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.

It’s funny how a thought can generate an emotion. What if instead of reacting to our thoughts, we re-engineered the picture? What if we decided how we want to feel, then figured out the thoughts that would create that feeling?

how can we ensure that we achieve a 95% successful rate? How do we keep our training sessions short and efficient, and keep our dogs happy and engaged? We need a model to help break our exercises down into their component pieces, which leads me to the complexity triad.