When I started agility, I went in with absolutely no idea
what to expect out of myself or my dog. I stepped into class with a dog who was
mellow and sweet and had a brilliant stay. A seriously brilliant stay. As in, I
could walk a few hundred yards and she wouldn’t move a muscle. Of course, that
translated to a dog who was sure that her goal in front of a jump was to stay and keep staying, no matter what I
did. Proofing? We had it. We really
had it.
What I didn’t have was an ace agility dog. Or even a dog
with a lot of energy. It’s been four years since I started agility with that
dog and I’ve had a lot of time to think about what I want to do with her in agility. Get a C-ATCH?
Never. A MACH? Ha. That’s a good one.
After only going to one trial in the past year (one that was an unmitigated disaster, though she did have a really awesome stay!), I finally came to a conclusion: It’s not
titles or ribbons. It’s not even trials. I’m not sure if we’ll ever go back to
a trial at this point and if we do, it won’t be with the goal of getting big
qualifying scores and titles. That’s for a lot of people. Most people in
agility, I would wager. But it sure isn’t for me and my girl.
Success is fairly easy to define if you’re going to trials.
Oh, it will be different for everyone. But there are certain measures of
success. The big measures of success are the Q’s, the ribbons, the titles you
can attach to your dog’s name. There are the smaller ones of course, the sorts
of performance goals like hitting a solid 2on/2off on the A-Frame or being able
to lead out past the second jump or getting that darned tunnel/dog walk
discrimination that’s been tripping you up. Those used to be my goals, my
measures of success. I still remember the thrill of the first time my dog took
the A-Frame at a trial, the first time she did the teeter. She didn’t Q either
time because something else went
wrong, but I remember feeling that as a team we had been successful because we
met those goals.
But that was then. This is now. And how do you define success when you’re not working toward the goal of
getting a Q or a title? What is considered successful when you’re only going to
classes?
At this point, I have really one measure of success for our
classes. One and one only. Ready for my big measure of success? My big goal?
After every class I ask myself one question:
Did my dog have fun?
That’s it. That’s the measure of success for me. Did she
look happy? Was she excited? Did she enjoy playing the game with me? Did she pounce on
the ball o’ treats (aka Clean Run’s Lotus Ball) with great glee?
If she didn’t have fun, then why not? What can I do to
change that? We certainly went through a time where every class seemed like a
chore, where she was obviously not
having fun. So I found I had to reward her more, had to get her more excited,
had to relax and be more playful with her.
It really is that simple for me. If we walk out of class and
we had fun together, it was successful. Maybe we weren't perfect (ok so we likely weren't), but that's not important. It really is all about having fun together and as long as we do, that's all that really matters.
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This was written as part of the Dog Agility Blogger's Action Day's "success" theme. Please check out all the other amazing posts here.
