#let me tell you- Jay is risking it ALL for donuts now. I was dead to him

[winedogs]

hello I am back with more Thoughts from this weekend that are mostly for me to read later because I am my own biggest fan and I run this blog exclusively for future katie

this trial was a HUGE exercise in trusting my dog and my training!!!!!!!! every time I opened a course map, I thought to myself “oh well we don’t have the skills for this, I don’t really have to try to Q on it.” multiple times, I told my friends that we could MAYBE make it happen on our absolute best day.

and then we ran the courses.

were we missing pieces? absolutely! especially distance sends, which I really have no cause or opportunity to train- that's to be expected. but there were also many, MANY pieces that I assumed to be lost causes that Jay nailed without a second thought!

case in point, our LAST EVER excellent standard run included a send to the table. looking at the map, I envisioned myself stuck behind the dogwalk, sending my dog out on a blind hope, and calling it a "well at least we had fun" run. walking it, getting to the table felt more doable but I was sure that a bar would be our downfall somewhere- out of the tunnel, turning on the pinwheel, and ending on a spread have all tripped us up before. I saw the run go wrong thirty times before I got Jay out of his crate.

but we ran it. and we ran it clean. and we held our own all weekend against teams from across the country, teams who train like it’s their job because it is.

we have the skills. we have put in the hours and the effort. it’s time to run it like I mean it!!!