Try to keep the dogs from chasing down the Pigs.

Last summer, we went up to Booneville to heaven on the sheep ranch. Click on August 2006, scroll to a post called Wu's Pigs and read all about it. Isn't there a more internet way to send you there? I guess.

Anyways, that's where we're going tomorow for 3 days. It is our big summer vacation with no horses and 4 dogs. Just sitting around on the porch and walking down to the pond for big huge fun. No internet. No phone. Maybe try to not hang out with the lady that shoes her own horses and try to keep Ruby from chasing wild pigs down. I am sure Gustavo will be interesting to keep tabs on on 550 acres. Sink or swim little buddy. Go to the bar at the High Pockety Ox for tv nite.

Remember that the store closes at 5pm. The bar is open later. Too bad there is no dog agility in Booneville. Maybe up in Ukiah?

I have the wrong backyard.

Even though I live on the Westside of Santa Cruz, surfer land, and take my dogs to the beach almost every morning, I work way out on the far side of Watsonville. Where there is no beach. It is kind of like a whole other country away from the Westside, yet only a 45 minute drive! Where sometimes on the way home, I have to follow tractors going about 3 mph on the road for a long time. Where you can buy tamales and popsicles from really old guys with little carts out in the middle of nowhere, walking around. Where you really need to speak Spanish, and there is also a brand new Safeway with a Jamba Juice in it that no one goes to. And everyone has animals in their yards.

You have to drive slow on our road because a lot of dogs live in the road. They are good dogs, they just don't have to live in a fence. It works out there. Way back when, our road used to just have farms and commercial nurseries. Now there are a couple big and fancy houses along it. The little houses along it all have their animals, a burro that lives in a metal scrap pile, the pony and the big dog that live with a metal scrap pile (animals and metal scrap piles are a common way to keep horses on our road), a white cow that lives with a white horse in a field, the herd of mares and baby horses that live in a field with some trailers.

These guys live under the tree on the corner. It's been really, really hot and they just sit under there.

This guy stays chained to the fence all the time.

Do you think it would be cheap to buy a house on our road or a road near it? Not with enough land to have animals in a scrap pile, or especially with enough land to have animals in a fenced area and the scrap pile somewhere else. Still too much! Actually, we could probably afford the scrap pile option on less than an acre. But it is too far away from one of the jobs that would have to pay a lot of our subprime jumbo loan to buy the property.

Can you get the idea I am back on the idea of maybe we have to leave our state? Then as soon as I write that, I am very sad and I think of all the nice things about California (no snow! no rain! the beach! my family!) and then I realize that once you are here it is sure hard to go.

It is puffy and now I talk really funny.

So I was sitting there on the fence, teaching a lesson and eating an apple (yelling and chewing together, something I am very good at) and something slashed through my tongue and deep pain! My first rational thought is, like I have been warned since I was like 2 years old, every Halloween, Someone has Finally put a Razor Blade in my Apple! My organic, locally grown apple. Razor blade! I am spitting and stuttering and not finding razor blade and can't tell if I am bleeding. The first girl to ride by me is stopped and ordered to look at my tongue. She is not impressed. I am yelping in pain. They stop their lesson because I am yelling at them that I cannot speak anymore. Due to an extra sharp apple seed? I have no idea but it hurts.

This goes on for a while and I just find a way to yell because I have more lessons, and you know, cowboy up.

When I get in the car a couple hours later to go home, I look in the mirror and pull on the weird black spot on my tongue (no bloody slash mark there as I am picturning in the razor blade mind). It is a yellow jacket stinger! I am stung is the answer!

The tongue is fat and swollen and hurts like hell. I am stopping at Susan's house for dinner and greet her walking in with request for many pills of any type to make it not hurt. Am given that and some wine and it feels better soon.

At least my whole head did not puff up as did poor little Otterpop's. Even though she is fat, she only weighs 16 pounds so my humongous giant size (in comparison to hers) soaks up the poison a lot more easy. It was that kind of day yesterday. Let's be happy today is a different one and leave it at that.

Tell Gustavo he won a trip to MTV Spring Break Dance Party!

Torture cages of the Mexican Song Dog.

So this wouldn't be a good dog agility blog without a training journal vibe to it, now would it?

Wait come back non dog agility readers! Remember dog agility is the new brown!

Remember I have this pup (1 year old? 2 year old? 8 months?). Someday I have to pick an age and register him with USDAA.

Here's what he's been learning/not learning. We are so off the Jim and Nancy protocall right now it's not even funny.

We have started weave pole training day 1 in the driveway, on cement. It's a start. He's got the channels open and the gates up. He doesn't have the idea to use his normal speed for this yet, but I am going to take his dinner bowl out there today and try it and I think the need for speed will go right it.

Contact board. I think he is actually going to end up doing a running foot touch on dog walk and a-frame, but I am teaching a nose touch 2on/2off right now just because I can and it's useful to have. Not sure what teeter he will have yet, we have a lot of time for that. It's the last thing I teach and I like to use the table method which means he's got to have a real contact first. Likely he will learn a flop into down on yellow teeter. He's little.

Walk and run close near me. Works great on a leash and where there are no distractions.

Be a good boy at dog shows. Except when I am out running another dog. Then scream like a monkey when they are coming to get you. Out of the tree into the drug test lab. Make everyone glare at me when I come back from a run. Sorry. But he can walk around on a leash now even near the agilty. And be at class near the agility and do sits and downs and stuff like that.

Run free off leash. OK. He does not have a solid, smashing recall. He is so not a herding dog. I am so not a religous trainer. Boy do I miss the whole ball obsession thing. Otterpop, albeit with her issues, was so much easier to train because of the frisbee obsession. But I am letting him run loose, he runs far, I call his name and he comes back. There is a lag time though, and he doesn't always run right in to me, just to my group. He runs farther out than I would like. But he's got to be able to run loose if he goes places with us. So we're working on it. I need to go actually teach the recall in these places, this is a training hole of mine because I go to places where dogs run.

What have we learned about his learning style?

