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Wednesday, December 14, 2011 'Nick' of Time: Lessons from a great dog |
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In this Issue: First Dog Stress? Keeping my Cool New Objectives
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First DogNick was really my first dog. I had other dogs in my life but they weren’t mine. When I was with Nick all of his attention was focused on me almost every moment. His breeder from Montana told us he would “live to take a command”, and that proved to be very true. What the breeder didn’t tell us was that he would do it at 100 miles per hour! Nick would attempt to do anything I asked. Even if the task was impossible he would attempt it without question. One day I was in the academy setting up the dog walk. The end closest to me didn’t yet have an up ramp attached. Nick, as always, was pestering me give him something to do. I thought I would keep him busy trying to figure out how to do the dog walk. Foolishly, I gave him the command "WALK", thinking he would run around for a while looking for a way to get on. That should keep him out of my way, right? Well, Nick charged the dog walk and tried to jump up onto the four foot high cross ramp, banging against the board and then falling to the floor. He got up and barked at me in frustration. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt. I don’t think Nick ever knew fear. He charged through life full speed ahead. Stress?Ok, I have this dog with no fear, who wants to do everything and do it at the speed of light. How do I keep up with THAT? There were so many things I had to do when I ran a course. I had to remember the course, remember the commands and be timely with them, and watch my dog, all while running at full speed with a maniac dog. I had a difficult time rubbing my belly and patting my head. How was I supposed to accomplish all of that at the same time, and do it perfectly? Stress? Me Stress? Right! My wife Sherry kept telling me to relax and let the adrenalin work for me, not against me. She said that it would give me a competitive edge. It seemed like the more I tried to relax the more stressed I became. When I would finally get to the start line with Nick I would be a nervous wreck. To top it off, Nick was behaving very strangely. He would sniff the ground before and after we got to the start line and I couldn’t get his attention. I couldn’t figure out what it was he was sniffing. The timer would give us the “go when ready” signal and away Nick would go, barking loudly as he went past me. He would be 6 or 8 obstacles ahead of me before I got past the first obstacle! Unfortunately they weren’t the correct obstacles. I wouldn’t have thought I could be more stressed than I already was. I could feel myself shaking profoundly and my heart would be pounding. I was screaming my head off at him while trying to catch up. (It must have been that Nick couldn’t hear me. That had to be it, I must yell louder.) Louder? I was already screaming at the top of my lungs! We later learned that the sniffing he was doing before the run was in reaction to my stress. It was a calming signal, something that dogs do to try to calm other members of the pack. When he took off from the line he instinctively knew I wasn’t quite right. It was like he thought “Dad’s not all there, I guess I’ll have to do it on my own”.
Keeping My CoolStaying calm while running Nick took me a long time to learn. I don’t think I was really ever completely relaxed on the course with him. Remember, I felt that I had to be perfect. EVERY run must be a qualifier. It took me over 5 years to learn how to minimize my stress when I ran with him. I just couldn’t seem to get myself calm enough to think. I remember being very depressed after one of my many 5 fault runs. I felt that I would never be able to lower my anxiety enough to think fast enough. I was thinking of retiring Nick at the age of 7 because we just didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. It took us 5 years to get our first USDAA Novice qualifier. At that time we were competing in both USDAA and NADAC. Sherry pointed out to me that I was competing in NADAC at the Excellent level, and in USDAA at Novice level. Nick didn’t know the difference between the two venues, but we were much more successful in NADAC events. So what was making the difference? One major difference was that I had two Standard course runs per day in NADAC and only one in Standard course run in USDAA. I knew I was a little calmer running NADAC courses. Could it be that I didn’t put as much pressure on myself to be perfect because I had a second chance in NADAC?. Sherry also pointed out that no matter what kind of run we had, most of the course was good. "But we faulted, how could that be good?" She reminded me that if we did 16 obstacles and faulted one, 15 out of 16 good things had just happened. I had been concentrating on the one bad thing instead of 15 good ones. That positive thought helped me a lot. After that day, no matter what kind of run I had, I seemed to enjoy my more of our runs. And our qualifying rate also seemed to be better. There must be something to this. If I run without worrying about trying to qualify I qualified more?
New ObjectivesFrom then on, I concentrated more on running a course with different objectives. What if I ran the course with the objective of keeping my voice lower? What if I tried to do something new I had been training? Changing objectives seemed to work very well for me. Nick and I seemed to run very well when I would ‘try something’. I could even remember what happened during the run after it was over! No matter what happened on course, agility became much more enjoyable and less disappointing. More and more, we seemed to run like we were connected. I could allow myself mistakes. I didn’t plan on making a mistake but I knew if was going to ‘try’ something that it just might not turn out. After all it was something new. I could then take that information home and train the areas where I was not proficient. Running a course with learning as my objective took almost all pressure off of me. It was a great feeling. Once I learned how to get rid of my stress my runs became much better. Still, every once in a while I would walk a course and think “this is do-able”. We would almost always not qualify when I had those thoughts. I thought about that and I realized that my translation of “do-able” was “Q-able”. That meant that I was putting pressure on myself to not make any mistakes. To qualify. To be perfect. Toward the end of Nick’s career we ran much better as a team. Nick had a much better understanding of where he needed to go next. Even if we didn’t ‘Q’ it felt good. I didn’t worry about faults. I ran to do my best and no more. When I relaxed and played with him on course we seemed to be dancing cheek-to-cheek and toe-to-toe. The run seemed to go in slow motion. In sports they call it being “in the zone”. After those good runs were over I would look back over the course and wonder if we had missed any obstacles. They always seemed to have gone too fast to not have missed something. It didn’t seem to matter if we qualified. It was fun. When I looked at him after those runs, Nick always knew immediately that I was pleased. Nick was right, I was pleased! Heaven, I'm in heaven |
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Previous Newletters:
1-17-05 |
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