13/12/2025
I sat down to plan some training for next year and ended up reviewing our 2025 in sports and figured it deserved a post. I did slightly get perfection paralysis with this page, and you'll see why I maybe gave up on wanting to post in what's to come. Buckle up, it's a long one!
I thought I started the year with fairly humble goals. I wanted to win Sonic out of Grade 1 over the course of the year, I wasn't expecting an instant win out or anything dramatic. Life decided to humble me as much as I thought my goals were humble. We got neither win required to win out of G1, in fact, we didn't get a single clear. That's not necessarily an issue, I have no bones about not getting wins if we get other goals along the way.
Sonic's agility year was filled with different issues, weaves, running under jumps, breaking start lines, AROUSAL (loud arousal obviously) and it was never the same issue consistently. They're all completely understandable issues and I have no bones working on them but it did feel like every time I put out a fire that another one would crop up, even if I did everything right to keep that fire out. It was so frustrating. Half way through the season I gave up on wanting to win out of G1 and started focusing on consistency in the things that would get us our wins, weaves, start lines, not running under jumps, etc. We did make progress with that and tracking it was the thing that made me feel so much better about things.
I think the hardest thing I found this year was the struggles I was having whilst everyone else seemed to be doing so well. I feel so awful actually writing this out. I knew logically that everyone else was winning because they deserved it and they had had their fair share of struggles. But seeing people win with a fraction of the effort that I had put in with Sonic was soul destroying. That's not to detract from their wins, everyone thoroughly deserved it, I just felt that I deserved it too. Some of these thoughts were driven by the following:
- having a dog that people expect to do well
- everyone on social media posting their wins, but not necessarily their struggles
I never, in five years of competing the terriers felt any of the feelings I felt this season with Sonic. Having a dog that people are expecting to do well, that your instructors say is incredible, with skills that are outright sexy in training puts a whole new level of stress on competing. It wasn't necessarily the pressure of people "watching" but it added to my expectations that a win was expected by others as well as myself. I felt like I was letting my instructors down, my dog down and ended up making myself pretty miserable.
Everyone only posting their wins (be they literal wins or training/consistency wins) makes it so easy to think that sports are easy. I know they aren't. The terriers gave me 5 years of humbling in sports before I got Sonic so I am familiar with them being challenging. But my brain slowly started to tell me that it was only me who was doing this badly, that it was only us who were failing because all I saw on social media was the celebrations. Some people told me I should stop posting our near misses or challenges, but actually, that's just not who I am but also I knew my posts were making people in the same position as me feel better about where they were. I would hate for anyone to feel how I did this year purely because I didn't want to show myself as less than perfect.
The struggles covered and moved on from, I did learn a lot this year. Sonic is a dog who really needs thought towards her competing. How much has she competed? Too much? Too little? How much was she exercised beforehand? How did she queue? Things I knew I should consider but never weighed heavily on decisions with the terriers would suddenly change how something went in the ring.
I learned that no matter how achievable the goal may seem, focusing on the process wins will make you far less miserable. I don't think I've ever tracked so much data and been quite so nerdy with my training and competing before. If it can be measured or tracked, I'm doing it.
I also learned that I have certain responses to pressure. Pressure "from others" (there was no pressure from others, but there felt like there was!), but more importantly pressure from myself. Tracking processes helped to take some of this pressure off. However this year was quite a pressure filled year purely because of the wedding. I knew I would struggle to compete close to the wedding so I got as many competitions in as early as I could and didn't miss a single one unless I had a sick or injured dog because I knew a missed chance would have impacts for later in the season. I shan't be repeating that again any time soon! I haven't competed since August and honestly haven't missed it. I burned myself out on it all and it has taken so long to recover. Even now, I'm not training like I was beforehand because I've been that burnt out. We're getting back to where we were but it has taken MONTHS to recover from.
Sonic wasn't the only dog competing this year. Pumba did so well. I think it was our best year ever competing. This was the year that finally I felt he was able to show the dog that I get in training in a show environment. My overall goal for competing Pumba since we very first started was to show off the awesome dog he can be and it was amazing to achieve that goal consistently throughout the year (notice the difference in how I'm talking about a dog who had mostly process goals rather than a dog who I had mostly outcome goals for!) I did dearly hope that would come with a first place for my special boy. It came with as close as a third this year and he still managed to place in every single class we competed.
I did start to notice that he seemed to struggle when I was building duration in our heelwork, in training as well as in show environments so I made the decision to retire him. I'm heartbroken about our obedience chapter closing, but it feels right and I have a happy healthy dog who never soured on the work he was doing because I pushed for any longer than I needed to see that he wasn't as happy as he might be. That does mean that Sonic is stepping up to the plate in obedience from now. We have been loving our training since we started back again from the wedding and I'm so excited to see what next season has in store for us.
I'll be doing a post on my training goals for next year and my goals for this page over the upcoming days!
