Crate-Gate

In this space, my goal has always been to depict the day to day pleasures, challenges and rewards of life with Cleo.  Though I may, from time to time, drop allusions about politics or my political leanings, I avoid taking this divisive topic head on.  I hope it’s clear, then, that the subject of today’s blog, Seamus the Irish Setter, is in no way intended to be political commentary.  Rather, I hope we can look at the now famous event from the human standpoint without falling into camps of defending or attacking a Republican presidential candidate or even trying to evaluate whether the event has bearing on his suitability for either the race or the office.  Honestly, as a dog lover, I just didn’t feel I could continue to neglect this subject.  If you think you might be offended by a frank discussion of what some have called Seamusgate, please stop reading now.  I promise, I won’t be hurt and will be happy to welcome you back next week.  I’ll give you a moment to click the close button.

Okay, it’s just us now.  Thanks for coming along for the ride.  So to speak.

In case you haven’t heard much about this story, let me give a quick recap.  In 1983, Mitt Romney, his wife Ann, and their five sons set out from Boston for a family vacation in Ontario, a twelve hour road trip.  They loaded the back of the station wagon with their luggage, then hoisted Seamus and his dog crate onto the car’s roof, strapping it firmly in place.  This wasn’t a spur of the moment decision.  In fact, Romney had created what he calls a “windshield” for the front of the crate.  Some time during the twelve hours, one of the Romney lads noticed that a brown liquid was running down the rear window.  The family pulled over at a rest stop, realized that Seamus had developed explosive diarrhea, pulled him out of the crate, hosed the car down, hosed the dog down, then put him back in his crate and finished the drive.

So what might that experience have been like for Seamus?  Romney has described the crate as “airtight.”  He probably didn’t mean that precisely.  For one thing, there is no such thing as an airtight pet crate today and there wasn’t one in 1983.  After all, a truly airtight pet crate wouldn’t be particularly popular as it would suffocate the animal inside.  So, yes, there was a handmade “windshield” protecting Seamus from the impact of wind coming directly from the front.  But anyone who has ridden in the back seat of a car with the windows down—even a bit—knows how much wind comes in from the sides, despite the car’s windshield.  In fact, a Nobel prize-winning physicist has said that the crate itself would have created turbulence, changing the airflow over the top of the car.  Wind diverted around the sides of the “windshield” would enter into the crate through the side vents and “would buffet the side of the dog.”  For twelve hours.  Even with the crate for protection, the speed of the car would exert ten pounds of air pressure on Seamus’ head, essentially making him feel like he had a three pound weight pressing on him during all of the highway portions of the ride.  On top of all this, he was hosed down with cold water at the rest stop and sent back into the wind. 

And what about that brown liquid?  Had Seamus just eaten something that upset his stomach?  Or was he literally scared s_________?  In the many, many times I’ve seen this event discussed and described, it’s been really rare that anyone has mentioned noise.  What would it have sounded like, passing an eighteen wheeler?  I find them loud and scary even with my car window up, and I understand what those rumbling behemoths really are.

Some folks have suggested that Seamus’ experience would have been no different from riding in the back of a pickup truck.  I can’t agree with that.  In this instance, size matters.  In the bed of a pickup, a dog can move around.  The pickup’s cab is significantly more substantial and cuts far more wind than the handmade “windshield.”  The high sides of the truck bed would provide shelter for a dog that wanted to curl up and take a nap.  It would probably be just as loud passing a semi-truck, but somehow, the dog in the steel pickup seems far less exposed than the one in the plastic crate atop a station wagon, hurtling down the highway.

In no discussion of Seamusgate has a Romney ever said, “Oh, you know, we trained Seamus to ride in the crate on top of the car.  Gosh, we spent months getting him used to being up there, taking short trips around the neighborhood, then gradually working up to the highways and byways.”  Preparation went as far as making the “windshield,” but never entailed acclimating the dog to the plan. 

Cleo rides in a crate when we drive, too.  Inside the car, of course.  She has a soft blanket to curl up on.  The idea, obviously, is that if we ever have an accident, she will be in a contained and protected space; she won’t be thrown about.  There have been a couple times I’ve had to stop short, slam on the brakes.  Had she not been in the crate, she would have gone flying.  As it was, her nose bonked the front, which probably didn’t feel terrific, but wasn’t life threatening.

