Ban on Bad

I have a lot of swirly whirly thoughts right now.

The good news: none of them are bad!

Good thing #1. The Dog is fixed!

After her last show I was seriously worried that she had somehow reinjured her shoulder.  I put her on the Boring Regime. How boring for her.  Even on the Boring Regime her stride was hinky, so after a few days I asked my student (wonderful, generous student who is a vet) if she wouldn’t mind watching her walk to see if I was crazy or not.  Wonderful, generous student she is, she did a full on chiro adjustment and evaluation. Love!  Poor little Dog was all kinds of out of sorts in her neck, which explains what I was seeing in her gait and jumping.  We had a follow up at my normal chiro vet Tuesday who did a little work with her spine but declared NO SHOULDER ISSUE! Woo! and cleared her back to Normal Regime.  Thank all that is holy because…

Good thing #2. We had a seminar with Daisy Peel Wednesday!

I’m so aglow after yesterday.  It was exactly what I needed.  Were we perfect? Nope. But finally FINALLY we are getting somewhere. 

The last day of the seminar was “Handling like a Pro.” Lots of jumps, tunnels and weaves.   Slightly awkward lines, Trappy McTrapperson off course draws and- a ban on verbal directional cues.  She wanted us to work on communicating with our bodies.  Well, to be more specific, our shoulders and legs.  Not so much the windmill arms or jazz hands.  And that we had to rely on MOTION CUES and LOCATION CUES.  You know, work on running our dogs off the things THEY actually care about not what we think they should care about.  I felt a bit…auggghhh! before we ran the first courselet. Because like, I use directionals. And I use jazz hands.  And historically The Dog doesn’t follow my motion cues OR location cues correctly (remember, obstacles focused doggy?). But if I learned anything from the day, I learned that The Dog has officially gotten the memo on motion. And has received the letter on location.  She paid attention!  To me! 

I forgot how much I liked getting A’s on homework.  Totally an awesome feeling.  All the homework we have tackled since our private two months ago made yesterday feel like we just completed a HUGE assignment and PASSED the test. 

Of course, now there is MORE homework.  As expected, Daisy delivered another round of amazing insight.  She suggested The Dog is ‘test ticking’ bars to see if I will maintain criteria or let her off.  The Dog was a bit sloppy to start and well, I let her off easy since she hadn’t run in two weeks.  But Daisy said THBBBT to that and after I started *trying* to mark ticks instead of drops. It was interesting. If I let a tick go, there were more until a bar came down, then bars (plural). But when I stopped the sequence, she got better.  It is SO like the dog to do something like ‘test tick’ bars so I’ll work with the theory for awhile.   I can believe it because she started her circling a little after I stopped her several times (it’s better though!) BUT did not circle when I kept making a mistake (like 10 times…oops) and stopped her. HMMM.  So anyways. We will up criteria on bars and see!

The other ridiculously helpful thing that was pointed out- apparently what I have called an issue with making difficult weave entries is actually an issue with a certain Leader forgetting to tell a certain Dog to WEAVE.   I’ve convinced myself that I need to manage her weaves for so long that I’ve stopped telling her what to do and actually do everything but. We worked on two tough entries and she missed them both.  Daisy pointed out that I either didn’t ever SAY “weave” or I waited until it was too late (like, she was past the plane). But as soon as I cued with good timing, she adjusted herself and got in.

GA!! 

Sorry Dog, guess we aren’t codependent on weaves after all.

But.

Good thing #3. The Dog is amazing. 

And well trained! I think I’m really starting to understand. I’ve sort of made excuses for her and have done the kid gloves thing for awhile. She is my little bird! I feel so protective of her. But I suppose it’s time to have some faith.  She IS amazing and I want so much for everyone else to see this too.  For that to happen though, I have to just let go of some of the history, because it’s ancient now.  The only thing in our way is…me!

Good thing #4. No really, knowing that is a good thing!

I’ve decided that while she may be accident prone and there IS a history to deal with, those things don’t account for all our issues.  And they don’t define her now or even explain the last hurdles we still have to overcome. What’s left is in my head.  It’s hard to explain. I’ve never had a ‘mental management’ problem, at least not in the traditional sense. In general (everyone has an off day!), I feel like I look at things the ‘right way’ and have maintained positivity and perspective.  I don’t focus on winning or dwell on losing. Shows and competition thrill me- they don’t make me want to barf.  With my Sheltie, I had the ‘show zen’ thing perfected and I feel that way with The Pup.  Even if she is a bit of an a&$hole at the moment I have this weird peace- I’m totally secure when it comes to her future and clear minded when it comes to her. Something about The Dog just plays with my head and my heart though. Because I care SO MUCH and a million other little things.  And lately I have felt like MY issues are turning into OUR issues.  Well.  No more.  I started suspecting a few months ago that our last hurdles were going to be more about my self-improvement than hers.  

Sooo… mental management 101! WEE!

A little research and reading points out quite a few ‘easy’ adjustments to make.  It’s not just maintaining positivity and perspective.   Or good goal-setting.  There is so much about having faith and focus in the process that I need to learn, ESPECIALLY when it comes to The Dog. While I might not need an entire 180 on my thought process, some things are skewed that can do with realignment.  

Good thing #5. Step one: Ban the bad!

