I have a theory that any given activity that someone finds worthwhile is considered a “red-headed stepchild” of some other activity.  That’s the way it is with American football and what we Americans call “soccer”, which everyone else calls football.  While we see “our” football as a natural evolution of the earlier, more pure form of the sport, just about everyone else in the world sees it as an overly complicated corruption of what they consider to be the greatest sport in the world.

Meanwhile, ancient Mayans would scoff at soccer because they use a wimpy inflatable ball instead of the decapitated head of their defeated enemy.  Plus, the losing team isn’t ritually sacrificed, as the natural order of things demands.

There is a similar relationship between rally obedience and obedience in its original form, its older, more legitimate brother.  On the morning of the third day of the trials, I spent some time watching trials in this type of obedience.  Standard (sometimes called “normal” or “real”) obedience is a solemn, somber business.  Unlike in rally obedience, handlers are to avoid giving the dog any feedback other than the robotically delivered commands telling it what to do next.  Dogs often go through the motions with all the enthusiasm of Dachau inmates shoveling gravel from one meaningless pile to another.

The concentration camp metaphor is probably a little over-the-top.  As far as I could tell, no dogs were gassed or cremated as part of the competition, although in fairness I should point out that I have no idea what went on behind the scenes.

While I watched this dreary spectacle, Cherise went shopping, as she is wont to do.  She picked up two new leashes for the dogs, despite the fact that we already have an impressive leash collection that puts the Imelda Marcos footwear stash to shame.  We have specialized leashes for walking, running, bicycling, obedience, agility, and surfing the internet. At least, I assume they cover all these activities, as it hardly seems economical to have more than one leash per dog that performs the same function.

Thus relieved of my bank account balance, I prepared once again to watch Mallory at work. It was our last chance to get out of there with some semblance of dignity intact.

It started out badly.  As Cherise had trouble getting Mallory’s attention, I mouthed, “Not again!”  Soon, however, our wayward pooch realized where she was and what she was supposed to be doing.  Despite stopping a few times to sniff and once to look around, Attention Deficit Dog wound up completing the course with reasonable competency.

We held our breath as we awaited the final verdict from the judges.  Soon, we had it:  A score of 84.  Qualifying.

We had done it!  Cherise’s patience, Mallory’s had work, and my reading had finally paid off.  After three tries, Mallory had her first leg of the advanced title. 

She didn’t come close to the top three scores, though, so we made do with a tiny little ribbon signifying our lack of failure.  It was enough.  Breathing a sigh of relief, we loaded up our kennels, chairs, and dogs, and prepared to clear out of the EXPO! once and for all.

On the way out, we cut through the plaza, and discovered that Shiner was afraid of large expanses of concrete.

Soon it became clear: This woman had tried to get the first leg of her obedience title, and failed, TWENTY-FIVE PREVIOUS TIMES.

TWENTY. FIVE. TIMES.

Finally, on her twenty-sixth try, her dog had qualified for its first leg. This, of course, was a lesson in patience and perseverence for Cherise, who was ready to quit after one failure.

She didn’t see the relevance.

Today was going to be different. Not only was there a much larger crowd, due to it being Saturday, but Mallory’s trainer Kim showed up to watch her compete. As soon as Cherise told her of the previous day’s failure, Kim asked to see the video I had made of her performance. Soon, she was able to pinpoint how it went wrong. Cherise’s demeanor had been too tentative and restrained, and Mallory picked up on that. The atmosphere in the ring was highly charged, and Cherise needed to compensate for that by being more animated.

This was good news. It meant there was hope after all.

While the women-folk chatted about interior design, rally obedience strategy, and whatever else women talk about, I took Shiner back over to the agility barn to watch some of the action there. I had taken some treats with me to coax him past all the scariness, but soon realized that a more effective approach was to pull him forward whenever he stopped and dropped at the sight of a lunch box, or whatever his latest new phobia was. After resisting for a second or two, Shiner would overcome his hesitation and walk on ahead, working through his mental health issues little by little.

This approach was working out swimmingly until my technique caught the eye of an especially judgemental woman manning one of the vendor booths. She gave me a withering look, shook her head in disgust, and beckoned me over.

“You’ll damage his larynx doing that,” she lectured. “What you want to do is use treats to get him to go forward.” It just so happened that she was selling treats, and used a couple of them to coax Shiner over. Shiner, of course, acted in a manner completely inconsistent with his usual self and immediately threw aside his neurotic nature to rush forward and take the treat.

It didn’t help to tell the lady that Shiner normally didn’t respond this well to treats. This was a novel situation for him, with a new, friendly human offering new and tasty treats. Of COURSE he was going to forget that he was supposed to be afraid of speed bumps, birdhouses, and whatnot. I could offer him the very same treat and he would react differently.

It’s this type of behavior in dogs — the willingness to work with a new, exciting handler while ignoring the boring old owner – that keeps Cesar Milan in business.

I somewhat sheepishly thanked the woman for the treats, not telling her what was really on my mind. I was not too pleased with the unsolicited, condescending advice. I couldn’t blame her, though. I’m sure her years of vast experience have shown her that most people at these venues are slack-jawed yokels who fell off the turnip truck, found a dog, and decided to take it to an AKC event; they were thus greatly in need of elementary handling tips from smug, know-it-all strangers.

Was she right about possibly damaging Shiner’s lanrynx? Perhaps. All I knew was that Shiner had more muscles in his neck than I have anywhere in my body. When I ride a bicycle with Shiner attached, I never have to peddle because he pulls me forward by his neck, dragging me along as easily as a tractor-trailer would drag a Red Ryder wagon. It was difficult to imagine being able to summon enough strength to do any damage, intentional or otherwise, to Shiner’s Neck O’ Power.

