LIFE'S A BEACH

I could have titled this post Life's A Bitch .. Two of Them .. but that would have been tacky and potentially offensive and when would I ever want to offend anyone *cough cough*

This week has been extremely spring like here in southern Ontario and it also happened to be Collette's spring break. So being us, when we saw the sun shining and the temps going into the double digits we packed up the girls and off to the beach we went

Hayley looked forward to the day so that she could work on her tan
Terra, however, decided the day was more suited to hunting sticks
Hunting sticks is not a simple endeavour. Sticks are crafty quarry. Devious you could say. You never know where they could be hiding. Sometimes they go turtle on you and dig themselves into the sand
Some times the wild stick could be hiding behind hills. Luckily, sticks cannot resist the super secret border collie inducement cry and can be "hollared" out of the hollows. Roughly translated into human speech, the cry means "Hey stick, get your ass over here so I can chew on you"
Hayley doesn't cry for sticks. She would much rather appeal for cookies. And who could resist such an appeal?

Back to the stick hunting. These Toronto Beaches sticks are particularly clever. When being hunted by puppy border collies, their last resort is to flee into Lake Ontario. This was especially effective. When we first took Terra to the beach last summer, she was very eager to swim. An entire winter has passed and now she finds herself having to relearn this skill. At first, she tried doing some kind of funky border collie dance to entice the stick out of the water ..

But the stick was impervious to this dance so Terra knew there was only one thing to do: Go swimming
Wrangling a stick out of the lake is no easy task. They are wily and agile and perhaps this particular stick came from special underwater trees cultivated by a race of sentient dolphins ... No, I haven't been smoking anything, I'm just tired. At any rate, it was no small feat for Terra to grasp her prey but she had help, with Hayley coaching on the side ..
So even though the waves looked pretty daunting to her, Terra is not easily put off her prey. She's never seen a sheep. For all she knows, this is thing she's supposed to herd

Hayley is not overly impressed. Here she is asking "If she eats the stick, does that mean I get her cookie?
So wrangling sticks is a solo activity. But there is one critter that requires two border collies to herd. A critter so baffling and strange it requires all the brain power to two herders to bring successfully home. Yup, it takes two border collies to safely bring home a "dad"
Below is a little video with some of our high lights of our day at the beach



Life's A Beach from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.



WHY DO YOU HAVE DOGS?

It's a question I get asked fairly frequently, especially since we've taken on Terra. It's a fair question. Dogs are a lot of money. They are a lot of work. They can restrict your movements, your freedom. They occupy a lot of your time. Double the dogs doesn't double any of the above factors .. it seems to triple them.

Except for poop. It quadruples the poop. . Seriously. It's some kind of physical phenomenon. Stephen Hawking should look into it

So, why dogs? When the vet bills or food bills roll in, when we're tired in the morning and don't feel like going anywhere but you get those four brown eyes staring at you .. I ask myself the same question

Today I got my answer.

It was a miserable day here in Toronto. The kind of weather I hate more than anything: Cold, grey and a cold stinging driving rain that almost hurts when it hits your face, that soaks your clothes through in seconds, that forces you to turn your head against it only to feel it slide down the back of your neck, wet and icy

I would take a blizzard over this any day. Without dogs I would have no reason to venture out in such shitty weather. I'd be huddled on the couch with Collette, watching B movies and drinking Bailey's Irish Cream and commenting: "You'd be fucking nuts to be out in this"

But there were those eyes. Collette had taken them out in the morning, it was now past the time we normally go for their afternoon weekend walk. They had been perfectly good, letting us watch a movie and eat breakfast, quietly waiting and now it was time, no it was past time and yes it's shitty but we really need to go ...

So yeh, I'm fucking nuts

I took them up to Earl Bales Park. We used to live closer to there and Hayley is very familiar with the park, the old road that leads down to it, the golf course that leads away from it, but Terra had never been. It's a big park, lots of trails and open fields and small woods. So I bundled the girls in the car and away we went

It was grey. Rainy. Cold. Miserable. But Hayley went down this familiar road with her tail wagging, finding trails she had not been in on in years and unerringly leading me along them; Terra went racing up and down the steep hills of the ravine, splashing through the rain puddles, barking in the trees .. at one point she raced straight up the side of a 6 ft tall brick wall and stood up there staring down at me as if to say "Wow, do you see where I am now?"