No, this doesn’t mean The Pup is moving out.  Negativity no longer has a place here. Nor does complaining. Or excuses.  I’m just… done.  I don’t want to hear it because hear it, be it.  Don’t tell me you can’t. Tell me you can.

Otherwise, I’m going to have to turn into one of those people who walk course with earphones.

You’ve been warned!!

Private Eye

Sometimes when you don’t know what’s going on under the surface you have to hire a private eye to investigate and get to the bottom of things.

And sometimes, similarly, when you can’t see what’s happening in your training, it takes a private with somebody that has a great eye to point out what’s going on.

Yay wordplay!
***
I’ve been training mostly on my own for awhile now (as in, not seeking continuous, deliberate instruction from someone duly appointed to provide feedback- thanks for being a training buddy though mommy!) and I’ve felt that some of our lingering gaps are the result of this. I feel good about a lot of things, but uneasy about some things. And while I have REALLY enjoyed absorbing training thoughts and tips from those with different backgrounds this past year and have been able to incorporate a LOT, I needed help with my established ‘system’ from an expert coming from the same ‘system.’ So when the option came around to get a private eye from the exact person I would have picked if I could have picked anyone, I grabbed it (and wrestled it to the ground and refused to let go. Everyone was just very lucky that there was an opening…).
***
Going into it today, for my part, I was pretty open. I tried to come up with things to work on to maximize my time but all I really ended up asking for was thoughts. I might have squeaked out words like “dogwalk,” “ring stress” and “jumping” but who knows. The hour directed itself anyways and because of that I probably came away with much more.

The Dog, for her part, displayed her true self in full- complete with start line weirdness and show quality dogwalks (high and leapier than in normal practice). She was NOT Perfect Dog but this was the perfect time for her to be herself.

Results? I came away with some of the best observations and suggestions I have ever gotten. Let today go down as the day that Daisy Peel got the scoop on The Dog. If she was a REAL P.I., she would have showed me pictures of The Dog canoodling with a married politician in a seedy hotel. With blackmailing and extorting people. Maybe some drugs. Watergate of dog agility. Yep, she is that good of a P.I. Like a real P.I., she came in, threw the reality down and didn’t disappoint. No excuses, just the truth.
***
Seriously though, we have homework. The good news is that I am super familiar with a lot of what we need to do (enter the bonus of a similar foundation!) and now that it’s been pointed out I feel comfortable diving in on my own.

More good news: the scoop is, she doesn’t think The Dog necessarily has ring stress. Remember in the summer (ok, you can lie) when I said I thought maybe The Dog was fooling me to some extent and not as stressed as she appeared? Yep. Though not so much fooling me (she isn’t THAT evil) as playing with a different set of rules (which of course I’ve been unknowingly reinforcing).

I’ve thought that her ‘circling’ thing (where she takes off and circles the ring at certain times) was her burning off stress. It actually seems to be a little game she plays. Dog makes circle so Leader calls Dog back. What fun we have! I never thought that me calling her would be rewarding for her since she never used to enjoy coming in. Times have changed I guess. The REALLY interesting part is how that behavior fits into practices. When she makes a mistake, she will take off for a circle. I always thought she was feeling pressure from the error and marveled at how she would circle back to just before the section where we made the mistake to restart (“She is so clever, look at her self-correcting!”) and would make circles until I called her to reset. But it’s actually more like, “weee! I am right since I came back from my circle and now we go again, how fun are second turns?!?!” So in her fun world, she is always right.

Interesting!!!

We went to go work handling, but then the start line thing came up right away (Dog sits and stares at me when I lead out, maybe eventually trotting out around the jumps to say hi) so we did little exercises where she declared The Dog not quite ‘getting’ jumping an really isn't getting what I'm doing. Not stressed. Just not educated. This has been my recent fear and I was sure I’d need to somehow understand Salo to teach her to collect and extend and WHEN. But again, good news is that there are things we can revisit that I already understand from our foundation to show her this. There are some holes in her understanding of location which seem to be the cause (at last, a real cause!) to her China trips. Previously I filled the holes with verbals and arm waving but those are just bandaids and don’t solve the issue that she isn’t really watching my motion and I’m not making her. Now we need to clue her in to me again. Hola Dog! The best part is that I wanted to just be able to run and not rely on the other stuff and this will get us there. And her jumping form IS good so the bars won't be an issue once the rest is in place.

I don’t think it will be a long disgusting road to retrain all of her jumping/handling foundation; she started catching on and remembering after awhile. Likewise, she started catching on that circles don’t get anything now. No more circles!

As far as the dogwalk, apparently I haven’t been picky enough. It scares me to get picky (and risk losing the running that took so long to get if she shut down) but with the newfound thought that she probably isn’t a stress ball anymore I might venture into pickiness yet. She thought I could select for a lot more rear leg separation AND teach turns. She showed me an interesting way to shape turns that I think could work for The Dog.

There was a lot more too, but I seriously doubt I’m making much sense so I’ll keep it to myself. I’m totally thrilled that everything makes sense to me which is probably what matters. I suppose I could feel discouraged by all the things she found wrong or lacking, but really I feel better about where we are then I have in a long time. It's like I've been fumbling in the dark with a flashlight but finally someone switched on the floodlights.

Oh yes! There's the door. Lets go already!

Happy.