Saturday, February 18, 2012

Joy In The Journey

I mostly post about agility because that is what we train for.  When I first started to train for agility my goal was to teach Max (at that time) everything he'd need to know (and learn myself).  The training itself wasn't a lot of fun - the fun would come once we learned enough.  I used positive methods and reward based training but I do think that sometimes Max must have felt like I was poking him in the eye with needles.  "I" needed a lot of practice so we drilled a lot (disclaimer - my instructor did warn me not to drill but she has border collies who would do something 15 million times without getting bored so I don't really think I took the advice onboard).

Somewhere along the way I discovered how to be more fun and how to make the training fun for me and the dogs.  We love to train (Rylie will yell at me if I'm on the computer too long in the mornings - a whole different issue I need to train through lol).

I have great instructors and mentors who have helped me see that it's the journey that's important - not the destination.  Also they've helped me to stop taking myself so seriously and allow myself to be silly - I can't lie though Rylie helped a lot with that too.  It's hard to be serious with Rylie around.

2 comments:

Beyond the Dog Dish said...

I think I know all about that "Rylie" personality as I have a little b/t character just like him. This session the group classes were cancelled so I opted to do 3 private sessions. I am loving it and have learned far more this way. As well it was so much less stress and I now look forward to training in bits and pieces a few times a day. Your an inspiration to me to train!

Riley and Stella said...

Sorry, I'm a bit late to your wonderful post. I'm so happy that we get to share our lives with these great characters who make us appreciate having fun. It also made me smile because I just did a post on the "journey" as well.