Sunday, December 13, 2015

Disappointment or Learning Experience?

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.  

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