Play the Cards You’re Dealt
Play the Cards You’re Dealt
Make peace with the uncontrollable and train for it.
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I used to be really picky about trials and training. I used to curate a list of “good judges”, rank my favorite footings from “good enough” to “won’t run there at all”. I used to know what equipment was at every venue, and kept a huge list of “I would never’s” that encompassed everything from what I thought were safe or fair challenges to training ideas to practice equipment. And you know, as a result, my world got really really small. My dogs were only ever exposed to certain types of courses, they only knew how to handle themselves on specific footing, and they were wildly unprepared to see different styles of equipment.
You see, there’s a lot in our sport that we can’t control. One school of thought tells us then we should control what we can. You get to control where you enter, who the judge is, and who you give your money to. That’s true, and if your goals are to pursue this sport as a social hobby with friends, that absolutely might work for you. But if you are pursuing this as a competitive endeavor, you’ve got to make peace with the uncontrollable. For me, I used to say “well international courses aren’t like that”, and then there was the year that a wildly unpopular judge judged EO and all the competitors complained about their course design. You know the one I mean, it was 2022 or 2025, oh wait, that’s every year. Every year there’s going to be a judge who has a style I don’t like. Every year the footing will be too soft, too loose, too hard, too wet. The weather will be too hot, or too cold, and 10,000 other things beyond my control will pop up.
Showing up at the highest levels of this sport doesn’t mean avoiding all the scenarios that make us uncomfortable. It means specifically training for them. Finding opportunities in your every day training to get out of your comfort zone, control a few of the variables for safety, and then build confidence so that if those things show up in competition, you can step to the line knowing 1000% your dogs have got this!
Let me tell you a story. A few years ago, the US Open was still run outside on grass. We happened to be having a hurricane. Well you can imagine the conversations around the crating areas about how unsafe it was to run on the grass in the rain, how dogs were going to get hurt. When my rotation was up, I walked over to the warm up jump, and you could see this little snail trail where everyone had moved the jump from one fresh patch of grass to the next, trying to keep it on the nice grass. I picked that jump up and plunked it down right in the middle of a soupy mess. Gasp?! The horror! My dog doesn’t have pristine footing! You’re darn right they don’t! What do you think they’re going to encounter during the run? Do you think the judge has been walking around moving jumps 5’ every rotation, or do you think those collection turns will be soupy messes? At the warm up jump I can control the variables. I can set my dog up nice and close. I can use food and toy rewards to take the speed out. I can lower the bar height and let them adjust to the footing. On the course I can’t do any of those things. And of course, if my dog wasn’t being safe at the warm up jump we’d scratch our run on course, because if they can’t be safe in that controlled situation then they for sure can’t be safe when we run for real. We went out and absolutely crushed the run, earning us a new motto “We will run in the rain!” (yelled in a 300 Spartan voice).
The same thing is true of course designs. I used to only train on courses I liked, and you know, that left me really really lacking. Recently I’ve realized that there’s a correlation between courses I like, and courses that I’m naturally good at. So I’ve been chasing down the courses that make me uncomfortable. Those ones where you look at the map and go “no that can’t be right”, the courses where I’m tempted to tweak and tweak and tweak until it “flows easier”. And you know the crazy thing? I’ve gotten better at my weak areas. The things that used to make me uncomfortable, or that I had no answer to, I can solve the puzzle. The stacked challenges that used to push my mental game to the limit feel like just another day at the office, hard, but doable. There’s a lot to be said for asking the question “can I succeed inspite of this course type?” and I think that’s where true excellence comes from.
The top people in the world aren’t competing under their most perfect conditions every day. They’re showing up and throwing down even when everything goes wrong. When they woke up late and missed their walk through, when their body felt sore and they just weren’t sure they could do it, when they don’t know if they had the skills to handle one section of the course. They still went out there and gave it their all, and maybe today the course ate them. But they’ll do it again and again, and one day they’ll eat the course instead.
Now when I walk into a trial and think “oh I don’t like that line” or “gee this footing feels slick” I stop those thoughts in their tracks. Instead I think, “This is the hand you were dealt today, what are you going to make of it? What can you accomplish despite these cards?”.