An Opportunity to Expand One's Horizons

SUMMARY: Dog agility blog event: Internationalization.

Today is one of those occasional days when "dog agility bloggers around the world ... join together ... to write on interesting and helpful topics for dog agility enthusisiasts." Read more about the group.

Today's topic is "Internationalization," and by the end of the day there should be a huge collection of posts on internationalization for you to browse.

Our fearless organizer, Steve S., says "This topic is about whatever it means to *you*." What it means to me: The chance to stretch one's education.

Early in my agility career (a lonnnng time ago), I naively suggested to my agility instructor that agility needed more kinds of obstacles because, after all, once you've learned to do a jump, what else is there to know? Now, of course, I know painfully well that fabulously interesting and challenging courses can be built with our increasingly limited set of obstacles. Some of that comes from the expansion of agility throughout the world--the more people and organizations involved in keeping handlers and dogs challenged, the more things we discover about what's possible.

Recently I've seen more courses like none I've ever seen before, built with nothing more than jumps.

And speaking of jumps-- (do you like that segue?)--

I like international agility because it prompts us to learn more about the rest of the world in general. Thanks to master jump builder Jim Basic, we learn some every week in class as Nancy Gyes and Jim instruct us to "Start at Brazil, take the back side of Germany, rear cross Japan..."  (See some photos of their jumps in the slide show on their web site.) Here are some tidbits to go along with the color:

	Argentina: Bay Teamer and world team member Silvina Bruera came to California from Argentina in South America, which is the 7th-largest country in area and the largest Spanish-speaking country. The name "Argentina" is derived from the Latin argentum ("silver") because the first Spanish conquerors arrived following rumors of the existence of silver mountains (which don't actually exist). Until the mid-20th century, English speakers often called it "the Argentine", which sounds more exotic and adventurous--"I've competed in agility in the Argentine--"
	Brazil: This is the fifth largest country in the world, occupying most of central and eastern South America, with the world's 7th-largest GDP. It's the only country in the Americas where the primary language is Portuguese. The word "Brazil" comes from brazilwood, a tree that once grew plentifully along the Brazilian coast and that produces a red dye also known as also known as "Natural Red 24." At the first USDAA Nationals I attended, in southern California, I remember Brazil as being one of the few other countries to send a team, some of whom made it into the final round and were loudly cheered.
	Canada: Canada is the world's 2nd-largest country in total area--but only 4th largest if you don't count the huge expanses of water within its borders. The country's name comes from "kanata", an Iroquoian word meaning "village." (Iroquois are a league of several indigenous matriarchal tribes living in southeastern Canada and northeastern U.S.) Norsemen briefly colonized Newfoundland around 1000 A.D., and that was it for Europeans for another 500 years. Canadian agility organizations (or should that be organisations) and U.S. organizations closely parallel each other, and plenty of high-quality agility competitors and gurus come from Canada, despite all that snow, eh?	ohhhh nooo I'm missing a photo of the Canada jump! Will have to remedy that.
	France: Per Wikipedia, "the name France comes from the Latin Francia, which means 'country of the Franks'. There are various theories as to the origin of the name of the Franks. One is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. Another proposed etymology is that in an ancient Germanic language, Frank means free as opposed to slave." Nearly 20% of the territory of France lies outside Europe. In France, dog agility is called simply "L'agility" (the agility), as in, "This weekend, I'm doing the agility, merci, ooh-la-la, cherchez la chien."
	Germany: There is no law regulation on the exact color shades of the German flag, so there may be differences from one flag to the next. The name "Germania" appears as early as 200 B.C. in Roman texts--possibly meaning simply "related tribes", as in related to, but different from, the Gauls (in France). The standard German language is closely related to English and Dutch. Beethoven and Einstein were German, although it is not known whether they did dog agility.
	Japan: The Japanese characters that make up this country's name mean "sun-origin"--hence, "Land of the Rising Sun." Japan is an archipelago of--holy contact zone, Batman!-- 6,852 islands! Hmm, possibly island-hopping led to agility-jumping. Makes sense to me. Japanese teams attending the USDAA Cynosports World Championships are always cheerful, excited, involved, well-coordinated, and successful. Japanese team and their decorations, 2007 at Scottsdale:
	Norway: This country's motto is "Alt for Norge," meaning "Everything for Norway." Their anthem is "Yes, we love this country." Isn't that sweet? No battle anthems for them! It's generally believed that the country's name comes from the Old Norse "nor veg", meaning "northern route/way." Norway doesn't allow dogs' tails to be docked and, in fact, won't even allow them to come into the country from outside, which caused ruckus in the international community when they held the world championships and a couple of champions from other countries couldn't compete. The term for agility in Norway is simply "agility," and Wikipedia says this about that: "Ordet agility kommer fra engelsk språk og betyr «evne til å bevege seg hurtig, smidig og lett». Det har sin opprinnelse i det latinske agilis som på norsk finnes i ordet agere, å handle eller å gjøre." So there.	uh-oh, missing this one, too.
	Spain: There are four official languages in Spain (Castilian, Catalan, Basque, and Galician), three unofficial regional languages (Asturian, Aragonese, and Aranese), and several more dialects of these (Andalucian, Valencian...). Despite all these rich vocabularies, no one really knows where the name Hispania (from which Spain is derived) originates. It might derive from the Greek poetic use of Hesperia, in one sense meaning "land of the setting sun." Looks like Japan and Spain have the whole day surrounded.   Another scholar, per wikipedia, "argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenecian word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged"." I wonder whether it's the land where dog agility jumps are forged?
	Sweden:  15% of Sweden is north of the Arctic Circle; however, thanks to the Gulf Stream, it's much warmer and drier than other countries at the same latitude. "Sweden" comes from an Old English word meaning "land of the Swedes." The Swedish name for the country, "Svierge," means "Kingdom of the Swedes." No one seems to know what "Swedes" were. Sweden has been at peace, avoiding war, for 200 years. Does that include discussions about the worth of various agility handling systems?
	United States of America: The country's name comes from "United," meaning "united," and "States," meaning "states." There's a nice round 50 states in the U.S., as the stars on the flag indicate. However, that hasn't always been the case--the 13 stripes represent the initial 13 colonies who founded the U.S.  Some of the interesting states are: California. Which is where I live, and which is a hotbed of dog agility. The first California Grizzly Bear flag appeared in 1846; the species was hunted to extinction in the state in 1922.  Interesting facts about some other states: There are no poisonous snakes in Maine. [OK, really, there are 50 states! And they are all interesting! I have been to about 45 of them, so I can vouch for that! Go see all their flags on Wikipedia!]

