Video: 

This is our grand prix run from this weekend.  The bar knocking is going to kill me. I swear it is my handling but then why doesn't Pickle always do it when I decel or front cross? And it still seems to happen more on the eye side, which sucks. Maybe I should poke out that eye too? Ha ha ha. Just shows you that I am a sloppy handler so when Picke can't see me he is doing better than when he can see me. I can't believe I thought we were WT material. I think I have a lot to learn.

Got eaten alive by mosquitos last night. I hope they like the taste of twinkies and ding dongs!

The Yard Sale

By: fluffy

Gas was only four dollars a gallon so I stopped, but I wished I hadn’t. I didn’t see the yard sale until it was too late. At first it was just the usual stuff, junk someone no longer needed or needed more in the form of the money that it represented and the beer/food/meth that the money could buy.

A rusty bike caught my eye, it was an old three wheeler with a basket and I thought of my brother. I remembered the Thanksgivings and Christmases that we spent riding circles around the Safeway parking lot at my grandparents. That was back in the day when stores were actually closed on holidays.

And then there were the fenders, flash back to Poop Dog and Zoid and wandering through the swap meet at Volkswagen shows. We dug through boxes of greasy and rusty parts looking for that OEM brake cylinder for a 66 “because that was the last year of the single chamber, 67 had two” or searching for the prefect t fan shroud with intact louvers, “for better cooling”.

My eyes wandered over the junk. It truly looked like this guy had taken everything from his garage and dragged it to the gas station for the yard sale. Old tires, a wheel barrow, random boxes of crap graced the dirt lot. He barely made eye contact with me, and I could tell there would be no conversation. He saw me for who I am; a random white chic wandering through, on my way to somewhere else.

I couldn’t see anything that I would want. And then I spied the dog. I swear it was the family pet, a fat lab mix with a ‘thump thump’ tail and it was sitting in a bird cage. It was a big bird cage, but it wasn’t a dog crate. He had a nice bed of sawdust and water and an index card that said $25 on it.

I wanted to ask if it was $25 for the cage or the dog but I didn’t have the guts. What kind of person sells their dog? In this day and age I wouldn’t be surprised if they were selling him for food. He looked so content in that cage, like he had been to every yard sale with his owner and didn’t quite understand that his life was held in a balance between this life and the next by the price on the card hanging in front of his nose.

And what could I do? Buy the dog and add him to my collection? Give the guy $20 for his next drink/burrito/fix? Drive away and think about if for the next 900 miles? I did the later. And I have been thinking about it for the last 900 miles. And I feel guilty. All I can see is his tail, thump thumping and his wet nose stuck through the bars of the bird cage.

Video: 

The first video is all four dogs who were under 30 seconds (Pickle actually led the class until after the
 weaves, you can see it if you watch the slow motion portion at the end of the video)

The second video is just Pickle.

 
I really want to say thanx to all the Pickle supporters out there. I would like to let you all know that I attained my dream of earning top 3 in the IFCS World Team Points. I MADE THE IFCS WORLD AGILITY TEAM! Unfortunately, the judges at USDAA championships this weekend measured Pickle just over the cutoff of 19 5/8 inches. I don’t think I have cried so hard in my entire life. I can add this to my list of other unfulfilled goals. But that Grand Prix run was amazing, can you imagine being .02 seconds from 3^rd place? And how many other dogs made it to both Steeplechase and Grand Prix finals?? And how many other dogs have one eye?? Anyhoo, in no particular order I would like to thank: Pickle for being the best dog in the world, Bo for EVERYTHING!, Bo’s mom for the consolation meatloaf dinner, my mom for driving up three days to watch and haul my shit all around, my dad for the multiple ‘mental game’ phone calls, my brother for the multiple ‘making goals’ phone calls, Eric for the humongous hug when I found out I wasn’t going to Belgium, Lory for breeding Pickle (the best dog in the world), Olga for the long distance course analysis, Rachel for the last minute confidence boosters, Megan for being a Pink Taco, Jonathon and Amy for encouraging me to try, Judy for all the pirate paraphernalia, Kama and Jubie for the coolest pirate hat ever, Terra for the last minute confidence talk after the o-fer in Camarillo, Mia for the beer and the ‘get your shit together talk’, Shelley for the corgi with tails support group, Liz for the pirate leash, Jean for being the TNT support group, Caroline for all the hugs, Doug and Denise for being Moose’s foster parents, Gina for letting me use your field, Elina and Kristy for letting me use Happy Dog, Sheryl for all the good wishes, Kathleen for the hugs, Frank for the support, Ken and all the other ‘cool’ Canadians!, Ernie for the congrats email, Debra and Dexter my new friends from Singapore for being very cool people, Sue for being my mom away from home, Tim for all the encouragement, Daisy for inspiring me to wear skirts, Claire, Barb and Michelle for introducing me into the world of Fighund’s, all the people at work who tolerate my obsession (especially Terri, Becky, Melony and Layne).