallelujah, we were in a dog agility bubble for days. Not even the Niners game and Mavericks breaking penetrated the bubble. The bubble also involved icy freezing mittens many jackets until noon, when it warmed up enough for swimsuits. Outside events not involving dogs, or dog agility, or online dating are not discussed in the bubble. 3 days of a bubble is a lot of bubble.


3 days times 2 nights equals Motel 6. It was the fancy kind of Motel 6, though, with a shower curtain and everything. The really nice clerk from Nepal gave me my own little tool to use so the heater worked. How often do you meet someone from Nepal? Who is industrious and creative enough to craft a customized heater operation tool? Motel 6, you are good to me. And right around the corner from Starbucks.


It was so cold out at night that the dogs didn't ever want to leave Motel 6. They were ready to live on the cigarette burn polyester seascape bedspread forever. With the Jang family right next door! Usually when you put on their leashes they leap around joyfully by the door. This is a rare and weird photo of dogs when there is ice outside on surfaces that will touch them. Much more ice than we ever have at our house. They had to wear clothing just to go get in the car. We are ready for you now, Canada and Alaska. Northward!


Me and Mary also visited a joint I had heard all about on tv called the Olive Garden. Happy people go there to eat and have quality time with friends and family. It's sort of like a Disneyland of noodles and breadsticks. I mean pasta. I believe they prefer that term over noodles at corporate. The restrooms are very clearly marked and the servers genuinely like you there. There are Roman busts made of resin in the rafters. It was just like on tv!


Loads of our friends were at dog agility this weekend. Friends with rv's who will make you even more coffee in the morning! I'm not too proud to go coffee begging to rv's. It was team day. Do you know how much that would have sucked to be less than exactly caffeinated before Team Gamblers?


We had all groovy fun times. There was a lot of sitting in the car for the dogs. But the car was conveniently parked to the frisbee chasing field, under a shady oak tree. And they had Motel 6 to look forward to every night! Otterpop adjusted to being retired from dog showing just fine. Let her do her gamblers and then play some frisbee, have some walks. She got the hard gamble on Sunday. Of course. Because this is now Otterpop's thing. Everybody needs a thing.


Hey, in the Golden Gate bridge traffic on the way home I saw exactly 5 other agility pals also sitting in traffic! Tired people and tired dogs, everybody probably listening to Beyonce hurl out the national anthem with extra added fancy notes.


So the agility? Gustavo ran great. He never stopped trying his hardest and never stopped running his fastest. He attempted exactly one teeter totter in Team Standard and ran halfway up, turned around and ran back down. Hell yeah. It's ok. I didn't care. Good for him for attempting it. We didn't always run clean but we always ran all out. I busted out some excellent blind crosses, and really messed up one in team jumpers. You only live once. We are making a handling system that suits us. Me and Gustavo, we're doing this together.

I don't know if he'll ever be ok on teeter totters. Or turn tight everywhere I want him to. Hell yes on his weave poles and contacts that aren't teeters and startlines and going where I go. There were no freakouts or vision quests or vortexes anywhere in sight this weekend. We just did the best we could. And we'll have to wait and see where that takes us.