Easily distracted, mind of a flea. Very terrier! Could be doing other things like getting under the house to find the cat or looking for gophers! He has border collie looks, terrier mind. Does not have super strong "wanna kill it" prey drive though. More like a party boy, having a good time. So have to figure out what is going to make his speed drive tick during agility. Loves food! Loves food in his dinner bowl! Loves to tug when you are playing so need to teach it to him as more of a reward.

Training has to be really fun for him. He gets bored easily. Flea mind! Must make it seem like a big fun frat party with all the free beer a tiny dog could ever want. Spring break! Margaritas! Strippers! Party on Dude!

The day after the exciting Winning Day!

Yesterday, glamorous winner of dog agility. Today, trying to figure out how to clean the house that is full of all the stuff from the wet office and much dirt from the moving of everything. Today is the opposite of a glamorous day!

One other exciting thing though was I picked up my very fancy and expensive new poles at the dog show. They are stuffed in my not unloaded car that they barely fit in. They are going in the construction site! I want to start weaving but the dog area is still the construction zone. Dog training may have to wait for a roof. These are the real deal channel weaves made of powder coated steel. For Gustavo! Who is sitting on the couch eating a tree at the moment. And as I wrote that sentence, I hear CRASH from the bedroom. Gustavo why are you sitting on a bedside table and a lamp is on the floor?

Can Gustavo learn to be a tiny Hobbes?

This is Rob with Hobbes on Saturday, when he qualified to get into the 2nd round of the Steeplechase. Do you see why I like Hobbes so much-he is like a pony!

As usual, not one bit of this story is a lie.

Here is the story of our adventure to Woodland!

Woodland sounds like a place where there are elves dancing around in leiderhosen with bunnies. It is really a place near UCDavis where the roads have numbers instead of names. There are a lot of fields there. We used to go to a bar with a number for a name on a road with a number and drink a lot of beer and shoot pool in a very Johnny Cash way back in the wacky MFA days. We had a reputation to uphold, us UCDavis artists.

We were headed for Motel 6 of Woodland. A place with on the Google map , with reviews (I am not making this up!) like, "My room had a sticky carpet, and what looked like blood spatters on the walls and ceiling, and a room so tiny you can't turn around. Try to avoid this place at all costs. ..." and " I stayed in this motel 6 and was followed around by a drug addict ( I was alone with my son) and when we got in the room the bed was damp with fresh pee, it stunk to the highest ...". An adventure!

For even more big night out on a road with numbers with small dogs, we stopped at Dos Coyotes on the way. My favorite food of UCDavis. I counted years as I rolled in there and realized I graduated from grad school in 1994. Making me really, really old! And Dos Coyotes looked not so different inside and the super adorable guy behind the counter asked me if I had a daughter named Bridget. He was probably a college student, so I now look like a lady that would have a college kid named Bridget. It was sort of weird and creepy and the burrito was so good. Like weird nostalgia deja vu. Last time here, all skinny artist with Timmy living in a warehouse wearing the boots with shorts look before it was in, now here with trio of small dogs and capri pants and bad hair on the way to a dog show. Life rolls on.

We went up to Woodland (the old home of Karl Ewald! Where he lived with a wife in a giant old house where the band practiced down in a hole under the floor or something and he had chickens!) and the Motel 6 had no blood spatters or drug addicts or pee soaked bed and we had a very nice night out on the town, me and the 3 dogs. Gustavo slept in his first motel room and no one even tried to pee anywhere. Great fun for all! I brought alcohol! The tacky kind.

So at the dog show in the morning. First of all, my teacher of dog agility Rob had a very tragically sick puppy at home, so instead of just running Hobbes in Standard, I was awarded Hobbes all day. A sad thing for Rob, an exciting thing for me. Hobbes is a great big border collie and I love him very much! I was very nervous to not make a huge fool out of myself running him and also I had a new top that was sporty and what I feel may be flattering. A good day about to begin.

I knocked a bar with Hobbes on his first run, a minus, but he did a very lovely table for me, a plus, and I ran him out and he got a giant bowl of dog food. Much fun for Hobbes! Ruby knocked a different bar on that one, a minus, Otterpop had a refusal at the same bar, a minus. No Q's in the Standard. It is so tidy and neat and easy to run everyone in the same classes!

Hobbes got a Q in his pairs, but I did knock a bar. But in pairs, it doesn't matter if you are fast and we were very fast. My partner was another dog agility trainer and I was nervous I would screw up and perhaps she would say snipey things about me (I don't even know her. She might not be a snipey thing lady at all. The dog agility ladies seem to come in snipey and non snipey varieties).

After that, I sort of got the hang of it. Hobbes is very sweet and he liked small dog camp and walks with small dogs and Gustavo loves him now and Otterpop does not like Hobbes to play with her frisbee. I let him roll around on the dirt before he ran! I am not sure if he is supposed to roll around and bark before he runs but we just kind of went with it. The theme was I will let Hobbes feel the love and he will be a good dog!

And then, here is the big News, we Won the Steeplechase (money for Rob!) and we Won the Grand Prix! I am not usually a winner of these things. Actually I am never a winner of these things but with Hobbes I was! I just tried to go around not making mistakes. The courses were very hard and I watched where others made mistakes and tried to not make them and then we won! Many people seemed shocked by this news and I felt like a big huge movie star. Target=Disneyland now and I get a prize in dog agility=Movie Star. Hello new life of dog lady!

And then Otterpop got a 2nd in the Grand Prix! Wow Otterpop! She wasn't the fastest but she was fast enough and clean! And Ruby had a curious Grand Prix, as part of our Grand Prix curse. First missed the dog walk contact. I really tried too but she was flying and then she just flew off out of the sheer joy she feels of that every so often flyer off the dogwalk. And then she flew in the green tunnel. And then I think Gustavo was barking in his pen somewhat near that green tunnel, so she came out the same end, then went back in. Bizarro! Hello Gustavo, good bye Gustavo, I hear you and now I go back in the tunnel! Good bye Q in Grand Prix. Because her time, even with that little extra tunnel style move, was so fast.

