Epiphany

I've been listening to Lanny Basham's "What Every Dog Agility Competitor Should Know First About the Mental Game" CD all week. I've dug out his "With Winning In Mind" book and have breezed through it. I rustled up my Daisy Peel "Clear Mind" book from who I loaned it to and will be revamping my goals next, long and short term. I was feeling slightly more prepared mentally this weekend. At least I was ready to be aware to catch myself and recognize what I needed to change. Like with agility handling, getting mad when a handling error occurs and focusing on fixing the handling error is way too late. I need to be proactive, change the mentality BEFORE the error, not so that I don't make the error in the first place, but to not let myself get mad about it. So that was my focus, to recognize what was making me angry.

And I felt really nervous. More nervous than I've felt ever since Kraft's first ever runs. I felt like I was starting over. We made errors. I felt disappointed afterwards. But not angry. At least, not as angry. Probably because I already decided not to go to the Open. Then Spy got walked out of jumpers. She messed up her weaves, made the entry and popped out, then when I resent her she just flung herself in at pole 3. She hasn't needed more than two tries at the weaves in a long time, not since the last time her weaves "broke". So I took her out. For several reasons, and none of them have to do with punishing her. 1) I just don't want her to rehearse that, reward or no reward. 2) I didn't want to continue to make errors and get mad, I can leave after a weave error calmly with her because of our history. 3) She hasn't run in a while, is out of shape a little and I didn't want to keep running her if there might be something physically off. Bottom line, I was calm about taking her out. Then in agility, she did her classic "pop out of the tunnel and sneak up the dog walk" on the discrimination. I haven't been able to train this with her, so I was ready for it and was able to correct it and continue on. (She did her weaves with the look of absolute determination and concentration by the way.) Again, I felt calm about it. Then with Marron, for snooker I didn't get her out before the walk through and she was the first dog, so she didn't get much warm up. I think she was thirsty since she guzzled water after her run, which she rarely does (they didn't have water in their crates, they just get everything wet in there, or I forget it and drive away like that if I crate in the car). She didn't really do much "running", very much old Marron. And I'm not used to handling her like that and didn't make it through our opening. Again, we left calmly. She gave me a smoking run for my only Q of the weekend in gamblers.

I was thinking on the ride home why I felt so differently about the errors. Part of it is expectations. I feel like there are so many more people expecting Kraft and I to excel. But it's not like any one has put any actual PRESSURE on us, so that hasn't made any sense. It really seemed to come on when I made the change to OMD system, and while I knew it would take a while to get comfortable with the system, I now think that it has more to do with how the system looks at errors. While I don't think other systems "blame the dog" and it is certainly the norm for the handler to take responsibility, even if it is for training holes, the way OMD does it, it's a whole new level. There are always things that are the dog's responsibility, and that's what happened on each of the girls' runs, it was out of my control, and yes, to a point I haven't trained things as well with them. With them, we make mistakes and I can see where the training holes are. It's really easy to forgive and forget the mistakes when they are the dog's failure. The only way to fix it is to go home and train more. With Kraft, the training holes aren't as apparent. The errors are 100% mine. And it is much harder to forgive myself. And that is why I am getting so angry. I really think that is what my problem is and why I get so mad mid-run.

After the trial, I went to my parents' house. I was going to take my father out to brunch for Father's Day (which also happened to be his birthday). And my older sister was going to be coming over as it was her birthday Saturday. When I got there Saturday evening, my dad sprung on me that my sister had agreed to go golfing with him and did I want to come along? UGH! I hate golf. No interest. Not ever. I had to play in gym class when I was in high school. The high school golf coach could not even figure out why I couldn't hit the ball. But my sister had never been before either, so we would be even. I decided to go. For one, to please my dad for his big day. That was the main thing. Why not? What's a few hours walking around in the sun with your dad and sister on Father's Day having a few drinks? The other reason was more personal. I wanted to rehearse making mistakes (and I knew there would be many!) in an environment that I knew it would be easy for me to forgive and forget without getting mad. Who gets mad about making mistakes when it's your first time doing something? I wanted to rehearse what that felt like. The drinks helped with that too! LOL. Maybe that's what I need to do before agility runs for a while! And you know what? I had a good time. I don't want to go out and get my own set of clubs, I don't think I will be practicing on my own. But as something to do with my dad, sure I'll go again. And I am making it my goal going forward: to remember what it felt like to screw up and LET. IT. GO.