Well, we went and realized that the learning in regards to showing, training, preparation and actual performance just never ends.
One has to not lose track of the impacts that are highly influential – the emotional stress factors and distracting environmental displays towards the animal as well as the handler. For us it was a huge deal being the first full season on the dock diving circuit to just get there. Sure there where reasonable expectations – on the human side – to end up in the top ten percent of the field of roughly 180 dogs . In the end we finished on 63 which is still a placement in the top 30 percent of all finalists and that was pretty good to begin with. Some dogs did not jump at all, the majority under performed by 2 feet or more, you get only two jumps period so eventually the luck factor plays in as well.
The things that truly mattered where of a different sort – we could handle the dense traffic and exposure to hundreds of other dogs nicely, Bernhardt jumped without any hesitation, my friend Pamela Doolittle escaped any critic for may be having held the dog slightly wrong (really) and the main competitor left the premises physically unharmed.
Remember that even just the Olympic thought is only a human one – it does not exist for the animal. So next time you go out to show take it easy and just try to set everything up in the best interest for your partner and your reward will be great regardless the placing.
Eventually your teammate will blossom to the best of his or her potential and than YOUR TIME HAS COME !!