I made it back to the obedience ring, plopped myself down grumpily, and regaled everyone who would listen with my story of evil, meddling dog treat vendors. By this time Debra, another friend of Cherise’s, had appeared with her camera, prepared to take pictures of Mallory as she tried again to qualify. When the time drew near for Mallory to compete, Cherise walked through the course with Kim, who pointed out all the potential pitfalls and spoke with the judge to help clear up any confusion over the course.

This time, we knew what to do. This time, we couldn’t fail.

Or, perhaps we could.

I got into position to video record the action, while Debra took another strategic spot to take pictures. As soon as Cherise got Mallory up to the starting point and the judge told her to go, Mallory stopped and stared, enthralled, at something she saw at the back of the ring. Everyone, the judge included, turned around to see what she was looking at, but there was nothing there.

Please, Mallory, won't you consider doing some rally obedience?

Just as Mallory shook it off and started to follow Cherise around the course, she abruptly stopped again, staring a second time at the same spot. From here, the episode took a bit of a downward turn.

When Mallory finally got moving, she was so distracted that she completely avoided the path she was supposed to follow and, at one point, actually stuck her head through the temporary fence that enclosed the ring so she could sniff at something outside. By this time the wheels had begun to come off, and Cherise mercifully brought the embarrassing episode to an end, disqualifying herself.

Our little group got together to try and puzzle out what had happened. Again, Kim, the Queen of Hindsight, had the answer: It was Debra’s camera, which used a flash that created a reflection off one of the laminated markers on the course. Apparently, Mallory saw it out of the corner of her eye and interpreted it as something very interesting–a rabbit, perhaps? –but didn’t see it again until a few seconds later, just as she had decided to go ahead and continue the course.

After the second flash, Debra had realized that her photography might be distracting, so she had shut off the flash. By then, it was too late. Debra was profoundly apologetic at having caused the problem, but Cherise shrugged it off. It wouldn’t have been an issue if Mallory hadn’t been such a spaz to begin with.

Without Debra and her camera, we wouldn't have this awesome picture of us trying to figure out what the hell happened.

The next day was sure to be different.  There were many other ways to fail that we hadn’t even contemplated yet.

Next: Day Three.

Thus I became bogged down in the quagmire that was the AKC Dog Show in Belton, Texas. Cherise decided to take Mallory there to try and get her Advanced Rally Obedience title. There were three trials to be held on three separate days during the show, and Mallory needed three legs to get her title. It would work out perfectly…providing Mallory qualified all three days.

The Bell County EXPO! Center had not been kind to us in the past. We had taken the dogs there in an attempt to get the first leg of their Rally Novice title a few years earlier, and came away bitterly defeated. The environment wasn’t very conducive to border collie attentiveness, what with all the interesting smells and concentrated dog adreneline in the air. We finally earned the Novice title for both dogs in a different venue, one dedicated to dogs and that never played host to organizations like the Southwest Donkey & Mule Society, which I swear to God was scheduled to occupy the EXPO! on the weekend of this writing.

Cherise worked it out perfectly: She would drill Mallory relentlessly on her rally obedience moves, scheduling extra sessions with her friend and dog trainer, Kim. By the time the trials came along, Mallory would be lean, mean obedience machine, would easily sweep the trials, and would hopefully come away with multiple large trophies for which we would have to rent a U-Haul.

Here is how it actually played out:

Day One:

The first day was a Friday. Attendance was fairly low, owing to the fact that most attendors (usually people say “attendees”, but that actually means “one who is attended”, not “one who attends”) had actual jobs. Cherise was one of those lucky few who had the leisure time to devote to dog activites full-time, while I was forced to take a day off work. Not that I wouldn’t have taken the day off anyway.

While Cherise has the time to devote to this sort of thing, she comes far short in the resources department compared to many other dog enthusiasts. Many of them arrive in colossal mobile homes far larger and nicer than our old-fashioned, stationary one. They then set exercise pens in the adjoining parking spaces, taking care to also use up just enough of a second space so that it can’t be used by anything larger than a scooter. The pens are then filled with what appear to be carefully crafted clones of the same pure-bred dog, except that no two clones could ever be as identical as these dogs.

Cherise had had the foresight to arrive the previous day and stake out a spot within eyeshot of the ring where we were to be competing. We had our two collapsible crates, a couple of chairs, and a kennel for a friend who was trying to get a novice title for her own dog. We set up shop and I immediately went to work reading a book on software development while Cherise went to check in.

My role in this enterprise was Dog Wrangler. This meant that I was to read my book, every now and then hiss “Shhh!” at the dogs when they started to get rambunctious, and occasionally wish that I had brought a hammock or reclining lawn chair so I could catch a quick nap.

Originally, I was going to enter Shiner in a lure coursing event, but that was cancelled due to drought conditions…the cracks in the earth were large enough to swallow up the smaller SUV’s, and it was deemed unsafe for dogs. This meant that Shiner’s role here was to essentially be Shiner, which made for a much more interesting weekend.

After much anticipation on Cherise’s part and much reading on my part, it came time for Mallory’s class to compete. I mosied over to the ring to watch the competition, and was filled with a measure of shadenfreude at the performance of some of the other dogs. They were lethargic, slow to react, and always a step behind their handler. This was going to be a breeze!

Then Mallory took the ring…and did the exact same thing the other dogs had done.

Just before entering the ring, she was attentive and obedient, but as soon as the judge said “go”, Mallory took on the persona of Matthew McConnaughey after smoking lots of weed and inexplicably finding himself in Narnia. Each attempt by Cherise to get the dog’s attention resulted in a listless “Wha…?” response, followed by looking around and sniffing the floor.

