The More I know, the Less I Know...

Today the blog-o-sphere is talking about continuing education.  Read more about it here:

http://dogagilityblogevents.wordpress.com/continuing-education/

I remember long ago when I knew it all.  When I was a teen, I told my mom all the time that I knew  so much more than she did and felt the master of my universe.  Those were the good old days.  Now I look at things differently.  Knowledge has opened up the wide universe to me and I begin to comprehend how much I do not know.  It is intimidating.

 

 

In an effort to make myself a better person I seek information about things.  I like to learn things and in learning things I open myself up to understanding that the more I know the less I know.  Those scales will never be balanced because there is always more to know. 

 

As I look at my dog training and agility life, I am interested to know how to train better.  There are many resources available online now, it is a very exciting time.  In my endeavor to make my dogs more competitive, I seek the next topic that might help me with my current dogs or even future dogs.

 



Fin is trained.  However, I still need to fix her contacts and as I watch my videos with her, I can see that I can work on tight turns.  Also, teaching her some new moves to help me get where I need to be is a possibility.  Learning more is exciting.

Olive is not trained.  She has opened up my knowledge to learning to work on Terrier time.  I find myself looking for classes and/or reading books on motivation and drive.  I spend time with her differently than I spend with Fin.  With Olive we are building a love for the sport and tight turns are not really important.

Is Vici Trained?  For my handling, I am constantly looking at how I can improve.  I often watch my video or look at a photo and ask myself, "what in the heck was I thinking?"

All in all, for me continuing education is what makes this sport so rewarding.  It is because no one has all the answers, that finding the answers makes it much more interesting then if I trained my dogs and we worked like clockwork. 

That said, sometimes it is difficult to find the learning resources that can help in expanding our knowledge.  Two of my favorite resources are Denise Fenzi and Susan Garrett.  I truly appreciate the information they provide and the biggest difficulty I find is finding the time to take all the information in.