The Glen Carbon report

“If we learn by our mistakes, I am in a constant state of education.”

The learning curve continues! Phoenix did some brilliant stuff at the four-day agility trial at Glen Carbon and I made some really stupid handling errors. Thank goodness for friends who videotaped us all weekend long (Terry and Michele, that would be you.) Watching “game films” was incredibly helpful in figuring out what the heck happened, since I have a hard time recognizing it in the heat of the moment. When the run is over in 30 seconds, it’s really tough for me to pinpoint where things went wrong, especially when my feet and arms seem to be operating independently of my brain . . . which clearly was not operating at all several times. Plus it was just plain fun getting together every night in the motel to plug the camcorders into the TV and review the day’s successful runs as well as those that didn’t go quite according to plan.

Overall, I was really happy with the progress Phoenix and I have made in running Excellent-level courses over the summer. While Novice and Open weren’t exactly easy, they were much less demanding on both of us and not really a true test of our teamwork. I do feel like we’ve made a lot of progress in our teamwork (versus individually running amuck . . . which still isn’t totally out of the question) but we've got a long way to go.

The other side of the coin was continuing frustration with the table. Phoenix stuck it one day (because I was body-blocking him from flying off), did a touch-and-go two days and totally ignored it the last day. Terry thought he was looking at someone walking by outside the ring. Oh look! A shiny object! Apparently he is just like his handler.

Weaves were another source of gray hair. Honestly, weaves and the table are the two things we have been working diligently all summer long but from the looks of it, neither of us had any idea what to do with them. Sigh. I’ll change my training strategy (the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results) and keep after it.

One of the best things about the weekend was everyone’s willingness to offer suggestions on how best to handle any given portion of the course. While this produced a considerable amount of conflicting advice, I am getting better at sifting through it and deciding what is the best approach for me and my dog. This is somewhat of a trial and error process and it probably won’t end any time soon. It’s great to have an instructor or good friends to tell you “do this” or “don’t do that” but at some point you have to decide for yourself what is the best strategy for you.

So often, we measure the success of a trial weekend by the number of Qs or the color of ribbons displayed on our crates. I’ve totally been there, so it’s a new experience for me to look at a weekend where the stats show us going 0 for 8 and call it successful! Being able to run four days in a row - although exhausting - was a great way to learn what worked and what needs work. I think we improved a little bit each day and it was a total rush to run a tricky sequence successfully, knowing that success was due to teamwork, not blind luck (although I’m certainly not opposed to that, either!).

Weekend highlights included Rilda’s wild rice summer sausage (thanks for feeding us, Rilda Sue!); doing some early Christmas shopping at the vendors (hope I can remember where I put things in December); watching Michele’s lip change colors from day to day (she had a little accident while loading her van before we left); a great meal at Zapatos after which we all suffered from “Hispani-bloat,” Tracy’s word for eating waaaaaay too much at a really good Mexican restaurant and four days spent having just plain fun with my dogs and good friends.