Today was a day of disappointment and
while you can sit there and think to yourself about everything that
went wrong, I'm going to think about all the good.
In under a year I
had a dog that shut down to trailing, completely forgotten how to
trail to a dog that trails fantastically and loves it. This year we
started off by having troubles with locating where our subjects left
(starts) to today where her starts are rock solid no question about it at all. Did our person
turn? 5 months ago she would be a hit or miss. Today she nailes her
turns even with a bobbling idiot of a handler holding the lead. 8
months ago, I know Peanut felt that Trailing was “meh” today she
was having such a blast she refused to stop even though she was tired
and hot. 2 months ago Peanut decided that she wasn't going to just
pick the right person, every person was her person and she was going
to make sure they all give her treats. Today she ignored people to
only find the one person she was looking for. She even ignored a
bicyclist passing by!
Today we may have not found the person
she was looking for, but the information she gave me was enough for
me to put other teams in the area and we would have brought them
home. THAT right there is what I want in my dog. I don't expect her
to be perfect, it's impossible. I want my partner to give me
information where I can make decisions that I can relay back to my
team that can allow us to make better decisions.
We failed today but I'm SO proud of my
partner's work and with everything that happened, we won. Failing
isn't always a bad thing, it opens your eyes and allows you to see
things you may have not saw before. We are lucky to have such a
passionate team that really cares about each others success.