Normally in rally obedience you have this smooth pace where the dog moves purposefully from one station to another, performing whatever obedience maneuver is specified by the card placed there. Sometimes she will sit, sometimes lay down, sometimes circle around the handler. In Mallory’s case, on this occassion, the “smooth” aspect was clearly missing. After Cherise managed to get her attention long enough to perform the obedience manuever, Mallory would immediately wander off, starting the whole embarrassing process over again.

Mallory pulled it together somewhat at the end, but it was too little, too late. After a brief period of hope that a clerical error would somehow give us a qualifying score, we learned that she had, in fact, failed to qualify.

So much for the plan.

Mallory wasn’t scheduled to compete again until the next day, so we went over to the other building where the agility trials were taking place. In order to get there, we had to walk through a large barn filled with vendor booths and grooming tables. I had Shiner with me, and as soon as we entered the barn, he went full-on mental. He immediately hit the floor, elbows glued to the ground and refusing to move. I looked around to see what was spooking him, and quickly spotted the problem: A small drainage grate on the floor about ten feet in front of us.

No problem, I thought. We would go another way.

When Shiner saw that we were moving away from the hell-spawn Floor Hole, he gladly trotted right along with us. That is, until he saw another, identical grate a few yards further down. Again, he hit the floor.

I looked around, and saw that there was no path through this building that did not take us directly over multiple drainage grates positioned every five yards or so. Fortunately, there was a nearby vendor booth where we bought a bag of dog treats, and we used these to coax Shiner forward.

At long last, we found a route through the forest of grooming tables that had no drains. Shiner did well…at first. Then he quickly hit the floor again, terrified by something he had seen.

Again, I looked around, searching for the thing that frightened him. It was then that I discovered an entirely new and unexpected trigger for Shiner’s neuroses: Yellow extension cord.

“Really, Shiner?” I asked the dog. He looked up at me with sad, quivering eyes. He indeed seemed sincere in his belief that yellow extension cord, not the apparently harmless orange or black, was going to kill him.

Slowly, excruciatingly, we managed to coax Shiner forward through the barn. Every third grooming table or so made use of yellow extension cord, so we were constantly dealing with Shiner’s panic attacks. Finally, at long last, we entered another barn where the agility trials were being held. Immediately, Shiner bounced to his feet and pranced along beside us, forgetting completely about the horrors he had just endured.

Agility is similar to rally obedience in the sense that the dog moves around a pre-designed course, but you are infinitely more likely to have seen it on television. At this point it was way past my lunchtime, so while Cherise watched some of the action, I went to the lone source of food in the entire event: The EXPO!’s sorrowful and highly inefficient snack bar.

Waving away the swarm of flies buzzing around the counter area, I asked a question about the only thing on the menu that looked palatable to me. “Does the sausage come in a bun, like a hot dog?”

“We’re out of sausage,” the highly unmotivated attendant informed me.

“All right,” I sighed. “I’ll take the hamburger.”

The young go-getter walked over the other other end of the snack bar, grabbed a foil-wrapped package from a steaming container, and plopped it on the counter in front of me. “Four dollars,” he said, the twinkle in his eye conspicuously absent.

I took my meal and went over the the nearby bleachers, with Shiner in tow, and tried to undertake the near-impossible task of eating with one hand while simultaneously holding onto and fending off a dog with the other. The hamburger clearly looked for more edible to Shiner than it did to me…Shiner normally doesn’t take vegetables or condiments on his hamburgers, and this one had neither.

I went back to the counter to see if there was a condiment bar in the vicinity, but came up empty. It was then that I noticed another customer of the snack bar taking away a hamburger, identical to mine, but accompanied by a bag of hamburger trimmings.

Annoyed, I went back to the counter and asked the aforementioned Employee of the Month for the rest of my meal. He handed me a soggy sandwich bag containing pickles, onions, a sad, wilted lettuce leaf, and a slice of tomato so small in relation to the hamburger that it would be statistically more likely to win the lottery than to take a random bite and hit tomato.

In spite of everything, I felt much better after eating. I asked Cherise if she wanted a dried-out hamburger with crappy fixins, but she strangely had no appetite for such a meal. In fact, she was quite discouraged. She said that if she didn’t do any better the next day, she may not bother coming back for Mallory’s third leg.

Only time would tell.

Next: Day Two

Everyone who has owned a dog is familiar with the crazy line…that line of demarcation within the canine brain that determines whether he a)walks along obediently beside you, his tongue hanging out in an endearing fashion, or b)charges, barking wildly, into the midst of a group of preschoolers on a field trip, scattering them to the four winds.

It’s all about emotional arousal.  If the day is so uneventful that the dogs find me to be the most interesting thing in the room, then they will be sharp and focused, and do whatever I ask of them.  If, however, an unforeseen cat or squirrel enters their field of vision, then I may as well be Amy Winehouse’s drug counselor, for all the attention they give me.

The importance of the crazy line is determined by several factors.  First, what is the baseline of the dog’s emotional arousal? Is she closer in temperament to a ficus tree, or a box of fireworks someone has carelessly tossed a lit cigarette into? If the baseline is low, then it will take an awful lot to get the dog over the crazy line.  Winning the lottery probably wouldn’t even touch it.

If, on the other hand, the dog is a veritable cork holding the Pacific Ocean in an aspirin bottle (so to speak), then you are likely to observe occassional incursions into what is scientifically known as the “Bat-crap Insanity Zone”.  It was none other than Temple Grandin, champion for the humane treatment of animals, who admitted that, for some dogs, the only way to keep them out of the Zone is a liberal application of electric shock.

