Have you ever had one of those moments, when you're working/training/trialing/playing with your dog, when all of a sudden it hits you how blessed you are to have the relationship you have with your dog?
I had one of those moments tonight. We were working on running contacts for the first time since the fall, and we were doing them full speed. For those of you who don't do running contacts, one of the key factors is that the dog has to curve it's body on the angle between the flat midsection and the downslope so it stays close to the obstacle. It's easy if a dog is trotting/loping, but if the dog is running full out, it's very difficult and requires significant physical effort on the part of the dog. A good way to understand it: imagine you rode a bike full speed along the dog walk. If you kept on going straight without adjusting your weight as you transitioned to the downslope, you would fly into the air. In order to stay flat on the dog walk you would have to put all of your weight forward on the bike. It's the same with the dogs - but much harder.
At any rate, we had a reasonably successful training session (hitting about 70 - 80% of the time - which I was happy with after no training for two months), and then all of a sudden he started hitting them dead on every time. I watched him to figure out what had changed, and saw him making a huge effort to curve his body right over that edge. It seems like such a small thing, but it's not something that can be taught - dogs need to figure it out on their own, which means they have to care enough to figure it out. And I honestly felt like crying - how amazing that this funny little dog of mine puts so much effort into understanding and fulfilling what I want...not because he cares about Qs or titles, but because he is my partner, and he loves me, and he wants to make me happy. It was just a moment that took my breath away, when I thought how lucky I am to have this dog, this relationship, this sport...when training dogs it really is the journey that counts, not the destination.
I had one of those moments tonight. We were working on running contacts for the first time since the fall, and we were doing them full speed. For those of you who don't do running contacts, one of the key factors is that the dog has to curve it's body on the angle between the flat midsection and the downslope so it stays close to the obstacle. It's easy if a dog is trotting/loping, but if the dog is running full out, it's very difficult and requires significant physical effort on the part of the dog. A good way to understand it: imagine you rode a bike full speed along the dog walk. If you kept on going straight without adjusting your weight as you transitioned to the downslope, you would fly into the air. In order to stay flat on the dog walk you would have to put all of your weight forward on the bike. It's the same with the dogs - but much harder.
At any rate, we had a reasonably successful training session (hitting about 70 - 80% of the time - which I was happy with after no training for two months), and then all of a sudden he started hitting them dead on every time. I watched him to figure out what had changed, and saw him making a huge effort to curve his body right over that edge. It seems like such a small thing, but it's not something that can be taught - dogs need to figure it out on their own, which means they have to care enough to figure it out. And I honestly felt like crying - how amazing that this funny little dog of mine puts so much effort into understanding and fulfilling what I want...not because he cares about Qs or titles, but because he is my partner, and he loves me, and he wants to make me happy. It was just a moment that took my breath away, when I thought how lucky I am to have this dog, this relationship, this sport...when training dogs it really is the journey that counts, not the destination.
