Getting out of a slump

Long time no motivational art blogging! Actually, this time I'm going off on a bit of a tangent, but it's all applicable to anything and everything that you might be working on a lot at any given time, plus it's a quick read so ho hum. ;)

Today hasn’t been great, I’ve been a bit off-colour in the art department (’scuse the pun) and things have been feeling a bit iffy with my webite, shop and general social media stuff, like I know there’s more I could do, and that I could do it all better, but something is holding me back. The thing is I’ve had this sort of crises with my work so often that I know it always inevitably precedes a kind of leap of progress, so I’m not getting too worked up about it (it also helps that one of my favourite video bloggers, Lachri Fine Art, mentioned having a similar sort of revelation with her work: a slump generally proceeds a big improvement). That’s not what inspired this blog post though, funnily enough – but it does involve the exact same thought/panic/revelation process as art!

See, it’s actually dog sports I wanted to talk about. My dog is fantastic, as I’ve mentioned many times before, she’s all you could wish for in a sports companion: endless motivation, enthusiasm, very fast and agile, is willing to work for toys and treats alike… So colour me surprised when every now and again (not frequently, thank goodness!) we have a really terrible training session.

Tonight it was frisbee. Freija girl LOVES those disks to bits, and usually I have no trouble getting her to at least attempt a catch (we’re not great at flying catches yet, not least because I am completely useless at throwing what is essentially a rubber pancake in such a way that it’ll fly smoothly). That was not the case this time, she wouldn’t go for the disks till they simply dropped in front of her to pick up. We wrapped up the training session fairly quickly when I realised things weren’t going to work, and left the little football pitch we practice on in a decidedly frustrated mood.

As a dog owner it can be difficult to hide that frustration, especially if it’s aimed at yourself (“why can’t I get this throw right?” “why am I not giving commands clearly enough?” etc.). What I try to do is take a deep breath, pause the training for a few minutes and figure out what’s going wrong while giving girly girl a chance to sniff around for a moment. If it seems like she’s too excited to focus on catching practice, I’ll let her chase a couple of rollers (where you throw the disk on it’s edge so it rolls instead of flying) and end the training there. If it seems like she’s getting irritated at not getting the catch right and receiving no praise, I’ll have her do a trick she knows and end the session on a happy note. And if it’s simply me being rubbish at throwing, I’ll go and practice that throw without Freija so I can get it right for her next time.

When we practice anything, whether it’s painting, crochet or even doggy tricks, there will be moments when it feels like we’re up against a brick wall. The first time (who am I kidding, the first ten times) this happens, we’ll get annoyed or even angry at ourselves for not being able to overcome the obstacle. That is not going to solve the problem – you have to make yourself take a step back, take a deep breath, and work out what’s going wrong. This can take a minute, a day, or several weeks, but you’ve got to let yourself get over that frustration and really focus on what you can fix in order to get better, and once you do you’ll soon forget that you had to go through that process in order to progress. That’s why I’ve written this post, as a little reminder that you’re capable of improving in whatever you’re working towards, as long as you give yourself a fair chance. :)

Just a hint of courage and a yellow ribbon.

I’ve talked about Freija’s anxiety before, and how difficult it is for her to meet strangers. These past couple of weeks I’ve noticed a bit of a new development… Girly girl has been going up to people voluntarily to sniff, or even be petted! To put that into perspective, it took her over six months to build up the courage to happily sniff and follow our agility class trainer. Can you imagine my sheer surprise when girly girl goes and parks herself at a complete stranger’s feet, and is quite happy to be stroked and made a fuss of? Make that a tall male stranger, which has been her number one worst nightmare up till now?? That NEVER happens!

I’ve also noticed a little change in attitude from dog owners approaching us since I tied a yellow ribbon to Freija’s lead. They know not to let their dogs pounce up on her and to just take the meeting very slowly and peacefully, so none of the dogs involved have any cause to fear. Not everybody knows about the yellow dog scheme of course, but those that do are a great help to us. Basically if you see a dog with a yellow ribbon, or perhaps a special yellow vest or lead with a warning, you shouldn’t approach it without permission. There’s any number of reasons for using the yellow ribbon – we use it to signal that we’re still practicing our social skills and I tell other dog owners this so that we can make the encounter calm and not too frightening for girly girl, but some use it when their dog is in heat, ill, or on fear-aggressive dogs… It could be anything, so unless the owner gives you permission, stay away.

From the Yellow Dog UK website

Off-lead situations are another matter of course. I don’t let Freija go off lead during walkies, there’s no safe space to do so around where we live, it’s all busy roads - besides which, when I have let her go without a lead on special forest hikes and things before, she’s simply trotted along beside me so there’s hardly any point! But the one place she is let off lead is at agility class. We’ve just started our fourth course which has a couple of new members in the group, who aren’t familiar with us or know that Freija is still working on her socialization. One is a large, excitable short-haired collie. As we were about to do a run of the practice course, this cheerful big lad runs up to us for a sniff and tries to get girly girl to play. My heart does a leap at this point, usually I’d expect a snap and panic from Freija, she’s not great with surprises like that. That didn’t happen – instead she just watches the collie, has a bit of a sniff herself, and turns to me as if to say “let’s get on with training, shall we?”. My jaw could’ve dropped clean off.

Could it be that we’re really making progress? Will Freija be the perfect city-dog when we move to Bath? I wasn't too sure before now... But dare I say, I really think it could happen! :)