Jumpers, nice and clean with Hobbes and a little slower so he got a 3rd. Otterpop had a refusal where I just didn't pay enough attention to her, poor Ottterpop has to feel like she is the center of my universe on every run and I need to do a very good job of showing her every single obstacle. Ruby was clean but on the slow side, I didn't check but I doubt she won any prizes. Maybe we were all just slow pokes by the end of the day.

It was a sad day at the end of the day to say goodbye to our friend Hobbes. A nice lady delivered him back to Rob in Salinas. I would have liked to bring him home with me. Where would Hobbes fit in our house with all the things from the office everywhere and small dogs everywhere? Not sure. Timmy might bump into him.

Today is a day of fun and funny!

Remember the funny story about how the roof guy never comes over? And he rips up some roof and you can see the sky! And then he never comes over anymore again. It is a funny tale.

Then it rained! We put many, many tarps over the roof, but when you just have open sky over a nice office with hand plastered walls and handpainted floors, it is very hard to make the rain not go in there. So that is where the rain went! In the office. Mostly where the computers and papers live. It was an exciting adventure to visit this morning at 6:30, when it was not bright and sunny but wet and rainy. Rain coming in everywhere, even the office!

The contractor (square dancing with no costumes) came over and his dog has been tragically taken away from life due to death! We are weeping with sadness of this tragedy and there is rain in the office!

Now there is nothing in the office except the dresser where the internet lives. The computer still works! The papers are drying under the muddy dog paws everywhere in the house and the books! Hey where is the plug so the digital camera can talk to the computer? Hey Gustavo do not eat plugs! That one is attached to a silver box and it is a hard drive! What a lot of things used to live in the office!

The sad, sad contractor said many guys will come on Wednesday to give us new walls! Maybe the floor will not die the sad death of the dog. He was hit by a car. He would come over with the contractor and play with the Team in the backyard. He was a good jack russell.

Also the vet had to go to the barn all morning and the horses needed shots and no girls could ride their horses due to the rain! And no one knew what time to not ride their horses so many people had to call me while I was making the office empty. Also I am leaving now to leave this mess to visit the lovely town of Woodland to sleep at Motel 6 with many dogs so we can awaken to no rain and a nice dog show and Otterpop can run in her very first Grand Prix. Ruby too. Ruby runs in many Grand Prix's (remember Laura's funny going off course in the big Grand Prix story?)

Very funny stories today!

Tim Gunn you are Not Carson!

Tim Gunn has a new show he does the whole makeover thing with the help of a silent but deadly super model named Veronica and a fashion design program called OptiTex. OptiTex makes a 3-d modeling of all the somewhat chubby thighed subjects, and Veronica kind of murmurs in the background and takes the ladies bra shopping.

I was thinking he could be helpful for me in finding a good and useful outfit for the barn (dirty asphalt grindings, dirt, horse slime, blood, hay, sweating), dog agility (sweating, running, dirty paws, grass stains, sticky mud), basic dog walking (sand, treats in pockets, plastic bags), and errands about town (plywood at home depot, new leaf market, 50 lb sacks at feed store).

He said that ladies need 10 basic wardrobe items. Of course I was falling asleep because the show is on at 10 (so I don't even know how any of them looked at the end), but they included a trench coat, black dress pants, a white shirt and a black dress. And not capri pants with pockets.

Tim Gunn! Speak to me! Help me! What am I supposed to wear that can help me with my life? I don't think any of them were in the basic wardrobe items! There are others out there like me-lots of you know who you are! We want to wear things that are cute and flattering and do not have problems with fishnets. But we have lots of dogs and horses and get really, really dirty over and over every day. Hair cuts are a problem! Makeup gets dirt soaked and rolls off with the sweat and when the horse snorts in your face. And running is essential, as are paddock boots. The half chaps must fit over them. Day to night wear means horse during the day, dog agility at night. With errand running in the morning at Home Depot! And dog shows on the weekend! Carson would figure this out easily and I believe it would involve Diesel, but he is only helping the Straight Guys. I had faith in you Tim Gunn! You championed Santino. Here is a true challenge for you to think out of the Box!

Do not think of it in terms of zombie puss.

The captain has not been writing about real estate much.

For several reasons.

1. We cannot afford to buy much real estate. Really not now. We are jumbo loan people! Very freaked out now.

2. As the prices fall on real estate that perhaps we would want to buy, so softly does flutter down the price of our house. Even with it's swanky new improved bathroom with a deer head in it. I am not sure how much it is worth today since it has no roof, it has attractive blue tarps instead and no roof guy in sight! There are lots and lots of houses in our neighborhood that are for sale and have been for sale for a long, long time.

3. There is very little in our price range that goes on the market and has any acreage. We are in the crap range in terms of buying property. Steep mountain hillside with unimbomber shack price range. Far, far, away from Gary's work range for even unibomber shacks.

Gary went to look at a modest open house that was exactly across the street from the dream ranch (see like every post during July 2006 for this sad tale). It was 1.4 million for 2 acres. Maybe even less than 2 acres. With an ugly house. I am not sure why he went.

The listing agent there with the cookies and Pellegrino waters said the guy up the road was selling a piece of property. 4 acres and a really crappy house and some weird shacks. Wanted to sell it off the market. Being the fabulous stalker that I am, picture wild goose chase, started on that and goes nowhere. Not that we even have any idea how much he would even want from that piece of land. Stalking wavering off.

So the whole ranch thing has taken a turn for the grim. Trying to be happy and positive re. we do have a house and may someday even have a roof for it if the nice son of a roof guy returns to build it. (Loving new rainy weather of Autumn!) All of our dogs are small and do fit nicely into the tiny yard and I am going to teach Gustavo his weave poles in our driveway somehow, some way. Come Novemer 1, we may not even have a legal beach to run the dogs on or the field but I am going on the thankful we do have a house that we can afford right now and leave it at that. The horses are happy up at the new ranch and right now life as a renter of ranches is working just fine, so going to just sit on that golden egg (knowing full well one day it will hatch back into the monster zombie that always lives in the golden egg and hatches to spew zombie puss and all that) -happy nice thoughts again, sorry-and everything is a-ok.

You can strap the aquaman thing to the digger guy.

