Zoning Out

Viva and I have been fortunate to have a number of "zone" runs over the course of our agility lives together. For the most part, I remember lots of them in 2006. There hasn't been a true zone run for awhile, and I've been pondering this. It's not that we've stagnated or gotten worse as a team. It's not that we haven't had our share of great runs, even. Our non-zone runs these days are much, much faster than our zone runs were back in 2006. Still, I crave that feeling of running with Viva in such a way that time stops and we are purely focused in the moment together. Nothing interrupts this: no thoughts, no barking, no abrupt changes of direction or pace. It's as strong a feeling of connection as I've ever experienced.

So why haven't we been back in the zone lately? Going back through my notes, I realized that 2006, the year of the zone run, was the year that I put things together for the first time as a handler. I had been steadily improving since working with Annelise Allan and Stacy Peardot-Goudy at the Agile Canines Agility Camp in the summer of 2005. My timing was better, my dog was barking less (Friends, family, and Icelandic Sheepdog aficionados, please note: I did not write "not barking"), and it seemed as though we were getting closer and closer to being in sync. Then we had it. The first zone run.

The zone run in agility is pretty much the same as the zone performance in chamber music (though, even if you run with an Icelandic Sheepdog, the zone run in agility is quieter). When you're in the zone during a chamber music performance, all of the decisions that the ensemble has to make during rehearsals fall away. No one has to wait for anyone else in order to play precisely together. The artistic intentions are collective, crystal clear, and beautifully executed at all times. Focus is intense, iron-clad, and yet feels effortless. If you possess an external observer, mentally speaking, he or she vanishes. During my best performances, I have no idea how I sound, because I am simply too focused on the artistic choice of the moment to pay that kind of objective (or, far worse, subjective) attention to the sound resulting from that choice. I am on to the next choice. The same holds true for the zone runs I have had with Viva. I think I share this with other handlers: we know, jogging away from the finish line to reward our teammate for a job well done, that we have had a zone run, but most of the individual moments in it are subsumed into the whole.

Once we experience the zone run, then, why don't we have zone runs all the time? Specifically, why haven't I had a zone run with Viva for a while? The common element of the 2006 zone runs was distance. My distance from Viva was a constant: we were working novice and open courses in which I found myself handling a few feet away from her except where a front or rear cross was involved. As we moved up to more advanced coursework, my distance from her began to shift; in some cases, shifting considerably. These days, I find myself having to work hard to support jumps when I am far enough away from her that she begins to pull in to me.

All of this brings me back to last Saturday morning, when I was most emphatically not having a zone run. In fact, in an Elite Regular round, when all Viva had to do was run straight from her weave exit to a jump and turn left to execute a second jump, I managed to pull her off her line. How hard it is to let one's dog go straight? (Don't answer that; sometimes it's a lot harder for me than other times, especially if there's distance work in play. Also, don't get me wrong; we were having a heck of a lot of fun, and came home with a fistful of qualifying and first-place ribbons anyway.) After we finished the run, I pulled out my record book, and made some notes. As I was writing, "Ask Annelise or Jacque what the best body language is to keep Viva going straight as I move left," I realized I knew exactly what the best body language was to keep Viva going straight under those circumstances. I needed to keep my shoulders facing the direction I wanted her to go, extend my arm to support the jump, and run left on a diagonal path. Ah, running on a diagonal. I suck at this. Strike that. Optimistically speaking, I find running on a diagonal physically counter-intuitive, which would suggest I need to practice it.

Practice, in agility, seems to mean both the act of practicing an activity for eventual use in class or at a trial, and the act of practicing the identification of locations on course, real or hypothetical, at which said activity would be useful. During the walk-through of Saturday's Elite Jumpers course, I spotted a couple of locations where I thought diagonal movement on my part would be useful. During our run, I duly noted that diagonal movement on my part would have been useful in those locations. Yep, I'd failed to move diagonally at either of them. Sigh. My shoulders really like to face the direction I'm going.

Between Saturday's Elite Jumpers run and Sunday's Elite Jumpers run, I had a talk with my shoulders. It turned into more of a discussion, really, what with me suggesting that my shoulders had been facing the way my body was moving pretty much every day of my life for more than four decades and wouldn't they like to try something new and different, and my shoulders countering that they were just looking out for my physical welfare, specifically that of my face and my ass, neither of which share a fondness for ending up flattened on cold, April ground. I asked my shoulders to give me a mite more credit for maintaining my balance, what with those years of childhood ballet and all, and they noted, in only a mildly snarky fashion, that I had lost my balance at the end of a Regular run that very Saturday and my left knee had the grass stains and bruises to prove it. In the end, it was the knee that persuaded the shoulders to lighten up, give peace a chance, and go along with this running-on-a-diagonal thing, at least for Elite Jumpers.

As Viva and I can attest, the shoulders came through on course with flying colors. I managed to run on a diagonal at both locations I had scouted for doing so, and Viva responded with what I swear was an "About time you figured this out" burst of speed. It wasn't our fastest jumpers run ever, but it was fast for grass and, given the curves on this particular course, might well have been a jumpers canine best. And the coolest part? We're nearing the zone again. I think this running-diagonally business has us on the verge of a breakthrough, a fluid connection that will persist despite changes in handler-dog distance. More on than in the next post . . .

Run Like the Wind

Every now and then, something extraordinary happens. This weekend, something extraordinary happened to us.