Our dogs spend a lot of time in The Zone.  It doesn’t take much to get them there, either.

Shiner knows the Zone well, as evidenced by this short video in which he displays the powers of concentration that caused him to NQ (not qualify) in the AKC Rally Obedience trial.  Shiner was attempting to pass the first leg of his Advanced title, having achieved his Novice title earlier that day.  The main difference between the Novice and Advanced trial is that the dog is restrained by a leash in Novice, while he is restrained only by his little dog brain in the Advanced.  I’ll leave to your imagination the question of how his brain stacked up to a good, sturdy leash in that regard.

Shiner does Rally Obedience, Sort Of

(In case you were wondering, a dog participating in Rally Obedience is not normally expected to spend as much time above the floor as Shiner does here.)

Mallory was apparently born in The Zone.  She spent a great deal of her youth there. One of the techniques used by our first trainer to get her to settle down and learn some impulse control was to teach her the “place” command.  This command requires something up off the floor, like a raised dog bed or, in a pinch, a chair.  The dog learns that when she is asked to “place”, she must get up in the bed or chair, or whatever, and stay there until explicitly released by a touch on the shoulder.

This is a great way to teach a dog to stay below the Crazy Line.  It was a difficult lesson from Mallory to learn, however.  The way it is reinforced in the dog is to try and coax the dog off the place, then correct them if they touch the floor for any reason other than the shoulder-touch.  If they slip up, the punishment is to take the dog by the collar, lead them back to their place, then tug on their collar three times to indicate disaproval.  Or something.  In any case, the dog knows she screwed up, and is properly chastened.  Each slip-up further reinforces the need to stay put until the proper signal is given.

Mallory is nothing if not clever, however.  You could see the gears in her little dog-brain churning away while she tried to find a loophole in the “place” rules.  At one point, she seemed to figure out that, if touching the floor was bad, then the only way she could legally get off her place was to find a way out that did not involve touching the floor.  Thus, she would try to step onto a nearby blanket, or leap to another piece of furniture, like a young child pretending that the floor is lava and the only way to safely cross the room is to jump from one safe spot to another.

You hate to punish such ingenuity in a dog, but it was important to teach Mallory impulse control.  So, we continued to reinforce the place command until it was rock-solid.

However, the Crazy Line is a fickle mistress.  One day we had friends over and were demonstrating how well Mallory did when perched on her place.  She was very excited, of course, with the unexpected guests present and all the attendant smells they brought with them, and did a perpetual little tap-dance on her dog bed.  She was clearly flirting with the Crazy Line, but didn’t cross it.  She didn’t dare disobey the command to stay put.  Raising the stakes, we began calling to her, trying to get her to slip up.  She wasn’t biting(again — so to speak).

Then, finally, one of our guests called to her.  That did it.  Her excitement level spiked and went far above the Crazy Line, and she leaped high into the air in the direction of the “interesting person du jour”.

As she reached the high point of the parabolic arc, a look of horror crossed her features.  Once some of the excitement was released by the action of jumping high into the air, her arousal level once again dipped below the Crazy Line, and she realized she had made a horrible mistake.  Her body began twisting frantically in the air, trying to circumvent the laws of physics in a manner that would get her safely back to the dog bed before she hit the floor.  This effort went for naught, of course, and as soon as she landed she whipped around and began to frantically scurry back to her dog bed.

Once again, we reinforced the place command by tugging on her collar — leading her back to the bed was unnecessary — and Mallory hunkered down in a submissive fashion.

Looking back on it, this technique seems a little cruel.  There are nicer ways to teach a dog impulse control, although they aren’t as easy to do, and we didn’t have them at our disposal back then.  With our relative inexperience, it was probably the best way to go at the time.

So, what do you do if you want to keep a dog out of The Zone?  As I mentioned before, electric shock is an option, although there are a few things you can try first.  Getting the dog’s baseline exciteability level as low as possible is a good one.  This is done by making sure she gets plenty of exercise on a daily basis.  There are also training protocols designed specifically to get a dog to relax and learn frustration tolerance.  We still have masking tape on our floors that marked out where the dogs needed to be relaxing when practicing this particular brand of voodoo.

Finally, you can wait for the dog to get older.  This not only allows the dog brain to mellow and calm itself, it also increases the likelyhood that the dog will throw out it’s sciatica, or something, when trying to do something truly crazy.

Or you can just make sure the dog never experiences anything that causes them to go into Froot Loop mode.  Good luck with that!

Given all this, I am sometimes amazed at how stupid I can be.

A few years ago I was at a party at the home of my nephew, celebrating his birthday. As I explored the house, I came across his dog Rolf, a large Weinereimer mix. Rolph was sitting there eyeing me warily, when I decided, against every principle of human-dog interaction that I knew, that it would be a good idea to go tromping brainlessly up to him and pat him briskly on the head, saying something idiotic like, “NICE DOGGIE, DERP!”

Now, you have to understand what this looks like to a dog. Here is this strange person, invading your living space and reeking of a hellish blend of weird odors (just for the record, it wasn’t anything a human would notice). As if that weren’t enough, this moron comes right at you, making eye contact and generally shouting, with his body language, “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU AND STEAL YOUR BED AND DOG TOYS!!!”

Then, as if THAT weren’t enough, he reaches back behind your field of vision, his hand where you can’t see it, and begins thumping you vigorously on the cranium.

What would YOU do? Yes, that’s exactly what Rolf did…he bit the crap out of my hand.

