If you live long enough, you’ll see everything

Bud Houston's picture
Submitted by Bud Houston on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 9:13pm.

Last night at about 8:45 I closely watched the beginnings of an eclipse of the moon. It was actually quite slow to develop. I have a nice pair of binoculars that give me a good view. The moon was stunning and radiant in detail. By midnight the shadow of the earth had not completely chased over the moon, leaving a sliver yet. Being an old man who values a good night’s sleep I left the balance of the drama to my imagination.

This evening I watched a debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It seems likely that for the first time in the history of this country either a black person or a woman will be nominated for the President of the United States. This was unimaginable a couple decades ago.

When I was a young man I actually worked for the campaign committee of Shirley Chisolm. In 1972 I wasn’t anything important to her campaign. It was just a job in which I got paid for putting up posters and distributing fliers door-to-door. I never even met her or saw her (though I did see NY Mayor John Lindsay on a college campus down in Gainsville, FL). But I was captivated by the campaign and the political upheaval of those years. One of my favorite Shirley Chisolm quotes goes something like this, “When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that loses.” Well, she was both black and female. It used to be that it was unimaginable that a Catholic might be elected to the Presidency when. In the 1920’s Al Smith, a Catholic, ran for the post. His nomination might very well have softened the way for John Kennedy in 1960. So you might consider Shirley Chisolm something of a pioneer.

Old League Play

I was looking for an old lesson plan to put up in the training building for this weekend. I’ll be out of town, in Denver you’ll recall. So I wanted something nicely scripted for Marsha to lead our students. I ran across an old lesson plan from August 24, 2004 that had this jumpers course as the League Play game for the week.

I vividly recall that the course was inspired by some of the South African jumpers courses that I’d been studying.

It strikes me that if I put up this course as a judge I’d get a bunch of people mad at me these days. You have to remember that we live in the era of the great dog. I believe the era of the great handler is yet a couple decades away. So all these people with great dogs would look at a course like this and complain of the unfairness of the design. But to me it is this really fun kind of romp. I know there’s a lot that can go wrong if the handler miscalculates his cues or if his timing is a bit off or if he missteps. But hell, who cares? It’s just a friggin’ game.

This course was originally published in Just For Fun Agility Notebook #26. There was an in-door component. I adored the prospect of working outside. During the summer we would typically do our split-group work by having half the class outside for a half hour and the other half inside. This week Marsha will be rerunning the inside sequences.

Here, I’ll share a page of it with you.

My, that black sequence looks wicked! 

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: dogwoodbud1@earthlink.net. And Checkout my new publication the Idea Book – Agility Training for a Small Universe available at www.dogagility.org/store. Â