Where we need to be

In my last post, I said ” … I think Dylan could win out of Grade 5 this winter, but I think we would both be overfaced in Grade 6 at the moment, we aren’t ready to move up.”

Dylan will be 5 in April. I hope he gets to keep running agility for another 5 years after that. The last few competitions have been amazing for us, Dylan has let his love of the game overtake everything else that might be worrying him. I have always known he loved agility more than anything, but getting him to switch off his insecurities and just run – because it’s ok to do that – has been really hard. I don’t know if this will last; he might find a different venue needs more caution, or going outside requires a little more care. Which is what makes it all the more difficult to try and plan for the future, because who knows if we’ll be able to win out in 6 or 12 months? Maybe now is the only chance we have!

But our training isn’t that far along, we can’t handle the precision needed for the harder courses (yet!). In Grade 5, we’re still going to get some 3-5 classes, but if we get it right and get into Grade 6, we’re stuck. We need some more time to find our feet and then go for it. So I don’t want to win out just yet.

It’s quite hard for me to say that, so someone remind me I said all this, ok?! I’m more than happy to admit that I’m one of those very competitive people, and that means we (my dog and I) should both be putting 100% into our runs. That doesn’t mean I’m unhappy when we do a less than perfect run! Nothing makes me smile more than when Dylan puts in 100%, regardless of how we actually did – in fact, the more effort, the more chaos we usually cause! I know we have a chance at a perfect run perhaps once in a lifetime, but that doesn’t mean we have to settle for less.

I think that to get a shot at that perfect run, I have to try very hard to keep Dylan in Grade 5 for another 6 months at least.

This is a rather presumptive post, of course, that assumes that we will be fast enough to win out anyway. I still don’t know if we are, but then again, I won’t know if we are until we have done. I’d rather leave the testing of that until later!