…That's what they would write on my gravestone. Were I going to have a gravestone.  I'm actually leaning toward having someone make sausage out of me and serve it at my wake without telling anyone until after.  By subtly handing out the ingredient list on the back of my sad In Remembrance card/Spicy Aged Patties or Links Recipe. (Links, I think!)

Anyway.

Last night I worked Pat at Dianne's weekly group lesson.

We worked on an AKC course that was set up in one of the smaller fields.  Small is hard for Pat and I because SLOW is hard for Pat and I.  This was a REALLY SMALL course. I think the crossdrive is like….40 feet.  (probably really 100) It felt like running him through a Quicky Mart.  It was a recipe for me to yell FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK NONONONONONO WHATDOYOUTHINKYOUAREDOINGSOBIHATETHISSHIT while twitching, stomping, and slapping my leg.

"Why do you not just say, 'No' when he needs a correction?"

I was busy slapping my leg and frowning fiercely, "Fuck…"

"I mean, because by the time you get all that out…especially on a course of this size….it's too late…"

slap slap…

"And quit slapping your leg. What is that? It's like some sort of …twitch."

It's a habit. Like the full on sentences that I call my commands.  Which is unfortunate especially when you combine THAT impulse with my and Pat's NEED FOR SPEED.  Because that is our shared flaw.  We both begin every run just wanting to get through it fast.  EVEN THOUGH I KNOW, again, intellectually, this is NOT GOOD: I want slow, but I want slow like I want Global Peace and a house made out of candy….

PLUS: I am prone to doing to an exaggerated degree what I've seen other's do: I take on the mannerisms and the handling style of my trainer. TIMES 1000.  If Dianne gently pats her leg and says, "Here, here…" to subtly bring her dog in toward her…I spank my leg incessantly with the fervor of a dominatrix and scream HEREHEREHEREHEREHEREFUCKINGGODWHYAREN'TYOUHEREYETSOBSOBSOB" and then throw in a whistle, just because its hanging around my neck wanting in on the action.

"Just think in increments of 10 feet," Dianne suggested.  "Make Pat lie down, every 10 feet, and use that QUIET TIME to plan ahead. Where do the sheep's heads need to be pointed in order to make that next obstacle.  Flank Pat, or walk him up no more than 10 feet, and LIE HIM DOWN. REPEAT."

And this helped.  It's a struggle, but thinking of an entire field in increments of 10 feet, IF I CAN REALLY DO IT, is easier for me. And Pat. 

This isn't new.  None of it.  It's that I need to do this 1000 times until my body is used to responding instead of my frantic mind; until I'm used to looking at the field as a grid of strategies and not viewing an entire field at once as a trap designed to get me to slap myself and sob… and freaking out. 

Dianne is going to straightjacket me for Kelley Creek. Duct-tape my whistle in my mouth.  It's the only way…

Susan Lindstedt frequently has some of the best blunt quotations concerning dog trialing, livestock work and people in general. She has a way of summing the situation up in terms that capture the less pretty side of trialing; the shittier grittier stages of dog handling and becoming a handler.  One of my favorites she delivered to another good friend of mine who, after a particularly shitty run last year was considering pulling her dog from the rest of the trial. 

"Bullshit!" Susan said, "You need to get your butt out there and suck like the rest of us!"

I've probably posted that before because I like it so much.  Now it really resounds.  I'm going to make myself a t-shirt because I'm too big of a coward to get it tattooed on my ass where it belongs. 

This last weekend Pat and I were entered in our first of the Summer Series of Suck, appropriately enough – Wessel's Dirt Blowing. We entered in ProNovice, where his talent and experience as Dianne's retired open dog lands us. 

There is no Shriner's Trial, or we would have started there. 

Wessel's is our second field trial, I think, and it went definitely WORSE than our first, so …we're SEEMINGLY going backwards.  I'm not sure what our next stage might be, unless it involves me bursting into flames from the friction of my shrill whistling and then extinguishing myself with my own emotional body fluids while Pat humps the legs of the innocent. 

We'll see. Yes we will. Because I TRUST what Susan says is true even if it is painful to KNOW.

I don't care how many times you hear someone tell you that in the beginning everyone sucked (except Derek Fisher, apparently. He never sucked. He actually went STRAIGHT from the birth canal to the post and, though his whistles were not PERFECT at first…his run was; as was his hair and little outfit. It's all in his baby book. Or so I imagine.) how bad and wrong things go for EVERYONE (who isn't Derek) starting out, the individual mortification of a really bad run feels uniquely your own.  It feels pretty simply your experience; your precedent setting ghastly handling, when its you standing up there, alone,  sucking like you ALMOST have to MEAN it to be that bad. 
You are the Nails on the Chalkboard of Trialing. 
Everyone is averting their eyes as you whistle or scream seconds or minutes too late….insistently shrewishly WRONG…until finally you just stand there and watch in horror as the sheep have missed, at top speed, every obstacle and now its just closer and easier to exhaust them because then you can start drinking.  
Everyone is relieved, though no one will make eye contact. 

Except P*trick, who does the one perfect thing: Walks over to exhaust and hands you a beer.  A few words, a shrug….a 16 ounce Chelada,

"It wasn't THAT bad. He listened to you."

Indeed.

P*trick is the Anti-Susan.  Softer gentler side, find the positive.  They are both right, both necessary, and both offer words to cling to. 

The beer was a really nice touch.