Note: Flags referenced to images on Wikimedia Commons. I had some trouble with their automatically generated HTML for images, so some images link directly back to the source and others don't.

There's a Price To Pay for Going Over to the Dark Side

SUMMARY: If I knew then what I know now.

Note: Dog agility bloggers are teaming up once every few months to all post on a common theme on the same day. Today is our first combined Dog Agility Blogger Event Day (well--second or third, we actually had an Agility Blogger Action Day some time back), and the topic is "If I knew then what I know now." See the list of other posters here; will be updated throughout the day.

So many people joke in the agility world about "going over to the dark side" after their first agility dog--or two, or three--do OK in agility (or not) but can't beat those beasts who seem to have been designed for the sport: The beautiful, driven, smart, workaholic Border Collies.

I hadn't intended to give in. I've always liked BCs and blue merles. I liked Boost's mom, Tala, long before there was even a vague hint of future puppies. And I just happened to be starting to think about a new dog when Boost's litter came along.

I agonized about the price. I paid $1000 for my rocket-driven girlie, and it was difficult for me to come up with that at the time and very difficult for me to justify when I was pretty sure that, sooner or later, I'd be able to find a rescue, shelter, or rehomed dog for a fraction of the price who'd do just fine. But, yes, I fell in love with her as soon as I broke down and went to spend some time with the puppies.

She has turned out to be a sweet and eager-to-please dog. She has all the drive, speed, and willingness to work that one could ever want from a dog. She was a natural on sheep when introduced to them; she has fabulous herding instinct and it's clear, when she moves into a ring with critters, that herding was what she was born to do.

She also loves doing agility; it is her job, and she loves her job; it is her exercise, and she desperately needs the outlet for her physical and mental energy; and it is her time spent with me, which she also loves beyond pretty much everything except maybe herding (usually other dogs, since we don't see many flocks o' grazing animals in Silicon Valley).

Each of my three previous agility dogs got better and better, as I learned more about handling and about training. She was going to be my best yet.

But she isn't.

As those who sometimes read my blog may know, we have a terrible time with refusals, runouts, and bars going down. Oh, and the recurring weave pole failures.

See, none of my previous three dogs ever had runout or refusal issues. (Definitions: A runout is when the dog runs past the plane of the next obstacle; a refusal is when the dog approaches the obstacle but then doesn't take it, usually by turning back. They actually represent a continuum of behavior--hard to draw the line between where refusals end and runouts begin--and they are scored the same.)

