Last weekend I tested a threadle wrap in competition and was honestly shocked when it failed. This is a skill Zi and I have struggled with for a long time, and I really thought I’d found and addressed the pieces we were missing. This failure was frustrating with a keenness only things we really care about can be.
If you’ve been following my odyssey for any length of time, you know Zi’s start line has been an adventure and a half. For almost two years she’s been steadily successful and only now am I reaching a point where her start line can fluctuate outside of its normal parameters without me having a small meltdown.
Just a few days ago I received disappointing news about my puppy plans AGAIN. A third hopeful litter to not pan out for me. I have a back up plan I’m really into, but I had a good cry over the original plan first. Some might say it was silly or a lot of undue pain, but I was ALL IN for those puppies. I don’t mind being crushed that it didn’t work out.
There was a time I thought I should feel less. That maybe it’d be better to be a touch less invested or a smidge less passionate. It’s pretty easy to find someone who will tell you “it’s just agility.” But there’s a limit to how much that ever helped me.
What has helped me — deeply and for real — has been embracing these big feelings. Not making them wrong, and not resisting them. Just feeling them, sometimes sharing them, and allowing them to be with me until they pass.
What has helped me is learning how to feel without giving feelings undue power over me. So I can go back to training with a strategy intelligently informed by our data. So I can go back in the ring and offer trust to my dog. So I can contact the next breeder without making anyone or anything wrong.
I feel deeply, I feel a lot, and my agility experience isn’t always sunshine and daisies. But damn is it vivid, and gloriously powerful. And what can I say, I love that about myself and my art.
I love it very much, now I’ve stopped telling myself it’s wrong.
