The Examined Life (Agility With a Tiny Dog)

I was chatting with friends and family this week and realized how I look at my life differently now that I have this blog. Sometimes I see or hear things, or experience them myself, and think, wow, that would make a nice bit for the blog.

Am I more engaged in my own life? Perhaps. I have always had good eye and memory for detail but lately when I find something I want to write about, I don't focus on the details so much as the larger experience.

I have always written daily in my job but what I write is relatively cheerless technical stuff. And I churn out pages and pages of it. With accompanying tables and maps and charts and graphs. Certainly my reports are exciting to me and my intended audience but there isn't much there in the way of entertainment. Not blog-worthy, you might say.

My friends Gosia and Denise prodded me into this blogging experience after Iz died, ostensibly to help me deal with my grief. I still can't bring myself to write about her very much (I took pictures and video of her last few days that I have not yet looked at). Still, reviewing the events taking place around me and deciding which ones are worth writing about has subtly changed the way I interact with my dogs and my friends.

It was just a coincidence that one of the regular Q&A columns in this month's Clean Run magazine had a brief discussion about the minimum weight specified by the various agility organizations needed to tip the teeter. For AKC, that weight is 2.5 lbs. Teeters have to be calibrated such that a 2.5 lb weight will make the end fall to the ground. Not very fast, but all the way to the ground. I remember reading this and thinking, who would run a dog that small anyway?

At the trial this weekend, I had the pleasure of watching a young woman run a Chihuahua in the Open class. I could have enclosed this dog entirely in my cupped hands. It was barely as tall as the top of this young woman's shoe. Still, the lowest jump height possible in AKC is 4 inches, which was just around the height of this dog's head!

But there she was, running the dog on the exact same course that I was going to run with Mimi. The same Aframe. The same dogwalk. The same chute, tunnels, and weave poles. The same teeter.

The entire arena was riveted to this spectacle. A woman next to me said, "The dog is running 10 miles!" Well, of course she was not. The dog was running the same 150 yards that Mimi was going to run, just taking many more steps to do so. (This is one of many examples of the numerical illiteracy of the American public, don't even get me started.)

But back to the show. The teeter was obstacle 5, and every one of us held our breath as this tiny dog ran to the end....and paused....and waited....until at last....slowly....slowly....the teeter began to tip. It hit the ground and off the handler went to the table (8 inches high, in case you were wondering).

The weaves were a comedy act unto themselves. With a pole spacing of 20", this dog was taking half a dozen steps between each pole, but was clearly weaving with speed and accuracy. No, it was not slaloming or doing any of the fancy steps our larger dogs do. It was running back and forth through trees in a giant's playground.

A friend of mine, a very tall man who also runs a smooth fox terrier bitch (he and I are the only ones we know of here in Texas that do agility with smooth foxes, thus we are automatically friends), said, "I would look so gay if I ran that dog!" Debbie and I assured him that he would rock pink and glitter with the best of them.

We all held our breath again as the dog approached the Aframe. Most of us could only see the down side of the obstacle. We waited....and waited....and everyone clapped when the dog's tiny head popped up over the peak.

The dog went over time but just a bit and still qualified.

Afterwards, I went up to speak to the young woman who handled the dog. She was telling some friends that she had fed the dog several times that day just to make sure she was going to be heavy enough to tip the teeter!

Isn't that a story worth telling?