Dogolio

SUMMARY: Socks, shoes, tunnel kludge, digging, ribbons, movies, calories, scary footing.

• Socks: The best-dressed agility handler always wears socks that matches her shirt. (I made that part up to justify my lifestyle.) The best-dressed agility handler wants to know why stores have decided that you must buy *their* selection of colors in packages of 3, 4, or 5 pairs at a time? If I want a green pair, I also have to buy navy and light blue? What's the deal here? And where can I buy one-up solid color women's socks? (I've tried half a dozen or more stores.)
• Shoes: Agility has also transformed my life in subtle ways. It always used to be tennis shoes and flip-flops. Now I wear these casual slip-on shoes, whose existence and utility I originally became aware of because many agility people wear them when they're around agility areas but not doing actual agility. I love 'em! Comfortable, convenient. I wear them to the bone. Here are the pairs I just tossed; bought two more exactly the same, and they follow many others exactly the same.
  
  
• Better than duct tape in some situations: Remember a month or so ago when my tunnel started to unravel--er, hmm, was that during the winter sometime? Maybe the end of last year? Holy rollover, batdog, it was a full frigging YEAR ago! Time flies. Anyway, this weekend I suddenly thought of a solution, raced off to the hardware store, and voila!
  
  
• Saw Robin Hood this weekend. "None shall pass!"?!? Give. Me. A. BREAK! Is this a medieval action/adventure film or is it a Monty Python pastiche? But neato-cool-out for the scene in which Russell Crowe snuggles with the Irish Wolfhound.
• Tika isn't usually a digging dog. Now, at 9, she's apparently become a dog with a mission. She has started working furiously digging out the soil from behind the compost bins. Doesn't appear to be any rodent-like thing, not that kind of intensity, but more like she just wants to make the biggest hole in the universe. When it started to show from around the left side of the square bin, I walked over and looked at it and asked what she was doing. She came out from behind, walked around the bin, looked at it critically, grabbed two branches on the overhanging shrub , one after the other, twisted them until they came off, threw them to the ground, went back around behind the bin, and continued digging. (Note pile of discarded diggings to the right of the square bin.)
  
  
  
  
• OK, you bag of peppermint salt water taffy, let that be a lesson to you! You too, you mint swirl fudge from Miles Kimball made with fresh cream and butter! Tempt me and you get EATEN!
• Friday, walked with  a friend around a nicely landscaped percolation pond on Water District property. There was a little pier-like thing going out of the water, so there we went. You could see water between a couple of the boards. Boost went into her Evil Scary Footing mode, even though the boards weren't at all slippery or loose. Not sure whether it was simply because it was a wood floor or because it was surrounded by water a couple of feet below. (Note stretched-out body, bent elbows, rear feet splayed to the sides and straight out behind her, tail down. Bonzo dog)
  
  
  
• Judging by Tika's collection of ribbons so far this year (11 days of trialing), she's having a spectacular opening season.
  
  
  
  
• Judging by Boost's collection of ribbons so far, hmm, well, maybe not so much.