I returned to the party, clutching my hand and wondering how I could graciously say, “Well, it’s been fun, and I hate to leave so early, but the flesh has been ripped from the bone and I must be popping off to the hospital now!” On the other hand (get it?), I also didn’t want to continue on as if nothing had happened and wait for some party guest to scream in horror upon seeing me casually toss back a ginger ale with a mangled and bleeding hand.

I worried about dripping blood on the new rug, but when I saw no blood I very cautiously examined my hand to assess the damage. There was, in fact, no bleeding, not even a mark where Rolf’s teeth had clamped down.

It’s amazing how much pain a dog can inflict without actually doing any damage. Or perhaps I’m just a wimp and have no tolerance for pain.

At any rate, I knew immediately that I had been a world-class idiot. I KNEW not to approach an unfamiliar dog like that (especially a big one!), and I KNEW that dogs, in general, do not like being patted on the head. In fact, some trainers recommend this as a method for getting an overly playful dog to go away and stop bothering you, already.

There have been many examples of this kind of idiocy with our own dogs. Way back in the old days when we had our Sheltie, Megan, Cherise and I were out for a walk when a stray cat followed us home. Of course, we instantly thought: “I bet Megan would like to meet a stray cat!” So, as soon as we got home, we went inside, grabbed Megan, and triumphantly plopped her in front of this strange animal we knew nothing about.

Of course, this happened late at night, so, long story short, we had to take Megan to the after-hours emergency vet. Cha-ching!

I wish I could count the number of times Cherise and I had some disaster take place involving our dogs, then immediately looked at each other and said, “Well THAT was stupid!” Rope-burn from a carelessly handled leash and overly-excited border collie? Check. Letting the dogs loose and assuming they’ll come back? Check. Feeding the dogs ten pounds of rotten chicken? Check. Blundering into a dogfight while walking the dog? Well, I don’t remember this specifically happening, but it sure sounds like something I would do.

Most recently, I was watching TV in the den while playing catch with Shiner. I’m sure all of you dog owners is familiar with this game: The dog brings you some old, weathered dog toy encrusted with what appears to be centuries of dog spit, you throw it, and he brings it back to you. If you decide to stop playing, the dog puts it in your lap or shoves it in your face, whichever is more convenient. If you take the toy away and put it out of reach, he simply wanders off and finds something even more disgusting to bring you.

I know better than to play this game with Shiner. I know that what you’re really doing is caving in to his demands that you play with him right here, right now, which is not the sort of thing you want to do if you intend to continue being the one who sleeps in a bed and has dominion over the remote control. In short, it’s a dominance issue, and it’s the owner’s responsibility to make sure the dog understands that the owner will determine when it’s time to play, not the dog. Because the dog will pick times that are extremely inconvenient for you, such as during a football game or a wake.

I know this stuff.

If you’ve learned anything about me by now, however, it’s that knowing something doesn’t seem to have any effect whatsoever in how I behave.

And so, predictably, I spent about thirty minutes tossing a particularly bouncy ball to Shiner, occassionally glancing over from the TV to watch his antics as the ball bounced off of walls, furniture, and various breakable objects, and he followed it close behind.

I could have done this for days on end with nothing bad happening. That doesn’t make it any less stupid.

Shiner, being an extremely athletic dog, loves to leap up into the air and twist his body around while snapping at balls, frisbees, or whatever happens to be flying past him. Occassionally, he’ll come down awkwardly and flop around on the ground for a while before getting to his feet again, but he has never suffered any ill effects.

Until now.

As he had done many times before, Shiner came down from one of his mid-air retrieval attempts and landed with his feet not quite under him. This time, though, he immediately slipped on the linoleum floor, crumpled to the ground, and began yiping in pain.

I jumped up quickly and came to his aid. I helped him to his feet and noticed immediately that he was pulling his right hind leg up close to his body, as if protecting it. He had quieted down by this point, so I began gently squeezing parts of his foot and leg to see if I could determine where the tenderness was. Shiner was silent, not reacting at all to my examination. I finally let him go to see if he had any trouble getting around.

As it turned out, Shiner had no trouble at all getting around. Unfortunately, he was doing it on three legs.

I knew I was in trouble. Cherise had been working hard on Shiner’s agility and herding skills, and had been making great progress. Now, I had broken him.

Before long, Shiner was putting weight on his injured leg, but still walked with a noticeable limp. Cherise announced she was going to take him to the vet the next morning, and I was in no position to argue.

The next day, the verdict was in: Shiner had dislocated his kneecap. The vet explained to Cherise exactly how such injuries happen and how the dog reacts when it does, and what he described matched exactly what I had witnessed the previous night. He said that Shiner’s muscles in his hind legs were so strong, they almost immediately pulled the kneecap back into position, but it was still going to take some time for the ligaments to tighten up again and the inflammation to go down.

Once again I felt stupid (I didn’t even know dogs HAD kneecaps!). It had never occured to me that having a dog jumping and cavorting on a slippery linoleum floor wasn’t a good idea, but clearly, it wasn’t. Now we had to pay the price: One week of cage rest for Shiner, which is as about as easy to achieve as putting a tornado into a bottle.

Or so I thought. Shiner actually handled it very well and didn’t become antsy until his week was almost up. I really think I had more of a problem with his enforced convalescence than he did.

Unfortunately, he has to take a break from dog sports for the next several weeks. For that period of time, I will have to endure offhand comments from Cherise about how this whole mess is delaying Shiner’s development, and it’s all my fault, and how I’m clearly the weak link in our marriage, etc., etc. I’m used to that sort of thing, and it usually goes away when I get her to eat something.

I can’t help pondering the irony, though. Shiner has performed amazing acrobatic feats catching frisbees, running a lure course, and jumping through obstacles on the agility field. And how does he hurt his leg? Chasing a ball in the friggin’ LIVING ROOM.

