or THE TRUE MEANING OF A VERY TALENTED ANIMAL
There is a German saying ” when you work with a lot of limited or poorly trained horses you eventually want recognize exceptional talent nor know how to work that ” For that i personally always assume that any animal comes with a great amount of natural talent and want miss one when i see it. All can be brought to their best potential and will shine one way or the other. In reality all animals are plenty equipped to perform at most or almost any level of human desire – they just have to run into the right person, somebody that understands the game from scratch or one that is willing to learn.
Almost on the day one year ago a than 11 months old puppy started at his first dock diving event ever with his very green handler who did not know anything about the sport engaging in. There were funny throws, fumbles, stumbles, the puppy got loose, there was no plan or concept and plenty nerves – on the human side. The puppy however showed something that is embedded in the expert commentary on this video – He showed NATURAL TALENT – and NO NERVES jumping 8 feet 9 inches. In reality it is almost always the case that our horse or dog is way ahead of us in training because nature had given them all the ability to do so. Showing and/or training are nothing but a replication of natural given talent, the demonstration or execution of that is based on trainable pattern recognition.The trick should be an easy flow on a small command.
We, the humans just ever so often fail to keep up with the very simple complexity of nature by not having our priorities in order and by giving into our emotions and social pressured way of thinking way to easy forgetting about the ultimate important part – to observe, feel and interact with the animal.
So next time things don’t go so well just be aware – you might be behind for whatever reason unrelated to your partner. And when things go extremely well you have to think about how to preserve and protect the talent and to keep the correct time frames of training as your priority.After all i have seen and learned in only one year competing on the national dog dock diving circuit i must say a huge big thank you to dockdogs organizer and host Thomas Platts who was a very genuine, patient, never tired to help and explain teacher for a back than absolute beginner like me. A part of Bernhardt’s great success with invites to all national finals. He saw him first and i was lucky.Thank you for making us better !