We played ball in a big open field and threw the stick on the fairway of the golf course. The rain sliced down the whole time. But the girls were running and barking and leaping and playing in the puddles

My eyes were slitted against the rain and it was sliding down my neck and my fingers were freezing.

But I was smiling

That's why I have dogs.

WHITEOUT:THE GENDER POLITICS OF KICKING ASS

This post contains discussions and descriptions of both the movie and graphic novel Whiteout, thereby it will contain spoilers. So go pick up the book (you really really should) and go rent the movie (you don't need to, but go ahead) Now sit in a comfy chair and get through both to the end

Go ahead, take your time
No, really, it's ok. I'll wait
OK, all done? Splendid. You may want to wipe the popcorn butter off your chin

Whiteout is a murder mystery that takes place in Antarctica. That would be difficult to tell by watching the original trailers for the movie. It made it look like some kind of B horror movie, like the Thing.

But a murder mystery it is, with a US Marshal Carrie Stenko at its chief protagonist. A big part of the pleasure of the book was Carrie's character. In terms of a mystery, a whodunit, the book was not strong, it was not difficult to figure it out but its real power was in its characterizations and its utilization of its unique settings.

Much was made of the fact that Carrie was the only "law enforcement" figure in this remote environment populated mostly by men

Carrie is tough, something the men respond to, but it's a toughness that comes, in part, out of past fears and in part from the fact that she is a woman, stranded on the bottom of the planet with all these men, and she needs their respect for her position.

In the comic, Carrie is short, freckled, funny, smart, vulnerable, stocky and bad ass when she needs to be. She has a past where her badassery leads to consequences she may or may not regret so it's clear that she tries to keep this aspect of her character in check.

In the movie Carrie is played by Kate Beckinsale. Ms Beckinsale is a gorgeous woman with the tall, willowy looks of a model. She can be bad ass, as witnessed by her Underworld movies. Badass in skin tight leathers, of course, but who am I to complain.
In the movie we see Carrie's reluctance to kick ass but it never seems to come from a position of strength. Right from the beginning, Carrie seems "soft" And it's not just the famous white undies/shower scene. That scene was in the book as it well but it was used to trigger a flashback, which doesn't happen in the movie

I'm going to continue pointing out differences between the book and movie but I want to make this clear: I'm not some fan boy who gets his Luke Skywalker underroos in a tangle because in my favorite comic book one character had a black mustache and in the movie it was blonde. I understand literature and I understand movies and while graphic novels have a cinematic quality to them, they are not movies; movies have different requirements from the static written page. I was fine, overall, with the changes made to Watchmen the movie. I thought what was left out did not hurt the narrative flow; some of the changes in character were more troubling but overall I thought it was a good adaption

Having said that, changes from book to movie should serve some purpose. There are a lot of changes from Whiteout graphic novel to film and some of them puzzle me. And some of them open a different debate.

One of these important changes was Carrie's backstory. Why did she take this assignment? Why does the potential of violence cause her to tremble and tear up?

In both versions it stems from an incident in Miami with a prisoner. That's where the similarities end. In the book, Carrie is guarding a despicable rapist/child molester/sexual predator. In the movie Carrie and her partner are guarding a drug lord. In the book, the scum bag gets free, beats Carrie up and threatens to "do" her and her family. In the movie, the scum gets free and Carrie has to shoot him. In the book Carrie subdues the scum but he basically lets her know he will plead insanity, get free and wreak havoc. So although he is in shackles, Carrie does him in. In the movie, it's revealed that Carrie's partner let the prisoner free; he is being paid by the drug cartel and wanted the prisoner to kill Carrie and go free. Bad things happen to the partner.

The change in this backstory is not necessarily "bad" The book version explains Carrie's reluctance to use force, it gives us insight to why she may not trust herself in certain situations and why she is hiding at the bottom of the world. The movie version builds distrust for other people, particularly partners and that opens up the most significant difference from book to movie

In the movie, during her investigations of the murders at the South Pole, Carrie finds herself reluctantly partnered with a "UN investigator". As you can assume from the pic above, he's a guy, your typical movie big boy scout action figure. He seems to come out of nowhere (interesting in the most isolated place on earth) and Carrie doesn't know if she should trust him

In the book, the second investigator is a person with the British expedition, who is probably some kind of spook. And she's a female. And that's where the gender politics come in.

