We had a great day at the Turlock USDAA on Sunday. Most of us at least. Otterpop was running like a champ, she won almost all of her classes, had fast and speedy times, and looked like a dog that wants to go somewhere like, say, Kentucky!

She now executes gambles like a slot machine queen. Amazing. Just had to move her to 8″ and also get that database fully programmed. She’s been on a gamble roll. This was the weave pole kind, piece of cake and lots of opening points too! She can do the big dog double teeter move. Big dog people, did you know some of us little people covet that move but are afraid to try it? Not Otterpop, not anymore. Jumpers and Standard, awesome runs and so much fun.

Then there was Snookers.

Oh Snookers.

My non dog agility friends, this is a run where the rules, I can’t even start to tell you the rules today. Suffice to say they contain a lot of “But IF’s” and “Unless the’s” and there is actual thinking required.

I ran 3 dogs in Snookers, each with a little bit different plan. Planning. Did I mention that there’s planning in Snookers? It’s not just follow around the numbers, or loiter near a couple jumps waiting for the buzzer to buzz. You must stick to the plan, UNLESS you aren’t sticking to the plan and then in which case, you need to think shrewdly and craftily while running as fast as you can with your dog.

This is the aspect I fail only. Miserably. And I like Snookers. I look forward to running it. It’s fun. I like finding aggressive and speedy courses to get the most points. Which you can see how successful I am at based on the amount of SuperQ’s Otterpop has. 2. In her whole life. Not enough. Holding up that ADCh forever. Today’s humbling moment was jumping 5 reds with Otterpop instead of 4, then proceeding to the wrong close. Oops. Once again, goodbye SuperQ. With Gustavo, just moments after, a similar mistake on his very nice run.

It’s like I’m out there, I’m running the plan and then all of a sudden David Bowie flies down from a cloud and he has on some kind of spandex and hemp ensemble and I’m glamoured by this and then go off the plan to some unknown and dangerous world that results in the judge waking me up with a nice loud whistle blow. I don’t always even know what happens out there.

I did make it through one Snooker run with Hobbes, but Hobbes is Hobbes so he pretty much is doing all the work and I’m just following him around out there, so I’m not sure if that counts. I may be enlisting the aid of some of my agility pals in Snooker, just for a little experiment. An experiment called Somebody Needs to Get Otterpop That Last SuperQ.

Gustavo had a lovely, winning jumpers run. And a lovely two thirds of a standard run until we got to weave poles and his brain completely exploded. Everywhere. Do you all know Mia? She was the judge and she lives in Santa Barbara and I think his brain particles stained her shirt. It was messy. Sorry about that, Mia. He was in and out and in the tunnel and out to where stuff was stored outside the ring and in the poles and in the tunnel and we were just stuck in the vortex of shame until I excused us, and once again, fled. Someday, that last Advanced Standard Q. He is going to have everything else for his ADCh I fear, except zero Standard Q’s due to this little technical difficulty.

I’m honestly not that worried about his weave poles coming back. Gustavo is like this and his life is a cycle of ups and downs. All those 24″ weaves the last couple weekends seemed to just send him into a downward spiral. We just need to train harder and better and on 24″ poles. Every time he has a hole like this, we fix it and plug it up until the next one comes along. He was great in gamblers, but the gamble was, of course, weave poles, so I didn’t pressure him and just let him have a happy ending.

So we did have a happy ending. Ruby even escaped from her xpen and joined us ring side at the end of the day. She was lonesome and I didn’t shut the door and she meandered over looking for us. I think she wanted a turn. I took her on a walk instead. And got home in time to take the dogs down to low tide. David Bowie did not appear again, and we all were relieved for this fact.