Approaching Change

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Progress is not a onetime thing. No quick fixes, it isn’t a short term commitment. It is a detailed process. It isn’t enough to wake up one morning and decide to be faster or be a better handler. True improvement is broken down and tackled one piece at a time. This process starts with an open mind, accepting that even what isn’t broken can be better. We don’t just decide to be something else; we dissect the old to recreate what can be.

It isn’t possible to go from one big picture to the next, you have to look at every pixel and understand its purpose. For example, there are wide turns and slow turns, but just training for tighter, faster turns is too vague. Break it down:

Is it a lack of information before the dog takes off?

Is your dog over collecting or under collecting?

Do they turn on takeoff or landing?

 Does the dog lack of body awareness?

Do you cue the turns late or too early?

 Do you babysit too long?

 What about conditioning and flexibility?

Now, how do you fix each of those things? This is the process of improvement, now you can finally begin to change, to grow. If you break down your goals correctly, you will soon find ten goals in one. Goals are meant to be specific, individual tasks to breakdown the very foundation of your handling, of your training to simply be rebuilt stronger and better.

This was the process Whimzy and I now train under, one detail at a time. Last year, after the 2014 AKC Nationals, I sat down and looked at Whimzy’s performance. Not to admire a job well done at our first national event together. I took this snapshot of our career, this single event, and decided what to fix, where we could improve. I learned here that things don't need to be broken in order to be fixed. It isn't always fun to break apart a nice, clean run to see what is wrong- however, if you can see this process as finding unused potential it becomes exciting to see how much time you have to make up every run. We once had a two and a half second teeter, a clean performance that also wasting time. We now have a 1 second flat teeter- consistently in practice and in show. This is just one aspect of our teeter performance I changed; we also improved this one obstacle three other ways, slowly building on to our toolbox of skills. This is one obstacle out of twenty on any given course…there are so many other places to perfect. We are still improving from that point 10 months ago. We still are nowhere close to fixing all the things that were not broken but could be improved. To be honest we will never reach a point of perfection, that isn't the goal. It isn't about being perfect, or being the best of the best. We aim simply to be the best we can be. We broke it down to begin building a better version of us- Whimzy and Kathleen 2.0

All we needed to start was an open mind and a goal. 

The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.