Expectations Kill

Not my words but a quote from Silvia Trkman which I happen to most definitely agree with.  So why do we often talk about our expectations on our agility journeys ?  We have high expectations, lower our expectations, meet our expectations, exceed our expectations, live up to expectations and may even have great expectations at times.   And why is it so hard to find a balance in what we expect?  If our expectations are too high then it's a one way ticket on the disappointment express eventually but if they are not high enough then it becomes easy to accept sub standard performances as the norm and not bother too much about improving these. Why is it so hard to find the balance at times?

It seems to me that often it is all to easy to confuse expectations with goals or is there just such a fine line between the two that it is easy to think of them as the same thing if you are not careful.

So far in our training and trialling, I try very hard not to confuse the two, focus on performance goals rather than outcome goals, and see the big picture of where I would like us to be as a team in a few years time.  But every now and then those expectations come back to haunt me and make me lose sight of what I think is important right now and I don't like it one bit.



Take Novice Agility for example.  I would have to say that Ivy is pretty much where I would like her to be at this stage on our journey.  Even though we have a long way to go, I am happy with the work we are doing and have definite ideas about what we need to improve on to form the basis of our training over the next few months.  Plus I can see improvement from a few months back.  But we cannot seem to crack it for a pass in Novice Agility which in the big scheme of things is not all that important at this stage - she has only been running agility for a couple of months - but all my other dogs raced through Novice agility so quickly that I guess I have been fooled into unconsciously having 'expectations' that we will do the same.   

We had a first place at the Scottish Breeds trial last month but it wasn't a qualifying score.  She does look very cute with her tartan rosette though.



Thanks to Sal Robinson for the photo
  

For some reason Novice Agility has seen one little thing each time, and always something different to boot.  On her first couple of runs, she decided that unfamiliar dogwalks were to be avoided at all costs, completing everything else beautifully.  Then she got over that, but we had a couple of 'just one bar' runs.

Then she suddenly started twisting sideways on her startline to watch me walk out, subsequently running past the first obstacle on release, but of course completing the rest of the course perfectly.  After developing an action plan for her startline, changing a couple of things, and pulling her from trialling for a couple of weeks to work on it, she hasn't had a reoccurrence of that behaviour, but then on to Scottish Breeds and the weave pole entry from hell that threw many Masters dogs and got left in for the Novice course.  Ivy's entries are pretty good and I actually expected her to make this one (those expectations again) but we did not and scored a fault there. 

The good thing about missing an entry is that it motivates me to keep proofing way more difficult entries and not just be satisfied with what I have.  The bad thing about it is - on to the following week's country trial with the same judge for Novice agility and lo and behold - he puts down the same course again, with a little bit of 'tweaking of angles' that actually made the course a bit more difficult. 

I handled the weaves differently this time and actually got the entry - but then she popped out when I yelled 'yes' as she went in, LOL.  One more thing to add to my list of weave proofing.

So here we currently are, Q-less in Novice Agility and while I really don't care about this and would honestly prefer to put the runs on the board for a bit before moving up, I still have to remind myself to stay focussed on what is actually important in our training at this stage - and the almighty Novice agility Q is really not.

I want to spend the next couple of months revisiting a lot of basic skills to fine tune these - especially our double box work and contact and weave proofing - plus I want to consolidate all the training we have done on our startline by pushing her a little bit more and 'testing the value' as Susan Garrett would say.

I also want to work on the mental side of training and competing a lot more, as I know I can improve a ton there.  And I intend to start by not letting other people's expectations influence mine.  In fact I am going to take the lead from Silvia, repeat 'expectations kill' over and over again.
Anyone for the T Shirt - it would make a good agility mantra.