Dogged Pursuit: My Year of Competing Dusty, the World's Least Likely Agility Dog

200 Pages·2009·0.93 MB·English

by  Robert Rodi

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication

Part One
CHAPTER 1 - To Dusty I Shall Return
CHAPTER 2 - What the Dickens
CHAPTER 3 - Class Struggle
CHAPTER 4 - Dee-lightful
CHAPTER 5 - The Obstacles of My Affections

Part Two
CHAPTER 6 - A Measure of Difficulty
CHAPTER 7 - The Agony and the Agony
CHAPTER 8 - Trial and Terror
CHAPTER 9 - Doubt and Distraction
CHAPTER 10 - From the Jaws of Defeat
CHAPTER 11 - Tales from the Cryptic
CHAPTER 12 - Friends and Neighbors
CHAPTER 13 - A Glimmer of Glory
CHAPTER 14 - A Day at the Orifice
CHAPTER 15 - Magic Time
CHAPTER 16 - Alley Oops
CHAPTER 17 - Hounds for the Holidays
CHAPTER 18 - A Rum Business
CHAPTER 19 - One for the Team
CHAPTER 20 - Polarized
CHAPTER 21 - Bloodied and Bowed
Part Three
CHAPTER 22 - The Leash Tugs Both Ways
CHAPTER 23 - Ifs, Andi, Buts
CHAPTER 24 - Psyched
CHAPTER 25 - On, Blitzen!
CHAPTER 26 - Rescue Me
CHAPTER 27 - Punc’d
CHAPTER 28 - Not So FAST
CHAPTER 29 - A Break in the Battle
CHAPTER 30 - Hop Alone
CHAPTER 31 - At the Crossroads

EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HUDSON STREET PRESS
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England First published by Hudson Street Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, June 2009
Copyright © Robert Rodi, 2009
All rights reserved
Excerpt from “Friendless,” music by Benny Carter and lyrics by Paul Vandervoort II.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Rodi, Robert.
Dogged pursuit : my year of competing Dusty, the world’s least likely agility dog / Robert Rodi.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-10105091-0
1. Shetland sheepdog—Training. 2. Dogs—Agility trials. I. Title.
SF429.S62R76 2009
636.7 ’ 0888—dc22
2008051164
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.For Haven Kimmel
PROLOGUE
Tragically, Hip
Carmen plunged through the suspended tire. She sailed over a pair of jumps.
She scampered up the teeter, and when it swiveled on its axis and bit the earth,
scampered back down again.
She took another jump, like an economy-sized gazelle.
She braided herself through the weave poles with virtuoso ease.
And then we arrived at the end of the course: just one final jump, no problem
for my girl. She could clear it in her sleep.
“Over!” I commanded.
She galloped toward the bar, the wind in her ruff and a smile on her lips.
But at the last conceivable moment, she banked and went around the jump
instead of over it.
Before I could bring her back to try again, she was past the finish line and out
the gate, which meant she hadn’t qualified. “NQ’d,” as we say.
I forced myself to clap my hands and say, “Who’s my athlete? Who’s my rock
star?” and give her back a good rubbing, because in the field of canine agility it
is never permissible to show anger or frustration. The philosophy is: when your
dog screws up it’s your fault, not hers. So even after a disastrous run, you’re still
meant to be upbeat and say what a fantastic little trooper she is, and who wants a
biscuit then?
I couldn’t understand why she’d deliberately blown a jump. She liked agility.
She enjoyed competing. Hell, we hadn’t even been at it very long—it still had
novelty value.
In fact only a year before, at a dinner party, I’d found myself bemoaning the
difficulties of raising a fiendishly intelligent, demoniacally driven Shetland
sheepdog. My partner and I had just moved into a big Victorian house nestled on