I'm forced to ask myself why they changed the gender of this character. The obvious answer would be create romantic potential between Ms Beckinsale and her male cohort. Except ...

In the book, Carrie is assumed to be a lesbian. Mind you, this assumption comes from a bunch of men, isolated from the world, and disappointed by the fact that the only female in their proximity is not dropping her panties for them, surely, she must be a dyke!

In the book there is an implied potential romance between Carrie and her British counterpart. This romance is never actually consummated but what is real is the friendship that develops between the two women. There is a great deal of skepticism at first; Carrie has to understand the Brit's motives in the mystery and there is also some professional jealousy. But there is also a bound, a kind of kinship, that joins these two women in this unique environment. It's a bond that does eventually develop into a friendship (and perhaps a romance) and it saves Carrie
As I said, the actual mystery in Whiteout is not its strongest aspect. What really makes the story work are the characterizations and the attention placed to its unique setting. In the movie, the relationship between Carrie and the male investigator goes nowhere. There is zero chemistry between the two actors, so any potential romance seems unlikely. And instead of a slowly built grudging respect between the two, based on shared experiences, we get something different in the movie. The male investigator is more like the white knight, uber capable and constantly bailing Carrie's ass out of the fire, or ice as it were.

Changing Carrie's back story was not a bad decision. The one the movie supposes is as good as the book's really. But changing the gender of the second investigator really weakened the story. The relationship in the book between the two women, whether or not they become lovers, is one of the things that really drove the story for me

What was Hollywood scared of? Is a woman lead, even a kick ass Kate Beckinsale, not enough to carry an action movie?

I understand that Hollywood always wants to engender a romance, is a lesbian romance something so distasteful to the average audience? Or perhaps just distasteful to producers and distributors. I would think that there would be enough prurient interest in Ms Beckinsale snogging with another "hot chick" to make this a marketer's dream. Perhaps Ms Beckinsale disapproved, I don't really know.

As I said, I'm not one of these fanboys who revel and froth over every tiny change between book and movie. But this one is a big mistake for me. The relationship between the two tough, capable women in this incredibly male world, was something refreshing and interesting. In the movie we just have two people of opposite genders who will probably tumble into bed together but for no other reason than that they are two pretty people of the opposite gender ...

So the mystery in Whiteout the movie is not the whodunnit, but rather the whydidthey .. why did they switch the gender of this important character. In this day and age I'm a bit disappointed, I must say.

There is a sequel to Whiteout the graphic novel. I have yet to read it but I'm looking forward to it. Will there be a romance between Carrie and the Brit? Or will the other woman be revealed to be in actuality Sven, a Swedish super secret agent in deep deep deep cover .. Oh wait, that will probably be the next movie.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TERRA

Yup, it's incredibly hard to believe, but it was a year ago today that I brought Terra home from Chatham Ontario. She was this sweet, pudgy little puppy ...

who has grown into an adult Hell on Wheels border collie

At the time, she was very much Hayley's "little sister"

.. to being merely the "younger" sister.

Terra's the one with the stick. It's getting hard to tell these days, even for us

When she was a puppy, Terra would make a toy out of anything

And nowadays, well, she makes a toy out of anything

When she was a pup, Terra was terrified of the city bus, especially at night as it roared towards her. I invented a happy Mr Bus song and with a judicious application of treats and a lot of clapping hands and excitement (yes I did this in public, I love my dogs) she quickly transformed to a transit riding sort of dog

When she was a pup, Terra had friends made out of stuffing

Now she real doggie friends who she beats the stuffing out of

We've watched Terra go from a girl happy to swim in her pool ...

.. to a girl who takes on big bad Lake Ontario

Yes, it's been a year of big changes and lots of challenges and Terra has met most of them. I know the future holds many both of most and I look forward to helping her meet them, beat them and seeing just what kind of dog she is going to become.

I cut a little retrospective video. The song says it all. I love my pup, she's becoming a great dog but there are days (and Hayley will agree with me) that she does Drive Me Crazy

Happy Anniversary Terra from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

ANOTHER TIME, ANOTHER PLACE

OK, so if have a Time Machine. No, not a Victorian Rod Taylor "pick a year and pretend you're god" kind of device but a wayback machine. Usually this takes the form of my faulty memory. Or sometimes, it's just a video tape

This time, the tape in question is a VHS tape. Yes, Virginia, once upon a time there were these big bulky composite video tapes you put into a machine called a VCR and there were even cameras, basically the size of a Buick, that recorded on to these tapes. Of course, if you're too young to know what a VHS tape is, you'll have no clue who Virginia was either. Relax, it's not important, it's just the pre-MTV past, how significant could it be?

