Journals

Are you still keeping a training journal? One of the reasons why I love my training journal is the ability to go back and see what my goals were and where we were at the start of the year. If I think using my normal memory and brain, it feels like I haven’t met my goals. Because it is easy to be focused on what we have not yet done. But in looking at all those boxes I put in of small goals, I have been able to check so many of them off the list! Like, I have not yet gotten any Agility, obedience, scent work or Rally obedience titles so that whole page is empty an untouched like it was at the start of the year. However, every skill in the subcategories under Rally, Obedience and Novice agility is checked off. Most of the ones under scent work and agility are too. So we are so close, even though that opening page makes it look like we haven’t gotten anywhere.

Another example of that for others might be: say reactivity is your focus, maybe that reactivity box is still left unchecked, but how many other little boxes of previous impossible triggers have you been able to check off? We tend to focus on the negative, on what we still struggle with, and that makes sense because struggle is no fun. But sometimes we need to step back and look at how far we have come. And your own words in a journal is often far more helpful than trusting the memories in your head that are influenced by the negative feelings from your last bad experience.

As I look at my list I see a whole area that is untouched, working on his next trick title. Like I have not made a single step forward in it. And I could beat myself up over that. But as I assess it with total honesty I see the reason is because ultimately it just isn’t an important thing to focus on. I don’t actually care about doing that currently and I’ve enjoyed other things I did not expect enjoying (like Fastcat). I’m sure at some point I might want to get back to that as the other training settles out.

Often progress is looking at what you thought you wanted and realizing you actually didn't need that, letting go of that struggle and just enjoying your time with your dog for exactly who they are in this moment. So many times when I find myself in a struggle, I step away and give it a break, then when I come back at it with fresh eyes if I decide I actually still do want to work on that, I am able to make better progress after we both enjoyed the break of not being so stuck in the struggle.

And sometimes I look at things on that list and I have not made the progress I wanted to, so I evaluate if I can kick myself into gear about it. That happened with my weave pole training. I just decided I needed to dig in and get it done, so I started working on it every single day, and wouldn’t you know it, two weeks later we were there. Many things on my list I realized I was just forgetting to work on, So I made a training calendar like you see me posting for you guys, and then I put it in my google calendar with a reminder to do it. So each morning or evening I get a little prompt: scent work? Rally? Weaves? Many days that is the only thing that reminds me and I pop out real quick and spend 5-10 minutes on that thing that I would have otherwise just not done.

These are all specific things since I am working towards specific competition goals, but you can easily swap out weave poles for recall practice, scent work for loose leash walking, etc. More than half the battle is remembering to make the time to do something. Committing is the other half. So evaluate those things on your list, do they still really matter to you? If so, how can you motivate yourself to work on them? If they are not, let them go and free that mental space up for other things. You don’t have to tackle everything on that list, you will be surprised how just digging in on one goal helps the others! By putting that daily practice on the weaves in play that got me working every day, now that he has those weave poles, I now use that same time to work on other skills. It reminded me how we BOTH love that time of day.

Live Zoom Rally Class tomorrow

For Rally you don’t have to any specific training competition goals. Rally obedience is basically a sport of foundation training behaviors practiced in a pattern that changes each competition. So it is a great way to work on foundation skills like: heeling, stays, sits, downs, come, and so on. See the events calendar for the zoom link!