Complacency vs Consistency

Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. - Andy Grove

 

During once progress, one can easily become blind of the smaller things when you're training. Because of this, I've found out that it can be good to run fun, straight forward courses to focus on the "easier" things that I need to work on. I like this alot better than to suddenly come in to a situation during competition where I encounter things I've never seen as a problem before, basically to prevent complacency.

I believe complacency is one very dangerous aspect of all sorts of training. You put in alot of work teaching your dog the basics in the beginning of your "team-career", but after a while you think that it is something that is "natural" for the dog. I would say that you are 100% wrong in this way of thinking.

One example that I can give you, which I got from someone I think myself close with during my time in the military, is around this aspect. Imagine your entire dog training base as sand castle. You spend alot of time making the castle strong and dependant, and it looks that way after a while. But as time passes by, weather and the elements starts to deteriorate nad the castle crumbles bit-by-bit. Picture yourself putting down all the work to start your career, making the basics feel like this:

And then you train more and more on the technical stuff, but also becoming more frustrated every training because the dog "cheats" on the basics, like the "stay-command" or the contacts. Maybe the dog cheats in the weaves where you know deep down that you have perfected in the beginning. However, if you keep ignoring these issues and brushing them away as a "bad training session", then things will only escalate and in the end your sand castle will look like this:

But then again, it's a matter of perception. Some people don't want to spend time to focus on the minor things, focusing more on getting through the courses or rising in grades. And I have nothing against this way of thinking, but I would rather continue focusing on the basics and getting the teamplay and teamwork between dog and handler very strong, and trying to maintain it. Thus removing the entire idea of having a problem with complacency.

It is all in the mindset of the handler, getting the correct focus and disregarding the negatives that might come from competition and too much overthinking and over-focusing on difficult scenarios. My mindset is being more and more travelled in controlling the negative thinking and getting my head set on having fun, finding positive focal points in all of my runs and not even trying to "ease" my way into the destructive mindset that can easily come from DQ'ing or doing mistakes in training and/or competitions.

But I will not appear as a holy grail of positive mindset. As you can see from the video below, I still need to improve the timing in my handling.

For me, this is a perfect course to find the "complacency" issues I've mentioned above. The timing issues for me in this course is the sections where I have to do a front-cross without breaking Leijas stride and making sure she doesn't jump over the same obstacle on the way back. Also I move too soon after the weaves, forcing Leija to skip the last weave and I have to do that section again.

But my most important thing to take away from this is THE SPEED!!! Look at the SPEED !!! O-M-G!! I LOOOOOOOVE IT!!!... This is what I just love about this dog... She is my little speed-baby :D  Can't wait for the next competition and for our training stay in Finland.. We're going to ROCK!

Have a GREAT week and think about what I've written above, as this is not just valid for dog-training, but for all training or way of life.

 

Tommy & Leija