Yes, I know. She’s big for a Border Collie. The "she", of course, is Rose, the handful of black and white fluff we adopted almost a year ago who just kept growing and growing and growing. Some would call her a Mutt. We prefer to call her a Border Collie and More. We have no idea what the more is, but we do know it’s considerably larger than the compact little dogs you see herding sheep and leaping over fences. Who knew? I carried our new puppy home with visions of the two of us moving as one through complex agility courses. We’ve taken Pre-Agility class four times. 

Rose had her first birthday at the end of July. We celebrated by naming her the official PetFix mascot. Her first duty was to spend the day in our booth at Canine Fun Days.

The day of her debut was the hottest of the summer but Rose worked diligently through the morning, politely greeting visitors to the booth and walking like a perfect lady around the grounds, pausing graciously for admiring pats and not even wincing when person after person felt compelled to point out her unusual size. "Rosie does agility," I proudly told everyone we met.

Around noon, I felt Rosie had earned a break so I decided to let her try the little agility course set up by our booth. By this time, she had made a lot of new friends and they were excited to see her do her thing. After standing in line for quite a long time, we walked proudly into the ring and surveyed the equipment: several jumps, an A frame, a tunnel or two — all things Rosie had done a million times in class. "Do you want to keep her leash on?" the woman at the gate asked. "Oh no, I said. Rosie goes to agility classes." 

I aimed her at the first obstacle, removed her leash and called out "Go Jump" in my best handler voice. Rosie went but she did not jump. She ran and she ran, full speed around and around the ring, skillfully avoiding each obstacle and ignoring my increasingly frantic calls to come. Finally, she took aim at the A-frame, scurried to the top and stopped dead. I think that's when she noticed the cheering (or was it jeering) crowd standing at the fence. She looked over, saw me coming to guide her down the other side, jumped from the very top right over my head, and took a few more laps around the ring for good measure. If it weren't for the heat, I think she'd be running still. Last week, we started taking private lessons.