Jocelyn Cheng

  There are no coincidences in life. Six years ago, if you told me I would end up being landbound after working on a cruise ship and traveling to 99 countries across all 7 continents, I would have been horrified. Five years ago, if you told me I would move back to New York City, where I grew up, I would have scoffed. Four years ago, if you told me I would fall in love with a sassy little border-collie-wannabe and that I would happily spend all my money on dog sports, I would have kindly asked you if you remembered to take your meds that day. Yet, here I am, with my soul dog, Dakota. She was a stray in Texas, who was brought up to a rescue in Maine. Somehow, I stumbled across a video of her on Facebook. After hemming and hawing for a few weeks, my heart won. I drove 8 hours up to Maine and 8 hours back to bring her home. She is my first dog and adopting her was the first time I ever did something completely for myself, without input from anyone else. Since I essentially had no idea what I was doing, I hired a local trainer. After breezing through basic training, we started agility training. What no one ever tells you about agility is, if you have two left feet and a herding dog who believes her job is to get YOU over the obstacles, there is SO. MUCH. FACEPLANTING. It was serendipity that one of our agility trainers mentioned Barn Hunt and sent me a link to Stonehedge. I immediately booked a lesson with Dana. The rest is history. Dakota loves this game and I enjoy not constantly being sprawled out on the floor. Less than a year after our first trial, we are slowly working our way up to our Master title, with much encouragement and advice from the Stonehedge gang. We’ve branched out a little into other sports, although agility remains beyond my current capabilities. I spend most of my time putting together amusing videos, crocheting (rats, among other things), or researching new places to go and things to do with Dakota.