Viva is a fast dog. Once I figured out some handling basics (things like giving your dog information before she needs it rather than after), I could count on Viva making course time. She usually picks up several speed points when qualifying on AKC agility courses, and I see a lot of speed from her when she's being her fuzzy happy self at home. Two years ago, she beat the 6 yards-per-second (YPS) mark for the first time ever, in a NADAC Tunnelers course. Since then, I'd seen pace from her in the high 5s, but nothing breaking 6, and nothing hinting at the capacity to reach 7 except in the living room while being chased by her Labrador Retriever sister, Luna.

In our second Tunnelers run last Saturday, Viva ran at 7.14 YPS. I didn't know it at the time. I never pay attention to our times at the end of runs. I figure we either make time or we don't, and if we don't, it's too late to affect that particular outcome since we've already crossed the finish line. Not only that, but other than a couple of spots where Viva really got to open up her stride, the run didn't seen much different from usual. There was one perfect turn coming out of a tunnel -- I started calling to her on time for once, and she came out of the tunnel on a PERFECT line to the next. When the scores were posted, I noticed she was faster than two border collies I pretty much idolize. That's when I thought we might have had a better run than usual. My mom called for directions to the trial site, and I asked her if she had a calculator handy. I made her do the math twice. Then I started looking at other runs and dogs' time. I did the same thing on Sunday.

Viva turned in the fastest run of any dog on any course all weekend long.

I'm still working on wrapping my brain around this. I know this is a speed sport, but honestly I've never rewarded for drive (at least not intentionally). Perhaps I may think about speed in training more than I have, as a result of this run, perhaps not. It blew away any concept of speed limitations I may have had, so I can guarantee there will be some shifts in self/team-image, qua Lanny Basham's model.

Not one to leave stones unturned, I figured since we'd gotten great speed on Saturday, I might try for some distance on Sunday. The bonus line in the first Tunnelers course looked like something doable, something that wouldn't frustrate Viva if anything went awry, and I wanted to see how Viva would do. I definitely didn't want to try the bonus line on the second Tunnelers course. There was a lateral section way at the other end of that second course, and I didn't think that would be fair to ask of my dog, given our distance training level. I got Viva revved up at the start line of the first course, and sent her through the first tunnel. She charged through the second tunnel, then noticed I was yelling, "Go, tunnel!" from what seemed to her like an awfully long ways away, and she turned to look at me. She stayed out, but her glance had put the wrong end of that tunnel in play, so when I asked again for "Go tunnel," she ran happily into the wrong end of the tunnel. I yelled "GOOD GIRL!" and brought her back through the first two tunnels in reverse order to me. I thanked the judge, and we ran for a treat jackpot. My mom was really perplexed. So were most of the other handlers (at least the vocal ones). After all, I had just rewarded my dog for doing the wrong thing. I explained to my mom that I was really happy that Viva had responded to my "Go tunnel" command by going into a tunnel. I figured we can hone this later, but I wanted Viva to know that her distance effort was something to celebrate.

Then the judge talked me into trying the bonus line for the second Tunnelers course. (Thanks, Michelle!) Viva charged through the first tunnel, charged through the second tunnel, *charged through the third tunnel* (at the distance that she'd felt insecure about just one run earlier), through the fourth tunnel, the fifth tunnel (at which point I'm pretty much jumping out of my skin with happiness and pride), then took the wrong end of the sixth tunnel. I smoothly got my happy fast dog to the finish line (skipping a bunch of tunnels on the way so I could reward as soon as possible) and we celebrated with lamb lung and liver biscotti. Good girl.

Those were the highlights. To summarize how the rest of the weekend went, well, in the past two trials she's collected sixteen blue ribbons. But the happiest moments? Two non-qualifying Tunnelers runs. I love agility. And my little red dog who can run like the wind.

Going Positive

Welcome back. This is the new home of the agility addict formerly known as Agility Spaz, now Agility Muse. Right around the time I last posted to my Agility Spaz blog, I got thinking about the power of the positive, especially as it applies to my teamwork with Viva. I didn't post much in 2008, initially because I was overwhelmed by our success at the 2007 AKC Agility Invitational in Long Beach, California. Coming in first in the FSS/Misc. Group blew my self-image as Agility Spaz. It's not that our runs at the '07 invitational were free of handler error. Some of my handling felt overcautious; I didn't always run the way I wanted to. But leaving the invitational, I had to acknowledge that I wasn't a novice handler anymore. I was better than I thought I was, and much of the success that weekend came from thinking positively. Inspired by Lanny Basham's story of shooting in snow for the first time at the world championships, I paced around the convention center muttering affirmations that seeped into my subconscious mind far enough to keep my conscious mind from sabotaging myself or my dog. Returning home, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep going as Agility Spaz. I also wasn't quite ready to assume a new mantle, a positive one, at least in such a public space as a blog. (Okay, so my public here may be a tiny one, but anyone can read this who runs across it.) A year later, I'm ready. It's not that my posts will be more positive than they were at Agility Spaz (the Agility Spaz posts were pretty positive), but I want to affirm that I can handle smoothly, confidently, and effectively, and staring at the "Agility Spaz" moniker on a frequent basis seemed counterproductive. So, welcome back to the home of thoughts and comments on the general topic of me-and-Viva, now reframed as ongoing musings. Maybe this will keep me from falling off the blog wagon the next time we experience more success than my conscious mind expects.