Living with Cala

Most of us who do agility want a dog with what we call "Drive." The word Drive is sort of a catch-all term, and it means different things to different people and can be applied differently to dogs. As an example, drive in a sporting breed could be tied to birdiness—the overwhelming desire to hunt/flush/point/retrieve birds.

In agility, we're a bit more generalistic. I think of drive as focus, intensity, speed, courage, desire, and resilience (ability to bounce back rapidly from adversity). The dog we're looking for in agility is not footing, body, or sound sensitive. The dog should have a "damn the torpedo's, full speed ahead" attitude. Who wants to work, and who is not happy without work. This is the dog who will fall off the dogwalk and immediately scream to get back on. The dog who wants to always go faster and will get impatient if you don't keep up. The dog you have to watch, because sometimes their drive will write checks their bodies can't cash.

Viva, Cala's dam, has drive in spades. She's retired now (shhhh, don't tell her). Over the years her drive has led to so many injuries I can't name them all, and now her body can't keep up any more but the spirit and the will to work is very much still there. Viva also has another critically important quality. It's called an off switch. She's a dog who could be sound asleep in the sun ringside. I'd wake her up, walk to the line, and by the time she got there she'd be screaming to go. So in spite of what she always looked like in the ring, she's easy to live with.

Now Cala, she's got insane drive. I've talked about that before. She's got all the intensity and speed and resilience. But focus? Not so much. And off switch?

Tonight I took all three dogs for a long run. Cala ran full out for a good 40 minutes or so. I came home, got their supper and mine and settled down to watch Dancing With The Stars (I love it, so sue me!). During Pricella Presley's waltz I was also being serenaded by pig grunts from the Cuz toy Cala was thrusting into my hands to throw for her. I kept putting it down, she kept giving it back. I finally got her to give that up. She wandered off. Came back and shoved a postcard into my hand. An invitation to a party at Rock Bridge Animal Hospital. I took it away from her. She wandered off again. This time it was a dog food coupon. Took that away. The next item to appear? Zipper's metal food bowl which she summarily dropped to the floor and stomped on. So much for a relaxing night watching TV.

This is pretty much how I spend my nights. She will eventually settle down, which is an improvement over when she was a puppy; she was six months old before I ever caught her laying down except when crated.

Living with Cala is endlessly amusing and also infinitely tiring. And now I must go. Cala is picking at Viva, she loves to nibble on Viva's head and Viva hates it.

Be careful what you wish for if you ever see Cala at the building and wish your dog had drive like that...