Evie Training Thoughts
When you’re really invested in your dogs and your dog sport(s), it can make you feel all kinds of big, profound, wonderful, terrible, things.
For me, there are few things that cause me to doubt myself and my skill more than when I feel I’ve let my dogs down.
Since COVID I’ve been much more of a homebody than before (although I’ve really always been a homebody), and so I go to agility trials far less than before. Instead of doing 2-3 days 3 out of 4 weekends a month (or more), I go to 1 or 2 days, once or twice a month.
This has positives: it’s better for my bank account; I get to spend time at home (which I love), with my husband (whom I love); I get to spend more time with my dogs outside of our sport.
But it also has negatives: my dogs get far less trial mileage than before; I get far less trial mileage than before (this has a highly detrimental effect on our mojo); we fall behind with the titles etc.
Agility is just dogs jumping over plastic, yes. But it’s also an amazing bonding experience with your dog. When the mojo is working, you truly do become one mind.
Anyway, all that is a big preamble to me trying to work through how I’m feeling about Evie right now.
Evie is an amazing dog. She’s so fast and quick, in training when I can feel the beginnings of our mojo, it’s like running with a hummingbird or a rabbit, she’s so immediately responsive, it’s like driving a sports car. And, for a dog who can be a bit of a weirdo about some things, she’s really very confident out there (three different people remarked to me about how confident she is).
But she’s a very sensitive dog, and she’s really experiencing the throes of adolescence right now. She has a LOT of feelings about things. And while I absolutely love a dog who stresses up, because those are usually the dogs who end up being the most fun to run with, right now Evie can’t cope well with pressure. She’s run in a handful of trials, and initially she was what I expect out of a novice dog. But the trend over the last few trial days has not been what I want to see, and the way I’ve been handling her is not what I want to see. I am so thankful to have dog friends who are wise, and willing to tell me what they’re seeing and what they think.
Evie is zooming, and visiting, and tuning me out, and I’ve been dropping connection, which is a big part of WHY she’s doing that. I took the opportunity yesterday (after a really ungood trial day) to run her in a match (you have 90 seconds to do what you like on a course, you can bring a toy or contained food). And while I got some really good attention from her in our second run, I came home feeling quite defeated, and disappointed in myself.
So, I pulled her from all ucoming trials, other than the games classes, where I can run For Exhibition Only.
I’m going to do some Control Unleashed pattern games. I’m going to work on relationship. I really think she has the potential to be an amazing agility dog, but she needs more foundation work, and I need to step back, go back, and work this through.