I blame myself. I’m supposed to be the one with the big brain. Sometimes, though, I really have to wonder.

Until recently, only sight hounds could participate. Breeds such as border collies, german shepherds, doberman pinschers, and (mercifully) pugs, were prevented from competing.

Now, that has changed. A special category of lure coursing has now been created to accommodate those genetically-challenged dogs that might be interested despite not falling into the giant, four-legged tarantula category. The initial trial for such dogs is called the CAT…the Coursing Ability Test.

Cherise, naturally, was unable to resist signing Shiner and Mallory up for the opportunity to do something they had never done before. I’m speaking of lure coursing, of course; humiliating us in front of a large group of people is something they’ve done many times.

So we loaded up the dogs and brought them out to Hutto, Texas (home of the Hutto Hippos, in case the plethora of concrete hippos in front of every business in town confuses you as to which high school football team they support there).

We had absolutely no idea what to expect, so Cherise and I initially just wandered around trying to get our bearings. There was a large field with some people sitting in lawn chairs looking official. There were also a number of spindly-legged hounds being led around by their handlers, leading us to believe we were somewhere in the vicinity of the right place. (There was a trial for “normal” sight hounds that morning.)

At first I didn’t see any infrastructure that could support any sort of mechanical bunny racing about. Upon closer inspection, though, I saw a strange contraption set up in the field which looked like the sort of thing Rube Goldberg would have come up with, had he been an electrical engineer.

The dreaded apparatus

In time, we got organized enough to get ourselves on the schedule for the trials later that afternoon. In the meantime, we got the dogs out of the kennel and led them over to the field so they could see what was involved in this new sport. There were still a couple of greyhounds and afghans competing, so we tried our best to get our pups lined up so that some of the excitement might inadvertantly pass in front of their eyeballs.

We needn’t have worried. The two dogs immediately spotted the activity out on the field and became visibly excited. Soon we were forced to put them away again as they threatened to disrupt the entire operation with their bouncing and barking.

Before long, the handlers of all the fancy sight hounds loaded up in their Winnebagoes and converted buses and moved on to the next trial. Now, it was our turn.

The non-sight-hound coursing is definitely less formal than the traditional kind, as the formerly pristine field was soon littered with lawn chairs, coolers, and of course, many different types of dogs. We took our place right behind the Contraption and prepared to watch the show.

There were two classes of dogs; those under twelve inches OR with a flat face (or both), and those over twelve inches with a normal dog nose. The first class only had to run 300 yards within 90 seconds, while the second class, to which our dogs belonged, had to run 600 yards in 120 seconds.

The dogs were required to run “naked”, which isn’t as kinky as it sounds. They were to have no collars or other embellishments; certainly not Paris-Hilton-type sunglasses or hats. There was too much danger that these would injure the dog at the high speeds that were to be attained, although with certain dogs this was never really an issue.

When the dog was ready to run, the “huntmaster” shouted “Tallyhoe!”

(To quote Dave Barry: I am not making this up.)

The dog was then released and…well, it chased the plastic grocery bags around the field until it stopped and the huntmaster said, “Recall your dog.”

If the dog refused to be recalled, the handler was subject to a 5 dollar fine and possibly being banned from future events. This was the clause that made me sit up and take notice. Both our dogs were known to refuse to be recalled once in a while.

As the first few dogs started their runs, we put Shiner and Mallory in front of us to observe. And observe they did, barking furiously. Shiner, in particular, went into Turbo-Hyperbark, and was soon displaying his patented “yarping” technique that could render a whole swarm of bats hard-of-hearing.

Cherise shouted at me to get Shiner to stop, as he would wear himself out before he got to the line. I responded by shouting that barking used considerably less energy than running, so this wasn’t really an issue. I’m afraid my argument fell on deaf ears, however. At this point, neither of us could hear anything other than a loud, persistent ringing sound.

Fortunately, we had memorized our place in line, and before we knew it Mallory was in the “hole”. From the “hole” a participant moved up to the “deck”, then to the “line”.

Cherise took Mallory first while I tried to keep Shiner from prematurely entering the fray. Despite our worst fears, Mallory had no problem recognizing the point of the game, and chased the “bunny” with great enthusiasm. Although Cherise had a little trouble getting her back, she had no problem qualifying.

Next, it was Shiner’s turn. Despite inexplicably becoming completely uninterested in the “bunny” just prior to the start, as soon as “Tallyhoe!” was heard, he lunged after the lure at top speed. At the second corner, he wiped out and fell, but soon got back to his feet and resumed the chase.

Cherise had videotaped his run, and later I was able to determine that he finished the course in 57 seconds, less than half the time allotted. I wasn’t sure if that was a good time or not, since I had nothing to compare it to. It was certainly much faster than a human could do it, though.

The next day I timed other dogs to see how Shiner measured up. The fastest dog in the field, a young blue mearle border collie, finished in about 41 seconds. I later found that greyhounds typically finish in 30 seconds or less.

Mallory made her second run and finished in about 50 seconds, faster than Shiner’s time the previous day, and faster than many of the other “over 12″ dogs. Not bad for an eight-year-old.

Shiner was one of the last to go, and did much better than he did the previous day. At one point he actually caught the lure in his teeth, and it had to be sped up to keep ahead of him. He finished with a time of 46 seconds.

Shiner does CAT

In a couple of weeks there will be another such trial in Florence, Texas. We’ll be there, ready to do battle!

