Quit Being Afraid

On Friday I did a Masters handling seminar with Soshana Dos. I find it crazy I had to drive almost 3 hours to take a seminar from her when she lives probably about an hour away from me but hey. The unofficial theme of the day seemed to be quit being afraid of forward motion. Sure, deceleration works to cue a turn, but it has its drawbacks. That seems to be what the Finns have going for them: they use very little deceleration to cue things, which keeps their dogs going full speed at all times, but use their other cues so effectively that the dogs are still turning appropriately. I think using deceleration slows the handler down, and while the dog reads the cue well, the handler is then stuck trying to get back up to speed, so the dog likewise does not accelerate as well as he could out of the turn. The biggest difference I see between the Mecklenburg system and OMD is this. OMD recognizes handler motion as the strongest cue but manages to use all the others without diluting the dog's responsiveness to that motion. Soshana mentioned that Mecklenburg followers probably have the easiest time transitioning to OMD because the cues and cue combinations are so similar. That said, I am still struggling, still clinging to using deceleration as a primary turning cue when I don't need to. I think this is where a lot of my frustration in trials is coming from, I'm still learning this handling system, and my execution is still leaving much to be desired.

I look at this video, and while there are some nice bits, I have a long ways to go. You can see it took me 4-5 tries at each of the hard places to get it right, and I'm still not sure I would be able to get it on my own at all without someone tweaking my efforts with each repetition. And even one of the easy places (1-3 on the first course) took me 6 (!) tries.

I love that I was pushed as hard as I was, I just wish I wasn't harming Kraft's body in the process. His knees are not going to last. He's only 3 and while I've been quiet about it, the past few months I've really struggled with how to keep him sound. He came up dead lame one night. The surgeon says his knee is still not bad enough to require surgery, the patella still isn't actually luxating, but just riding on the inner groove so the pain is him developing arthritis from that. His thighs are starting to look asymmetric so he's clearly off loading onto his good leg. I've started him on Adequan, and doing more fitness work and less frequent agility. Sigh. At this point, I don't know which dreams are still realistic for us and which ones I need to let go of.