Hi, my name is Lisa and I’m in my third year as president of the Upper Suncoast Dog Training Club. That means, basically, I drink and I throw things.

Frisbees, tennis balls, tantrums.

I love dog people almost as much as dogs. The thing about humans, though, is nobody temperament-tests them before letting them in.

And some humans, like dogs, have more heart than sense. They’re ready to try anything out there on the agility course. It makes them plucky and charming.

Sometimes it scares me.

Above: a few of my favorite animals, USDTC General Membership Meeting November 2022

People of all walks take dog training classes from us, mostly basic obedience and puppy classes. Most students are people who chose a dog without realizing it has the strength of a bull, the intelligence of a chimp, or the temperament of a battle-scarred hyena. But it’s not the students I’m worried about here.

See, the club’s a nonprofit run by volunteers. We volunteers teach the classes, take care of the building, organize the obedience and agility trials, and enter the trials around the state that bring our club glory and gossip.

And while we our spirits are willing, sometimes the flesh is weak.

That’s because the agility handlers at our club:

• Tend to be women who’ve forgotten how long we’ve been receiving AARP magazine;
• Have lived a sedentary American lifestyle for at least fifty years, which is our birthright and privilege, as is Lipitor, Omeprazole, and Fosamax;
• Feed our canine athletes a meticulously selected and judiciously rationed diet and pay for equally high-quality canine fitness programs and equipment, chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, and sports medicine veterinarians.
• Run with our dogs on the agility course as if we possess the supernatural rapid cellular regeneration of the cheerleader from Heroes.

As soon as my hip flexor injury heals, you’ll find me back out there, working alongside among my middle-aged and elderly compatriots. We set up the equipment, the heavy wooden A-frame, the dog walk, the enormous cloth tunnels and their massive sandbags. Some of us are limping. Some wear knee braces. One complains of back pain, the other scolds her for hauling sandbags with a bad back, another swears by her acupuncturist, and a fourth is trying to show us pictures of her dogs posing with her grandchildren. We are do-or-die. This is agility in Florida, so hold my beer.

A snapshot in the life of your average agility student

After setting up the equipment, we sit for a half hour or more waiting our turns, watching each other, videotaping each other, listening to our instructor, and cheering each other on. Then suddenly we’re charging out on the course shouting “teeter!” and “target-target-target!” sprinting, stopping short, changing direction like children as we try to cut in front of our rocket-fueled dogs who, at any moment, could collide with us, which is probably why you see so many knee braces.

You know what none of us do? Limber up first.

At a trial, though, you will see some of us limber up our dogs before a run. Even at a trial, though, we don’t do it for ourselves.

Above: Maisie’s ready to go-go-go! Do you have any idea how heavy that tunnel behind her is? We do our best with dollies. We pace ourselves. But now that my name’s on the club’s insurance premium, I have a new perspective.

In the video below, you’ll see all the equipment we set up and me taking my turn in a typical lesson at the club. Note the error I make early in the video–stepping right in front of my dog, then the bending to pick up a pole. My handling’s bad, but I’m not even thinking about form for other movements. Then I do try to follow my instructor’s direction again and do well, but note the turning and stopping short. This was February 2020, when I was fifty-seven, and I’m running my fast dog, Maisie, blissfully unaware of my mortality. Many of us running agility at the club are older and have faster dogs. Trying to keep up with Maisie is what tore my hip flexors.

Are agility handler injuries for real?

If you search for dog agility handler injuries, you’ll find a million articles about injuries–but to dogs. I only found two about injuries to handlers. It’s almost as if we really are indestructible. I did find one NIH article that showed the most common dog agility-related handler injuries are to the knee and lower trunk, which, did you know, includes the hip flexor?

We just don’t want to believe we’ll ever get hurt. We love the sport, and we’re not gonna stop. But when they come, injuries hurt more than you think they will.

At our age, they take longer to heal too. The second article I found says handler injuries take a surprising emotional and financial toll.

During the time I was healing, which took over a year, my dog, who was at the height of his agility skills when I got hurt, got another year older. Which for him was like seven years. His hips got weaker and more arthritic, as did mine.

I grieved the loss of the bond we shared out there on the course. I grieved the loss of that time with my agility friends and classmates.

Left: me with my old man Mick and Maisie, my speed demon, who won a blue ribbon that day.

The thing is, I knew better. I stretched once at a trial before my run and stood out so bad you would’ve though I put on a top hat and toodled around on a unicycle. I was embarrassed to be such a weirdo and never did it again.

Then came the day I was sitting on an exam table at the surgery center listening to a middle-aged man tell me, “Tendons are like rubber bands, and when you get to be your age, they’re all dried out.”