So it's not all that hard taking 4 dogs on a road trip. There is a lot of counting to 4 involved. A lot of leashes that get tangled up and have to be untangled. And more counting to 4. Counting to 4 and actually seeing 4 is crucial to not losing any dogs along the way.

It means not everyone gets to spend much time running around off of a leash, because it's just too hard to manage a pup that may or may not come back and a timmy that walks very, very slowly. A picnic turns into an adventure of typing up dogs to a picnic table and trying to eat sandwiches and untangle leashes from immobilizing the wrong dog to a picnic table leg.

Always make sure you pick the picnic table that doesn't have the homeless guy sleeping with a pitbull next to it. Although, at the park we found in San Luis Obispo, I have to say, there was only one homeless guy. SLO looks a lot like Santa Cruz, except with one homeless person instead of lots and lots of them. Same ladies with ipods strapped on, same guys with red racing hondas and saggy pants, same young girls working in delis. We weren't there very long, long enough for lunch, so maybe that's a skewed impression. There was the same Peets Coffee and Urban Outfitters and all that stuff downtown but no umbrella guy and no street punks sitting on the curbs. Fewer tattoos and old vets walking their cats as far as I could tell.

The drive between Santa Cruz and LA used to be so fast, a quick little commute. Now it seems endless and full of traffic in weird places and more and more Best Buys and Home Depots in places that used to have absolutely nothing there. The whole 300 miles seems to be turning into one giant Torrance. It takes a long, long time and makes me too cranky to take any pictures.

Just don't say squirrel.

So my mom and dad live on a busy street. Which has always been pretty busy, but lately has turned into an expressway. It's sort of frightening, and very loud, but like brave soldiers we perservere. So along we go, my mom in a back brace, and 5 dogs between us, walking down the expressway with traffic flying by in both directions. My mom is more interested in making sure we do not use the "S" word (that would be SQUIRREL) which gets Matilda really going. Forget traffic danger, there are squirrels about.

A lot of the traffic has to do with the high school. We couldn't even walk down the street to the high school (the "dog park", security guards and high school officials and local police not withstanding), because it has gotten too frightening with the buses and SUV's that come winging it up the road. So we walked roundabout through the alleys and other streets to take the dogs down to the track to walk. Along with the hordes of high school students in gym clothes who were in various states of walking, jogging and sauntering around the track. We kind of didn't blend real good.

Yesterday's walk involved dragging a toddler along and by the end of it, literally dragging/carrying a toddler along who was a lot more interested in sitting in the street or on a rock or in the dirt than actually walking. My dad is actually really good at reasoning with said toddler, who I was perfectly happy to just drag along, screaming. Which is maybe not the best method. Five dogs and one toddler and one grandpa with a replaced knee...and then every so often, a squirrel.

We love L.A.

It is not cold in Los Angeles. Autumn is palatable here, none of that crisp air and weird sunlight and best weather of the year crap. The dogs stay exhausted, the yard is large and full of tennis balls and the sun is always out. One 2 1/2 year old can keep 5 dogs tired for days. All the dogs. How many houseguests come armed with 4 dogs? Some of them blind, some of them puppies, and some that turn hivey?

If I could upload photos, you could see what Otterpop looks like after having her head stung by a bee or some other hivey allergenic thing. Her head puffed up with giant protrusions like fluffy pompoms and neck goiters. Her snout was all collagen plumped like and her neck fat even fatter and poofier. She was miserable. I don't know what happened. I gave her some cake soaked in Benadryl for Toddlers and hope that it goes away someday. Otterpop one miserable bodyguard of the dogs now. Must kick some ass even harder and meaner than usual.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

So every day, I walk down the street with 4 little black dogs. I KNOW what some of the neighbors think, because they tell me. But some of other neighbors? It's their reaction. Let's take a little make believe stroll down my street.

1. Let's not even go to the land of my next door neighbor. Many blog posts related to bad things here. But now she is doing great and getting her house back.

2. The Evil Postman and his evil wife. They will not make eye contact with me or my next door neighbor. They once said hi to Gary. We have lived here for 10 years. Evil looks like a tall, gray haired robot and they just had their house painted craZy easter colors to match their weirdest purchase-a yellow mini. I say hi to them all the time. They look away. I've heard him talking at the post office, and he actually talks like an evil robot too. So chances are, he is just a robot and is not programmed to talk to neighbor ladies. I just say hi now to make them crazy, so maybe one day the robot head will start smoking and overload?

3. Nice couple that the wife works with Gary sometimes. I think they feel bad for him, all the dogs. They are nice though and very sporty people. So we are just different kinds of sporty. I get their sporty. Lots of equipment and camping and bikes! They sort of feel bad for my sporty I think and say wow a lot when they see all the dogs.

4. We have too many bichon frises and a lot of peace stickers everywhere and weird little buddha and indian statues in our front yard weeds! The bichons are out! Look out for the bichons! Can someone catch that bichon??? Windchimes!

5. The taco bell house (it looks like a cinder block taco bell) where the cryogenics guy lived and died (I heard they only got his head to the cryogenic place in Scottsdale when he died a couple years back). His name was an Egyptian phrase. He also would not make eye contact with me and left weird things for free in his driveway like old jars of spices from Safeway. His girlfriend inherited the house and painted it and it looks less like a taco bell. She had a giant manequin/doll dressed up in festive mexican-wear sitting in a lawn chair on her front dirt for a while.

6. They recycle and have a prius and solar panels and hang plastic bags out to dry after they have been thoroughly rinsed and bike to work. Their dog barks at us all the time. They are nurses. They are very nice and always tell me if there is free furniture and pianos around the neighborhood. Although they are older than me and still bring home free couches and stuff from the street.

7. Their toddler seems to escape sometimes and loves dogs.

8. The lady here couldn't sell her house and had already bought another house and is overfinanced to the hilt and this house is now rented to students with attractive sheets and blankets for curtains. The student's dog attacks the screen door and apparently wants to eat all of my dogs. It's name is ROXY ROXY ROXY SHUT UP!

