Back to Basics We Go!
Back to Basics We Go
What would it feel like to walk into the ring and not worry about which skills are breaking down?
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“You’ve just won a Gold Medal at the Americas y el Caribbe Competition! What are you going to do next?” The answer might surprise you.
You see, I had a 10 hour flight home with a layover to think about all the lessons from this event; to evaluate my own performance and that of my dogs; to consider where we got faulted and what held us back. My girls put up some of the fastest times in each round. I never got blown out of the water on my own physical fitness, and I never felt completely overwhelmed with how to handle a specific course. So in between naps and switching terminals, I thought about where our results weren’t what I had hoped for, and what held us back.
The simple truth: the devil is in the details, and the details lie in the basics. It wasn’t the fancy skills or sexy course analysis that got us, it was our foundational skills. Things that I have allowed to erode and deteriorate over the last 6 months as we’ve campaigned at one big event after another. So that’s why I hopped off those planes with a plan to break everything down. To stop trying to band-aid skills and keep things patched up for the next event, and to get back to our roots of 95% success rates, and teasing apart challenges to find where the gaps truly lie.
What has this looked like so far? Practicing contacts on cato boards to really tighten up the end criteria; pre-placed rewards to boost confidence and muscle memory; limited challenges vying for my dogs focus.
Its only natural that we go through different seasons of life, with different focus areas. Maybe you’re still working on trying to learn Masters level handling, or maybe your learning to layer with your fast new dog. As you work through those challenges, don’t forget to come back to the basics. To keep your criteria sharp, remind your dog of the things they once knew like the back of their paw, and to boost their confidence and motivation as you challenge them in new and complex ways. It’s probably the biggest misconception in our sport, this idea that you can be “done with foundations”. That you’ll move through your 6 week class and never return to those concepts or principles, that you can simply check them off your list and toss them from your memory. These are the skills that form the bedrock of your performance, and a crack in your foundations will eventually lead to disaster.
So if you’re tired of fretting over those ever widening cracks, if you find yourself coming in to class needing to practice the one skill your dog failed last weekend before the trial this weekend, if you’re walking up to a course only to see a specific challenge and feel your heart sink, knowing that skill has eroded, consider this your sign to focus on your foundations. And if you need some direction on how to do that, check out my Power Pup program! It’s 20 weeks of comprehensive foundations including everything from focus forward, impulse control, to 2o2o contact criteria, and running contact mat work. The best part? You own it for life, so you can use it as a resource time and again to keep your foundations fresh or to start a new dog! What would it feel like to walk into the ring and not worry about which skill is breaking down? To just go out and run your dog, and trust that their skills are rock solid? Why not find out?