"She did, right?!"

I ran into a training friend after Laev's TD certification track.

"How'd Laev do?" she asked brightly.

"Eh," I responded.

"She did it, right? She passed?"

"Eeeh."

"How'd she do?"

I was honest. "It was the worst track I've ever seen from her."

My friend nodded. "Right. But that was still good enough, right?"

"No. She failed the track."

"What?! How can that be? Laev?" She stared at me. "I would have cried."

Sometimes there are disadvantages to having people know that we're supposed to have a clue how to go about this.

I wonder sometimes why I blog about Laev's training. I don't blog about anything else, and I don't really want to look like I'm setting myself up as some sort of internet training goddess. Well, no danger of that -- I record our failures as well as our successes, and it should be pretty obvious that we aren't, um, perfect. /laugh/

It does add a certain amount of pressure, the blog. Once, right before a big trial, I got email about Laev's efforts from across the world. I whined to my sister the night before the trial, "What if it goes bad? I'd have to write and tell Norway that we failed!"

There is a certain advantage to anonymity.

On the other hand, I know my clients often appreciate hearing that my dogs are real dogs, too, that they do make mistakes and I have to train through difficulties. I have been told by others that they find Laev's blog to be encouraging and helpful to their own training, and that's hugely gratifying.

In addition, it's useful to me, because it's often as I'm mentally reviewing (I write all my blog posts in my head before I ever type them) that I recall some detail which can make the difference in our next session. That's good. And it is good to get feedback from others, of course.

So I'm blogging, and training, and of course enjoying my dog. It's what it's all about. :-)