Trial and Error

 

Thinking things over...

We have been together for nine months next week and we still are figuring each other out.  On most days things work well and I am left with a sense of accomplishment and even pride when the day is finished.  We really have come a long way, both of us, and I must never be tempted to forget how fragile we were in the beginning.

Wednesday nights are obedience class.  I love obedience and he loves it more.  He is honest and hard working, yet patient enough to ignore my novice obedience training errors.  I like being prepared for class, so Tuesday evenings are almost always "refresher" nights of the skills that we have worked on that week.  Tonight I decided to wrap up some training we've been doing on fronts, finishes and halts mixed with some heeling and a few signals.  It was awesome.  He was good, really good and I was learning how to communicate with him to achieve a straight finish and halt without luring him with bait.  I was pumped when we were finished.

Next up was agility.  We're three weeks from our first competition and I am hoping to be at the point that I can zone in on a few weak spots while working our strengths to finish the final preparations.   To my dismay, he was all over me tonight, there was no focus on the obstacles.  I couldn't get him to leave me alone and look forward.  Well of course not, I had just spent a tremendous effort in reinforcing his "attention" to me during our preceding obedience training.  He was just applying what he'd already been rewarded for to the task at hand.  My self talk was going something like this "all I want is a NA, NAJ title in AKC toward the versatility title...that's all I need and I'm done with agility..."  Yikes, that was the talk of someone who was ready to put a dog away and not work them in the sport anymore.  Not my typical response to challenge.

When I finally finished a successful sequence with a little drive, I ended the session with a jackpot for him.  It didn't take but two minutes of complaining to Dave to realize that I'd followed an intensive handler focused activity with an obstacle focused activity.  For Stetson, a pattern of only a few minutes or sequences quickly becomes "etched in stone" behavior.  My initial take away from this was very  short sighted - I have competition in three weeks, therefore, I'm going to deal with the situation by arranging my training around the issue.  In other words, I'll work obstacle focus skills before handler focus skills until after our first trial.  Something tells me I'll not be able to lay down to the challenge.  I'm betting on myself that I'll have figured out a way to work through this in the next week, but for tonight, I'm planning on giving myself a break on this one. When the day does come that I decide to step up to the challenge, we will both be better competitors for it.