At any rate, I fished this particular tape out of obscurity or more correctly, out of the bottom of one the big Tupperware tubs where I store old tapes. Collette and I had been discussing the first trip we ever took together, to Quebec, back in 1992 and she was mentioning how she had lost all the photo's she took there. I did remember hauling my old Hitachi full sized VHS camcorder there, I knew I shot video, but I had never done anything with it ...

So I went all Charles Bronson in The Great Escape and started to dig. "All my life I have fear of small places, so I dig, Danny, I dig!" Charles Bronson found freedom from the Nazi's, I found a tape labelled Quebec, 1992. OK, well he's Charlie B, I'm just Vic, you have to put all victories in perspective.

So there it was in all its composite, fuzzy, desaturated glory, the video record of a trip that we still look upon with a lot of fondness. As I mentioned it was the first trip we took together and it was a total success. We did the whole thing by train, first to Quebec City, then to Montreal. Collette was already with the school board so of course we did the journey during her March Break. The day we left Toronto, the biggest blizzard of the season was rolling in. Her co-workers, who were all heading to Florida by car thought we were nuts. Well the storm wasn't big enough to stop the trains. The week we spent traipsing about Quebec, most of them spent stuck in hotels in Ohio, still trying to get south

The video I've cut isn't very long, I concentrated on a few high lights: The Old City in Quebec City, a trip to the fort there we found ourselves stranded on a mountain of snow and Collette displayed her northern girl ingenuity when dealing with an icy slope

The highlight of our trip to Montreal was a visit to the Biodome, an indoor zoo, divided into various climatic zones; rain forest, antarctic, Canada, etc. Not only does each zone feature the indigenous species, it also replicated the climate. Note the foggy lens in the shots of the rain forest.

We really loved Quebec City in particular. We both love to walk around and explore and its a place tailor made for that. And there's a restaurant every four feet and every deppaneur sells beer and wine .. gosh, why don't we live there?

So here's the video, finally edited after all this time .. see what happens when I don't have a deadline

Music is a song by Beau Dommage, one of my favorite bands from when I lived in Quebec.

Quebec City 1992 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.

THE OLYMPICS & THE OSCARS: NUMBERS VS EXCELLENCE

First we had the Olympics, now we had the Oscars. I'm finding parallels between the two

Both claim to be events that celebrate excellence in their fields, be it athletic competition or artistic expression. The Olympics claim to be about amateur athletics, celebrating the unadulterated joy of competition. Even though professional athletes are allowed to participate and even the "amateur" athletes stand to make millions of dollars in endorsement deals if they succeed

The Oscars celebrate making movies, which is a commercial business, no one is an amateur here but the party line is, that this night is not about making money, it's about the pure art of movie making. But check out your local movie ads today, see how many movies are touting their Oscar wins and see how many movies are back in theatres with images of that little golden guy on their ads

Both are all about the numbers and the numbers relate to money. In the Olympics, you have the medal count. Even when a country like Canada didn't win in overall numbers, we like to say "But hey, we won more gold!"

In the Oscars, it's all about the numbers as well, primarily the number of statues a particular film was nominated for, or awarded. That will be touted in the revised film ads as well

Is one film actually better than another because it won more Oscars? Is an athlete more worthy of attention and fiscal rewards because they won gold over bronze? Is a country made superior because its athletes got more medals than another?

The Olympics and the Oscars are competitions. No matter how fuzzy wuzzy and kumbya they want us to feel, they are competitions. In competitions there are winners and losers. Both pretty much acknowledge there are degrees of victory as well; in the Olympics it's gold over silver, in the Oscars it's the number of awards you win and which awards you win. Nobody pays much attention if you won Best Sound Editing (but they should, trust me, they really should) but everyone wants to know who won Best Picture

I noticed this year that the Oscars do seem to be letting go, a little, this pretense that it's all about love from your peers. In recent years, when an award was presented, the verbage was "and the Oscar goes to" This year they reverted to "and the winner is" Yes folks, it's all about winning. On one hand we listen to acceptance speeches and presentations that tell us that film makers do their thing "for the art" but really, what's important, is who has their sweaty hands on that little golden guy

It's no different with the Olympics. There's a reason why in the next few months you'll see images of athletes with their medals around their necks. Perhaps that won't be their choice, perhaps they'll be coerced into doing by their handlers; but the fact is, they have handlers and they will listen to them, because they want to continue to compete and they need money to do that, and they also know their time at being able to compete at such a high level is limited and e everyone wants a nest egg.

