Misunderstanding Mistakes

“You learn from mistakes, make as many as possible.”

Feeling overwhelmed by this weekend, and the next, and the next, and the next. I don’t feel like I've been doing everything I can possibly do to prepare properly, which is unfortunate on many levels. Time to step up my game I suppose, granted I don’t even know how many dogs I will be running tomorrow (either 3-5).

So looking at a full schedule isn't helping my anxiety of shows at all. I remember when shows were all about messing around for me. With just a silly little uncooperative lhasa it was hard to take dog shows seriously. Now I have dogs that need a serious competitor and handler willing to put as much effort into every run as possible, not to mention I spend most of my day talking to endless students about handling choices and going over their runs. It’s not all bad, or rather not bad at all. I love it. I love the responsibility, the challenge, and the dynamics of running multiple dogs on multiple handling systems with a wide variety of goals. I wouldn't change a thing. 

I don’t know perhaps I’m overreacting to the pressure. I always feel like I've let the dog down if something goes wrong, obviously they don’t care. But still, mistakes seem almost dreadful at times. Then I remember that, mistakes are the exact opposite. They are the most wonderful things, especially in agility. They tell you what went wrong, why, where, and then give you something to improve. Without them we’d all be stuck in the stone ages of agility jumping our dogs 30” without even knowing what “front crosses” were, let alone having a wide arrange of handling moves and training styles. The mistakes clear a path for innovation and the evolution of our sport. So by all means, make mistakes, as many as possible. We can only learn from them.