05 June 2013

Improving Dog Agility, a Very Organized Power Point Lecture which is sort of like a less than mediocre TEDx slideshow, on whether this improvement is possible due overwhelming existential and global crisis.


Improving dog agility organizations means we the people must defeat and wallop the big ass threats against them. Just like Batman beating down the Joker. Search and destroy, even if the bad guys have crazy cars that shoot marbles out the wheels. With or without bats. Civilians must be wary and stay alerted to all dangers.

In dog agility, there are countless threats. It's a wonder dog agility can exist at all. Whiny competitors that don't set bars. Judgmental, ringside commentators with unkept hair sticking out from under bedazzled sun visors. Dull, challengless courses. Blind crossing in mixed company. Wrong jump heights. Massive asteroids hurtling towards the earth. Daft Punk. Gophers. Spiders. Big bad wolves. I could write down the longest list you have ever seen. Listmaking is one of my specialities.


At the very top of the list sit the problem that stops me in my tracks and hinder me in everything I do. Proverbial deer in headlight making. A problem that would have the boldest bullets in the power point, be underlined with stabby lines one thousand times on the white board, pop up in automatic alerts on the iphone that just won't go away. A problem that is hard to solve if you're only just mediocre, that requires greatness to fix.

A problem that is caused by, the Particles.


Dog agility's number one problem is the exactly 400 particles per million of CO2. This is the amount of particles that occur when the global temperatures are too high to sustain dog agility any longer. And we, here on planet earth, are on this number. Science has counted it. If we don't decrease the particles, us planetary inhabitants, dogs and peoples, and everybody else, are screwed.

Climate change will crush dog agility.


You thought the break-away tire and slippy slidy floors were dangerous? Hell yeah and then some. Because, at the same time as climate change smacks down dog agility, dog agility is causing climate change.

Meditate on that fact in front of your hookah.

Let's examine some scientific data to support our cause. For less bummerness, greatness inspiring quote slides!


Factoid: Fossil fuels cause particles causing things to warm up that should be cool causing expediated glacial meltage. Dog agility requires carloads full of dogs constantly driving many miles. One trip to dog agility involves a car load full of dogs with a tank full of particle spewing fuel. One trip of friends to dinner from a dog agility event involves a caravan of station wagons, vans, trucks and SUV's as far as the eye can see, spewing particles galore.

Conundrum: Car loads full of dogs are raising the level of the sea, but without fossil fuels, no one can get to dog agility.


Factoid: Agility fields need to be cleared of trees for lovely wide open spaces of at least 100x100 feet. Or covered with buildings on clear surfaces to keep the deadly weather particles off of dogs and humans during agility. Carbon offset effect-negative deforestation is particle building. No trees to exchange the carbon. Rainy places have agility trial canceling super storms, and dry places have drought drying up the grasses and water supplies, which besides canceling dog agility trials also cause famine and loss of habitats which drive human beings and dogs towards extinction, and once mass distinction is running, humans and dogs aren't far behind.

Conundrum: Super bummer for dog agility if dogs and humans become extinct, except dog agility is causing extinction.


Factoid: Dogs eat meats unless they have non functioning livers. Agricultural meats come from the herbivorous animals, all of whom are stuffed with deforested grasses, then slaughtered via throat slitting under their cute little faces. The existence of all these food sourcing animals to feed dog agility dogs, and perhaps their people, releases loads of methane which is right there behind CO2 in terms of changing the climate through the danger particles.

Conundrum: Dogs need to eat the meat to compete in dog agility, but the meat is causing the particles, but if the dogs die from not eating meat there's no dog agility.


Factoid: Dog agility requires a lot of stuff. Little tents for your dogs. Little tents for humans. Tug toys. Video cameras and multiple mobile devices running Coach's Eye. Warm dog jackets for cold days. Cooling dog coats for hot days. Special electro magnetic coats for deflecting radioactive waves. Shiny sun reflecting panels. Gore tex rain proof footwear. And so forth. And most of this stuff is produced in fossil fuel burning power plants totally sucking electricity and spewing particles left and right and up and down in production and shipping and raw material.

Conundrum: The more the extreme the weather, the more stuff needed to protect the dogs during agility, causing more fossil fuel burning causing more global warming, except the more the dogs do the agility the more they need the stuff..

Oh lordinheavenmercygoodheavens, do you see what I mean?


Now. If you're someone like me, totally self absorbed, you are so concerned with your own trip, everbody on their own trips, that a lot of the time you have your head up your ass. When you take a moment to pull it out, you get hit with ginormity of these scientific factoids. It's like when you pull your head out of your ass and realize, I am never going to be anything except mediocre in all that I do. Mediocrity, the evil scourge of hovering just around average. Perhaps you aren't. Perhaps you are a super champion and have risen above.

Yay for You!


If you're like me, though, you know that mediocrity can get you killed in the Hunger Game Snooker Arena Death Match. Mediocrity gives you nothing good to post on facebook. Mediocrity is a flat line, dead line of ok and with mediocrity you can't go nowhere but sideways, never up, maybe someday, down. You can work really hard, but you're always just trying to get by. And if you're just mediocre, you are probably not really doing enough much of anything to improve much of anything.

Bummer.


So are there any answers? Is there room for improvement? This problem is complicated. Not just improving regular old global warming, but improving it when you're mediocre at dog agility. If improving global warming automatically improves dog agility, if we improve dog agility, does that improve global warming? Due to the conunudrums?


