We’re driving to Santa Rosa Sunday morning to do some CPE Dog Agility. Go to San Francisco, keep going across the Golden Gate Bridge. Which is red, you know. Gustavo, gets to be in his first dog show in a big, echoey covered arena. Dog show No. Three for him! Otterpop, just do some agility. Practice, practice, practice. Ruby, a CPE afficianado, almost has a CATCH. My non dog agility friends, you get obsessed with these Letters. Like if I walked around saying, Hi, Good To Meetcha, I’m Laura Hartwick, MFA. Never hardly use my Letters. Maybe you have a PhD. And we call you Doc.

So, in our world of dog agility, you can get Letters for your dog. ADCh is the one Otterpop almost has. Ruby, almost at an APD. If she does 4 rounds of a class called Colors, she has a CATCH. So we can not use those Letters. Not going to start introducing her as Hi This is Ruby CATCH. Or CATCH Ruby. She would blush and go chase a cat if I did that.

Let me explain to you the Colors. Now that you understand the Letters. Two dog agility courses out there. One is named Red. And one Orange. Could even be Purple. Named after a color of a cone. Oh, the secrets revealed. Really short courses. Usually really dumb and boring. Pick one, tell the judge which one. Do it, really fast. You are done.We never, ever enter this Colors. We like long courses. Or ones where we make them up ourselves. Or ones named Grand Prix. But I looked up some records, and Ruby almost has this CATCH thing, except we need all these Colors. To get the Letters.

Sigh. Did you hear that? That was me.

This sounds SO STUPID. It is so stupid. I used to be an intellectual. An artist. With an MFA. All those friends, abandoned me. Now I’m in the world of Letters and Colors. Like preschool! The whole thing of the Colors, stupid enough. Dog agility, not supposed to be dumb. Not supposed to be about Letters. But here I go. Drive to Santa Rosa. Team stuffed in crates. Chihuahua in tow. So we can do our Colors and Letters. If we are lucky, next week you hear about Shapes and Numbers. And maybe alligators.