One of these things is not like the other.

Banksy is always going to stick out like a thumb. Not a sore one, but just the kind that sticks out. Also, they're putting the Kitchen Brothers' Court of Mysteries back on the market. Last time it listed for over two million and nobody bought it. It's a graffiti covered mess on a busy street. But I sure do wish it could be our new team headquarters. The towers can speak with submarines! There's room for weave poles and a dogwalk on the grounds. We'll see if they lower the price. By a lot. Anybody wants to buy it, we'll be happy to take care of it for you and repaint the creepy, gangster graffiti'ed interior for you in chippery bright animal murals.

So we went to a fun match the other day. I skipped work and ran Banksy and Gustavo. Gustavo ran great and had the best time ever and did little mini courses beautifully and super fast and no freakies. We love us some fun matches.

Banksy, we had a different kind of day. I tried an experiment called what if I let her hang out closer to the ring, adjacent to dogs doing agility and let her tug for a while before her turn? This was a huge failure. She got so wound up that we had a big zero of team work in the ring. Huge big fat zero. Brain explosion. Bars. The blue tunnel way over there every time. She also got super freaky scared in the parking lot, I think because of a lot of barking dogs in cars near ours. To where she said at one point, don't make me get out of the car. Freaky paranoia attack Banksy has been making appearances lately and made a dramatic appearance at the fun match. Real fun. Then there were the zero good running dogwalk contacts. Big fat zero. And she snapped at a friend's dog. And when we were playing ball with another friend's dog, decided to not let me put her leash on when the game was over. Oh, and I threw her toy early in the weave poles once and she popped the last pole to get it and after that, multiple more pops out of the poles. Which is like, so six months ago.

Augh.

So the sun was shining, we were in Carmel Valley which is like the most beautiful place ever, loads of my friends were there, I was having a self imposed holiday off work, there was pie, and it was that kind of day. Multiple training failures every where I turned.

I felt like paranoia attack Banksy feels. Backed into a corner and all, INCOMING FROM EVERYWHERE!

So I came out of the ring off one of my turns, I think where I was just doing an easy loop with an easy dogwalk approach, trying to find her hit, which we didn't, and one of my friends who I haven't seen in a long time is grinning widely.

She's all, "I am so happy you got your border collie! That was awesome!"

I reply, "Oh my god. That was a disaster. Total disaster. Did you see her dogwalk?" I'm dragging Banksy away to recover behind a bush because of the earlier disaster of letting her stay too close to the ring and fit throwing over threshold brain explosion.

"That was awesome! Laura, you have your fast high drive dog! You got the dog you needed!"

Every time someone's told me that thing, You Get the Dog You Need, I always think it means crazy Banksy. When she's throwing a fit, or having a weirdo attack, or telling me she should be able to go chase that blowing leaf across the road and then take out the Mercedes driving by at the same time. I'm pretty sure this isn't what I needed. And usually I wanna deck 'em. But I don't. Because manners. And jail.

But when you look at it that way, yeah, I did. Just came with some extra value added complications I didn't know were part of the package. But they are. And off we go. To practice some more dogwalks right now. Me and the dog I needed. Not sure she needed me, but I'm all she got, so there we go.