Why do I want to become a WC in agility?

Why do I want to become a WC in agility?

This is a very good question.  I have always wanted to be world champion in agility but never thought why.  What is my real motivation to reach this goal? I took a little while to answer this. My first thought to get fame to my dog. This is really a very shallow purpose because this really doesn’t matter to my dog. Other thing is to challenge myself to become super good at something.  I am also a patriot so hope that my dog can bring honor to my country. These reasons did raise some feelings but not very strong ones. I really got the strongest feeling of becoming the best agility handler.

So how do you become a best agility handler? I need at least 10 000 hours of training. This has been scientifically proved that you need 10 000 practice hours to become excellent in something. Of course people have some skills that can give first advantage in the beginning of carrier but to become excellent in something you need practice, practice and practice. So I have trained now 10 years agility but I haven’t done my job so intensive that I could say have done work worth of 10 000. I have done this my first years with more emotion than really analytical way. So if we got to the National Team we would really need luck to reach it. I haven’t done my “homework” well enough to say that I’m excellent in agility.

My next goal is to change my training and my other life to support more my goal. I have started to write training diary again and also I plan my training session ahead. I want to get the maximum effect from the training each time and analyze my training from videos. I also know that I can learn more agility by training other so it’s time for me to go back to training other teams. I can train with my dogs only a certain amount but I can repeat my skills every time I teach them to someone. Also from teaching other I can see things what dogs don’t know how to do or get a new idea in training when I have solve a problem of my student. Altogether I need to step up my act to reach my ultimate goal. This thinking has given me a lot of more motivation. I have seen better what I can do better to become what I want. It will be a never ending story but this beginning has too sloppy to really take where I wanted. 

Jukka Pätynen / Koirakuvat

Thoughts after National Team Tryouts

I wrote this blog post before I went to National Team tryout. Pixie did the same mistake she did last year and jumped A-frame contact. This was really a thing I didn't like. She has done 2on2off contacts very well in the last competitions and she never makes this mistake in training. So I was really disappointed to her work. She just got too much steam in her head to make it well. We will see if we can fix her drive issues in big competitions. I was happy of my work in the course. I was calm and kept the contact to her. I know her problems come from the running contact training and I'm not sure can I fix her to be a dog that I can trust on the course. I have had to "fix" our problems too much. I haven't enjoyed competing the whole year. Well in jumping we have had our moments but I hope we will get the same feeling to agility runs.


That's for know.. Soon update of Freya.. She has reached competition age!!!!!

MLPF