Clean Run - February 2018 - 37

GOAL

STRATEGY

PROCESS

PRACTICE

Plan for Action
By Mia Grant, photos by author
As I write this, it is the end of October.
Rich has just finished four weeks oﬀ from
agility. We have been enjoying five weekends in a row without any responsibilities
and are in the middle of two months oﬀ
from competition. For me, the 2017 agility season is over.
I have three dogs. Starlet is a remarkably
active, very deaf, 15-year-old senior, retired longer than she ever did agility. The
USDAA Western Regionals was Vic's last
real competition, my agility soul mate
soon turning 11. Vic getting older is bittersweet, we will still step to the ring in
Veterans to show oﬀ his mad Gamblers
skills, but I already miss him as a teammate. My goals for the seniors are all
about doing as many happy hikes, romps
at the beach, and swims at our swimming
holes as possible. Rich is now my only
competition dog. He'll be turning 5 at the
end of the year, so brilliant, so keen and
in his prime.
In coming months I will talk more about
what I have been training, the setups I used,
and how it went, but this past month our
training has focused on working on jumping over waves and building swimming
speed/endurance. This does not mean I
haven't been working toward next year. I
have been making plans for our training
and plans for our competition schedule.
2017 was a year of no national events, but
2018 will be diﬀerent. Rich and I are done
qualifying for our first AKC Nationals
and for World Team Tryouts (we did go to
February 18 | Clean Run

tryouts a couple of years ago as the "white
team," a noncompeting dog and handler
that run first to show how a course is run).
We are mostly qualified for Cynosports as
well, so a busy competition year coming
up for my brilliant boy and me. Obviously
I want to do well at these events. I want
to do well at local and regional trials as
well, but my main focus this coming year
will be on those three big events and what
I need to do throughout the year to be
best prepared for them. Planning for that
started with this break. I normally take
a break in December, but with AKC Nationals in March, it made sense to move
our recharge time. And we are recharged.
Rich has been itching to do more than run
some dogwalks, dashing out with a toy
"do you need me to demo?!" during my
classes, and I am excited to get back to actual training and out of the planning stage.
One thing I have been doing more than
planning for is my own fitness. I have long
joked that while Vic makes me feel taller,
smarter, prettier, and thinner, Rich tells
me when I don't look good in my jeans. To
run Rich the way I want to, I had to get in
better shape. I have been on the improved
fitness kick with the guidance of my fellow agility competitor Kim Lohman for a
few years now. In our workouts, it seems
like the emphasis has moved to my balance and core strength. Either that or Kim
likes watching me look angry on the horrible balance board, clenching weights in
my hands while she tells me to relax my
hands and feet. I'm also upping my cardio.

I do not want to catch myself doing math
at Tryouts, "Dogwalk is 36 feet, 20 more
to the jump, then have to run back across
the ring... damn it I'm doing math! Focus!"
Yes that thought happened in round 5, the
white dog year at Tryouts, from the backside of a jump down the dogwalk. I felt my
oxygen tank hitting empty, then remembered what hitting the wall felt like when
I ran track, and then started doing math.
So, in addition to training Rich's backside
sends more and looking for opportunities
to test the skills at local trials, there will
be more stairs and wind sprints for me.
Like most of us, I look to those I admire
for inspiration. The FCI Agility World
Championships is a great source of inspiration for me and I wrote down my list of
"things to improve" while I watched the
2017 event:
*	 Running dogwalk: Rich has a run for
dogwalk straight exits and push exits, and a stop and release for when a
pull is needed after the dogwalk. Recently I have not been as happy with
his run performance, so it is back on
the list of things to do focused work
on. It's too easy for me to get lazy and
just send him oﬀ to a jump and stand
around while he runs. So no more
than two dogwalks in a row with the
exit obstacle in the same place and no
more sending him to the first obstacle.
I need to be involved from the beginning and I need to run!

37
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - February 2018