9. The corner house! For a while, it was sold to someone that had a guy living in an RV out front and kept the house rented to German tourists as a beach house. It always seemed like the people in there on weekends were German or maybe Austrian? I even found it's website once, it was expensive and they called it a beach house. I guess Germans were the only ones that wanted it. If you've been to my street, we're not exactly a beach street. It takes about 10 minutes to walk there, 20 if you are walking with Timmy. Then the RV got towed, and really fancy cars with Grateful dead stickers live there but I never see the people. They have a gardener. For a while there was a stripped volvo out front with all the doors wide open for like 2 weeks. It has been for sale a lot and then never gets sold. This week it had a giant pile of clothes on the sidewalk in front.

10. The tae kwon do studio! If you want to see people kicking ass and awesome half man manequins, go to the tae kwon do studio!

11. My friend's house. They have a dirt boarding mound in the front and chickens in the back! Help for walking dogs can be found here.

**skipping a couple houses here...so numbering is off now if you ever wanted to do a guided tour.

12. Crazy guy's house that is filled with trash. No one can live here. The neighbor that lives in house 13. seems ok with this. It is a quiet neighbor. But maybe a fire hazard? Toasters hang from the tree. The house looks like it could rot apart at the seams and then an avalanche of garbage would spill into the streets.

13. And into her house. She has a smaller house than me and 3 australian shepherds.

I am skipping houses again. How much time do you think I have to write this stuff? Anyone still with me?

14. The surf dudes. Some of the houses I skipped have surf dudes. The ones near the corner are the best ones though. Their house is mad! Spray paint makes nice decorations! Jet skis with spray paint are useful for giant wave tow-ins! When they are all congregated, they fill the street and the mad stickers and duuudddess. Where do you keep the surfboards? Keep them everywhere! Where do you keep all your crap? Keep it everywhere! Where do you keep your trucks? Keep them everywhere? And bikes and jetskis and skateboards and your pitbulls! Everywhere! Dude!

15. Mom and dad do not speak english or train their own small black dogs. Who enjoy running across the street, into the dangerous territory of many surf dudes and their trucks, to attack my small black dogs. But I have more and they can kick this small black dog ass, anytime. The many, many teenagers that live or hang out here think this is super funny and they have lowrider cars! Also the dad has brought us mushrooms before, he works at a mushroom place.

Look at all that nice sky where there used to be a roof.

So, yes, I do go to work. I actually work a lot but on a weird schedule sometimes. Think how long this blog could be with the nice drawings in pen if I did not have to go to work! Like the old days, sigh. On some days, I can do other things on the way to work. I am the boss! Or the way home. Or the way between 2 works. If I count teaching dog class as a work. It's a stretch. But I do get a paycheck to yell at others and have to show up even if I am very, very tired.

Yesterday, one car place where I took my tired car, told me the tires on the car were very, very bad. New Tires! So at 7:30ish am I went to the new tire place. I do not comparison shop things like tires, I just go there and say, Rip Me Off! Slap on some tires. Give me the ones with medium prices. Do not tell me about buying tires at Costco. Nice tires here at the tire place!

During tire buying, I brought the dog with me that needs practicing to walk on a leash and not walk on his hind legs when meeting cats and rodents and singing songs of howling. Instead of squirrels today, we met guys that use loud air tools and hold big metal sticks and sharp things! Gustavo loved them all. The tires are near where the day laborers work or stand there pre work or maybe work, and I thought here is perfect dog walking opportunity, let's go meet lots of guys that some dogs in our family would be horrified of and start peeing and barking! So off to the day laborers we went, where Gustavo met many new friends. Everyone loves Gustavo. Many people spoke Spanish to him. And for more new friends, off we went to the river levee where many homeless people sit around and ride bikes real, real slow. All new friends for Gustavo. Maybe not for me. Luckily no pitbulls on pieces of string or chain on the levee.

This was a fun activity that maybe someday Otterpop could work up to, like back in the days we used to take fun walking adventures around Watsonville. Maybe when she is like 15 years old. She is a lot better now at age 3 almost 4, but I think day laborers, shaved head tire changers and homeless people in many layers of thick clothes are more advanced people meeting skills and Gustavo passed with flying colors. Otterpop has at least graduated to being ok with drug using meth kids in the park! And beer drinkers hiding in bushes! Good girl Otterpop.

Another fun trip we had was to the secret yard of windows and skylights where I bought a huge skylight for cash (the Story is it is worth $1500 new) from a guy with a hawaiian shirt and a big gold chain and the whitest, fakest, teeth I have ever seen. Rip me off! Here's $200! I'll take it! It was in a side yard of a warehouse with a gate locked by like 3 giant padlocks and involved a lot of cel phone calls. It's in my driveway now! Does it work? I have no idea. Why did his teeth look like that? Maybe expensive veneers from selling secret things for cash? Oh god...

We may never know if it does work or is a real skylight worth $1500 because the roof guy, who is actually the son of the real roof guy (remember the square dancing that had no costumes? ) has ripped off much of our roofs and the whole breezeway then has disappeared! The skylight is for him! But he seems to be gone, gone, gone and we have no roof. It is so lovely and bright here all the time and I just pray that he someday comes back like before it Rains!

Also squeezed into the middle of work 1-barn-to work 2-dog-was a trip to Disneyland (OK. It was Target. This is my life now. I have traded Target for Disneyland. ) where I bought a nice gift to take to my nephew this weekend in LA. A dog suit! What 2.5 year old who does not share at school wouldn't want a little dog suit to wear? So he will look like a dog! I am a good, good auntie. I also bought my sister a shirt so she cannot be too mad for turning her child into a dog. Aunties are the ones that can get away with bringing little dog suits as gifts.

My reward for all this and going to 2 works was late last night I got to run fast with not one, or two, but 3 dogs in dog class and have many turns because not many people came to the dog class. Maybe they were too tired to want to drag much heavy equipment out of the trailer then back into the trailer late at night when it is all heavier and covered with sticky, black dirt. Today I feel like I was hit by a truck. I think I am living the life of a middle aged lady animal trainer! Where are my pens? The trips to the bar? The art openings? Go to breakfast? Yikes!

Just shake it really hard.

