Clean Run - July 2013 - 16

F CUS
in the Ring Is Not Just for Dogs!
By Juliet Franzen, photos by Donna Hedrick
Focus is something we
expect from our dogs in
agility, but what about us?
Don’t we need focus in
the ring to be successful
in competition? What happens if we let our mind
wander for a split second?
Oops! Our dog doesn’t get
the cue he needed and
either barks, makes up his
own course or knocks a
bar. Is this the difference
between the consistent
qualifier and the talented
person who seems to always have one glitch in her
run? Can we improve our
focus and therefore increase our qualifying rate?
Or will we naturally improve
by training harder and
becoming better at doing
agility? Are “ring nerves”
one of the causes of lack of
focus in the ring?
As someone who has
trained for several years to
become proficient at agility,
I am amazed at how often
I don’t qualify because I let
my mind wander in competition. In discussing this
with others, I see this is a
problem shared by most
competitors to a greater
or lesser degree. We seek
16

excellent training to learn
how to direct our dogs and
then shoot ourselves in
the foot by zoning out for a
nanosecond in the middle
of a great run. This is not a
problem that is addressed
by most trainers, yet it is
an important component of
success in the ring.
After running Marcel for a
couple of years, a PBGV
that I could easily keep
up with, I started running
Kai, a very fast, motivated
Australian Shepherd. All
of a sudden I didn’t have
time to think or react. The
result was a frustrated Aussie that either jumped high
in the air barking at me or
jumped over every jump on
the course. My training for
agility had to reach a much
higher level. I needed to
become a much better
handler who could “think
on my feet.”
In fact, I found that “thinking” got in the way once I
was running the course.
The time for thinking
and planning was while
I walked the course and
once I released Kai for
the run, I needed to be on

automatic pilot. In a way it
was like learning to drive a
car; first you use your conscious mind then once you
become proficient, you stop
thinking about every move
of the steering wheel. I had
become proficient at agility
and yet still found myself
making mistakes or losing
focus in the ring. I became
one of the handlers who
always seemed to have
that one error resulting in
a low qualifying rate. Despite realizing I needed to
relax and focus on my run,
I found my nervousness or
ring nerves were causing
me to make mistakes in
competition.
Becoming proficient in agility was indeed important to
success, but I found that
no amount of training was
preparing me for what happened in competition. Kai
picked up on the excitement of the trial and also
on my nervousness and
ran faster than in practice.
He is a focused dog and if
I hesitated anywhere in the
ring, he would go over the
closest obstacle. I needed
to find ways to calm my ring
nerves and be able to “trust

my dog and myself” to do
the right thing in the ring.
Lanny Bassham, the gold
medalist riﬂe shooter who
wrote the
book With
Winning in
Mind and
founded
Mental
Management Systems, has
worked with many
athletes, including agility
handlers, to help them improve their performance. He
says that our self -image is
very important for success.
Do we see ourselves as
competent and successful?
When we enter the ring, do
we expect we will do well?
When we leave the ring,
do we focus on what we
did right and things we can
improve rather than focus
on what went wrong? How
many times do we leave the
ring and the first thing we
think or say is, “I messed up
that front cross” or whatever
we did wrong? According to
Lanny, what you say to yourself or others when you finish competition is the most
important part of improving
Clean Run | July 13
Clean Run - July 2013

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