I’m sitting this very moment in my hotel room in Billing, Montana, having finished a three-day handling seminar. These are terrific people in Montana, and always fun to work with. I’ll actually be returning to Montana in a couple months to do six days in Bozeman. I do hope it warms up a little. The average temp on this visit has been about zero degrees.

Folks are always stunned by my teaching (ever feeding my vanity eh?). But it’s a phenomenon that’s easy to explain. Most top seminarists own blazing ballistic dogs and the only thing they are anywhere near qualified to teach… is how to train and handle the blazing ballistic dog. Well, that leaves out only about 95% of the dogs in this sport. And so my message is crafted to demonstrate to people how to get the absolute most out of their own dogs – and the rather easy illustration of how the training and handling of the blazing ballistic dog is corrosive and counter-productive to most other dogs.

The Agility Dream

Dogwood is in contract. We are in negotiation for a new property, about 150 miles southeast of our current digs, near Marietta Ohio. The new property The Agility Dream is 28 acres of forested wild-lands with an idyllic pond, a secluded grassy area, and two rustic cabins outside of the main house, a rather fancy modern log cabin.

We’ve contracted with earth movers, and a builder for our new training building. Construction will probably begin in the first week of March. And so we are optimistically scheduling training camps beginning in May of 2007. I’m waiting until June or July to order the 3/4" rubber matting for the floor. I learned an important lesson with my first floor that it is best put down when the rubber is warm and expanded to it’s full extent. If you put it down when it’s cold it will expand and buckle in the warm months.

The Vultures

Our water-well pump died and the well itself collapsed on one of our two properties at Dogwood. And so we called in Dublin Pump with whom we have had about a ten-year relationship. They’ve always provided competent and courteous workers… and we’ve trusted them. I have reciprocated, in my trust, by being a loyal customer. I’ve bought a couple of top-of-the-line water systems from them and have retained them for periodic maintenance.

They sent out a new guy this time. And I suppose that it was a mistake to tell him that we’re selling the place and that the sale is imminent. What follows is a nightmare of modern gothic proportions as a young opportunistic con-man spies an easy mark and goes into action.

Every day the young man comes out the news grew worse and worse. And at the end of each day he presented us with a bill, payable immediately. Of course we are busy, and we want to get this done, and so we let him go on with it and on with it.

I watched as they ruined the water conditioning system (remember, the-top-of-the-line system that I bought from them?) They sunk the brand new pump into the collapsed water well, and proceeded to pump sludge into my water system and into the plumbing of the house. But these guys are pros right? Experts?

I’m not going to share all of the grizzly details with you. I will say that Marsha took all of the invoices they’ve given us and went out to independently price the things Dublin Pump was charging us with. We found that their pricing was from 50% to 300% higher than any of their competition. That’s a great way to treat a loyal customer eh?

Furthermore, their labor costs have ranged from the reasonable (but expensive) to the uber overtime—up to $250 an hour. What’s that about? One day I came out and two of them were simply standing in the yard watching water pump out of the well onto the yard. I had to chase them away.

We called the well digger back out to look at the new well (the fellow from Dublin pump informed us that this new well is a failed well)… and the well digger was appalled at the job Dublin Pump has done… that they have dropped they pump way too deep in the well, and have pretty much botched the water connections back to the house.

It strikes me that the regular home-owner who lives from pay-check to pay-check would be devastated by this kind of predatory treatment from people we trust to do our facility maintenance. But, I will survive and this will recede to the extent of a bad nightmare.

In the meantime I’ll be sicc’ing our insurance company (and their lawyers) on Dublin Pump. I shall also be making inquiries with the local Attorney Generals office for the possibility of a criminal complaint. Oh, and I shall also file my usual complaint with the Better Business Bureau. But you should know that the BBB has long since been hamstrung and made irrelevant by American industry and business concerns. There exists today very little protection for the consumer.

I’ve finally updated my calendar!

Well, I’ve been updating it all along. You must know however that on some level I’m just dumber than a bag o’ hammers. I have failed to update the link to the new file name. And so nobody has been able to see the changes to my calendar for something on the order of four months. Jeez!

The year is getting pretty busy already. But that’s what I do. You’ll note that I’m starting to indicate those weekends that are reserved for one reason or another, like when I want to do a local trial with my own dogs. I’ve sacrificed these weekends too often in the past because I didn’t make the notations on my own calendar before committing to go out in the world. Is that selfish?

The link to my calendar is: http://www.dogwoodagility.com/2007_calendar.htm

There are a number of weekends that are in negotiation. I may have to go back to protect those weekends.