She has been riding in a car as long as I’ve known her, and still, from time to time she whimpers or grumbles as we accelerate on the freeway or navigate a twisty road.  She’s on a cozy blanket, inside her familiar crate, inside a closed car.  Every time she whines, I think of Seamus, unheard on the roof, his family out of reach below him, and my heart aches.  

Angels with Wet Noses

Whenever someone rhapsodizes about their Lab, their Australian Shepherd, their Shih Tzu, I always smile and make encouraging remarks.  It’s so important that people love their puppy dogs.  But I know the truth:  Bedlington Terriers are the best dogs there are, and Cleo is the cream of the crop. 

Of course, I recognize that people have different needs in dogs and that what charms me about Bedlingtons might irritate someone else.  Granted, the irritated person couldn’t possibly be in their right mind, but nevertheless.  Even our trainer, who was recently celebrated as the AKC’s pick for both trainer of the year and breeder of the year, leaned down to Cleo during class the other evening and whispered, “I would take you home in a heartbeat!”  Anyway, it’s pointless even to try to explain the perfections of one’s pet because whoever hears you will just smile and make encouraging remarks, but will never understand that your dog really is the height of perfection.

For the last few nights, Cleo has had to be on her own while John played at one venue or another and I performed a staged reading of a play at a local theater.  Cleo is pretty relaxed about being left alone.  Though she always gazes at us in disbelief as we walk out the door without her, it’s clear that when she hears the car drive away, she makes a nest out of the blanket on the chaise in the living room, then curls up and naps until we get home.  As we walk back through the door, she lifts her sleep-rumpled face and checks that it’s us, then rolls over onto her back and exposes her tummy for a good rub.  That done, she scrambles to her feet and wraps her arms around my neck, giving my face a good once-over with a wet tongue.

Last night, Saint Patrick’s Day (Saint Patrick’s Night?), John’s gig went much longer than mine.  His band played till midnight, then the packing up and the drive home put it close to 1 AM by the time he called me to report in on the success of the evening.  During the three hours that Cleo and I had been home alone together—other than a couple trips outside, once to relieve herself and once to patrol for intruding wildlife—she had followed me from one room to another, plunking herself down somewhere comfortable while I did whatever it was I was engaged in.  When John called, we were in the middle of an active game of indoor fetch.  The rules for this game are that Cleo and I sit on the chaise and when I throw a toy, she launches herself after it (remaining airborne for several feet), grabs it, then scrambles back to the chaise to tag me with it and a cold, wet nose. 

She had just flung herself after a particularly good toss when my cell phone rang.  I have a distinct ring tone just for John.  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized that Cleo has learned to recognize that ring tone—the introduction to “Here Comes the Sun.”  But as soon as it started, she whirled around and looked at me.  As I picked up my phone, she hopped back onto the chaise beside me, curled up and stared at the door.  Behaviorists say that dogs don’t have much sense of time, but Cleo knows that sometime after that song plays, Daddy comes through the door.  Though the venue where John was playing was just down the hill on Cannery Row, it took him several minutes to get home.  While she waited, Cleo put her head down and closed her eyes.  When I knew he was close, I said to her, “Daddy’s almost home.”  Up she sat, staring at the door once more.  As we heard him pull into the driveway, Cleo pranced over to the door, tail wagging gently, ready to let her daddy know that he’d been missed.

It seems odd to say, but Cleo’s level of intellectual engagement with us is a source of constant wonder.  She surprises us daily.  And I have to smile when I think of the changes in my sweetheart.  From the man who never wanted to have another dog to the playmate who races around the house at top speed, leaping over furniture in a wild game of keepaway.  From the loving husband who resignedly told me, “Honey, I understand if you want to get a puppy” to the adoring puppy-daddy whom Cleo presses herself against for an extra snuggle every morning. 

Sure, I think Cleo is the Angel of Perfection, but I know that the folks talking to me about their Lab, their Aussie, their Shih Tzu think that their little darling is, too.  And that makes life pretty sweet.

The Dog Owner's Dilemma

There are certain challenges inherent to sharing one’s life with a dog when one has chosen not to eat animals.

