Miles and the Patootie Peccadillo
On May 1, 2022, I competed in a World Cynosport Rally trial with my dog, Miles. It was Miles’s first ever competition. He is ten years old.
I admit it, guilt was my main motivation for trying a new thing with Miles. This year’s time and energy have been almost exclusively devoted to caring for our elderly cat, Lucy, and our dog, Mulligan. Lucy died on May 3rd at the age of twenty years old. After twenty months of navigating leukemia and lymphoma, Mulligan died on June 14th at the age of twelve years old. Caring for them has meant spending less time with the rest of my little family. The little pangs of guilt hit me particularly hard with Miles. We’d even hit pause on our art photography project, Miles on Hydrants.
Miles, on a fire hydrant from his personal collection, August 2021.
I entered Miles in a trial and started to get to work on training.
Rally is a dog sport where handler and dog proceed through a course as a team. On the course, there are signs depicting skills that you and your dog perform together. The signs test skills of heeling, stationary position behaviors (think “sit” and “down”), and transitional movements. Intro and Level 1 are performed with the dog on-leash. Levels 2 and up are performed with the dog off-leash and include recall (coming when called) and a jump. Teams have to complete the course within the allotted time. In WCRL, the maximum score that can be earned is 200 (or 210 with the Bonus sign). The dog-handler team with the fastest time and highest score wins. Teams have to earn a minimum score of 175 to earn a Qualifying Score (or “Q”). Q’s count towards a title. Because you and your dog are the only ones on the course at a time (except for the judge), Rally can sometimes be a good option for dogs who struggle with fearful or reactive behavior.
I usually take Rally classes with Tycho. Our instructor kindly allowed me to bring Miles to a few class sessions to prepare.
We adopted Miles when he was two years old. He’d had a tough go of life in those two years. He’d recently been returned to the shelter due to his behavioral issues when he came into our lives. Since then, we’ve done so much work helping Miles be more comfortable in the world. It’s rare to see him worried or reactive anymore. But, the class environment with strange dogs and strange people was a challenge. He wouldn’t eat food for about the first ten minutes of class. His tail, normally a high brazen curl, was tucked down low. He made little woofing sounds at the other dogs.
I made the usual bargains in my head, the bargains you get used to making when you have a dog who struggles with fearful or reactive behavior. “If Miles isn’t feeling this, we’ll go home halfway through class,” I told myself. After a few more minutes, Miles ate food, played, and had fun during his turn out on the course. When Miles is feeling good, he has this swagger in his walk. There was a little bit of that swagger during a couple of sections of heeling that first week. We got into a groove in the following class sessions, and there was a lot more swagger.
In class, Miles preferred to sit on top of his crate.
When the trial weekend arrived, I decided to go for it. Miles was entered in Intro Level, scheduled for first thing in the morning. I got to the training center in plenty of time, and I walked the course several times before the judge’s debriefing.
The judge, an upbeat woman in a ruffled pink sleeveless shirt, emphatically reminded all the competitors, “Remember, this is supposed to be FUN! This is time well-spent with your dog. Don’t be nervous, go out there and have FUN!”
She said that we’d get started in about ten minutes. Miles was second in the lineup, so I hustled outside to collect him from the car.
I don’t know if we got stuck in a time warp in the parking lot or what even happened. By the time Miles finished peeing and we walked into the training center, we’d somehow missed our turn! The organizers kindly let us take our turn out of order. We had to rush, and that meant Miles was nervous and not ready. He even turned his nose up at a piece of steak before we entered the ring.
We entered the ring and approached the “Start” sign. Usually, we set up in a sit-in-left-heel position to start. When I cued Miles to set up, he went into “peekaboo” position between my legs. It was, indeed, awfully cute and I heard a few giggles behind me. We reset and the judge asked us if we were ready. “Ready,” I said. Miles looked up at me and we began heeling to the first sign.
Things were going pretty much okay, but then, something happened.
Miles wiped his ass on the floor.
Miles doesn’t “scoot” like other dogs. He plants his front feet, lifts his back feet off the ground, and kind of bounces up and down. If he did yoga, it would be a springy variation on firefly pose.
Maybe his anal sacs* were uncomfortable? I’d just groomed him and trimmed EVERYTHING a couple of days before, maybe he felt itchy? Maybe he was baking a loaf that needed to come out of the oven? I’ll never know for sure.
It only lasted half a second, but I was mortified. I said, “Oh, Miles, let’s go!” in as cheerful a voice as I could to prompt him to keep going.
We got through the next couple of signs and then there was a long stretch of heeling to the next sign. Miles was trotting along happily, and then, he did it AGAIN. This incident lasted a full two seconds, with a little more…gusto.
I felt the heat of embarrassment creep up my neck. I felt my ears get hot and red. As Miles was fluttering his tail feathers against the floor, I tried to take a step to prompt him to keep moving, but I risked getting too far out of position and tightening my leash, which is a penalty, so I just stopped and watched.
Yep, that’s what I did. That was the choice I made.
Those two seconds felt like an eternity.
The rest of our run was an uneventful blur. I do remember Miles threw in a little swagger while heeling through whatever sign had the cones. I don’t remember whether it was a serpentine or a spiral.
Everyone cheered when we finished the course. Miles ate the pieces of steak that he’d refused earlier. I put him in the car and went back inside to see our score. One of the organizers approached me and said that we did a good job for our first time out. I apologized again for missing our turn and thanked her for accommodating us.
Then, I said, “I mean. My dog wiped his ass on the floor.”
She smiled and said, “He did, didn’t he?”
“Everyone noticed, didn’t they?” I said, my ears heating up again. The expression on her face gave me the answer to that question.
“You did fine. It’s his first time out. You did a good job!” she said.
We somehow scored enough points to earn our very first Qualifying Score (“Q”).
Later, a friend shared a video of our run. The video captured the judge’s reaction to Miles’s first bottom blooper. Once the judge realized what had just happened, she bent over in silent laughter and looked back at the stewards’ table, as if to say, “Did you all see that, too?”
It was one of those moments that couldn’t have been more perfect.
Miles and I are at our best together when we are leaning into our weirdness. My funny, scruffy little senior dog was so brave. We tried something new and spent some meaningful time together, just the two of us. The cost of embarrassment is nothing when cast against this backdrop.
And, he made the judge LAUGH. This is a memory I will always treasure. Yes, really. He made the judge laugh. I’m even tearing up a little as I think about it.
These are the moments, friends.
There’s a massive constellation of goodness that makes moments like this possible.
Miles, I’m so, so proud of you.
