Lots of our friends went away to camp last weekend. These are grown up friends who have jobs. Jobs with vacation and sick days and paychecks, where they can plan ahead and ask in advance, “May I have Friday off so that I can go away to camp?” Perhaps unemployed friends were there, too. Scrimping and saving all year long for a glorious weekend at camp, in hopes of becoming a super agility champ, before returning home to sleep under a bridge in a moist sleeping bag with their beloved dog curled up at their muddy feet. Everybody around here goes to camp. It’s a rite of passage in our local agility world.
Not sure exactly, what goes on at camp. I’ve never been, but have heard the Lore of it many times. Skits and the Hoochie Dance and Drinking Games and the Time Someone Put Jim’s Bike in a Tree. Oh, and agility. Days and days of it. A Who’s Who of Agility Excellence comes and teaches and everyone is excited to see Greg’s Powerpoint Lecture. Powerpoint! Doesn’t get much more exciting than that.
I know it was at Nunes Field in Turlock, but I’d like to imagine it at Camp Crystal Lake, like in the movies. With creepy shadows and a sludgy lake and Jason lurking in the shadows with his hockey mask and the occassional teenage corpse strung up in a tree. That’s how I imagine a camp should be. Where you keep an eye out at all times for masked chainsaw slashers and your long lost heiress twin and the call is coming from inside the house. Although the phone lines are all dead.
There wasn’t any agility in our weekend. Not a speck. There were whales. This is about as exciting to the dogs as the time we had the tsunami. We just walked around on West Cliff a lot and even sat on a bench to watch the humpback whales that have been swimming around out in the bay. Even got boring for me after a while. It’s majestic nature and all, but they keep doing the same thing. Spout, fin, tail. Majestic nature gets repetitive.
Stuff I probably missed at PowerPaws Camp (but this is conjecture since I’ve never been. Perhaps some of you will prove me wrong):
Secret handshakes
Beer
Bunkbeds
Matching blouses
Bad timing on front crosses making Derretts crazy
Ladies complaining about stuff
Roasting marshmallows around a campfire with Jim telling vaguely dirty stories that hinge around a pun you really didn’t see coming.
Things you probably wouldn’t find at PowerPaws Camp (but this is conjecture since I’ve never been. Perhaps some of you will prove me wrong):
Strapless dresses
Machetes
Wallabies
Zombies
Expensive orange marmalade
Lady busting out of her spandex spaghetti strap top screaming at her 2 off leash Golden Retrievers to BE NICE BE NICE as my dogs get closer and the big one clearly not feeling nice today and lady in spandex glory dives for the big one and pounces on him and commences pummeling him before my very eyes in her effort to keep me and team small dog safe and uneaten by her dog.
I think your imaginations about camp probably outshine the actual camp by 300%
That's a good thing.
Happy Halloween!
300% is about right
I do feel majorly hungover, but only drank minimal amount of beer in the privacy of my Best Western. This may have more to do with my popularity, than the existence of beer parties for inner circles. (And I had all the circling I needed in a couple of the seminars.) I didn't catch a single Jim Basic pun, but that may have been because he was my group's last rotation. I think he was trying to tell a joke that involved an arm, or armlessness, but I was too tired to listen.
Mary I was hoping for a more glamorous report than this!
Wait, I did see some Zombies on Sunday afternoon. There was a little spandex, but no divebombing women and team small dog eating goldens. Yes I saw beer, but you missed the fine wine and tequilla shots. You also missed the fan waving, fly swapping food servers keeping our food safe from about a zillion flys. …maybe all those flys were following the zombies…
If it makes you feel any better I just got back from two days of camp with Silas Boogk, the blind crossing, short name yelling, German wunderkind. There was no time for beers at the Best Western because camp started at 9 am and ended around 9:45 pm. I would have smuggled beers into the agility area, but I was too tired. I did, however, come home with a sprained wrist, heaving lungs and a bruise on my backside the size of a humpback whale (see my FB page). Hoepfully he will come back again next year so I can redeem myself.
My friend, Diane, sold her saddle to pay for "part" of PPCamp. But she doesn't sleep under a bridge in the mud.
Camp is a lot tamer than it used to be. And that's probably a good thing. What you most likely missed was a bunch of agility lessons all crammed into a coupla days so that your brain, your muscles, and your dog are all fried. And hopefully after the frying, your agility skills come out a little more cooked than they were before.
But in the old days of camp–well–
you are the best agility writing genius ever, and, it seems ok to speak for everybody, like all the agility punks who slum around agility shows, and your blog page too, it seems ok to speak for everybody and say we love you and also thank you for being wonderful
oh yes,
and your little dogs too.