The other day,  I was shopping for a chew toy for Cleo, something that would keep her entertained during meetings when she needed to lie down and not interact with people.  Plastics are out: They either completely fail to interest her or they’re so soft she burns through them in a half hour and risks choking to death on the oversized chunks she gnaws off of them.  Rawhide is out: I’ve heard too many horror stories about pieces getting lodged in dogs’ intestines, slimy strips slipping down dogs’ throats and strangling them, or contaminated samples that cause sickness and death.  Bully sticks are out: I might be able to deal with the fact that they’re made from bull penises, but I can’t deal with the rank smell that wafts from Cleo’s mouth after she’s been slobbering on them.  Bones, of course, are out: I don’t know of any vet who thinks they’re a good idea, though few pet supply stores fail to carry them.  She loves Booda Bones, but they’re short-term entertainment, not enough for those three hour meetings.  She also loves her rope chew toys (the doggie version of dental floss), but only when one end is being held by a human; in her mind, they’re not for solo play. 

Now clearly, given the obvious fact that I must have provided bully sticks (though not rawhide or bones) to Cleo in the past in order to know what her breath smells like after she’s been chewing them, the problem is not that I’m completely averse to providing animal products to my dog.  I am under no misapprehension about dogs; they are meat eaters and must be meat eaters to get the full nutrition they require.  Human beings, the remarkable survivors that we are, may be omnivores who, barring certain medical conditions, can get all the protein and other nutrients we need without ingesting a single animal.  Dogs just aren’t built that way.  Cleo’s food—both canned and kibble—is made of meat: turkey, duck, chicken, venison, salmon, beef and even lamb.  I would be lying if I said it doesn’t bother me.  I feel guilty, even pained, every time I restock the puppy larder.  But as deeply as I feel about not eating animals, my love for Cleo runs far deeper.  And so, the best I can do is mitigate our impact on the animal population. 

My personal choice to stop eating animals sprang from three main concerns.  The planet cannot sustain the number of food animals necessary to feed a world of meat eaters, from the vast amount of water necessary to produce one pound of meat to the noxious fecal pools that neighbor every factory farm, spewing methane into the air and drastically increasing global warming.  My second concern has to do with the way factory farmed animals suffer their miserable existences.  While I can seek out farms and ranches that prove that their animals didn’t suffer during their lives, that only takes me to my third concern.  Other than a handful of privately run, family owned facilities, slaughterhouses are nightmares of atrocities, for the animals brought there to die and for the humans who work there.  So the answer for me personally was to stop eating animals.

And yet, Cleo needs animal protein in order to survive and thrive.  Anybody know of dog food that guarantees that it is made from animals that lived and died humanely?  I read labels.  I haven’t found any yet.  I suppose the answer is to make my own dog food from guaranteed happy meat.  Is kibble baked?

So anyway, there I am prowling the treat aisles at our local Pet Food Express, picking up and putting back one long-lasting chew treat after another.  This one Cleo wouldn’t like, that one is too dangerous, a third makes me feel too guilty.  Finally, I am holding two packages.  One is some kind of remarkable sirloin jerky that I think Cleo would love.  The other is dried bison Achilles tendons.  I stand debating for several minutes.  Finally, I choose the bison bits.  I know how cattle are slaughtered and I can’t bring myself to buy the sirloin.  I hope that the bison lived happy lives roaming what’s left of some Wyoming plain, then, because they are different and exotic, had to be slaughtered by someone who really knew what he was doing and made it quick and painless.  I admit, it’s a pretty slim hope.

When I got home, I plucked a tendon from the bag and presented it to Cleo thinking that it would be a good opportunity to test how long the chew fest might last.  She sniffed it, looked at me, sniffed it again, then very gingerly took it in her mouth and backed up.  She stared at me for another moment.  Then she trotted into one of the back bedrooms.  “Aha,” I thought, “she’s off to start a good gnaw.”  Within minutes, she was back, empty handed—well, empty jawed.  She strolled into the living room, curled up and went to sleep. 

