The Highs and Lows

I started agility 5 years ago with my Border Collie, Homer.  Being my first agility dog and not being taught by the best instructors, Homer and I acquired some bad habits that we are just now trying to fix.  Let me tell you, years of letting him break startlines and self release on the contacts is not an easy fix.  For the past 6 months I've been working hard with him to fix these bad habits.  We had some very successful weekends where he would hold every contact and startline and others where he would break nearly all of them.

I consider myself a patient person.  I never once got mad at Homer for breaking.  I would at him like "Oops, that sucks.  You don't get to play anymore."

The month of March has been very busy for Homer and I.  We had a trial every weekend and 3 out of the 4 were three day trials (luckily two of them were local trials)  The first two trials Homer was PERFECT.  He did awesome with his startlines contacts.  I didn't care at all that we went one day with no Q's and the other with a QQ.  I was just happy he was listening to me, whether we Q or not.  A couple weekends after that he started to break without me looking (I try to lead out confident and not turn around to give him an idea that I'm going to release him)  The way I found out was from videos and people telling me he broke.  Great.  I let him get away with it.

This weekend was definitely one of our lows.  He had to be walked off 4/6 runs.  For the first time in my life I was actually frustrated with him.  It frustrated me that we could go one weekend perfect and the other weekend he wouldn't listen to me at all.  The thing that upset me the most though is we couldn't play.  I had to stick to my criteria and we would go the whole day not running once.  I love running my Homer and it completely sucked that we didn't get to play together.  It really bugged me and I was upset with Homer for not allowing us to play.

I am so lucky to have people who care about me.  Someone told me, "Because of Homer he makes you a better trainer in the long run."  Because of that simple sentence I picked up my chin and tried again.  I know what we're going to be working on the next couple weeks at class.. Thanks Homer.  Literally. You have taught me a lot.. even if sometimes I want to ring your neck.  Okay.. maybe not that far! :)

This morning I was reading the a clean run articale and a quote stood out to me.  "Run the dog you have, not the one you wish you had." (ironicly on an article on why you shouldn't get a BC lol!)  Let's try again Homie.  One day we'll get there!