The sight of a tiny, tiny dog running hell-for-leather is one of life’s great pleasures. So we could spend a lot of space here telling you that the video below is from the Masters Agility Championship at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, or that it depicts a 3-year-old Papillon named Gabby from Westbury, New York, or that her handler is named Andrea Samuels, but we all know you’re going to scroll down to the video of a small dog running very fast, not hang around in the introduction reading a bunch of details about how Gabby won the 8” division title with a time of 39.31 while the Grand Champion title went to a border collie named Verb.
Verb is a champion, but Verb is not tiny, and you came here to see a tiny dog’s legs blur like insect wings on the straightaways, then suddenly come into crisp focus as that tiny dog soars gracefully through the air, paws pointing straight ahead like Superdog. And that is exactly what you will find in this video, which writer Jamie Bartlett brought to the internet’s attention, and which you have almost certainly already pressed play on:
Traditionally, this space in a Slate article about a viral video would be used to analyze what, exactly, it was about the video that was notable or delightful, but if you don’t know, we can’t tell you. What we can tell you is a few things that make this video of a tiny dog running hell-for-leather better than other videos of a tiny dog running hell-for-leather. Gabby’s giant ears and fluffy tail accentuate the bounciness of her gait, and her form in the air really is astonishing. But it is Gabby’s decision to hurl her entire body through the weave poles rather than weave—an option not available to larger dogs—that really makes the video, and I assume by this point in the paragraph, everyone has stopped reading in order to watch Gabby again. So we’re going to do likewise.
