Bright Star Xeena 🩷
Isn’t that a lovely photo? Thanks, Kim 🩷
Congratulations are in order to Wildflower Kadi who earned her Excellent Jumpers title recently (AJP) 🎉 Yay Team Kadi!
Last evening Capella had what a friend called Date Night — here is a photo…
Second Date Night later today 🍀
Happy Saturday, Friends 🩷
Starry G got mail!
⭐️🤯🎉
I did not expect Starry G to pass the VST test, truth be told. My plan was to use the test to identify gaps in our training and be ready for 2027.
But she passed 🎉
As I drove home after the test, I realized that earning that VST positions Starry well for BMDCA excellent-level awards — a situation practically begging for some serious planning.
And that is how a Google doc called The Starry Plan came to be. It includes goals in four separate events: Tracking, Draft, Agility, and Conformation (with a side of Obedience). Under each event goal (or goals) is a section titled, “The How,” which articulates the specific plan for achieving the goal(s).
Let me pause here to say I am a fan of training in seasons. Not everything needs to be trained all the time. That is another benefit of advanced planning — you can decide when to “peak” with a dog and when to take breaks, and you can rotate the training focus. Variety really is the spice of life!
I want to have Starry ready for both Novice and Open draft on the occasion of her second birthday, which is the earliest she can enter a test and yes, there is a draft test scheduled on her birthday (June 4). My specific plan is to train draft until about the end of October and then take a break until late February/early March.
What does draft training look like right now? Micro sessions of hopping between the shafts. Fun and easy.
By the end of October, I want her comfortable being harnessed and hitched, and pulling the empty cart in the yard. That will position us well for more advanced training in the spring.
My agility goals in The Starry Plan are to compete in Novice and Open agility in the spring. I am fortunate to have both the space and the equipment to train at my house, which allows the slow, gentle, incremental training that I like to do with my dogs (because it works!).
I have set up agility stations — weaves, teeter, dog walk, tunnel.
All we are doing now is learning at each station. No sequences. No jumping.
Just a few minutes of well-reinforced success at each station.
I want to keep Starry happy and confident — and safe ⭐️
Starry G loves the agility stations 🎉
We are on a Tracking break until mid-September but that doesn’t mean Tracking isn’t shaping what we do each day. Starry’s next tracking challenge is the physically demanding TDX, and so we do long walks every morning, and she gets rewarded with cookies for all the random stuff she picks up along the way 😂
Conformation — both training and daily grooming — is also on break. We will pick that up again in early September.
We practice obedience in micro sessions every day — and then there is play, which is an important and consistent component of everything else.
Not everyone wants or needs the kind of detailed plans that I like — and that is totally fine! People have different goals, skills, life circumstances, etc.
For me — after losing so much time to Covid and then the Big T Traumas — I am going all in with this amazing puppy.
And yes — I know well that the Universe has a wicked sense of humor and loves to blow up carefully laid plans.
I am undeterred.
The reality that goals and plans may need revision is no reason to avoid them. Besides, it is so fun to set new goals and create new plans 🎉
Thanks to Scott for the question — I hope this helps. As for the scone recipe — that is a closely guarded secret 🤐😂 But I will bake them for anyone who wants to come on over 👩🏼🍳
Happy Tuesday All.
❤️
After observing that my dogs and I seem to move easily between dog sports, Scott asked, “Do you have a road map or mental plan for each dog to go from one activity to another?”
Plan?!
My favorite!
I love making plans. I love implementing plans. I love evaluating plans. I love revising plans.
Plans are my jam.
But no, I do not have a mental plan for a dog — I have written, detailed plans!
A plan is like a recipe. It is both important — and insufficient. After all, simply having the recipe doesn’t make the scones appear.
To make scones happen, you have to want scones (who doesn’t?!) AND you need the recipe AND you have to do the work of making and baking.
Or you can come visit me and I will make scones for you!
I have had ideas for what I want to accomplish with Starry G since she was a twinkle in my imagination. Once she arrived and I got to know her, I translated those hopes and dreams into specific goals and then created The Plan — or the recipe — for how to make it all happen.
But those early plans didn’t include mastering behaviors that a puppy might learn in a basic obedience class — not at all. In fact, I don’t like basic obedience classes for future performance dogs.
The foundational skills needed by a future multi-tasking working dog are less about specific behaviors and more about developing broad life, relational, and learning skills. These are things like confidence, task commitment (grit!), comfort with new people and new places, focused and sustained engagement, play, and an understanding of how to learn. There are more, of course, but you likely get the idea — foundational skills are what let us scaffold advanced behaviors to achieve success in dog performance events.
If The Plan is the recipe, think of foundational skills as the ingredients. It is a sad day when our dreams of warm scones comes to an abrupt halt because there is no baking soda!
To be continued…
Happy Sunday, Friends!
❤️