I said, “Them’s fightin’ words.”

He said, “Tendons don’t snap back like they used to. They tear.”

Above: the lovable lunatics of USDTC. We had just hauled all of the agility equipment off two courses and were headed back to the club to unload it all and put it away.

The truth is, as a woman of a certain age, I’m losing muscle mass, bone mass, and balance. I need to build all that back and maintain it. But I’m too lazy and too cheap to go to the gym. Or, rather, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that going to the gym takes too much time. And I’m busy running a dog club.

Right: Here I am sprinting to the finish with my best buddy, my “slow dog,” Mick. He’s only “slow” because he paces himself to me, (unlike Maisie, who barks at me to keep up). Anyway, in this photo, I was 56.

Here’s the video of that run below. Note the sudden bursts and turns on uneven terrain.

 

My “Best Middle-Aged Fitness Friend” Saves the Day

Luckily, my sister told me about Pahla B Fitness on YouTube, “Your best middle-aged fitness pal.” My sister was working on losing some weight and came across Pahla’s “Five Pounds Down” playlist. The part I like is the 65 free 23-minute exercise videos that offer low-impact, full body and balance routines for older women. Pahla’s routines are designed to get you the maximum benefit with the most safety, efficiency, and moderation, short, sweet, and easy enough that you’ll do them every day.

Overdoing it was part of the problem with my spin bike routine. I was so hooked on getting the “high score,” maximum effort, all in the red zone, and the endorphin rush, I didn’t realize the reason I couldn’t exercise every day, didn’t even want to try, was because I needed at least a couple days in between each workout to recover.

Besides, spinning did nothing to build my upper body, core, bones, or balance. Sometimes on the agility course I’d turn to quickly and get dizzy, disoriented. Sometimes I’d get up at night and shuffle to the bathroom and catch myself feeling unsteady. I’d think, Oh! This is how little old ladies break a hip. After about two weeks of Pahla B, I no longer felt unsteady. The balance exercises, which comprise about the last two minutes of each routine, worked that quickly.

Last year I tore my rotator cuffs moving my orchid collection out of the way of Hurricane Ian, and they felt fragile ever since. Now, thanks to the exercises with light weights, my arms and shoulders are not only stronger, my rotator cuffs don’t hurt anymore.

Right: Here’s Mick seriously doubting my priorities.

Pahla B’s not perfect. She has a kindergarten teacher’s squeaky-clean enthusiasm. That’s probably because she used to be a kindergarten teacher. She talks the entire twenty-three minutes and there’s no music to get you moving, which sounds like a drawback, but isn’t. She talks about the exercises, how to do them and why she chose them, which gives me another kind of drive to perform them and pay attention to my form. The lack of music turned out to be a surprising perk—I move at my own pace. Some days I feel like I want to push myself. Other days, I can’t quite keep up, and if there were a beat I had to keep, I might feel bad about myself.

And Pahla B won’t allow that. She also addresses emotional fitness with the “helpful thought” of the day. Since she set a goal of 65 videos, she has to come up with 65 helpful thoughts, and sometimes she’s really reaching. But she admits it and goes with the helpful thought anyway. The thing is, the helpful thought will either genuinely be helpful, or my critical analysis of its potential keeps me engaged just enough that suddenly I’m doing the final two-minute balance exercise, and I just did a moderate workout using muscles and tendons I’d neglected for years.

Below: You know what else is a helpful thought, “I have awesome friends.” Here’s another: “I can stay fit so I can keep running around with these wild women.“

I might not “give myself a pat on my sweaty back,” but after a Pahla B workout, I’m so satisfied with my 23 minutes, I go for a power walk or jump on the spin bike to round it up to 30 minutes. All so moderate, sane, doable daily. All so likely to protect my entire body for the longterm, so I can keep up with my crazy old lady friends and our maniacal dogs.

Now I’m less likely to break a hip on my way to a nighttime tinkle or die slipping on the wet tile by the dog bowl. Hurricane season is here, and I can move my orchids without losing the use of both arms. Most of all, my joints, bones, and core are stronger, little by little, week after week. I have less pain and feel safer in my body than I have in a long time. Dare I say, I feel younger?

No. Not younger. I always feel like I’m twelve years old, which is why I was running around the agility course with my dog in the first place. Now I feel smarter.

I can see myself doing workouts like these the rest of my life, and life on the agility course may be getting longer and happier all the time.

Two of the characters counting on me:

Above: Mick is one cool customer.

Upper Right: Lady Maisie

Lower Right: Mick and Maisie with me at the 2022 Canine Biathlon, where obstacles aren’t just for dogs anymore–they’re for dumb-asses like me!