Mallory flanking the sheep

Mallory and Shiner hiding behind their many ribbons

AKC (American Kennel Club) was not new to us. Our dogs had already been certified (”titled”, in AKC jargon) in rally obedience, novice level. In order to do that, we had to register both of them with the AKC, a somewhat tricky process because, being rescue dogs, there was no record of their ancestry. Instead, we had to submit photos of our dogs showing that they were, indeed, border-collie-like mammals and not misidentified wharf rats, such as the one made famous by the urban legend. You know the one.

Once that was done, Mallory and Shiner appeared in the official AKC Big Book O’ Dogs, alongside more pedigreed beasts with names like “Precocious Prancing Dorothy” and “Cruciferous Adumantium Rex”. More importantly, they were then eligible to compete in trials of various dog sports for which they are not really qualified.

Since Mallory and Shiner were newbies in the high-stakes, fast-moving world of sheep herding, they had to be titled in the Pre-Trial class before they could really compete in any meaningful way. “Title” is a confusing word to the uninitiated, because it sounds like the dog won the World Series or something, but in fact it’s just another word for “certification”. In order to get a title, one must qualify in a certain number of trials for each class. They then become eligible for the next level of competition.

In Mallory and Shiner’s case, they each needed to qualify twice in Pre-Trial before they could become “Started” dogs. At the Bertram trials, they would have the opportunity to accomplish this in a single weekend.

Before the competition began, Cherise showed me what she would have to do: Get the dog to fetch the sheep at one end of the pen, drive them to the other end and through a gauntlet of panels that formed a narrow corridor between the panels and the fence, and then go back the way they had come. The dog needed to sit still while the handler opened the gate for the sheep, then help drive the sheep into the exhaust pen. By this time, the sheep didn’t really need much goading to get the hell out of the trial pen; the only trick was to slam the door shut before the dog followed them into their sanctuary and raised all living hell in there.

In comparison to the non-AKC trials we had been to, this one seemed much more…civilized. For one thing, there was no outrageous carpet of poo to traverse, and there were actually TWO porta-potties for the humans among us. There were two certified Attack Donkeys patrolling the grounds, which were none too sociable but reportedly quite skilled at kicking the living crap out of mutton-craving coyotes.

Rules for humane treatment of both the dogs and the livestock were more strict. The sheep couldn’t be overworked, they had to be rotated diligently and given plenty of water to drink. At AKC trials, each dog has fresh, calm sheep. If only we were all so lucky.

There were fewer people competing here compared to other trials we’d seen, and for the most part they seemed much more like us: city folk who loved their dogs and wanted them to have fun while competing for fabulous prizes.

When it came time for the pre-trials, Cherise got into position with Shiner. She had been worried about Shiner, who in practice runs did not seem to be taking the whole thing too seriously. In the actual trial Shiner did OK, not in the sense that he was actually aware of the sheep and actively participated in the exercise, but more in the sense that he did not do anything to deliberately sabotage the effort. The sheep followed Cherise through the course, and Shiner stayed close enough that the sheep felt safer sticking together than running off in random directions.

When Mallory’s turn came, things got interesting. The first half of the trial went much as Shiner’s had, but on the way back through Cherise became overconfident and was not aware that some of the sheep had broken off and were heading back to the exhaust pen. Meanwhile, Cherise continued blithely on, like Moses leading his Chosen People to the Promised Land, but not noticing that over 65% of the Chosen People had wandered off in the direction of Mesopotamia.

“Look up! Look up!” the judge yelled helpfully. Cherise turned around, quickly sized up the situation, and promptly forgot the command she was supposed to give Mallory. Was it “go by”, meaning she should circle around to the right of the sheep and drive them back, or “away”, which would tell Mallory to do the mirror-image of the manuever? Unable to quickly do the English-to-HerdSpeak conversions in her head, Cherise simply blurted: “Get ‘em, Mallory!”

Mallory look at Cherise, then at the sheep, and sprung into action. And here, while I usually am being ironic when I say “sprung into action” in reference to Mallory, I mean she actually sprung into action in a meaningful way. She immediately ran after the sheep, staying to their right with enough space to keep them from bolting, and cut them off before they could make it to the exhaust pen. The sheep reversed direction and went back the way they were supposed to go. Soon Cherise had them under control again, although she lost one of the sheep again just as she was approaching the end of the trial. Again, Mallory expertly charged after the sheep and got it to join its brethren. They were penned without incident.

Despite the unplanned detours, Mallory actually finished with a faster time than Shiner did. It was an astonishing performance, considering the phobia of barnyard animals she had demonstrated just a few months before. She was amazingly agile in her performance, especially taking into account the fact that she was gimpy in one hind leg due to an old knee surgery and had mild hip displasia in the other.

A professional photographer had recorded all the trials for posterity, and Cherise talked to the photographer’s assistant afterwards. The assistant, who had just gone through and picked out the best photos from each trial, gushed about how cute Mallory was and how crazy Shiner was. I was a little suprised at her perceptiveness, for although Mallory was indeed noticeably cute, Shiner wasn’t nearly as crazy during the trial as he normally was. However, pictures don’t lie, and they told a story of a dog who spent approximately fifty percent of the time with all four feet off the ground. Some of the pictures were dramatic action shots, with Cherise showing a determined expression, the sheep following her intently, and Shiner doing some random action that had nothing to do with the task at hand. Sometimes he was examining a bug on the ground, sometimes he was reacting with great intensity to something off-camera that was in a diametrically opposed position to the sheep. In one picture, he appeared to be doing an impression of Mighty Mouse. Although he never got far from the sheep, and as a result he had no problem qualifying, the pictures portrayed a strange disconnect between Shiner and anything resembling sheep herding. All in all, he displayed a level of enthusiasm that was completely inappropriate to the setting.

But then, if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be Shiner.

