Disappointment and overcoming it.

Well I guess from the title of this post and my long absence you know that I did not qualify for the world team.  To be honest this gutted me, mostly because I failed myself and I failed my dog.  I mean the Spaz has been working like a dream, he has really been an awesome boy, but as I predicted, my failure was my mental game.  Cautious handling, ridiculous choices and over-all lack in confidence out there on the field.  This will be my goal to REALLY fix in the next year.  I mean, not just moan about it on here.  I am making a lot of changes mentally. I am taking every single round seriously and not just half-arsing it.  I mean of course still having fun along the way.  But I am sticking to a routine now, keeping my training diary updated, complete with video clips.  So before every show I will go through it now, slap myself against the cheek thirteen times and say: 'See you can do it you moron'...  It took me a few days to get over the disappointment, in fact I am still getting over it.  But it has actually been my training that has helped me overcome it, mainly because it reminded me how much I love the sport and thus made me set new goals for the year... I won't bore you with all of it, but lets just say it involves going clear and winning A LOT.  

So below are some of the rounds from SA Champs and a couple of shows afterwards. Yeah yeah, they are atrocious I know.  I promise the handler will catch a major wake-up :)



Now I have to back track a bit...  Before SA Champs something terrible happened.  For those that have not seen this video yet:



Now Alison has been a very good friend of mine for a very long time and I was absolutely gutted by this whole ordeal.  I actually don't even know what to say about this without starting to swear, so I will leave it to you to watch.  Just as a note, it was actually Alison that we were supposed to be visiting now when we visited the UK, but she ofc was not there, as she is sitting in Europe with the dogs.  So not only did this greatly affect their lives, but it had many other repercussions, including some in my life.

Now back to the present.  I am enjoying my training more than ever and my dogs are feeling it... and of course I forgot to say, Quake did his first OFFICIAL competitions recently!  And came away with a second and a third place believe it or not.  He still lacks a ton of confidence at shows and I will have to keep on reviewing goals with him, but for now we will wait and see what happens.  Anyhow, so here are some training videos from this afternoon.  Oh and yes I KNOW I sound like a retard when I train my dog and I am going to try to change that too!