Clean Run - March 2018 - 14

Ten Reasonable Steps
for Weave Pole Training
By Laura Hartwick, illustrations by author

Territorial Pissings
Come on people now, smile on your brother and
everybody get together, try to love one another right now
-Kurt Cobain, via The Youngbloods, 1967-1994

Step One: Equipment.
Get yourself some kind of pokey poles that you can stick in
the ground.
Bonus training tip:You can buy the cool yellow ones from
Clean Run or just dig up some moldy old plastic fence posts
from your shanty town former fence.

Step Two: Moving equipment.
Load them in the car, minding the pointy bits-you can take
out an eye with those things.
Bonus training tip: Make a nifty weave pole holder with a
hoody, tie the arms round them snugly and carry them tenderly, like a bundle of baby possums through the woods.

Step Three: Finding the best place to train.
Drive around looking for grass. Finding grass is one of the
hardest parts of training in my California neighborhood.
As a member of the coastal elite, one perk we don't get is
grass. The non-sanctioned climate change we either are or
aren't having, depending on who you talk to, has given us
long stretches of drought. It rains enough some years to give
us some mudslides and floods in the winter, then vanishes,
whence temperatures rise to unprecedented heights, causing
bountiful and horrific wildfire conditions.
Thus, watering lawns is kind of like using twenty-year-old
bourbon to scrub your toilet-a precious commodity gone
to waste and causing spectral future visions of barren desert
14

and nothing to drink except piss. So no one waters. Pot farmers, farmers of the salad bowls, and almond tree growers, they
suck old wells dry and drill new ones. For us in suburbia by
the beach, there's just no grass.
You see some. Plastic grass became all the rage a few years
back, thousands of dollars for a square of synthetic turf to
give the illusion of days gone by in a front yard. For spraypainting dead weeds, Rustoleum's premium Gloss Meadow
Green can be applied in broad swathes over dirt and sticks
and sad little bald patches. Looks green, and slick as a whistle.
Even if you have a neighbor who's out there in the dark drizzling a contraband lawn with their hose, you can't just go
around sticking poles in a neighbor's yard and running around
with a dog on it. They're going to notice.
Bonus training tip: Don't move to California.

Step Four: Not getting busted.
Stake out your territory. I have my secret spots. Secret in
that I'm not telling you, or the landlords of all my training
fields. Corporate America and academia have proven rich resources for dog training, especially those who abandon their
facilities at 5 pm on the dot and leave lovely, open lawns
adjacent to headquarters with convenient parking. And no
video surveillance. But not so secret that everyone else who
needs a patch of land doesn't know about them, too. So just
because I enjoy a magic spot doesn't mean it's mine. I share.
With others who also dig the fact of no video surveillance.
Non-weave pole related activities may include throwing balls
for dogs, communing with nature in the bushes, conducting
drug commerce, sleeping, and occasionally shooting things.
We may come from all different walks of life but we all run
from the cops just the same if they drive happen to drive by
doing an after-hours check.
Clean Run | March 18

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - March 2018