The past few weeks have been a bit of a rollercoaster of retrieves, rain and realisations. Here’s what Hail and I learnt at our Easter and ANZAC trails.
The school holidays are always a glorious time for me. Not only do I get a break from repeating myself ad nauseum, but I also get to spend time with my dogs when I’m not completely fried! These holidays were particularly packed with dog-related fun as our club hosted the CKA Easter Champs over four days and then the following weekend, Tasman hosted their Champs over ANZAC weekend.
Both trials offered our regular retriever field trials and walk-up retriever trials. I will go into more detail about the differences between these in a future post.
The Easter Trial
The weather for the Easter Champs was, to put it lightly, revolting! It rained every day… we even had a heavy rain watch in place for the Sunday night, which caused swollen rivers the following day. Thankfully we had finished all the water events the day before. In my true hopeless fashion, I did not have suitable wet-weather gear… as it turns out modern but aged rain jackets lose their watertightness after years of abuse, who knew! Fortunately, I did have my mothers old Barbour jacket squirrelled away in the car. This coat is older than I am, but it was an absolute godsend when the downpours hit.
Anyway, back to the dog trialing! I had entered Hail in the Novice Walk-Up and the Retriever Novice. We had the Walk-Up on Friday, and it’d be fair to say, it’s not our strong suit. As it requires a high level of steadiness, which we just haven’t mastered yet, I chose to keep Hail on lead and use the event as an opportunity to reinforce some other key skills. As my mentor says, you have to spend points to save points, meaning that being on lead takes us out of the competition but allows us to work on those valuable skills in the environment in which they are needed.
Well, it’s a good job I wasn’t hoping for a win as Hails first bird was her only bird… sigh. It was thrown up the side of a hill. She marked it well but, reaching the bottom of the hill, decided it looked too tough a climb and instead helped herself to an unlaunched bird. Needless to say, we were eliminated from the competition in the first round.
Our Novice Water wasn’t much better. We had two single marked birds on the water. She mismarked the first due to the distraction caused by some floating sticks, and ran out of time to the pick up, meaning we got a COT (call off time). She worked hard, didn’t panic and did stick to the finding area, but that was about the extent of the good work in that one. Lastly, we had our Novice Land which was three single marks. She marked each of them beautifully, took some excellent lines out and back and pushed through some difficult cover but, unfortunately, a repeated sit command on the first bird put too much pressure on her and she munched the first bird meaning we were disqualified!
A weekend like that is tough as a newbie handler. I couldn’t be cross with Hail. She was trying her little heart out, and you can never fault a dog for that. It was just disappointing because I know that the bird munching is the result of me having put pressure on her that I still don’t fully understand, so I don’t have any tools to prevent it at this stage. I also know she can do it, I just haven’t managed to figure out how to get her to be more consistent yet.
The ANZAC Trial
I was apprehensive about the Tasman trial, because of how the weekend before had turned out. It was a similar set up in that we had the Novice Walk-Up on the first day and then Retriever Novice (water and land) on the following days. Surprisingly, our Walk-Up was much better this time. While still on lead to reinforce steadiness, her field work was pretty spot on. She marked well, and took nice lines there and back. Once again, it was our deliveries that let us down again with her dropping birds and a bit too much mouth.
The Novice Water was also ok in terms of her field work. She did a nice job of marking the single bird, had a great line there and back but munched the bird and dropped it on delivery. We still got a score but we lost a lot of points in the last 3 meters. On the Novice Land she broke on the throw of both birds and, as a result of not waiting to see the landing area, she then mismarked both. While it took her a while to find them, I did get both birds back to hand and we did get a completion (also known as an aggregate score) which was a great result given that only five of the twelve dogs competing managed to complete both sections.
Reflections…
As I drove the five hours home on Sunday, I had a lot of time to think about the events of the previous two weekends. At times, I had felt pleased with the small wins, but in other moments I couldn’t help but feel deflated, like I was trying to push shit uphill. It’s hard to describe that feeling of total frustration. It wasn’t at the dog, but at myself for having not trained harder, having not made more time to get out into the field to expose her to different situations, having not worked out how to teach her a skill that I thought she should know by now.
Trialing is a funny old thing. It should just be about the dog-work, and by that, I mean the work you do with your own dog on the day, but so often we get caught up in our own heads about other things that don’t (or shouldn’t) really matter. I don’t know who originally said that “comparison is the thief of joy” but man, they were on to something! In a world dominated by Labradors, I find it almost impossible not to, on some level, compare Hail and my performance to that of other dog/handler teams that started on their journey at the same time as us. They’re fishing in an entirely different genetic pool – so why would I expect my HPR to retrieve like a Lab?
Thankfully, I am surrounded by wonderful people who know the exact moment that I need grounding, and they always turn up with the best advice. While walking through the trial with what must have been a heavy expression on my face, one of my biggest guiding voices in this sport pulled me aside for one of his chats. I cherish these moments because he always finds a way to keep me in the game, even when I think I’m out for the count. We spoke about all the things I’d been feeling with regards to Hail and he gently explained that it’s the tough dogs that teach us how to be better trainers. He calmly pointed out that I just need to make sure that everything I teach, I teach thoroughly, as Hail doesn’t have the genetic ability to fill in any gaps I might accidentally leave. We talked about what’s next for us, how I might need to go back and reteach some of the basics to patch over holes in our process, to help Hail understand what is expected and make it more rewarding for her.
Weirdly, as though they had perhaps had a discussion about it, another friend also pulled me aside that day and commented on how stoked she was that, despite my frustrations, I still keep turning up, making a go of it, and that she had seen some real improvement in our fieldwork because of our perseverance.
When things are tough, it can be easy to focus on all the things that aren’t going well. But, as we all know, you don’t have to be a professional to enjoy something or for it to be worthwhile. And while it hasn’t been the most enjoyable journey of late, I’m nowhere near at the point of throwing in the towel. When you start new things, they’re ugly, a bit like the first pancake… unfortunately, Hail might be my first pancake, but I’m going to do my best to salvage what I can and see where that takes us.
So, we’re dusting ourselves off and making some adjustments to help get us back on track. We’ll keep you posted on the new plan soon!
Field Notes & Follies 
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