Clean Run - January 2018 - 38

Throughout my time in the sport of dog agility, I have taken a passionate and competitive approach
to training and competing with my dogs. Lessons in mental attitude and mental game have since
followed, and continue to greet me at both expected and unexpected moments. Often these are lessons in failure,
frustration, success, mental toughness, and mental vulnerability.

Sense of Self

Living Like a (Performance) Dog
By Tori Self

As I have mentioned in earlier articles,
in 2016 I joined a rowing club. I'm not
a great rower, still very much a novice.
I enjoy training and learning new skills,
and I train seven to ten times per week,
whether in the gym or on the water.
When it comes to racing my focus is still
on the lower divisions as I learn more
about how to move my body with a boat.

old. I played volleyball very briefly. I
rode horses briefly. Otherwise I never
really trained my own body, so looking
at my dogs I never actually knew what
they were going through before/during/
after training and competing. My year
in rowing has taught me more about my
dog as an athlete than thirteen years in
the sport of dog agility ever did.

It's an agility story just in a different
context: I'm the athlete now.

Conditioning (Strength)

I thought I was the athlete before, too.
After all, handling dogs over, in, and
around obstacles takes some fitness, or at
the very least fitness can help. For thirty
to forty seconds you have to pivot, sprint,
anticipate, and time in order to navigate
your dog in very specific ways. But during
my prime years in the sport, not once
would you find me in the gym lifting
weights; I occasionally meandered outside
for a meager one-mile jog; one time I took
a circuits class... and left halfway through
with some pathetic excuse.
No, I got the job done on course but I
was not an athlete. I didn't have to be,
so I wasn't (arguably it would have been
beneficial; if you're training yourself
every week and not just your dog: yes,
keep going you amazing, dedicated
person). As a result I didn't really know
how it felt to be an athlete. I swam for
about a year when I was around 12 years
38

My dogs have always been conditioned
by accident. I love water-swimming
in it, paddling on it, kayaking on it,
whatever-so early on in my agility
career it was me and the dogs in or on
the water all the time. A few years down
the line I started to travel more and
was introduced to hiking; I fell in love.
Florida never had the hills, much less
the mountains, for hiking but over the
last five years every chance I got I was on
a trail with a dog climbing to the top of
something.
So my dogs got pretty strong and stayed
pretty strong, and for a long time it never
occurred to me that if our "conditioning
program" were to wane, they'd lose
that strength. Years into the sport I
began to work more with a couple of
canine performance experts, including
specialized veterinarians and physical
therapists. They pointed to our strength
and power training, told me we were

doing the right things and gave me
advice on how to balance out weaker
areas. Still, all of this was just information
programmed into my mind; it made
logical sense but I could not feel the
necessity.
In rowing I started my training on a
rowing machine (a.k.a. ergometer or erg)
not on the water. My coach knew my
history with sport (or lack thereof) and
helped me to build into harder workouts
gradually. Yet the first six months or so
were merely getting my body used to
regular exercise of varying intensities. I
didn't begin proper training until close
to ten months into rowing; it was then
that the reality of my dogs' agility careers
hit my like a ton of bricks (or more aptly:
DOMS, a.k.a. delayed onset muscle
soreness). Not only did my conditioning
for rowing become a constant in my
life, it was also outlined by my coach
in very specific patterns that I began to
better understand as the season went
on. I learned quickly that training wasn't
arbitrary; hitting the weights hard for
no reason wasn't smart, nor was it smart
to do the same intensity on the rowing
machine every session. There was
reasoning behind each workout and its
place in the week and/or month.
My dogs missed out on this type of
program, this type of training.
Clean Run | January 18

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