The way I fixed my camera was first buying it a new memory card. Which still didn't make it work. Then I went on the internet and found out it has the dreaded problem that all those models develop after a few years. One way to fix it is to send it to Canon's black hole of expensive camera fixing. I found another helpful website that suggested shaking the camera as hard as I could. I tried this instead. Much more of my style of fixing of things. It didn't fix it. I tried it again. It still didn't fix it. I tried it one more time. I shook and shook and shook and now I have a working camera!

My fixing method didn't go so well with trying to put the cabinet in the bathroom that will actually hold items that have nowhere to be held currently. We now have a wall with 2 unlevel and not correctly installed bolt or screw holding wall anchors that cannot come out of the wall or hold screws! So also no cabinet. I have no idea how to fix this mess so I just put the cabinet in the bedroom on the floor and Gary just walks by and shakes his head.

Barack Obama=Lindsey Lohan in agility class.

The radio was talking about Oprah's support for Barack Obama when I woke up this morning. She raised 3 million in campaign dollars for him by having Stevie Wonder play at a big movie star and rich folk bash at her Montecito dog ranch over the weekend, and then said something how the biggest support she can give him is just by supporting him. Which is true. If Oprah says it is so, she makes it so. So maybe he will be the next president. Although she did not support GW the second time around and we still got stuck with him.

So the first thing I thought, beyond thinking, I should be the one living at Oprahs's Montecito dog ranch, was if Oprah started doing dog agility, or even if her best friend Gayle started doing dog agility, how the sport would take off in leaps and bounds! Oprah has a bunch of dogs. Once she had Cesar Milan on her show to show how to socialize her apparently evil cocker spaniel and she has bazillions of dog portraits of all around the dog ranch. And I think she also has a herd of golden retrievers out there too. And some other cocker spaniels and whatever else. She switched from Cesar Milan to a glam Hollywood clicker trainer after a time to teach the dog to be socialized again, maybe to stop barking, I can't remember. I think she has dog nannies, which would be a pretty good job. Sort of a personal assistant to her dogs. Although she must have had kind of crappy ones if they never trained the dog.

I am pretty sure Oprah would not be that good at dog agility. She doesn't seem all that athletic, or focused. She would need Jim as her full time personal trainer of dog agility and also to actually train the dog for her. And she would sort of show up and run it. Actually she would be more of a Susan Garrett disciple I think. She's kind of more high end. And evil guru-like.

The only celebrity doing dog agility currently is Greg Louganis, and he is not even that celebrity. I barely saw him over the weekend, I think maybe he just did team and was out of there with the rest of the Garrett camp by Monday. I tried to interest Paris HIlton, but I haven't even seen her in her team small dog shirt ever, so maybe her personal assistant swiped it. All those gals there all have small dogs. I actually think Paris would be more suited for agility. Oprah would just bring more clout to the sport, but she is already in her 50's and we have enough ladies in their 50's.

The whole Lindsey Lohan rehab group, I am not even sure who that all includes but Brittney Spears and the young ones who pop in and out of rehab like crazy, they could bring a liveliness to the sport, a sportier outfit, big fun and paparazzi at the trials and a bunch more small dogs in the 12" division. A great diversion from coke addiction and all night dance parties! Way more jr handlers! Trials on the beach in Malibu! Win a sports car with the Steeplechase check! Jumps sponsored by Rolex and Coach bags. Professional trial management and high nominating fees. OK, now it's starting to sound like horses. Maybe not so good. Maybe they could just try it and see if they like it. And then quit.

A nice sculpture by Daniel Edwards. He knows the value in celebrity coattail riding!

The timing executes you when you execute late.

I remember this turn. It was in Master's Snookers, when I opted out of going for the Super Q (winning or coming in second usually in my group) for a regular Q. I probably could have gotten it too, except I opted out of going for the bonus red combo in favor of saving Ruby from being too tired for the Steeplechase finals. And we all know how that turned out.

**Warning-Sort of Boring Agility Analysis Coming up here...

This was a very tight threadle from the blue wing jump back into the tunnel in the closing sequence. It was a little risky but a good way to get some extra points (I think I came in third or so in snookers, just out of the Super Q point range). So you can see the send out to the jump, then I am doing something weird and flapping with my hands, which I am hoping was flapping my right hand down to flap my left hand in but in the photos it just looks like flapping.

I did get one video out of the whole day, of Master's Jumpers. Otterpop did this one too but didn't come up in video. Maybe Eric was going to the bathroom. Click here and you can see it and here me sort of pulling her along on a hot day. She was kind of medium speed that afternoon-it was pretty warm. She got a Q, but ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack again. I love jumpers-it's all bars so it can involve hitting bars if I screw up any timing at all, and winning vs. not winning means speed-usually Ruby speeds thru jumpers, Pop not so much-and tight, tight turns. The video is good for seeing where one little footstep out of place and one shoulder pointing the wrong way makes a way wider turn than should have been, which not only costs a second or so but also sends Ruby into a flash moment of breaking her stride up, just like a horse, instead of staying smooth and accelerating. When I'm teaching riding, I am always going on and on and on about not breaking up the stride, even in collecting and balancing, and here you can see a foot out of my track doing that very thing.

This was from the dreaded Steeplechase finals. I felt like when she came out of that yellow tunnel, she was done and over with and that was when I pulled her from the course. In the photo, she still looks mean and ready to run. ??

Speaking of mean. And ready to run.

Yesterday when I got up to go to work early, I made a cup of coffee and forgot to drink it I was in so much of a hurry. All morning and on the way to work I wanted some coffee so bad like addict bad, but had no idea I forgot to actually drink the coffee I made. So I just figured I was being a baby. Cowboy up.

Who has ever seen me in the morning with no coffee? This just isn't something that is done. Ever. Under any circumstances. Bad and evil things happen. The morning was a blur, I don't think I stabbed anyone or committed heinous crimes and taught all the millions of lessons on Saturday and dealt with lame Kissy and the shoer and when I got home, it was brought to my attention I left the house without a drop of coffee. Um, is there even a moral or a point to that story except scarey, scarey, scarey.

Is your fetching recreational or professional?

