Clean Run - April 2018 - 56

GOAL

STRATEGY

PROCESS

PRACTICE

Plan for Action
By Mia Grant
"The best laid plans of mice and men
often go awry" -Robert Burns
There are things we know to fear, like injuries and inevitable endings. Then there
are things so big they are too scary to even
think about, and we don't even think of
them as possible. I live in Santa Barbara,
and I grew up in Ventura which is about
30 miles south. My father still lives there
in the home I grew up in. I make most of
my living in Moorpark, which is another
30 minutes past Ventura. This matters because of the disasters that came to California in December and January.
On December 4, it was too windy to
teach in Moorpark, so I met up with a
friend and trained on the weave entry
exercises from last month's article. I was
happy with Rich's weaves, but I made
notes about pulls and my ideas to improve them. It was a good day. But that
night the Thomas Fire started in Santa
Paula (15 miles southeast of Ventura),
and by the next morning it had burned
through Ventura and all my childhood
haunts. It took two days to learn that the
fire had jumped the valley I grew up in, so
my family got lucky; but many were not
lucky. And the fire kept coming. I could
not teach in Santa Barbara for two weeks
because the air quality made it unsafe to
be outside; masks were the fashion statement and ash rained like snow. It ended
up being the largest fire in California history, making its last dramatic stand five
miles south from me in Montecito.
56

I was lucky to still be able to teach and
train at Moorpark. I did short simple
things with lots of rewards, such as rewarding both pieces of tunnel discriminations: "come to me, now go there." I
played around with "go where I'm looking." I make direct eye contact with Rich,
release him and look at an obstacle without saying anything. It's amazing how
our dogs can follow where we're looking;
it's a powerful tool and one that I had not
isolated in past training. We did more
running dogwalk work focusing on the
third plank and we worked on Linda
Mecklenburg's recall to heel over jumps.
Nothing that would push me out of my
comfort zone, since the fire had already
pushed me far enough.
Christmas came and went, but it didn't
feel like Christmas thanks to the weeks
of fire fatigue. My dogs spent the holidays enjoying the beach and some of the
most glorious sunrises I have ever seen.
Then we went north to train with Nancy
Gyes and do a USDAA Team event over
New Year's weekend. I am very lucky to
be able to train with Nancy, a wealth of
knowledge and a good friend. And we
have an idea for Rich's stickiness when I
need him to keep going when I no longer
can move. Inevitably, it's a moment when
I have pulled him and then need him to
continue forward. He wants to drift on
the pull and then stick at my side when
he finally comes in. Such a simple solution: I am making direct eye contact and

rewarding him with a cookie for coming
to me. Then without any change in my
position, I look to where I want him to
go next and say the obstacle name, then
reward that too. Sometimes I skip the
first reward, sometimes I move after the
redirect, but lots of food rewards and
Rich is happily showing great improvement. Hooray for training solutions!
After that show, I also added to my training list "become a great Snooker team
with Rich." We have some new pull games
to play in our pre-training warm-ups
thanks to Nancy, where I put him in a
stay and have him run to me past obstacles. He is lined up so there is a straight
line to me. Interesting, he is very good at
the game if I am running, but not so good
when I am standing still. Otherwise, I'm
going to wait until after AKC Nationals to
really start working on Snooker.
2018 arrived. I was motivated, finally
feeling recharged after the fire. Rich and
I did our "unstick Rich" homework. I set
up some drills to work on my timing and
courage to get places. And then the rain
came. After a fire, rain is always a worry,
but what came early Tuesday, January 9,
was not anything anyone could have predicted. I woke up sometime after 3 a.m.
trying to figure out what the sound was. I
got up, turned on the lights, and thought
my house was on fire and the sound was
fire hoses spraying it down. It was rain.
Rain that would dump half an inch in five
minutes and another couple inches that
Clean Run | April 18

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - April 2018