Of my previous three dogs, only Tika had bar-knocking issues, but at its worst, it was never anything like Boost's.

And weave poles--well, Remington was never fast in them, Jake was sometimes not perfect, but Tika has always had awesome weave poles (enters correctly and independently, fairly fast, and stays in until the end), so I figured, yeah!, I've figured out how to train them! But, apparently, not.

Yes, I'm getting to my point.

I'll admit that I'm 7 years older than when I got Boost; I hadn't yet had knee surgery when I got her; and I had competed in only 135 trials when Boost came home with me; I used to train in the yard almost every day and found it exciting and entertaining. Now, I have a crappy knee, crappy hip, additional years of aging that have been starting to show more and more, and another 120 trials under my belt, during most of which I have felt like a failure with Boost. And I have lost my enthusiasm for agility and for training.

How much of it is the been-there-done-that thing? And how much is the sense that I have blown my chance with my dog and don't have a great future to look forward to with her in agility?

Here's the thing: When I read back through my posts about Boost's training and agility experiences in the first couple years of her life, it is all there: The bars, the refusals because my timing is bad or whatever, the inability to do serpentines that cause runouts, the weaves that are on-again, off-again, and even the stupid contact issues that are now plaguing me again: Coming off the side of the teeter instead of streaking to the end. It is all there, all of it.

And I worked on some of it, sometimes. I think that I fell into the trap of thinking that, with experience, things would get better. I mean, things got better with all my previous dogs as we each gained more experience.

In fact, I'm still falling into that trap, as in, "Maybe if I do a ton of CPE trials, where the courses are usually simpler and often smaller (in total distance) than USDAA courses, we'll learn to run more smoothly together." I can safely say, after 4 CPE trials in quick succession, that that is not happening.

The thing that I keep coming back to in understanding why we have problems with things that the other dogs didn't is that she is, first and foremost by instinct and breeding, a herding dog. She stops and changes direction on a dime. She pays utter close attention to things that are moving (sheep, me), not things that are stationary (jumps). She wants to get to where the action is ASAP.

So, if I had known when she was a puppy that, at age seven, she'd have only 3 Jumpers Qs in USDAA after 90 tries, only one Super-Q after 80 tries, almost never any placement ribbons despite her speed even when we do manage to Q (mostly because of time-wasting bobbles on course), here's what I would have done differently:

• Recognized sooner that Boost is an entirely different kind of machine than my previous three agility dogs and approached her training and my own training in that light.
• Gotten some coaching on a regular basis on my own fitness and running ability.
• Made sure that we attended a lot of foundation training classes very early on.
• Made the effort to rent the big agility field regularly to just let her run in huge loops, full speed, over agility obstacles and not work exclusively in my small yard and the tightly controlled confines of classes.
• But most importantly, as soon as I realized that I had an issue--something that happened more than two or three times or that we never successfully managed--I'd have gotten help and followed the exercises and assignments closely and determinedly.

I don't know whether it would have helped--I like to think that I have a clue about weave poles, and for the first three years or so I worked aggressively on weave training, and that was never completely fixed, either. But I think we'd have done Oh, so much better.

Now, it's hard to get around the blasé feelings about training, the sense that it doesn't matter and I'll never fix the problems--Boost *is*, after all, already 7 and past her physical prime, just a fact.

It's hard. I did NOT know then what I know now, and it is a challenge for me to let it go, let it go, let it go, and find a new enthusiasm.  It is both an advantage and disadvantage that I know now EVERYTHING that I know now. Because I think that, if I want to be successful, I actually have to forget a lot of what I know now, shed the emotional baggage and history of failure, so to speak, to be able to get a new lease on Boost's agility life and training.

I'm trying to find within myself the energy and enthusiasm that I might have felt if, say, I'd have not gotten another dog, and then had suddenly found myself with Boost in my family, rehomed at age 7 with all of her training and foibles already in place. In other words, give myself a fresh perspective and permission to start over.

(The longer-term If I Knew Then question will be--would I have forsaken agility and taken up herding? But that's something for the distant future.)

P.S. In the end, I am glad that I wrote this post, although I agonized for days about what to say and how to say it, and almost didn't write it because of the pain I feel on this subject and not sure whether I could turn it into something positive--because the insights in the last two paragraphs didn't come until I had written everything else. Let's see whether I can do something with that interesting new perspective.