It's not little dog. It's me.

We are in the midst of training for our next Rally-O trial (Next week! How it can almost be the end of February already?!). Despite philosophical musings of previous posts, our last trial didn't go so well. We qualified in all our runs, but that's about the best I can say about it.

Iz shut down in the ring—again. She seemed to forget what she was doing in the middle of doing it, did not recognize basic words (or hand signals) including "sit." "Sit" for crying out loud! How is that possible? I was desperate, frustrated, and embarrassed. Not great emotions to have on hand for competing, or training—or for much of anything else, for that matter. But why was Izzy shutting down? Should I stop competing with her? Does she hate it? Is the presence of all those other dogs too much pressure for my little reactive dog? Is it just too long a day for her?

In the meantime, while those questions hovered unanswered, we started taking an "Introduction to Freestyle" class and WE LOVE IT!  Recently, we were given the homework assignment of stringing together five behaviors (a.k.a tricks) in time to music of our choosing. I picked my song and started rehearsing in the living room. The living room, by the way, is where some of our best work is seen. We're both relaxed and Izzy is brilliant. Really. BRILLIANT. Her response time is lightening fast, her accuracy is spot-on, and she is one happy tail-wagging dog. Hey, Rally-O judge, why don't you come watch us in the living room next time—you'll be blown away. I promise. But, I digress. Sorry about that.

But here's the thing of it: my fail-safe location failed. Talented trainer that I am, I managed to create a  pathetic ring performance in my own living room. And this time I can't blame it on  the environment or on Izzy. It was abundantly clear to me that she shut down and didn't want to work because I was acting like a freak. I was tense and concerned about getting it right—OK, I was concerned about getting it perfect—and Izzy reacted to my stress (i.e. weird behavior, weird movements, and weird too-high-pitched voice) and shut down. She pulled back her ears, looked blankly ahead, and didn't respond to anything I said or did. Plus, she looked miserable.

So, I turned off the music, took many deep breaths, and went back to working on simple things. I rewarded Izzy for everything she did with lots of treats. Then I started working on the last behavior in the routine. Then I added the one before that. After a short bit, I put them together, and added the third and so on, back-chaining the five sequenced behaviors, so the "opening" was the last thing we did.  I kept up a high rate of reinforcement and kept telling little dog how wonderful she was. The very last thing I did was to add the music (because that's what stressed me out). And then I didn't give a whit if we were moving in time with it; I just let it play in the background. Izzy bounced back like a champ.

So now, my task is to get mellow on speed dial so I can reach it when I catch myself acting like a stressed-out competitor.