Everything around my house at 7am is usually pretty quiet, that's when I am trying to deal with emails and scheduling when the girls ride because they have to go to San Francisco this Saturday or somewhere and can they ride at 8am or on Thursday and I shuffle that whole house of horses around and read a blog and open bills and try to get things done that are piling up left and right. When I could just be drawing with pens! Most of the dogs are sleeping in dog beds in the office, except for one. Gustavo. He is constant motion, it's like a little Brittney Spears on meth running around with unbridled Joy of Dog Toys and Running. Or digging. Or chewing a plant. Or jumping. The dog has an off switch which we see only late at night, at falling asleep in front of whatever informative show happens to be on for me to fall asleep with (usually a choice between tattoing, house flipping, top cheffing or top modeling, all of which I am now somewhat a well informed consumer of except for usually having never seen an ending to any of them).

Every dog toy that has a squeaky is a thing for running around with really fast and squeaking. If there is sitting down it is to squeak the squeaker for a while until the running should start again or perhaps finding contraband to chew such as hats or magazines or pillows or other things until you notice there is no squeaking then trade it out for a dog toy. Then the running starts again, pretty much until I can get them all on a walk that involves a beach so there can be real, genuine running in an effort to make him tired.

That part is tricky because Timmy is getting slower and slower and it's hard to get them all out together, so it's involving 2 sets of walks so Timmy doesn't feel left out. Timmy loves the beach too, but it's pretty slow going to get him there. Anyways, it's a little complicated but we make it work because it's Timmy.

Gustavo, if made to be in an off position during on time, has a steely eyed look that he fixes on you, trying to telepathically get himself released out of the crate or out of the dog pen or wherever he has been put. It is kind of border collie in a way, those eyes, except that I think he is more terrier. He does have the sheep herding sweep to his running circuits-no straight lines here except for running back into what is becoming a pretty cool recall, and is developing good tennis ball fetch but he doesn't have that laser like herding focus. Even his tennis ball thing is not obsessive like some ocd dogs I may have, it's more business casual recreational fetching. Gustavo is a creature of distraction and fun.

His free DNA test should be coming back with possibly some clues to what he is, possibly not. The 60 times per day people ask me what he is ("Are all those yours? Boy you have a lot of dogs! What kind of dog is that?") and I mumble something and head away, usually I just mutter street dog or mexican or terrier in my antisocial way, maybe could be answered with St. Bernard/Italian Greyhound or whatever the computer comes up with. I'll take it. If the computer says it's so, then I'm good. And then I can just lie like I do about the rest of the team.

Prada shoe wearing Xmas Pool Party Movie Review!

What did we train on a Wednesday Nite after a dog show?

I let Ruby have the night off. She has been tired all week and slow and just not that wild, I let her run a tiny bit and no poles. No poles for her at all. Little does she know my devious plan to tear up the top of the driveway, lay sod (if and when we sell the house it will be an attractive side yard lawn!) and make room for weave poles and a contact trainer for Gustavo. I am going to retrain her on a slightly open channel to just run straight thru and give her Burger King or some other Super Excellent Treat and see if she can regain her drive through the poles and learn to love-em.

So that's what Ruby didn't do. Otterpop got to run, run, and run. I warm her up when she is fast and ready at long distances. When she is warming up, she easily works at Masters Gamblers distance. Someday this will transfer to the Stressball known as a trial, but for now we just take what we can get. Not freaking out a judge 2 feet from the teeter was huge. At practice, she can weave and do the teeter from 15-20 feet no problem. At a show, forgetaboutit. She got extra runs because I ran Hobbes and not Ruby, and about halfway through class, she became blase and i started rewarding intermittedly and redoing obstacles for speed then letting her at the frisbee. Worked well. She goes back to this method just to keep up speed on every course.

Also I believe I left all dog leashes there! Fantastic job! I did an ok job of running Hobbes but really I could do a lot better if I were the rockstar of dog handling that I know lies buried somewhere deep beneath the chowder legs.

There is a beagle in the class I teach that looks like Pencil in the Mike White movie "The Year of the Dog". I told the beagle owner not to see it. Any beagle owners will not love seeing little fat beagles laying there playing dead-it is just a movie and these are pro dog actors is what I kept telling myself due to the sadness of it all-from eating the snail bait. It's actually very funny in a Mike White way, even if in terms of dog realities it is pretty retarded and off but I still liked it. I think the message is PETA supporters are clearly off kilter. Also Laura Dern plays Molly Shannon's sister in law and is super funny as the overprotective Prada shoe and tunic wearing mom having xmas by the pool in some Anaheim Hills tract community. Also I love it that she almost takes a 6 year old to a chicken slaughter house. But the best part is a movie with lots of dogs and you get to try and figure out where the dog handlers were for every scene and how they taught each behavior! Now that is Entertainment! That was clearly my missed true business calling.

But that movie gets a lot of stars due to the fact I did not fall asleep 20 minutes into and stayed awake the whole movie and it is not too long and features dogs in Almost Every Scene! Very good movie! Mike White is the Chuck and Buck guy. We love him. More dog movies Mike White! Who is the first one to make the dog agility movie-I guess I have to write the screenplay and send it to him? I am more reality show than screenplay though. We need Joel Warner on this!

Do not wear the skort with the chowder legs.

Allright, so you got to hear the sad violin story of not winning the Steeplechase Finals. Big huge boo hoo. Now let's get to the real story. Good gossip and what was everyone wearing?

(Side Note: I am getting a new memory card for my camera and there will be photos again one day soon. I promise.)

This is a much sportier looking crowd, these heavy hitting USDAA folk, than you see at some of the trials. They tend to be very fit and could be dressed for tennis or some other such sport. The Susan Garret crowd has a whole fashion thing going on with very wicking type fabrics and tight shorts and lycra. The guy who wears very gay cheerleader-esque baseball outfits was there in a tight little baseball number that looks like a costume from Hairspray. He has a little sheltie.

There were a lot of guys at this trial. Usually not so many. Big sporty guys with big fast dogs and a new trend seems to be sports jerseys, like soccer jerseys. Another thing at this trial that you don't see every day are special European jerseys from big world events in Europe. Since these people are on teams that go to these events, ala Olympics for dogs, and then I guess what they do is trade shirts at the end. So wearing those at a trial like this sort of says, "Let me intimidate you, non European traveler of dog agility, by my sporty and non english speaking shirt".

