I got Ruby to be a friend to Timmy. I had always wanted to get him a small, flat black dog and name it Lassie. When I saw her, she was this sort of feral thing that was at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter. I was thinking chihuahua? jack russell? I asked my friend Charlie, is it a bad thing to get a jack russell that's feral? She thought it sounded like a great idea and I brought her home. She was probably something like 6-8 months old.

Things were odd from the start. Clearly she didn't know about houses. She was able to get her 13" high dog body to the top of the refrigerator for food. Leap to the counter and steal a piece of pizza as it was removed from the box to a plate. She was agressive towards other dogs and faster than blazes. At home, she had a weird habit of gathering up all the dog toys, putting them in a laundry basket and sleeping on them.

Right away, I put her in a training class. It was traditional obedience with a choke collar, which didn't seem right for her. I stuck it out, got her heeling in little figure 8's and kept her away from the brutal claws of the teacher. I taught her to down using positive reinforcement training, which I didn't know what it was but was how I had always taught my dogs. You go down, I give you a treat. They did have a tunnel there, and someone told me about agility.

I went to Mardi Richmond's tiny agility yard and this changed our lives. We learned about clicker training, and Ruby had something to do that kept her occupied and was able to learn to be near other dogs, and get tired enough to not be insane at the house.

Her weird streak is still there. She is a worrier, and concerned about everything. She allows not a single error from her agility handler. It took her years to be able to sit comfortably at the starting gate at a dog show. Loud noises like fireworks and trains make her go ballistic. Flies in the house are the worst-it is like the witches seep into her brain and make her go crazy until she can hide under a bed in a corner and shake it off. She's an aloof dog, sometimes she wants to be with people, sometimes not. She is a great ranch dog to have around the horses, and guards our house fiercely.

Had I been a better trainer, she would have been a world class agility dog-I'm sure of it. But she was my first dog and I made a lot of mistakes. She runs in Masters, she was few legs short of her ADCh when I moved her down to Performance because of a lot of soundness issues that seem to be erased at a lower jump height. She knocks bars. We are starting over on Q's towards her APD, I hope to acheive that with her someday. I love running with Ruby. When Ruby is on, she is amazing.