Some Valuable Agility Lessons - From a Kelpie

I couldn't wait to get back to trialling again after the Summer break.
So much so that I drove 3 and a half hours to Warrnambool for 2 half day trials - 3 runs on Saturday and 2 on Sunday.
As I had a devil of a time trying to get accommodation (Warrnambool was obviously where it was all happening over the long weekend!) I didn't enter Cruz. At one stage it looked as if I may have been sharing accommodation with a number of other people and dogs and I didn't think it was fair to rock up with more than one dog. Anyway, we ended up getting a tent site for Saturday evening only - 2 people and 2 kelpies only just fit into a 6 person tent by the way. Obviously to get 6 people in you have to sleep in 2 layers. Luckily my 'old boys' are happy sleeping in the car.

I'm not sure if it was the long drive or the warm afternoon, but on Saturday I just couldn't get connected with Atilla. Our first run in Open Jumping wasn't too bad but thanks to another 'blonde moment' I ended up doing an extra circle of a pinwheel before the run home. (3 extra obstacles and we still made time!) I haven't forgotten a course in quite a while so that should have served as a warning for what was to come - two of the worst Masters runs we have had in a long time. I can't even remember agility, and Atilla got so fed up with me in jumping that eventually he took off and made up his own course. (Very frustrated 'kelpie-like' and rightly so!)

Sunday was a lot better, the connection returned and we had two good runs in Masters (on two beautiful courses that were very kelpie friendly) with just one small error each time. Later on when talking to a friend, he commented on what a wasted weekend it must have been to travel all that way without a pass.
Well if that was what I measured a successful agility weekend on, I would be disappointed a lot of the time!

There were so many things that I learned over the weekend that I have decided to list them here in the hope that recounting them makes me truly learn these lessons and benefit from them.

Firstly, this was the trial weekend for my new lead out procedure - no more looking back and running to position instead. It has been working well at training with both dogs but this was the first time I have done it in a trial situation. 5 runs, 5 lead outs held and none of the stress signs that I was sometimes seeing before - even when I went out to the 5th jump in Open Jumping and 'arm changed' to handle the serpentine in the distance test, which was at the start of the course. So a big tick for this one and I will definitely keep on doing it. Not sure why running to position appears to work compared to walking, just happy that so far it is!

I'm usually pretty relaxed running Atilla but when things came unstuck on Saturday I tensed up and handled accordingly. Although I would put verbal cues down near the bottom on the priority list of how I handle, for some reason when I tense up I become a lot more verbal.
I think kelpies really hate this. Not that I see the need to run totally silent (although I think this is an excellent training exercise to really get the focus on your body cues) but maybe shutting up a lot more and letting the kelpie actually get on with his job would have been a better handling strategy.
Something I am going to try and be a lot more aware of from now on.
I also noticed that the more verbals I used, the more he started to ignore me, so maybe being a little quieter would give an improved response to a verbal command when I do give one.

One of my favourite quotes ( can't remember the author or where I read it though) is written in the front of my training diary as a reminder:
'What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.'

This is a hard lesson to live and I don't think I have been able to totally hide my disappointment on other occasions when things haven't gone well, but this time I think I went closer to getting it right. After I left the trial on Saturday, I took Atilla to the beach - we still had 3 hours before L. was due down with the other dogs. This would have been the first time in ages when we got to run on the beach together, just the two of us, and it was a good 're-connecting' experience.
Atilla found a dog toy that had washed up - and of course a 'freebie found' is way better than any toy I could buy him. So for the better part of 2 hours, we ran played 'tug' and 'retrieve' with the toy. When we were both really tired, we walked along the sand for a couple of kms.
A happy kelpie face is a great pick me up so the disappointment of our runs was soon forgotten which I believe went a long way toward the much better performance on Sunday.
In the past I would have probably put him in the car, gone home, and stressed about all the errors I had made which is totally counter productive. Especially when no one else remembers or cares about your runs except you - including your dog!

Other things I learned on the weekend :
*There will always be some fallout as a reformed 'flicker'. (GD handlers know what I'm talking about) Accept it, continue with 'anti flick' training - which in all likelihood will never be 100% effective, and move on. Smile as your kelpie flips you the paw and disappears into the far end of the tunnel- you taught him to do it in the first place.

*I can actually have 2 good runs with L. standing right outside the ring. Apart from some initial head turning on the startline, Atilla didn't look at him once.

*Listen to everyone's advice, even if you don't take 99% of it on board - it's that other 1% that can sometimes make a difference.

*Sometimes very successful weekends, pass wise, mean that you don't learn all that much from your runs. So which weekends are really the most successful in the big picture?