I'm not sure. I only have small ideas, I am mediocre. I suppose they involve noticing everything a lot. Don't laugh at the locally grown craft pickles delivered by bike in a box and artisan shoes woven from hemplap. They are trying. You could just TRY to do as much less of climate changing things as you could, dog agility. Even if you keep getting stuck in the elitist and classist and hypocritical tail chasing conundrum. It's easy to try to have less when you already have more. But it's always better to be the one producing culture than the one consuming it. Although, really, pretty much anything anyone does now is just a pin sized drop in a crater the size of where the Superdome used to be once it's the apocalyptic future. Every single person in dog agility could never, ever  again drink down water from an individual size plastic bottle and it probably wouldn't even matter.


Usually in agility, I would say that's who it's all about the dogs. I wave little pom poms when I say this. Make it funner for the dogs! Yay dogs! When the superstorm hits here, when the temperatures soar beyond hot, when zombies start crawling out of the walls, do we still worry about saving dog agility? Is there still getting better, safer, faster, funner, fitter, blinder, tighter, quicker, earlier? Do we keep on discussing trial dates with the Board? Or do we all rush to save our own dogs, pack up our Made in China tents, and head for the woods? You know that when your twister/flood/wildfire/ice chunk hits, the only thing you're grabbing as you flee will be your dogs. Organization, it goes out the window.

Today, on this Special Forces Wednesday, we're talking about improving an organization. Secret code word for human civilization! A massive conglomerate population. The biggest improvement towards greatness? It won't be my own personal improvement, I will probably have to settle for mediocre. Probably competing in the European Open is highly over rated. And a whole lotta plane fuel to cross the ocean. But so, then, hey ho, champions. You guys are the bomb. Maybe it's that champions that know, since they're above average, somehow, some way, we can still have dog agility and not have it heat up the planet so bad that it's fried to a crisp by the end of the century. Maybe the champions, THEY have to figure out how to improve everything?

Because over here in mediocre land, we are stumped. Possibly off topic. No matter how I look at it, I always end up painted into a corner, like the polar bears, floating around on their tiny chunks of ice. I should have just wrote about something like not enough little dogs in USDAA, and come and join us even if we don't have things as short as you like. Well, hell. Everybody go raise some vegetables, and see what other agility people are writing about to improve their idea of agility organizations: http://dogagilityblogevents.wordpress.com/improving-agility-organizations/

13 comments:

Hiker said...

LOL--thanks for the morning chuckle!

Daisy said...

You always seem to be able to make points that I could never make without pissing a lot of people off :) My own post is basically going to be a link pointing to yours :)

ViewFr4Inch said...

I was chuckling along with this post, then suddenly, I'm like, "Wait a minute..." All the while tornados are swallowing up the entire Midwest to send us all to Kansas. That said, there are too few small dogs in USDAA. Drop the A frame and stop treating shortness as a disability and we will come.

BTW, my robot-defying code word is detsGir vain. Deep significance, no?

Anonymous said...

Eloquently said!! Not mediocre for sure.

Tammy Moody said...

This. How do you do this. You are such a champion in finding words and art to express emotion and thought. Mediocre? Come on over to my blog and agility world.

And Daft Punk, I have been listening to them since Saturday when my brother gave me everything ever done by them (I had one lone album), Daft Punk 24/7. Rosie is going insane, or starting to like them, mostly insane I think.

team small dog said...

I'm just not feeling the new daft punk...if Tammy likes it though, perhaps I can be persuaded.

Daisy, got any good ideas how to stop climate change?

Mary, lifecycle cradle to cradle blows my mind. I haven't had yet time to read the other blogs, I'm always behind the curve so I'm sure there are 17 others just like mine.

USDAA small dogs are all waiting for the plethora of akc small dogs to come and compete with us. Perhaps masters challenge classes will entice you all!

Courtney Keys said...

Are you going to ... destroy some particles ... and go to Tennessee this year? My mediocre team could use a 3rd. :) Love the post, so true.

Tammy Moody said...

If you listen to it while playing Cards Against Humanity you might be persuaded. It seems Daft Punk goes well as background music with a Windmill Full of Corpses being played on the table.

team small dog said...

Courtney we would love to be on your team if we were going to Tennessee. I sure did want to go, to visit the Grand Ole Opry too. But being that we came in last in team last time, and don't always have a teeter totter, sort of put a bummer on the let's fly an airplane to Tennessee this year. Thank you for asking us!

Tammy we don't even know about those games here because Portland is so visionary. Stay gold!

Lynn Ungar said...

I am not qualified to judge whether you are mediocre in agility, as I have yet to rise to that level. You are, however Champion of Dog Agility blogging, and this is far and away the best post I have ever read about dog agility and climate change. Which is the sort of thing I worry about a lot.

nosemovie said...

HOLY SCHMOLY! Classic!

OBay Shelties said...

You are certainly NOT mediocre! Loved the post! :-)

Elf said...

I am very slow getting around to responding to blogs. I loved this, because almost every time I drive home from an agility trial, I think many of the same thoughts ("dog agility=particles"; also, "I am mediocre"). I wish I knew some answers, because I do feel odd about driving 15K miles a year, mostly on my own, in my not-terrible-but-not-great-mileage minivan, mostly for doing agility. And I worry about what happens when the global fuel crisis erupts or gas goes suddenly up to $25/gallon or the water situation in CA gets so bad that lawns can no longer be watered. But I do it anyway, and try to take some comfort in the fact that I recycle many many things, and compost, and teach composting (which helps to reduce particles in many, many ways), and don't use pesticides and mostly not artificial fertilizers (only sometimes) and don't eat all that much meat and buy from local farmer's markets, at least sometimes. I think professional football alone probably adds more particles for a single game than an entire year of agility in the whole state of california, for instance. But I love that you've brought this up out into the public to think about. And I'm sorry that I use nonreusable plastic water bottles. But I do recycle them, fwiw.