For the next several days, each evening after we got home from work, she would move her treasure from one hiding place to another.  When she is being sneaky, when she’s stolen a pair of socks from the laundry hamper, for example, she tiptoes past us, making a distinctive tick, tick, tick, tick with her claws on the hardwood floors.  As she moves her bison bit, she uses the same gait, casting sidelong glances at us as she sneaks by.  A few times, it has turned up tucked into the space between the refrigerator and the sliding glass door that leads to the side yard.  Once I discovered her standing on our bed, trying to hide the thing underneath my pillow.  For a couple days it disappeared altogether, only to resurface (literally) clenched in the mud-covered maw of a triumphant Cleo.  The worst time was the rainy day last weekend when I came home from a conference in Seattle ready to curl up on the chaise with a book and the little girl I had keenly missed.  Without stopping to wonder why the blanket was so oddly smushed against the back of the chaise, I yanked it up and sent the gnarly animal part, spinning end over end, into my lap.  I’m not too proud to admit that I squealed like a twelve-year-old girl, although I did manage to remove it from my lap with nothing stronger than an “oh, yuck!”  All this time, though, she had not left a single tooth mark on it.  Clearly it is a prized possession, but I had given up any hope that it would ever be put to the purpose for which I bought it.

At some point this afternoon, I realized that Cleo had been outside for an uncharacteristically long time.  I peeked out the glass door.  There she was, sprawled on the Dichondra in the dappled sun.  Her front paws clutched one end of the tendon as she gnawed happily away at the other.  As I watched, her rear end went up into the air, her elbows still on the ground as she maneuvered for better leverage, bringing her back teeth to the job of pulverizing that bison tendon.  Cleo, the happy meat eater.  I don’t know how long it kept her busy.  When I checked on her a bit later, she’d either polished it off or buried it again.  I’m not sure that it fills the bill as entertainment during a meeting, but I do know she has enjoyed the thrill of possessing such a frontier treasure.

I guess all I can do is say, “Thank you, Bison, for your sacrifice.  You have brought great joy to this wolf in lamb’s clothing.”

Cleo and her frontier treasure

A Puppy's Garden of Verses

Although we tend to report or write only about significant moments, and this blog is no different, life is lived in the day to day.  This week, I wanted to provide five little snapshots of daily life with Cleo.  While each could come with a longer explanation, I hope that these five haiku give an insight into the beauty of a day with our girl, or maybe sound familiar to other Bedlington moms and dads.

Crow, cat, squirrel, child,

Any a potential friend.

Wide smile of greeting.

*            *            *

Ten toys on the floor.

Stretch, nose to the counter-edge.

What toys are up there?

*            *            *

Grass blades don’t rustle.

Each step silent as moth wings.

Joy!  Stalking gophers.

*            *            *

Darkness.  Crisp air.  Leap!

A riot of happy barks.

Ears swept back by speed.

*            *            *

Reclining figure

Limns the couch back, paws adrape.

Is it stuffed or real?

Shaggy Dog Stories

After my aunt’s service last week, the family went out for dinner.  It had been something like fifteen years since I had seen so many uncles, aunts, cousins and second cousins all in the same place at the same time, what with them living on the East Coast and me living in California.  Amid all the reminders of what a funny, warm and deeply affectionate group they are, one fact emerged most clearly, and for me, it was as much a revelation of one of my own personality quirks as it was insight into family dynamics:  We are a family of storytellers.  And every bit as much as we love to tell a good story, we love to hear one.

When I share information with my colleagues, I prefer to do so in story form.  Not that I make things up or over-dramatize, but that I like to allow the information to unfold as it was presented to me, complete with dialogue and description of tone and facial expression.  After all, if you don’t know how a fact was communicated, how can you know the full import of the information?  Over the past year, I’ve become aware that not all of my colleagues appreciate this degree of painting the picture.  I think the major tip-off was the day I was recounting an altercation between students to the two colleagues with whom I work most closely.  One listened with concern and attention.  The other suddenly rolled his eyes and said, with an exasperated tone, “Oh, my god, the detail!”  It’s not like I’d gone on and on for minutes on end.  And it had been a pretty intense moment between these students.  Nonetheless, I have since practiced to report the facts and nothing but the facts.  I feel like I’m wearing a straight-jacket.  Or like I’ve lost half the colors from my palette.

But now I know where this penchant for storytelling arose; I credit my dad’s side of the family.  As we sat in the restaurant, and even earlier during the post-service reception, heck, even during the service itself, stories flowed.  They spooled out as naturally as our dark brown hair is trending towards grey.  Just as often as someone would say, “Let me tell you…,” he or she would turn to someone else and say, “Tell the one about…,” then sit back to enjoy the hearing all over again. 