It's not that different for movie makers. As I said, movie making is generally a more straight forward money making exercise but you have to concentrate on where that money comes from, and who is benefiting from it

I'm not completely cynical .. no, really, I'm not. I think there's a few centimeters on my left big toe that are still a cynicism free zone. I do believe that a lot of film makers, even commercially successful ones, are initially motivated to make films from some inner creative drive. But making a film is a ludicrously expensive process and most people (aside from James Cameron or Steven Spielberg maybe) don't have the wallet to finance it out of their own pocket. Production companies become involved, studios, distributors, investors. Check out the opening credits of any film, and count the number of production companies involved. They are not there because they believe in the artistic integrity of the film, they're there for an expected return on investment.

It's the same with amateur athletes. Most of these people begin their journey as kids, young kids, and they sacrifice an awful lot; time, socialisation, etc. For people doing sports like biathalon or skeleton, there probably isn't an initial thought about making buckets load of cash, they are there for the competition. But all that time has to be supported somehow, not to mention the gear, training, coaches etc. And when Nike is drewling over your gold medals, it's because they want your name on their shoes. They expect a return on investment as well

And we all feed in on this. Everyone got caught up in the medal count and "owning the podium" at the recent winter Olympics. People are breathlessly blogging about which film won the highest number of Oscars.

We can admire that athlete on the field or have an emotional reaction to a scene in the film but in the end, we like to quantify things. We like to measure things. We like our numbers

So Hurt Locker owned the podium, the US Olympic team owned the red carpet, and James Cameron is laughing all the way to the bank. After all, he has the number one and number two highest grossing films in history. And he doesn't need to thank the Academy, he's just going to dog paddle in his swimming pool filled with cash ..

WHOS POOP IS IT?

Last evening I went to a meeting to determine if Viewmount Park, the local park I take the girls to, should have an official off leash area. No, it does not. Yes, I off leash my dogs there. Yes, that's a violation of a local bylaw. Go ahead, make the call. I'll just sit here and wait for CICIS, the Mounties, the local SWAT and the Dept of Who Gives A Fuck to come arrest me.
It was a lively little debate. You would expect there to be two main camps: The Yes to the Offleash area camp and the No to the Offleash area camp. Of course, it never breaks down that way. It was really Yes to dogs or No to dogs. On leash, off leash, anyway except on a bun, we don't want your dogs. Funny how some of them professed to have dogs of their own. Of course, the dogs in question are probably the size of my shoe, are named Princess Chloe Mummy's Sucky Rat Dog and never go outside anyway ... OK, that was hostile .. but read on, you may learn why.

People were very passionate about the issue. Well, not the issue really; the issue at hand was whether or not there should be a fenced area where people could legally off leash their dogs. Yes people were opposed to that. But a lot of people were opposed to the ideas of dogs period, on or off leash.

Viewmount is not a huge park, but neither is it tiny. It is about five acres. Now it has a lot in it, a playground, tennis court, baseball diamond. There are paved walkways that link to neighboring streets. It is a heavy usage park. That's why I understand the issue, sometimes, when the dogs are running free, but my closest alternative is a good 20 minute walk away or a drive through some really dreadful streets.

So I do get that people feel intimidated by the dogs, there are of course some butt head dog owners who are not in control of their dogs and there are some filthy pigs who don't clean up after their dogs. So I would think that the idea of an enclosed area, a little off to the side, where the dogs would be off leash, would be a welcome compromise .. well, that seemed a foreign word at the meeting

There was a loud, very vocal group who did not want the dogs there. The common excuse was some danger to their children. Again, if the dogs are behind a fence, with gates, I don't see the danger Frankly, I don't know why we just don't enclose playgrounds, have gates and maybe medal detectors and armed guards at the gates .... seriously, they made the situation sound that dire. Like if a dog breathed on a kid, the youngster would suffer some permanent damage. OK, some doggie breath is pretty nasty, but let's face it, so is the breath of some humans

