RALLY

Our Border Collie, Liberty, will turn eight on Valentine’s Day. Where had the time gone? She and I spent the last six years training for and competing in agility trials. Each dog and their handler race around a course that consists of jumps, weave poles, tunnels, see-saws, etc. The handler (me) walks the course and has to develop a strategy for getting the dog to move as rapidly as possible from one obstacle to the next. There are many choices to be made: Which hand does one use to signal the dog? How close to the obstacle must the hander run before running to the next one? When should the handler run fast or slow? The choices are endless.

Liberty did very well, knowing the course better than I just from watching other dogs. I have a learning disability which causes me perceptual problems, making it difficult to read maps, and do arithmetic. I also reverse lefts and rights, and even have difficulty typing, writing things like “ot,” instead of “to.” I can’t remember patterns easily, so, recalling my course strategy was torture. “This will be good for me…a challenge!” I told myself. If Liberty had a better handler without a perceptual problem, she could have been a champ. She was faster and smarter than most of her classmates. All the same, we had fun competing and going to classes. Last spring, Liberty, on several occasions, appeared to limp the day after class. She was so fast and turned on a dime after a jump, that she may have been straining her tendons. Several trips to the vet and an x-ray made us finally conclude that Liberty’s agility days were behind her.

Instead, we have decided to participate in rally. This takes place on a course, as well, but there are no jumps: just cones or signs telling you what to do once you approach them. For example, a sign might say: “Off Set Serpentine Right". Below the words thereis a diagram of circles and arrows. This sign means that as you and your dog pass the sign, you will see three cones in a spread-out triangle. Your job is to duplicate the action depicted by the circles and arrows. Another sign reads: “Call Front Finish Right Halt” and has a picture of two big yellow arrows showing the motion one needs to make. Translation: your dog must face you, then walk around you and sit on your right side.

Liberty walks badly on leash. This is because there are crumbs on the arena floor from people rewarding their dogs. Rather than following me on the left at heel position with her head up, she assumes the “vacuum” position: head down scouring the floor, yanking us out of line to reach a crumb. It is also because we haven’t trained leash walking very well. We need to go back to puppy training on that.

I was fumbling with her leash and a bag of training treats, and Liberty’s constant breaking form kept me juggling everything. This made it hard for me to concentrate on each sign in time to accomplish the task required. Our trainer, Pam kept saying, “Keep your leash loose; don’t try to yank her head up…lure her up.” But, all the while, Liberty, (who only weighs 25 lbs, yet can pull me across the floor when I’m sitting on it,) was lunging right and left with all the tenacity and determination of a Pit Bull. “I’M not pulling the leash taught…SHE is!” I thought, sulking. We would come to the next sign and I would have to try to figure out which way to turn. The pictures confused me even more than the words. I kept going right, when the sign said left. I would almost have figured out what we were supposed to do when Liberty would give a yank and I would lose my train of thought.

“This will be good for me,” I kept saying under my breath. I videoed Pam explaining the vocal commands she teaches her dog off-leash so that the dog already knows what is expected without any tugging on the leash. Now, all I have to do is memorize them and practicethem with Liberty so I don’t panic and go blank when I see the sign the way I do when someone asks me anything to do with numbers, time, or measurement. I have forced myself to do things I have great difficulty with my whole life. I often make a fool of myself or fail. But the point is, I have realized over the years, to get back up and keep trying. Some things I know instinctively; gifts I was born with which other people can’t do as well. My teachers said I was “gifted” in the arts. But rally…this is yet another of the things I will have to struggle to master. I will need to learn to read the signs and understand what they mean. Once again,I will have to work hard, gather my strength, and swallow my pride.

Maybe that’s why it’s called rally.

Many Americans this week feel as if they have, once again, failed to read the signs correctly. Perhaps there is a learning disability at work here too. I assumed that a majority of Americans could read as well as interpret signs that were before us: that it was long past time for America to elect a competent, moral, experienced woman to be Commander in Chief. Along with all of the above, I was sure a candidate of mixed race who had experienced and triumphed over racial prejudice would be a breath of fresh air to America’s Latinos, and to the Afro-American community. Kamala Harris would be a competent, poised leader, whom other heads of state would respect.

We misread the signs that told us America was finally ready to catch up with the world and elect its first woman president. We mistakenly assumed Americans had learned from past mistakes; that we would not be fooled again into making a deal with the devil, choosing an aged chronic liar and scoundrel with a criminal record over a woman in the prime of life with a great track record. We believed that most white men were past the adolescent stage, where males fear being told what to do by a woman. We read the signs wrong.

So, while I struggle to master a new skill, I hope that our countrymen and women can not only pay closer attention to this president this time around, but note the signs which indicate incompetence, lack of empathy for others, mysogeny and an inability to tell the truth. For those of us who have read these signs in this man before, I can only say, we must do a better job of listening to and speaking with our fellow Americans, because it is with division that tyrants turn people against one another. 

We must all learn to rally.