germy shep @restinthewest - Tumblr Blog

When I had Jack I’d routinely get up at 3-4 am to take him on mountain adventures. Now I’m trying to get up a bit early so I can get Hallow her exercise before work instead of after (due to the heat wave) and Jesus why is this so hard. Where has all my energy gone

#it’s like 5 am it’s not even that early I’ve just become weak

It’s crazy to me how much her face has changed from 1 - 6

#it’s like well obviously she has aged but I still somehow find it shocking

abirddogmoment

Gorgeous sunrise hike around a lake where we got serenaded by birds and frogs and gorged ourselves on wild blueberries. Call that Ontariomaxing 🫐🌲☀️

danskjavlarna

Source details and larger version.

Foxy: my collection of vintage fox imagery.

2woofs-1meow

nearlyb

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1949

restinthewest

Long ramble about Hallow and Nosework under the cut.

TLDR; I am unsure about continuing Nosework with Hallow. My plan is to focus on training a LOT over the next two months, at which point I’ll assess her enjoyment and make a decision whether to continue classes and plan for trialing or not.

The long version is- In the past month and a half - two months, I have noticed a significant drop in Hallow’s drive and focus during classes. Six months ago, she had phenomenal drive and enthusiasm for the sport, so this has been a fairly recent development. As far as I can tell she doesn’t seem to be having negative feelings during classes, she simply seems less interested. Though it’s of course impossible to be definitively sure, I am fairly confident that this change is not related to pain or underlying health issues.

I personally do not like our instructor (not going to go into reasons why) and I find classes with this person to be stressful and unpleasant. I myself have lost drive to practice as much as we should outside of class because I am enjoying Nosework less. I do not know if Hallow’s reduced interest is related to her feeding off my negative emotions about classes, or perhaps just a byproduct of less at home training, or possibly both.

I have been pushing myself to work through my negative feelings because I think it’s important to be resilient to these things and persevere even when things aren’t ideal. I also don’t want to switch to a new instructor somewhere else- we already had to once (moved) and there aren’t other options in a close area.

Though I don’t like the idea of quitting, I also wonder if my own goals are not aligning with what is best for Hallow. When I got her, I planned on her being my first sport dog. Life really got in the way. I was in my 20’s, and my 20’s were seriously ROUGH. I was having difficulty managing some of her health issues. Now I’m in my 30’s and I’m worried about starting dog sports “so late.” (I know it’s not actually but it’s hard to drop those weird standards we put on ourselves, right?). I definitely feel some serious internal pressure to meet these goals that I set for myself and sometimes I think that pressure I feel leads me to not look at things clearly.

Hallow has really mellowed in the past 2 years and I have no doubt she’d be completely fine with not doing any sports. She comes to work with me, which she loves. We spend almost every waking moment together. She has friends that she gets to see on a regular basis. She gets to run and explore off leash in the mountains every day. She gets to go so many places and do so many things. She loves sleeping in when we don’t work. Overall, she’s an extraordinarily happy and content dog and she lives a very high quality life. I don’t really know if Nosework is adding anything at this point. Essentially, she’s just a happy pet dog either way.

So my plan is to really buckle down on training at home and see if that brings back some of her drive for it and go from there.

I’m going to give it till the end of June and make a decision at that point. I love the idea of trialing with her, but I also accept that it may just not be a part of our life together.

restinthewest

Update

Made a decision. Ending classes but will continue training at home with hopes to trial.

There have been a couple people from my classes who have stopped classes but have continued training on their own and are successfully trialing. I have spoken with one former classmate who filled me in on how she is doing setups and finding people to help with blind hides and all that. Our conversation gave me the confidence that this is something that Hallow and I can do.

Not sure how much trialing we will be able to do the rest of the year due to my work commitments but we will see what we can make work.