The next day we returned and the dogs repeated their previous day’s performances almost verbatim. With their second qualifying trials, they each earned a Pre-Trial Test Title. All in all, we took home six ribbons, an accomplishment that was only dimmed slightly by the fact that they were old ribbons left over from a previous event. It didn’t matter too much that the description of the trial was incomplete and/or inaccurate on the ribbons, they just looked good when the dogs’ kennel was festooned with them.

The whole experience made me feel closer to my doggies. I was proud of them and filled with confidence for their future as competitors.

These warm feelings continued all the way to the point where Mallory, once again, wrapped herself around my laptop power cord and pulled my expensive and fragile computer, clattering, to the floor.

Damn dog.

Kim is a dog trainer who has been helping us with Mallory and Shiner for a number of years. They had been talking about vacations, and Cherise said that she had wanted for a long time to load the dogs up in the car and go on one of the many dog-friendly vacations she had found on the Internet.

“You don’t have golden retrievers or chocolate labs,” she explained. “You have BORDER COLLIES. They aren’t the kind of dogs you can just take on vacation.”

Sadly, it was true. Mallory and Shiner were great dogs, and behaved wonderfully most of the time…but they have never forgotten their roots as carniverous pack animals, and neither should we.

Things had gotten much better since we had first taken on the impossible task that Mallory and Shiner represented. The first time I took Mallory over to my mother’s house — a foolish thing to do, I know now — the problems of integrating a border collie with human society became apparent. I took her inside only briefly so visiting relatives could see her, then, since my mother isn’t really a dog person, let her loose in the back yard. Mallory quickly found the disused Koi pond back there and dove in, coating herself in the rich, aromatic black mud that had been accumulating on the bottom for several years.

As my brother and I checked out the damage at the pond, Mallory had already moved on to bigger and better things. Soon, we heard a blood-curdling scream coming from the house. It was my mother, and judging from the scream she had witnessed either: A. a decapitation, B. an alien abduction, or C. a hyperactive dog covered with swamp muck running through her house and jumping on anyone she could find.

Fortunately, my brother had brought his dogs with him — a golden retriever and a chocolate lab — and let me use one of his kennels to contain Mallory for the remainder of the visit.

Such escapades had occurred with less frequency more recently, partly because Mallory has mellowed with age, but mostly because we don’t trust her nearly as far as we could throw her. Which, by the way, we have been tempted to do from time to time.

The most recent encounter between Mallory and my family occurred about a year ago when we brought the dogs to a picnic for my niece’s birthday. The dogs were on leashes, which we held onto like an addict holds onto his last dose of heroine. I was wrangling Shiner, while Cherise had Mallory. I maneuvered carefully over to the grill, where my brother-in-law was making hot dogs. I managed to talk him out of one of the few German sausages he was cooking, since I knew Cherise didn’t trust regular hot dog meat. After putting the sausage on the bun, I walked over to Cherise and offered it to her.

“Here,” I said, extending the hot dog. “Do you want…”

CHOMP! I heard, and when the momentary fog of war cleared, I saw that I was holding an empty hot dog bun. Cherise looked stunned, and on the other end of her leash, a supremely satisfied Mallory was licking her chops.

We haven’t even gotten to Shiner yet. Although more submissive than Mallory, his neurosis and extreme high energy can cause problems as well. Too late, we have learned not to add to this neurosis unecessarily.

There was a time when Shiner loved children, and he would show his love by rearing up on his hind legs and knocking toddlers to the ground. A few years ago, we permanently cured him of this by taking him to a family outing and demonstrating his frisbee-catching skills to our nieces and nephews. The kids loved Shiner, and each wanted a chance to throw the frisbee for him. Shiner seemed to enjoy himself as well, although we overdid it and let the exercise carry on far too long. Ever since then, Shiner has been extremely distrustful of children. Whenever he sees one out in public, it seems to set off his fight/flight response the way bears or lions would do to most dogs. Thus, children joined street gutters, floor grates, and front-loading washers on the list of things that freak Shiner out, much to our embarrassment.

Speaking of embarrassment, Shiner has a unique bark when he gets excited, once that sounds like the sound a puppy would make if its tail were caught in a pencil sharpener. it is a cross between a bark and a high-pitched yelp. For lack of a better term, I call it “yarping”. It’s loud and piercing, and when he does it in public…well, I only wish I could pretend he’s not my dog, but having him on the end of the leash I’m holding makes this quite difficult.

With Shiner, though, the major embarrassment is his lack of recall. If you’ve got a frisbee in your hand, then he’ll never leave your side. However, if he’s got the frisbee, and he has grown tired of bringing it back to you, you might as well be invisible. He runs off on his own, gripping the frisbee tightly in his jaws, and romps about playfully with no more awareness of the outside world than a black-and-white rock. You could try to chase him down, if you dare, but chasing down a malfunctioning cruise missile would be a more profitable endeavor.

He got into this mode one night after a training session at Kim’s field. She instructed us to teach him a lesson by getting in our car and leaving without him. When he saw he was being abandoned, he would succumb to separation anxiety and, when we returned after circling the block a few times, he would gladly run to our waiting arms.

It all worked out very well, except for the parts about separation anxiety and running into our arms. When we returned, he was exactly as we had left him: Prancing mindlessly about the field, still carrying the frisbee in his jaws and waving it about in a carefree manner. We finally did the only thing we could do: Lure him in with a bigger and better frisbee than the one he was carrying.

And so, reluctantly, we have to agree with Kim. Although our dogs are well-behaved 99% of the time, they are unfortunately capable of damaging property, people, or our own reputations 100% of the time. Our dogs are not ready for the world at large, and probably never will be.

Or, perhaps it is the world which is not ready for them.