I remember that my Uncle Charlie was always a wonderful storyteller, able to see the absurd in the every day and to relate an event with a certain sardonic disbelief that reduced us kids to peals of laughter.  He retains that gift.

The conversation inevitably rolled around to stories of my grandparents.  “I’ll never forget,” said Charlie, “the time the whole family went out to lunch and forgot me at home.  He paused.  “Shoot,” he added, as he looked around the room full of people who had gathered for his sister’s memorial service, “there’s no one here who would remember that story anymore.”  One Thanksgiving, he went on, his grandparents came to take the family out to lunch.  With eight people to transport, four kids, two parents and two grandparents, they had to take two cars.  In the flurry of getting out the door, six-year-old Charlie was left behind.  He crawled under the dining room table, his only companion Bumpy the Boston Terrier, and listened to the silence.  Turning to Bumpy, he put his hands on either side of the dog’s face and looked deep into his bulging eyes.  “Oh, Bumpy,” he moaned.  “They don’t love us anymore.” 

Of course, as soon as they arrived at the restaurant and the adults realized that each thought Charlie was in the other car, they hightailed it back home to rescue him.  The image that sticks with Charlie, though, is of sitting underneath the table with Bumpy.

How often do dogs lighten our loads?  My heart aches as I think of that tiny boy clinging to his dog as he sought sanctuary in the darkness of the tablecloth fort.  To recast the scene without Bumpy is to multiply the desolation a thousand-fold. 

"C'mon!  Let's play!"

There is a student at school, Jane, who spends every spare moment with Cleo.  If she has an extra five minutes between classes, she is in my office.  Every lunch period—my office with Cleo.  Tutorial periods—you guessed it.  After school?  You get the picture.  She will toss a ball as many times as Cleo will run after it.  She will play Tug-of-War, Chase, Hide-and-Seek for hours on end.  She will sit and let Cleo lounge all over her until her legs lose feeling.  She is endlessly patient, teaching Cleo tricks like Close the Door and Look Pretty.  When she isn’t with Cleo, she spends (probably far too much) time on YouTube learning how to teach tricks or researching dogs for the moment she gets to have her own.  She is a wealth of information on a wide variety of breeds and their characteristics.  Her parents, sadly, but most likely appropriately, won’t let her have a dog.  She pines for one of her own.

The other day, Jane was in my office at the end of the day, as usual.  She said, “I saw you and Cleo up on the field after lunch today.”

“Oh, yeah?” I responded.  “From the Latin classroom?”

“Yeah.  It was scary!  I saw Mr. K tearing around in his cart up there, too, doing something on the field.”

“He was measuring for the new striping.”

“Well, I think it’s okay that I was a little distracted from Latin.  I mean, I wasn’t sure if my best friend was going to get run over by a—“  She went completely silent.  Then she laughed.  “That sounds really lame,” she giggled, her cheeks reddening. 

“Your best dog friend,” I suggested.

“Right, right,” she agreed, still giggling.  Then added with the slightest breath of sarcasm, “That’s exactly what I meant.”

I know what she meant.  Some day, sixty-some years from now, though there will be no one left who remembers the story, she will begin, “Once, I knew a Bedlington Terrier named Cleo.”  And she will relate the way that many licks of the face and a fuzzy head tucked under the chin helped her make it through her teenage years.

Cleo and friend

A Thank You Note

Aunt Marion & Uncle Ken

After twenty minutes of staring at the blank computer screen, debating between two possible topics for today’s blog, I went to the source, quietly snoring on the couch in the living room.  Within a couple of minutes, I knew what I wanted to write about, but I lay with her for a good while longer; it just feels so good to have a mini-Wookie sacked out on top of you, nose wedged into your neck, back legs splayed in complete relaxation.  If a noise outside hadn’t roused her to action, I’d be there still.

The debate with myself stems from the fact that what I wanted to write about today has very little connection to Cleo.  The alternate topic, which I will get to before much longer because it presents itself every single school day, has very much to do with Cleo.  Can a blog that styles itself as the chronicles of a perfect Bedlington Terrier developing into a therapist for a group of extraordinary adolescents really turn to a topic that has no connection with that particular dog, or indeed, dogs in general? I guess we’ll see.  I do know two things that holding Cleo helped me to recognize: In just over a year, she has become so entwined in my life (and John’s) that there is no part she doesn’t relate to, past, present or future.  And the other is that to neglect writing about my aunt who died Friday night would be a betrayal, not only of her, her family and mine, but of that which makes me human enough to find Cleo beautiful, delightful and precious.

