Post date: May 3, 2009 11:33:11 PM
This morning Kelly and I packed all 3 dogs in the car to head up for day 2 of the Mensona agility trial in Santa Rosa. As we crossed Golden Gate Bridge in the rain, a faint whimper came from the back of the car. It was Trevor. On the other side of the bridge, the rain intensified into a downpour. Trevor's cries of distress rose to match it. The more I tried to ignore him, the louder he got. He was desperate. Clearly explosive diarrhea was imminent. We took the Stinson Beach exit and screeched into the parking lot of an artsy shopping center.
I got him out of the car as fast as I could and rushed him over to what I hoped would be an acceptable grass formation (Trevor has exacting requirements when it comes to pooping away from home). That's when I saw his bright, hopeful eyes staring at my raincoat pocket.
"Mom throw ball?"
Trevor caught my eye and cast a significant glance back at the car, where the other dogs were still in their crates. He whined. That's when the penny finally dropped: Trevor didn't have explosive diarrhea. His "urgent need" was that he wanted to take a walk and play ball with his doggie siblings. It was a squeaky ball emergency.
By this point we were in a veritable monsoon. My jeans were drenched. We'd already wasted 20 minutes walking around the parking lot. We were running late. And all we'd accomplished was Trevor barking at some statues in the sculpture gallery next to the parking lot. Sigh. We went back to the car, where Trevor spent the rest of the ride in frosty, unapologetic silence: "I just wanted to play squeaky ball!"
The last few weeks have been a blur of agility activity. We had 2 days at the Malinois trial at WAG (2 JWW Qs, 1 Std Q). At the very end of the trial Trevor refused the chute in FAST (in the send bonus), so on Sunday we went to the USDAA trial in Prunedale to run Gamblers and Std, just to get Trevor in the chute. He picked up a P2 Std leg. The day after that (Monday, April 27), we went to the Rottweiler trial at Bolado Park in Hollister. It was the worst trial setting I've ever seen. Some dogs were so distracted by the gophers and other smells that they didn't even make it out onto the course. Miraculously, Trevor picked up another Std Q. It wasn't a very elegant run, but only 5 Exc B dogs Qed across all the jump heights, so we were happy just to run clean.
Throughout these trials, Trevor was doing the chute. But at class last week, the tides turned. Moe set up a course where you had to rear cross the dog into a chute that was set at a right angle to the dog's path. Trevor refused it. Even though we managed to work through the refusal in class, officially the chute refusal was back.
Trevor refused the chute yesterday in a disastrous Std run. We left the trial and went straight to Diamond Bar to practice. Today was slightly better: Trevor refused the chute initially, but he eventually went in. It's frustrating and discouraging, but all we can do is keep working our program. It doesn't help to get caught up in the "crisis du jour."
Next weekend we go to Casa de Fruta. It will be Trevor's last trial before his neuter surgery.