Attitude: We're a Team
It’s an Dog Agility Blog Action Day for Attitude. I wasn’t going to write anything for this because I was stumped on the topic, but after our weekend at Wigton I had the glimmer of an idea.
I am competitive, stubborn, and determined. Those are sometimes good personality traits, and sometimes very bad traits, but with every year I get better at recognising when those traits are in conflict with my dogs. I do believe it’s important to have a good mental game when it comes to agility, but first and foremost comes my partnership with my dogs. I can talk about my attitude to competition all I want, but if I’m only thinking of myself, I’ve got the wrong attitude for this sport.
I’ve spoken before about my feelings on Qualifiers and Finals with Dylan. The competitive part of me desperately wants to compete at Olympia, at Crufts, even just at the International Festival. I love the nerves and the excitement and the crazyness that comes with that, it’s amazing! But I know and love my dog, and it’s not fair for me to put him in a situation where there are large crowds, confined spaces, extreme noise and pressure.
I can change Dylan’s attitude to a lot of things, through positive associations and training. I know I can, and I have. He’s enthusiastic and happy now about a lot of things he wasn’t before, like dogwalks and seesaws, queuing, tugging. But I can’t change his personality, and his personality isn’t competitive, isn’t stubborn, and isn’t determined. There are some things I can’t change; he’s never going to like running on the same flyball team as a Beardie, for example. We are still a pretty good team, I think.
On a closing kind of note, at the show this weekend there was one guy whose attitude was seriously at odds with his dog. He told the dog to wait, and the dog broke. He took the dog back, and within seconds the dog was rolling on his back, squirming, and generally doing all he could to avoid his handler in as polite a way as possible. The poor dog wouldn’t hold his wait, of course, so he got scruffed and manhandled, and the whole queue winced and waited for the judge to kick him out of the ring. She didn’t, by the way, but that’s for another day’s rant.
It’s not that little dog’s wait training that needs work, it’s the handlers attitude.