At the end of June 2019, Phyzz and I traveled to Southwest Virginia to participate in an agility seminar taught by Tracy Sklenar. In that seminar, Tracy taught me a lesson about dog training and handling that was instrumental in teaching Phyzz to develop the holy grail that in agility we call “obstacle commitment.” As we floated our way home from that seminar, reveling in what we had learned, we took a windy route through beautiful hills and valleys of Floyd and Carroll Counties, on a path that showed us the majesty that Virginia has to offer via both pastoral and mountainous terrain.
Up to this point, I’d carried around two daydreams related to land — one of having my own agility field and another of having a little getaway in the mountains. It had never occurred to me that these daydreams could be a single daydream. But on that drive back from Tracy’s seminar, my mind connected the dots. In this land where real estate prices seemed affordable and every view was more striking than the last, could it be that I could find a property that included both a mountain cabin of some sort and enough clear, level land for an agility field?
I started my online search that night. I came clean about this new obsession with my husband and daughter a few days later, while plying them with their favorite munchies. They were cautiously supportive, but also forgetting the kind of zero-to-60 action that is one of my signature traits. By the following Saturday, I had appointments with two realtors to view properties. None of those properties were right, but one of the realtors was.
Sam Harrod had come to real estate rather late in life as a post-retirement career. I believe I was his first client. For the next several weekends, Sam and I traversed the roads of rural Southwest Virginia looking at properties. Although Sam had never even seen dog agility before we met, he came to understand that it wasn’t worth seeing the interior of a home until I’d walked off the space that might house the agility field, and he grew to appreciate the spreadsheets I’d prepare to analyze each property’s pros and cons. Along the way, we made a few offers that were not accepted, typically because what I thought was a sensible purchase price was lower than a seller was willing to accept. I became frustrated, and my dear friend Meagan kept reminding me that “the right one will be easy.”
In mid-September, the season for property hunting in this area was winding down, and my schedule was filling up with Fall work and travel commitments. I was beginning to think that this just wouldn’t come together in 2019. One morning, Sam emailed a few listings for me to consider. One was in an area that I’d considered before, where there were multiple cabins for sale. When I saw them, I wrote back, “Sam, I’ve looked at these before. The cabins are perfect, but none of the lots have enough clear, level land for agility.” Before I sent that email — out of habit really — I looked at the county GIS map for an aerial view of the listed properties…..and saw something I’d never noticed before. In the middle of this tiny mountain development, there was one lot that had never been developed, and it was mostly clear, and as level as land gets in this world just off of the Blue Ridge Parkway. That undeveloped lot was adjacent to one of the listed properties and across the street from another. I added one sentence to my email to Sam to explain my discovery and to wonder “if one could contact the owner of that undeveloped lot and see if they would consider selling,” and I hit “send.”
I hit send, but I wasn’t waiting for a reply. I found the owner’s name in the county tax records, and through a Google search, I tracked down enough details to confirm a location and a few biographical details that made me think my crazy idea might not be so crazy. Fifteen minutes after I’d sent that email to Sam, I called the phone number I found, and left a message. Three minutes after that, my cell phone was ringing, and it was the owner of the undeveloped lot — an 88-year old woman named “Dot.” Dot had already listened to her eager voicemail from a complete stranger, and was calling back to learn more.
Not only did Dot listen carefully to my inquires, but she also listened with fascination while I explained a dream – one that involved mountains and weekend getaways and level land with a view where magic would have space to unfold with an amazing dog named Phyzz. She asked a dozen questions about my dog, our teamwork, and the sport that was involved. I felt like I was in some sort of job interview! Then, without skipping a beat, Dot said “Yes.” Yes, she would sell her vacant land so that this dream she never before knew or cared about could become reality. At this point, I hadn’t even seen the property or any of the cabins that were listed for sale, but we made a tentative agreement for a sale contingent upon my purchase of one of the cabins, and the whole process kicked into motion. We visited the cabins the very next day, found one of them to be perfect for us, and started the negotiations that ultimately led to our purchase. How remarkable that the one that was easiest turned out to be the one that wasn’t even listed for sale!
Dot’s chief concern throughout the negotiations was whether the land would be “enough” for the dream. You see, the land had been her family’s playground for decades, starting when her children were young. She told me that she didn’t need the land anymore but she hadn’t been willing to sell it until she was sure it would be put to a use that was “important enough.” That “interview” she conducted with me was how she concluded that Team Phyzz was important enough for her land. At the closing, I got to tell Dot’s fully grown son what his elderly mother’s curiosity and open mind were making possible, and he shyly admitted that the idea brought tears to his eyes, then shared that Dot also happens to be fighting for her life against lung cancer. So, every snippet of joy that we experience on Phyzz’s Phield is dedicated to Dot, the glue that held the disparate pieces of my crazy dreams together. And this is why our “toy box” at the phield — the storage building that houses our agility equipment — bears a metal sign that reads “Be the Dot you wish to see in the world.”
Be the Dot. And keep believing impossible things.