Clean Run - August 2014 - 5

Winning Is About More
Than Championships
By Megan Arszman

As agility exhibitors we celebrate the qualifying scores and the
championships. We focus on yards per second, employing any
new technique we've read in books and magazines, dead-set for
that next title. We focus so much on the championship picture
that we sometimes lose sight that we live for our dogs, and our
dogs live for us. However, I am privileged to have one person
in my life who has never lost sight of that, and she was greatly
rewarded with one of the penultimate
titles an agility team can achieve-
national champion.
In January 2009, Merinda Tiffany
was just 32 years old when she was
diagnosed with breast cancer. Even
though she had no family history of
the disease, she tested positive for
the BRCA1 gene mutation. (The rest
of her family later tested positive as
well, including her mother who was
diagnosed with breast cancer after
Merinda finished treatment.) We are
part of a close group of friends known
in our area as the "Small Dog Posse,"
and we came together to support her
through the treatments. Each of us offered to handle her Cardigan Welsh Corgi, Porter, at agility trials,
but she wanted every Q he earned to be with her.
Merinda underwent six rounds of chemotherapy, as well as a bilateral mastectomy. Every three weeks she'd go in for her treatment, then return home to recover with Porter and her fiancé,
John. She scheduled trials around the treatments, figuring out
how long she'd be sick and when she would have the energy to
run a course. Once the chemo was complete, she endured sixand-a-half weeks of radiation therapy, followed by a hysterectomy to prevent continuation of BRCA1 gene. She considers October 2009 as the month she was officially cancer-free.
From January to October, Merinda competed with Porter in 10
trials, including their first trip to the NADAC Championships.
On each course you would see a happy dog running beside his
equally happy handler. You would never know that under that
knit cap was a bald head from the cancer treatments. Merinda
never let on that she was sick, not once. Through it all, she persevered. Porter would pop out of his weaves, she'd go home and
train some more, taking breaks when she tired. Knocked bars?
Oh well, he still tried for her, and that's all she asked of him.
August 14 | Clean Run

To help raise funds toward Merinda's mounting medical bills,
a friend and I created a shirt with the silhouette of Porter jumping through the pink breast cancer ribbon with the slogan, "No
obstacle too big!" Word of the shirts spread, and I was shipping
them across the country to anyone who wanted to share Merinda's message. The agility community came together for someone
they didn't even know.
Five years later, Team Porter is still
going strong. In 2013, Merinda competed in her first AKC National Agility Championships in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and while she didn't earn a single
clean run ribbon, she was happy to
be there.
The Posse returned to the AKC Nationals in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
in March, looking forward to an
adventure-filled week. The best part
was watching Merinda and Porter
run a clean, fast round in the Clean
Run Challengers' Round to earn the
right to compete in the Finals for 4"
Preferred dogs. We all knew they had
a chance to win, but we didn't share
that knowledge for fear it would make her more nervous. But
how can you knock the confidence of a young woman who has
overcome so much?
I can't even begin to describe the moment it was certain that Merinda and Porter had won the championship-I might have been
crying and screaming the most out of anyone in that arena. I was
breathless as if I had just run that difficult course with her, cheering on Porter through the serpentine and the chute. I have never
been more proud of someone in my life-not because she won,
but because I knew her struggle to get to that point.
Five years ago it wasn't about accumulating the most MACH/
PACH points or QQs, it was about just trying to accumulate the
days in her life and the life in her days. Merinda never let on
that she was nauseous or exhausted when we were at trials or
practice. I never once saw her cry or ask, "Why me?" when it
came to her diagnosis-whether she did that behind closed doors
is her business, not ours. To know how much strength she had
to push through those miserable months, a missed Q seems so
menial now.
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5

Clean Run - August 2014

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