Life is short. Aim high and bite hard!

This post might be better entitled "Send me money!" but that seemed a little too blunt even for me. First of all, apologies to my two or three faithful and curious readers for leading you on and then failing to deliver. This blog back in June was not, apparently, on the verge of being revived. Though it all depends on what the meaning of "on the verge of" is. Using a geologic time scale, four months is a mere femtosecond. And I've spent most of that femtosecond happily and busily running around doing fun things with dogs, leaving no time for blogging. Back in January I started composing a post entitled "2007: The Year of the Dog", because dog activities and accomplishments had dominated the events of that year. I never got around to finishing it, because The Year of the Dog became Two Years of the Dog, and dogging continued to take priority over blogging. No idea what 2009 has in store. Possibly The Year of Muddling Through, or The Year of the House (one of these femtoseconds I really need to get cracking on that project, I'm about to go through my fifth winter with no central heating). Maybe even The Year of the Blog. Or even better, the Year of the Book. Two Books, actually. But for now, I'm still in the dog phase, and pretty intensively at that.

So why do the dog and I need your money? Because at the European Championship in Dogfrisbee, my canine partner Lyra and I finished sixth in the Open Freestyle category, thereby qualifying for an invitation to the USDDN Disc Dog World Finals in Cartersville, Georgia. I never dreamed of ranking that high so early in our career; we've only been doing this sport together for a little over a year. We both love it, and make a good team. Years of playing frisbee as a kid helped me develop a pretty good throwing arm, though it was with a Doug, not a dog--Doug's my big brother and was about my only opportunity to practice throwing balls and frisbees in an era when girls were not supposed to enjoy or be good at sports. For her part, Lyra is a natural athlete and loves to leap, chase and catch just about anything. Frisbees are probably further down the list than pine cones, sticks, balls, and squeaky toys, but in the absence of those other four she'll enthusiastically pursue a plastic flying disc.

So, here we are with an invitation to the World Championship and no funds of our own to make it happen, since just about all my discretionary income over the past year or so has already gone for traveling to and participating in seminars and competitions elsewhere in Europe (primarily the Czech Republic and Germany), and buying frisbees. So I've put out an appeal for donations to my fellow Slovenian dog sports fans and competitors (you can read more here if you know Slovene). The response has been terrific but we're still short a few hundred euros. If you live in Slovenia and would like to help send a representative from this country to the World Championship in Dogfrisbee, email slo.frisbee@gmail.com with your pledge.

The title of this post is a quote from Bryan Lamky, canine judge at the EC and former world-class competitor, who in turn was inspired by his partner Tatiana. Words to live by!