When I was very young, my dad’s next younger sister, her husband and three children moved from Emmaus, Pennsylvania, a little over an hour away from us, to St. Davids, about ten minutes away.  The clear message that penetrated my tot-mind was that both my parents were overjoyed.  My dad deeply loved his sister Marion.  She was his intellectual equal.  She was quick, opinionated, funny, never let him get away with anything, and loved him every bit as much as he loved her.  To my mother, she was a sister, a confidante, someone who loved and supported her, someone who probably had more faith in her than she had in herself.  My uncle Ken was a gentle bear of a man who earned the highest praise my father could bestow: Not only did he trust him, rely on him, and respect him both for his professional expertise (as a minister and an advice columnist for one of the big Philadelphia papers) and as a human being, he believed him to be a worthy partner to Marion.  That may sound horrifically condescending, but Dad took seriously his role of oldest son and had astronomical standards for the person who would become his beloved sister’s husband.

Gwyn & Aunt Marion

My mother was a year and a day older than my aunt, and Marion and Ken married a year and a day after my parents.  Their oldest child and my parents’ were born just days apart.  From the moment they moved to the Main Line, we were regularly in each other’s houses.  My mother and Marion traded Thanksgiving and Christmas for the whole tribe, but really, they were a team and a partnership at every holiday feast.  Family dinners together were filled with uproarious laughter, heated political arguments, unburdening of worries, thoughtful advice.

I loved being at their house, and some summers I would go to spend the night with my cousin Kris and stay for a week or more.  It was they who taught me that families tease each other and laugh about it.  Marion and Ken modeled a loving relationship that had friendship at its core, as well as mutual respect and regard and a love that carried them through over sixty years of marriage.  Kris and her younger sister Gwyn, always close, made room for me and allowed me into their sisterhood.  The house itself beckoned with endless possibilities of adventure and play: an enormous yard with a creek in the front and a mulberry tree in the back.  We would come in from a day outside, muddy from searching for newts or the headwaters of the Nile, and with purple-splotched hands, face and clothes from sustaining our adventures with handfuls of sweet, juicy berries.  At night we would snuggle in their den and all watch Ed Sullivan or Gunsmoke on the black and white television, Aunt Marion exclaiming her delight at Topo Gigio or her children or just at life in general, Uncle Ken humming along with the music in his low rumble that seemed to vibrate in your chest and permeate you with a sense of safety and warmth.

Uncle Ken & Kris

Aunt Marion and Uncle Ken were with us at all of our important moments, from graduations and weddings to hospital stays and funerals.  It was they who my mother called to come take her home from the party at which my father died, they who fought through the aftermath of a blizzard to rescue her when she had the first of the strokes that eventually ended her life. 

Last week, knowing that our aunt was dying, Kris held her mother’s hand and asked her who she was looking forward to seeing on the other side.  Her answer was immediate: “Uncle Dick and Aunt Pat,” she said, naming my parents.

We never say enough to the people we love while they are alive.  It’s too late now, Aunt Marion, but thank you.  Thank you for your years of patience, support and encouragement, up to and including your email last month telling me you loved my blog and that our parents would be so proud of my sisters and me.  It doesn’t matter how old we get to be, those words have profound meaning. 

Uncle Ken, Tim, Kris and Gwyn, words are inadequate.  I am so very, very sorry for your loss.

Mom, Aunt Marion, Gwyn & Kris

Lithe, Limber and Light of Foot

Cleo and I started agility class a few weeks ago.  I figured this would be a natural for her.  I’ve seen the YouTube videos of Bedlingtons whipping around agility rings, ears flying, tails extended in pure joy.  They are sleek, they are fast, they are, in a word, agile.  Plus, I’ve seen Cleo tearing around the field at school, and she is nothing if not a fine example of her breed.  So it felt like a no-brainer to test out the sport at our local indoor Zoom Room.

