Clean Run - September 2014 - 5

Gratefulness
By Brenna Fender

After another great agility practice on a beautiful day with my
best dog friend, I couldn't help but think about how grateful I am.
Grateful to have the means, although meager, to train and occasionally trial in agility. Grateful for a dog that wants to play the
game with me. Grateful for safe equipment and for good enough
health to enjoy a bit of running in the sun.
It wasn't always this way.
I discovered agility in the early '90s and by the end of 1996, I was a
fixture at local agility trials. As time went by, I was trialing three weekends out of every four, competing with a total of three different dogs.
Then I decided to start a family. My Whippet wasn't so hot on
agility trials anyway, so cutting back to one trial day a month for
a while seemed like a way to keep me in the sport I loved while
I sorted out the parenting thing. When I had child number two in
2006, I thought I'd soon return to that status quo.
I thought wrong.
Child number two, a lovely, healthy-looking baby girl, wasn't so
healthy. For the first 20 months of her life, I often spent two days a
week with different doctors and therapists, trying to determine why
she couldn't eat and grow. The dog stayed on the couch, still loved,
but agility was the last thing I could think about.
After a cross-country trip to a diagnostic hospital, we learned that
my daughter had a rare condition called a Chiari Malformation,
which required neurosurgery. She grew healthy and happy, and I
started to resume my agility life, only to once again shelve it while
my son went through his own medical challenges.
By late 2013, things had settled into a reasonable routine. So,
more than seven years after the virtual end of my "agility career,"
I brought home a puppy. I still don't have the time or money to
properly trial or invest in a lot of classes. But what I do have is a
dog that loves the game, and some nice friends to train with. And
that is worth more than gold!
After my break from agility, I find myself with a new perspective
on the sport. Before, I took agility pretty seriously. Lots of practice and lots of pressure-mostly on myself. Qs mattered. Ribbons
mattered. Titles mattered.
And then my kid had neurosurgery.
And now... now I can appreciate every bit of agility, not just the
"pretty, shiny" parts. With each dog, we have new challenges, and
some of them are a bear to figure out. My young dog, a Border Collie named Tessa, is approximately 300 times faster than my last dog,
while my sleep-deprived mom-brain works at about half speed.

I am no longer even reasonably fleet of foot. I have a tendency to
remember about half of my handling during the tricky parts, only to
be left flat-footed to muck up the ending. And yet, so far, I love it all!
We train in the backyard every time I take her out to get some exercise. A few minutes here and there, but she thinks it's just a blast
and not work at all. We are just having the best time. We go to class
and we make a giant mess of some international-style course that
we aren't ready for, and you know what? We are still having the
best time! Because I can see the moments that are beautiful and they
all seem so amazing that the rest just fades away. It's awesome how
every class I get to attend, she's better than she was the time before,
even if I have to skip a few weeks because one kid has a doctor's
appointment and then I have physical therapy and then it rains.
It's all amazing. Every bit of it! The things we do with our dogs,
you guys... this is stuff that most people can't even imagine doing.
And if they've seen it on TV or in a book, they think, "My dog
could never do that." They don't even know! They don't know
how awesome it is to teach a dog to jump and climb and weave and
then race around the course at top speed bonded by some spiritual
connection (and maybe good handling).
But we know. We are so, so lucky, because we know.
Tessa and I have attended two trials together so far. Just tests of
our training; a chance to see how the car drives off the track, so to
speak. At one trial, I saw a handler who was really disheartened.
The courses were challenging and she wasn't qualifying. Toward
the end, she just picked her dog up in frustration, and I thought,
"You're missing it. You're missing this beautiful day. This connection with a dog that's really rare in the big scheme of things. The
rush of the good parts. The humor in the bad parts. The fact that
you aren't hungry, you aren't homeless, you aren't sick... You're
on a grassy lawn on a Sunday surrounded by people who love
the same sport you do, and you are doing it with your best canine
buddy. But you're missing it because some stupid bar fell down
or your dog did some extra obstacles or maybe no obstacles at all.
And you're going home angry."
But I had similar problems on the courses and bombed on every one
of them. And I went home high as a kite. Same trial. Same number
of qualifying scores. But a very different outcome. I'm going to
make an effort to remember this feeling so that if we get to the point
where my dog qualifies more often than not, I will know how to handle the bad days. Because, you know, they are all good days, really.
I'm grateful. Are you?

Brenna Fender

Brenna Fender is a writer and editor who works for Clean Run Magazine and the United States Dog Agility Association. She lives in Florida with her husband, two children,
a Papillon, a Beagle, and a Border Collie, as well as various other furry and not-so-furry creatures. Over the years, her dogs have been titled in agility, conformation, Junior
Hunter, Junior Courser, rally, obedience, and Canine Good Citizen and have also exhibited in disc dog and early versions of flyball and canine freestyle. Brenna can be reached
at brennafender@gmail.com and you can read her humor blog at www.laughingattherain.blogspot.com.

September 14 | Clean Run

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Clean Run - September 2014

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