Another big complaint was the dog shit. No argument, that park gets really disgusting, especially during the winter where these doltish owners seem to think that dog poo will melt away with the snow. But if you have an enclosed, demarked area, it gives people less excuse not to pick up. It does happen, I've stepped into dog shit in an offleash area, but I'm a dog owner and chose to enter that space

There were many suggestions to have an off leash area elsewhere, way far away, and the implication was clear: Take all the dogs there and keep them out of our park. NIMBY is Not in My Backyard. This is NDIMW .. No Dogs in My World. Sorry folks, that just ain't going to happen

I know some of this is fear, I've written about this before. But you would think your fear would be somewhat placated by having the dogs enclosed; nope, we need them gone, just gone. Hey, you know, I have a deep seeded fear of Conservatives do we think we could .. um .. wow, if only

There was no compromise in these people. Even when most of the audience, dog owners included, thought the City's proposed location for the offleash would interfere with the park too much and we had it moved, the dog haters just wouldn't let up

A pretty valid point was made about the whole procedure though. A young dog hating mom kept asking how the process ever got started and how it could be halted. It turns out that under the current system, one person (and no it wasn't me) proposed the area and the city is going right ahead with it; yet there seemed no concrete way to stop it. No vote was taken at the meeting and although there was some vague noise about "taking the pulse" people were told that even if a hundred anti dogites showed up, it really wouldn't matter. The smirking city counsellor who showed up for ten minutes merely said "You already had your vote, last election" Honest to god, he actually said it. Then Mr Howard Moscoe waved his hands and left early

That kind of thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Our current political system seems to have evolved into a self aware, self serving beast that prowls right on, regardless of us and NOT regarding us for one moment. These people were frustrated by the system and I can't blame them

On the other hand I was dismayed by their lack of willingness to compromise. I kept hearing this phrase of "our park" As if it was run for a specific group of people, mostly parents it seemed to me. Well this my neighbourhood park too. We've been using it for about 7 years now. It's designated a multi use park, hence the playground and baseball diamond and tennis courts. People made point about the kids who played soccer and the Phillipino's who set up volleyball nets .. Well, I'm a person (mostly) and I choose to use this park to exercise my dogs. As is, I'm restricted in how I do that, by leashing them up. I don't agree with this restriction; the offleash law as it stands does not guarantee any one's safety and clearly doesn't guarantee a cleaner park. I've seen dog owners not pick up after their leashed dogs. I've also seen dogs on leash attack other dogs (including mine) and bother non dog owners. But the tickets do bring in revenue, don't they Mr Moscoe.

Public spaces are all about sharing, all about compromise. What kind of world do you live in where you get to custom design a public space to suit your own personal needs? And what kind of world do we want where dogs are not allowed to play? Not one I care to inhabit and just so you know, I don't have enough flyer points to go to Mars just yet

So yup, that's your dog poo too. Don't worry, I'll pick it up for you. That's the kind of nice guy I am

THE REAL WINTER GAMES

OK, now that the 25 hr Commercial Games .. I mean the Olympic Games ... are over with, we can concentrate on the true great winter Canadian Game ... The Border Collie Bowl

This is a full contact, no holds barred game of speed, dexterity and mouth to paw coordination. The object is simple .. catch the ball before your sister does. Or bite her while the ref's head is turned.
This is a championship match, between the new up and comer, Terra "The Prodigy" and the current champ, the wily veteran Hayley. No love lost between these two. The trash talk has been flying. Comments have been flying about "mud puddle licker" and "butt sniffer" and accusations of a certain athlete tampering with the ball
The pre-game intensity was evident at the weigh ins, where the reigning champ engaged the rookie in an intense stare down
The game was certainly exciting, back and forth, give and take, bark and sniff the whole way. An official protest was lodged against Terra for carrying the ball until it was pointed out, how the heck else was she getting it back to Dad?
But all in all it was an honourable affair, no was bitten, no one was peed on and although the word "bitch" was bandied about, it could barely be considered a technical foul

Still, no medals were handed out for this historic athletic event, but Milk Bones seemed to suffice. And thankfully, I've captured the entire event for posterity. You know, for when you go into your post Border Collie Bowl funk

The Border Collie Bowl from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.