I had no idea.  Natural doesn’t even begin to describe the way she has taken to this activity.  As usual, the trainer greeted us with, “You’re my first Bedlington Terrier!  She is so cute!”  The first task we had to learn was to sit in the exact center of a black square painted on a small raised platform.  Cleo gave the little table a thorough examination, hopped onto it and placed her butt, boom, right in the center.  She looked at me as if to say, “That was easy.  Now what?”  And to be perfectly honest, it was easy.

The first real apparatus was the weaving poles, but as we are beginners, they were set wide so all the dogs had to do was run down the center aisle.  Cleo shot through them so fast she took me by surprise and I got the leash tangled on one of the poles. 

“Okay,” said our trainer, “now we’re going to try the A-Frame.  This is really high for some small dogs, so be patient and give lots of coaxing.”

Cleo’s response was an almost audible, “Cool!”  She was up and over that thing as if she’d done it a hundred times.  The trainer and her assistant were giggling as Cleo came down the ramp.  “She’s so good!” they exclaimed, almost in unison.

Shoot through the tunnel.  Shoot through the tunnel combined with a hop over a jump.  I’m running to keep up.  Up and zip across the Dog Walk, a waist high, balance beam-like structure.  Again, she took to it so much faster than anyone expected that I was caught flat-footed and nearly dragged her off of it when the leash went taut as she ran ahead of me.  The trainer is no longer giggling.  She’s open-mouthed.  “She’s really fast!” she exclaims.  Then, “Keep up, keep up,” she yells at me.  Believe me, I will; I don’t want to be the one who lets Cleo down.

There are six or seven dogs in the class, depending on the day.  There is a yellow Lab named Bella.  What is with the sudden bounty of Bellas lately?  Is it the Twilight series?  Cleo and I know three: two in our obedience class and one at the agility class.  Really, I could understand it if any of these dogs was Italian, but all three are Labs.  And fairly stout Labs, at that.  I don’t suppose I should talk, though.  Who am I to criticize Canadian dogs given Italian names?  After all, I’m the one with an English breed named after a Greek queen of Egypt. 

Also in our class is a Boston Terrier named Thor and a Poodle whose name I’ve blocked.  By the way, why is it, and forgive me for this obvious show of prejudice, that Poodle owners seem to think they own the world?  At the end of every class, we get about five minutes to practice on a piece of equipment we need extra work on.  If there is one dog going the wrong way, cutting in line or charging around harassing other dogs, you can bet it will be the Poodle and its oblivious parent.  Anyway, there’s also a very sweet Border Collie named Lucy.  Then there is a lap dog of some variety with long white fur and very short legs.  It’s name is Bronson, I think.  Or Brewer.  Something like that.  You’d think I’d remember it.  We’ve all heard it enough.  Bronson-Brewer is the dog who enters the tunnel, gets half way in and curls up for a nap.  He is the dog who is helping us all to perfect our sit-stays on the tables as we wait for him to totter across the dog walk.  I am not exaggerating when I say that during the last class, Brewer-Bronson’s parents (and both of them eventually came into the ring to try to coax him through) lured him up the A-Frame by placing a treat on each foothold.  They lured him down the same way.  It was one step at a time with lots of waiting in between.  There was lots of “C’mon, Brewer.  Good Brewer.  Good A-Frame!  Yes!  One more step!  Good A-Frame, Brewer!  No, Brewer, not that way, keep going forward!  That’s it!”  I’m not sure if the dog is ancient, dimmer than a doorframe or just not very interested.

I’ll tell you one thing, though.  There isn’t a single hint of impatience in that class.  We all applaud his success when he toddles off whatever apparatus he’s just torturously navigated.  There is a chorus of “Yay!  Good dog!” that is both heartfelt and sincere.  I’d like to say it’s because being dog owners has made us all so much better human beings.  And while that’s probably true, I think the real reason we are so patient with Brewer-Bronson and his parents is because we know that at any moment, that could be us.  At any moment, our own dog might have a bad day or get bored, say.  At any moment, our own dog may become distracted by the puppy out in the waiting room jingling his collar as he dashes back and forth after a Frisbee so that she barks her fool head off through half the class and insists on slamming her feet against the wall in an effort to see if the stupid puppy is still there, then is too excited to even want a treat or to focus on the mini teeter-totters, and before you know it, someone else could be in the embarrassing position of trying to deal with an uncooperative dog that is holding up the whole class.  I’m not going to mention any names.  Plus, I plead the fifth.