Playing Through

What are the makings of a great athlete? It's odd that Mary Swindell should have some insight into that question, having been such a terrible athlete herself. As a kid growing up in Boyd, Texas, her athletic experience began and ended with dodgeball, a game specifically designed, in her opinion, for the cool kids to be able to pick on the dorky kids. She was a dorky kid. Today, however, it's a good bet that none of those cool kids has a claim to a world record, and Swindell sort of does.

So there.

I say "sort of" because it's actually Swindell's dog, a 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Cassanova, who is the athlete in the family. Cassanova is a prodigy in pole-weaving. He's to pole-weaving what Wayne Gretzky was to ice hockey or Yo-Yo Ma is to the cello. And while Swindell will be the first to give him all of the credit, the sad fact is, the world is chock-full of Dobermans who fail to live up to their pole-weaving potential. Perhaps they take up with the wrong crowd. Maybe they're suddenly struck by its cosmic pointlessness. Maybe just scaring the crap out of the neighbor kids seems the "cooler" thing to do.

Swindell, 35, wasn't going to let that happen to Cassanova. She got the dog while she was living in Pittsburgh, working on a doctorate in bioethics. Soon, she decided to screw the graduate degree and devote herself to training dogs full time. Trying to understand how people and animals communicate was every bit as intellectually challenging – and far more rewarding.

"I love to see the moment when people and dogs get it," she says, "when the dog finally figures out what the owner is trying to tell him, and the owner figures out how to tell the dog what she wants – that lightbulb moment. It's an amazing thing to watch, two beings coming together like that. You see the total joy in their eyes."

It is certainly an amazing thing – and a total joy – to watch Cassanova weave through 60 poles in less than 12 seconds. In dog-agility competitions, border collies usually clean up. A Doberman would seem to be too big, especially a boy Doberman. But in the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge at the state fair a few weeks ago, Cassanova annihilated the field, working tall and upright, throwing his large body in two different directions at once, and winning a shot at the national championships in October.

"When you have a perfect run like that," Swindell says, "it's almost like a dance. Everything moves so smoothly, with very little conscious communication. That's what athletes and artists are searching for – that moment. If we can get in that zone, I know we'll clean up. But, really, winning is just a side benefit. It's that feeling we're searching for."

And how do you get there? The same way you get to Carnegie Hall.

Duh.