How a Colonoscopy is like USDAA Gamble

I feel like I've lost two days of my life.

Team Whisner had a couple days off while the team captain went in for a tuneup.

Now, most people don't need two days for regular maintenance. They need like a day and a half. Me, I was stressing out for a week. Everyone I spoke to agreed that the prep was the worst part. As far as the procedure goes, pretty much everyone said, "you won't remember a thing." However, everyone also said, "when it is painful, just tell them." My question, "if you can't remember a thing, why can you remember when it is painful?" Another concern was that some people get sick afterwards (one even passed out on the way home scaring her husband). All these things concerned me.

So I started to think about in terms of agility and I noticed alot of correlation between the USDAA gamble and a colonoscopy.

Many people are scared about gamble because it is unknown whether your dog will take the obstacles. I know that I've stood with people before the walk throughs and we've talked in worried tones about the difficulty of the course and whether we can get through it. Many people are scared about the colonoscopy. I was scared. I stood around talking about it trying to get ideas from people how to get it right. The bottom line for both topics is you have to get out there and just do it with confidence.

With the Gamble, there are two parts:

• The opening


• The closing

With a colonoscopy there are two parts:

• The prep


• The procedure

Lets talk the first part. For both topics, (the opening and the prep) the first part is the longest part. In gamble you run around as fast as you can getting as many points as possible before the buzzer starts. For the prep, you run to the bathroom as many times as fast as you can. Now in the prep, you don't run to different places, it is the same over and over so you need to do it longer to get the points you need to move on to the second stage. But in reality, you are running in both the Gamble and the Colonoscopy with different outcomes of course. For me the prep lasted till the next morning. I got A TON of points and was all ready for my gamble.

The second part is the shortest. In the Gamble you are sending your dog out to a distance challenge hoping and praying that s/he takes the appropriate obstacles. For the colonoscopy, you are the one getting put out and hopefully will not get the judges buzzer that you incorrectly completed the exercise.

For both (the gamble and the colonoscopy) it is important to do the first part correctly. If you don't, you'll get disqualified and have to try another day.

I am happy to report that I "Q'd!" my first time out. I would even go so far to say that I won't have to perform this particular task for another ten years! Yippiee!