The tennis skort was here. I wish I wish I had the skinny legs for a tennis skort because this is a good dog agility costume but not so much if you have chowdery legs. Some kind of yoga inspired pants too, which I think is a good look for dog agility actually and I was wearing a yoga top I got from my yoga teacher. Who would just cringe if she saw what dog agility and carrying of heavy dog agility items does to undo the yoga.

RV's-much of them. These are RV owning, traveling people and the parking lot was full of giant RV's. Something to aspire to. A giant house in a huge thing the size of 5 schoolbuses. I have no idea how people drive those things. They must get like 1 mile to the gallon. But oh so convinient for carting around the dogs to the dog shows to win the prizes in things like steeplechase. Likely all the RV people actually win Steeplechase. No chokers there.

There were still copious amounts of dog cartoon tshirts and ugly pants and weird flopppy sun hats with straps and shade panels. Those are just always there and always will be. None of them scared Gustavo though. Who was brave and quiet and exceedingly well behaved. He only went on Monday, and he was a champ through it all. No monkey screaming, not one bit. He got to stay in the xpen the whole time with the other dogs and was polite and well behaved and took a lot of walks. A geneticist who is also a dog handler is doing a dna test on him for the canine heritage breed test. He may come up as something, but she also says a lot of the little weirdo dogs come up as totally bizarre things too, like italian greyhound/saint bernard mixes, when the computer really can't find anything for them. So we'll see.

This is just a sucky story. You might as well skip it.

OK, so the Steeplechase is the thing that, if you get a certain time and are clean on the first round, you move on to the second round. At this Big Dog Show, there were a lot of really fast dogs, but Ruby still made it into the second round.

Here's what the second round is like. Imagine it is the baseball game and everyone is in the stadium, watching, ready for Barry Bonds to hit the famous home run. It's not like that. But there are lots and lots of people sitting around in folding chairs, watching because they know all the dogs in it are top notch and super fast. And ready to win some money.

This Big Dog Show had top dogs from all over the place-some really tough competition. And huge classes. So, even though I didn't feel nervous in the finals, maybe I was and I just didn't know. I've been in enough of these now that I really feel calm and cool and collected and kind of la de dah, another day at the dog show.

It was very hot and in the afternoon, and I knew Ruby was tired, that concerned me a little. I took out her little purse I keep her treats in (it has bunnies on it). I told her one more run, this one is Steeplechase so you need to go FAST! I think we were both on the same page.

We happen to have this little curse I neglected to mention regarding popping out of weave poles in Steeplechase. Either in first round, so we don't make the second round, or in the finals. Ruby never, ever, ever pops out of poles any other time. Never. She does the poles with her eyes shut. When she's tired though, she doesn't love the poles, I think they make her sore and tired. So I am very careful with them, and I was especially excited that in this course there was only one set of poles and 2 a-frames, which is her particular favorite thing and something she loves to go very fast over. Unless she is hot and tired. Which she was.

In my mind, I was thinking please please please please please let some miracle happen and we would like to Win the Steeplechase! Maybe Ruby can hear this due to the mutant telepathy and it stresses her out. I don't know. What I know is, she ripped out this blazing fast start, flew into the weaves, slowed down in them, and popped out. What I should have done was just ignore it and let her run and finish and just be done and be fast. What I did was try to put her back in with the glimmer of hope she'd fly back thru and finish. Ruby doesn't work like that.

Once you've screwed up anything with her, she mentally melts down. She is a perfectionist and if it's not perfect, she is outta there. So she just slowed down to a crawl, did a couple more things, and I could see it was not going well and I pulled her out of the ring. In front of the big cheering crowds who were expecting all fast and perfect dogs and then what was this antic?

I am sure this is something I do to her. It made me want to cry. I really just wanted to sit down and weep like a whiney pants little whiney baby but I didn't do this, it is not the cowboy way. Whether or not everyone secretly was making fun of me as we walked back to our tent thing I don't know. I doubt it but in my mind I was pretty sure everyone was. Can you see how twisted my mind is these days from being so sporty with this whole dog thing? Thank god I am not an olympic swimmer or something. I'd be a wreck.

We survived. We'll just keep trying. The dogs both had a lot of ups and downs at this dog show, some great runs and some crappy moments and I can be happy for the qualifying runs they had and also that they were both good and happy and fast for the most part. End of lame story.

Does this sound familiar?

We are back from today's big Dog show. This one was a Really Big Dog Show, with people there from Canada, and Arizona and Washington and Oregon and probably a lot of other places too. It's a Regional Qualifier, which I am just too tired to explain. Suffice to say it is a really big dog show.

It is also about 100 degrees out, and I figured on that, so only entered the earlish classes, making it so the dogs were done running by noon. Perfect! No one got too tired and hot, although Ruby was practically melting anyways. Otterpop doesn't seem to care much how hot or cold it is.

It was Otterpop's first time running in Masters, and she did a bang up job. She didn't Q, because I made one bad turn and caused her a refusal, but all in all top dog Otterpop! She had a gamblers run too, but was so fast it messed up my timing and I didn't send her in well so she didn't get any prizes there either.

Ruby had an awesome steeplechase, we'll find out tomorow if she runs in the finals. There was so much competition that she was kind of borderline with her time when I left today. Running against some of the best dogs in the country makes her all of a sudden not so fast. She missed a down dogwalk contact in her standard (haven't done that in a while) and had a fabulous time but it's a No Q. And her gamble was just a no way in a million years would she get that and she sure didn't. So it was a good and fun day even with no prizes. And early.

We had ensenble stress again. We saw a dog named Pickle whose owner has a bright pink mini skirt and I think she was the best ensemble at the dog show. She is also a very good handler that wins big, big prizes, I think she is from LA. If I had skinnier legs I would wear that ensemble but I do not have the skinny legs. I think it is clear now I got up at 4:45 am and I think I need to stop writing this. We go back to the dog show at 5:45 am tomorow. See U There! Where is my coffee...