At work the other day someone asked what I was doing on the weekend, and I said I was taking Sadie to a correction match.
- A what?
- A correction match. It's a sort of, um, well, it's a pretend obedience trial. The difference is that you can help your dog if she makes a mistake.
It's hard to explain obedience activities to people who are really only asking to be polite, and whose eyes begin to glaze over the instant you start using terms like "q" and "nq". So as I tried to distill the essence of the correction match into a simple phrase, this is what came out.
As I have discovered, the correction match can be a very powerful training tool for any dog and handler team. You have the full experience of the trial: you travel to a hall, which may be completely new to you and your dog. This was the case on Sunday. We went to a nice facility called The Poodle Farm in Vanessa, Ontario.
Just as at a real show, you set up your crate, you check in and find out where you are scheduled in the running order, you warm up your dog, you put yourself in the ring with a person who may be a complete stranger, who has a clipboard and who runs you through your paces as though it were an actual trial. In classes that require stays, you can test the strength of your dog's stays, and if you choose to, you can stay in the ring to help your dog, or you can come back intermittently to reward your dog. You see the strength of your competition, you watch other handlers and pick up tips you can use in your training. You commiserate with the teams that are having a bad day.
Sadie does not yet have what I would call a great deal of ring experience, so she still finds things overwhelming and stressful when we go out to new places. I am trying to take her out as much as possible to expose her to new people and new places, and correction matches are a safe and positive way to help her grow in confidence and develop her trial skills.
Unlike in a real trial, if she makes a mistake, I can correct her, re-do the exercise, break off the exercise and start over, encourage her when she is doing really well, and communicate in ways that are not allowed in an actual trial. So, for example, when we were doing our heeling pattern and instead of following me through an about turn (this is a u-turn to the right to send you back in the direction you just came from) - where was I, yes, so, instead of actually doing the "heeling" bit of the exercise, when I turned into the u-turn, Sadie decided that it looked like much more fun to jump the fabric-draped gating that we were just coming up to, to see what might be on the other side, and took down most of the line of gating in the process. Much tail wagging and spriteliness on the far side of the gating - look what I just did, mom!
Had this been a real trial, my mortification would have been extreme. Since it was a match, we were able to laugh it off, put the gating back up, and I was able to immediately re-do the exercise and make sure that she stayed with me, and reward her for doing it right.
I do have some jitters even at matches, so this is good too. Because I can talk to her, and encourage and help her, the whole experience is positive for us both. One of the things I try to do mentally at a trial is to hold on to the feeling of enjoyment I have when I work with my dog in a non-trial environment, and the feeling of calm, and to remember it as precisely as possible so that the next trial I go to, I can bring it back to mind and try to put myself in that positive, happy frame of mind.
I think that when I go to our next trials, I am going to try to convince myself that it is in fact no different or more important than a match. I need to stop investing so much emotion into the trial situation, because I keep sabotaging myself with my nerves.
A fellow match attendee mentioned yesterday that it's natural for us competitive types to enjoy the pretty ribbons and try to get them and that it is a good feeling to earn them. But the ultimate goal of doing dog sports is to spend time with our dogs and have fun with them. At the end of the show, you go home with the dog you love, ribbons or not.
Other certainties of dog shows - there is always another show next weekend, and you never, ever know what the dogs will do. Every dog and handler team has their day, and every superstar has unpredictable days. If you put in the effort, you and your dog will accomplish the things you want, while having a good time. The same person also told me "it's funny how the harder you work at something, the luckier you get".
A bonus to yesterday was the glorious weather. It was a beautiful early autumn day. Full sun, moderate temperatures, no humidity. The drive to Vanessa was filled with trees just beginning to turn colour, fields of pumpkins ready to harvest, corn as high as an elephant's eye.
On our way back home, we passed through Ayr and visited Riverside Park. Sadie jumped up into my lap and we watched the world go by for a bit.
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