Knowing Your Decision is the Right One

When we determined that Stetson wasn't going to physically hold up well to a career in Agility I sank pretty low.  Yet I knew he wasn't fun for me to work with in the sport.  His cautious personality doesn't fit my need for the rush of the sport.  I rarely enjoyed our time training or competing, so being let down seemed silly.  To my rational self, it actually seemed ridiculous to get wrapped up in it and think of it as a loss.

What I did hold onto though was the rekindling of my love for the sport.  Having brought Edge into our home and beginning agility training him has on occasion given me the temptation to see if Stetson might be able to compete in Preferred and seek his preferred novice titles.  The temptation is however fleeting because doing what is best for him will always be my primary focus, yet it has flitted in the back of my mind for some time.

Obedience has a minimal amount of jumping and, depending on the dog, it is more controlled.  In order to be certain he would be comfortable for a long career in the sport, I began incorporating strength training that targeted his front end, I started over on jump training.  I wanted to ensure he is knowledgeable and using his body correctly.  We began with ladder work, then moved to poles on the ground, uprights without poles and finally jump chutes.  He is retrieving over the high jump and landing more appropriately than he did prior to the groundwork and jump chutes.  I feel like he will always need jump chutes as part of his training every once in a while to keep him mentally on the game.

The past few weeks we've done jump chutes a couple of times a week plus he has been run more frequently.  I have been of the mindset that we put in the work, it was time to test and evaluate our results. The training and reconditioning is paying off as he is stretching out after a workout without trying to pull back on me when I work his front end and today he even let out the long, heavy sigh of relaxation.  He is relaxing so deeply during the stretch that he is going to sleep.

He is recovering to normal respiration very quickly after 3 mile runs.  Before we stepped back and started over on training and conditioning, he would occasionally "miss" launching into the truck to kennel and hit at his chest on the bumper.  I have become so confident in him the past two weeks that I haven't even thought twice about letting him launch into the truck.

Over this weekend we have run almost three and half miles on back to back mornings, not something I would have considered with him only five months ago while we were battling what seemed like one injury after another.  This afternoon I sent him over the panel to retrieve over the high jump twice and he sailed smoothly over and picked up and returned the dumbbell to me smartly.  When we finished working in the yard and I ran my hands over him, there was no heat and no sign of avoiding my handling him. No more questions.  No more second guessing.  Pulling him out of agility was absolutely the right thing to do.

I am not looking back anymore.  I have confidence at last. He is strong, he is sound and most importantly, he is my partner.