Nothing like dancing with your dog where you don't even have to think. You both flow in movement together. This doesn't happen over night, it is part of building a relationship with your dog.
Divine was entered in two element specialty trials this weekend. My goal was to keep my stress level down and allow her to be happy and silly. Divine enjoys nose work and my goal was for her to have fun. She and I have only done one NW1 trial and three ORTs. We donj't have a lot of experience working together in a trial stress situation.
Divine did beautiful in containers. She had to check each box again in some of the searches, but I waited her out and she got it right. She titled in Containers.
For the interiors, we missed one out of four hides. She did get a leg and will need to trial at this level again before she can title and move on to level 2.
Divine found the hides in three rooms well. Thought I could tell my confidence wasn't as good as the containers. I did say I wanted her to win so she could have a title over Mickey. Mickey only got a leg in his Level 1 interiors (L1I). I'm finding for me, that thinking in that way takes my focus on task. It is what I learned is don't focus on outcome, focsu on task. When I focus on outcome, it messes me up.
The interior room we had trouble was a classroom. There were desks, and then various objects around the room. The desk could seat more than one student and putting four desk together makes a nice work area where 4 students on one side face 4 student on the opposite all facing each other. . There were two sets of 8 students work area.
Divine got fixated on one group of desks. She circled, and circled, tried to sort it out, and worked it. She went counter clock wise and clock wise. She would get stuck in this one area, circle the desks and come back to that same area. It didn't feel right and I didn't call it. A few times I shifted my body position to lightly pull her off and she went around the desks. I tried again to pull her off by calling her name and turning my body away. She did pull away about 4 feet but went right back to that one spot of the pooling odor. My nerves got the best of me, I called it and I got the No. The odor was about 6 feet behind her underneath the center of a two sided Easel.
When ever I miss a hide, instead of getting devastated, I start problem solving. It wasn't until 24 hours later it dawned on me I should have puter h back on leash to pull her away, and set her up in another area of the room. The other three rooms I did have heron leash. I haven't had a lot of experience with her off leash.
Divine and I haven't been practicing a lot, just 1-2 times a week, which really isn't enough to get in sync. I have felt that beautiful feeling of being in sync with Mickey where everything flows so nicely it all comes automatically. You don't have to think or if you do, it comes naturally. It took a lot of practice to get to that point. As of late, I haven't worked Mickey for about 4 months and I know we are out of sync, we will have to work and condition, to get that special balance and flow going again. I have never achieved that with Divine yet, in nose work. I need to really get serious with Divine to work on our dance, if I want to go further with her.
Divine could have found that odor, and helping her out while she was "stuck" is what would have helped her. My issue was what I call "trial brain." I freeze. I become a deer in headlights and my brain doesn't think. I have been in workshops and heard "put the dog back on leash" many times. Thek nowledge is way back in there in my brain. It just didn't think of it at that moment.
Although I can feel aggravated for not thinking to put her back on leash, everyone in a trial situation has done something where the brain didn't think of doing something they know how to do. Either way, the handler either over thinks or under thinks is what gets them in trouble. That takes away from getting in sync with their dog.But this expeirence keeps fine tuning my handling skills and working a different dog is just making me learn how to dance better.
But the biggest success I had for the day, NOT ONCE did I wish I had Mickey. That was a day for Divine and I. Now I can pat myself on the back and say JOB WELL DONE! You made a huge leap of improvement to not think of Mickey. You thought of DIVINE. I am on my way to getting in sync with Divine.
