Have we learned any new lessons lately? Like really good ones. With morals. Moralizing. How about demoralizing?
Hey, here’s one! A nice tale for a day after a dog show.
One of my friends so very sweetly took a video of Gustavo’s First Standard Run. It was a stinker of a run, that much I knew. Off the bat, knew about 4 major errors that occurred. Was a bummer, and I moved on. Had a good day after that, and I sure love my little baby of a dog.
So then I watch this video. I haven’t posted it here. Yet. Because I will surely be carted off to agility jail once this gets around. It is like the training video all agility teachers are supposed to show their classes for the lecture called, Don’t Do This-Scared Straight Handling. In fact. If I wasn’t so shamed and mortified, that is exactly what I’d do. If the video was someone else, this is exactly what I’d do. But the video is ME! I am the criminally bad handler. I am the handler from hell. With an uncorrupted, virgin dog, and basically is a video of the drooling zombie leading the poor little lamb off to the slaughter.
Highlights, for this feature video coming to a youtube near you:
It starts off with dog self releasing their start line.
Goes to a non criteria dogwalk contact, with dog self releasing itself.
Goes to a weird, non pivoting pull.
To a screamy, unneccessary Out call.
To a super late front cross causing a super wide turn, with this comedy show ensuing with shrieking and complete dog confusion. I don’t even know what to call this bit. The time Laura went insane doing dog agility and Gustavo just goes along with it?
To a wrong position which causes a refusal at the a-frame.
To a stressy, late down on the table.
Complete train wreck of a missed weave pole entry, with letting dog complete wrong entry, bringing around so dog thinks he is going elsewhere, missing another entry, running thru almost all the poles, pulling dog early, and finally getting some poles. Um, hi, any wonder after this beginning we just had, poor little baby of a dog misses the pole entries? Good GOD!
Late rear cross after the poles. At least this is caused because I am YAAAYing the completed weave poles.
Late rear cross causes a late front cross, causing dog to do a blind cross.
Thankfully, after the teeter totter, goes on to a nice ending bit. A sigh of relief is breathed at the very end. Watching it caused me to run out of the house, to go wash my car. So yeah, I’d already been planning on washing the car but not RUNNING OUT OF THE HOUSE to go do it. I could barely make it through. I don’t know that I can ever watch it again.
Humbling? An understatement. Lowest of low points in dog agility? I believe possibly, YES! This might be it! Far worse than the time a judge actually stopped his Grand Prix ring, and came running over to me to cheerily quote a quip from our agility boyfriend Greg Derrett, “Great dog, shame about the handler.”
After Gustavo’s run, I thought it was weird when a few people started giving me unsolicited advice on various things that was along the lines of basic kindergarten dogma such as, don’t run with scissors or eat paste, and the monsters under your bed are satan’s handmaidens. I was thinking, Why do they think I don’t know this? They think I’m some kind of agility idiot, my personal first time ever in the starter’s ring, not the dog’s? What do I look like here, a total agility first timer, brand new sneakers and we just started taking our first class last month?
Uh, yeah. Because that’s exactly what it looked like. I was the one eating the paste.
Watch it if you dare. Your opinion of me, sadly dropping 12-37 points. But realize, this is a lowest low. I will never, ever allow that to happen again. Scared straight for reals. We can only go up from here.