If you have been reading this blog at all, you have seen the videos - most of which consist of several videos from a 3 day trial in Belton over New Years weekend.
I decided I wanted to dedicate this post to why "Filming is Fantastic".
I have filmed myself and my dogs on and off over the years - and I have always watched them afterwards. I found myself watching them and thinking "Yeah - pretty much how I remembered it"
For awhile, I completely quit videoing because I wasn't getting much out of them - and I didn't want to waste my co-agility addicts time filming me if it wasn't going to much use.
Then I got a new camera, and learned about Microsoft Movie Maker and of course Hemi (Vroom Vroom)!
While having fun putting together some movies of our "good and not so good" moments is when it started to really hit home for me. Especially in putting together the movies for this blog.
As I put together the ones of her 'sassing' at me and especially the ones of her contacts I could clearly see what body language I was giving her and what her responses were. I am a little embarrassed to say - for as many years as I have been in this sport - I thought I was more consistent.
It's easy to look at Hemi and say she is doing it because of this or that - but what I truly believe is that it is about my consistency! There was one gamblers run, that besides the fact I should have run forward quicker I had both arms out straight - like a damned HELICOPTER! What is that telling her? Go forward? Go to my Left? Go to my right? I never (cough cough) do that in class.
I believe every dog I have had, and every dog I have put in agility has taught me some very valuable lessons. I have learned about behavior, reactive-ness, ring stress, worriers... and I think Hemi is going to be the lesson on consistency. I finally have the dog that wants to play and boy does she have the DRIVE... but if I don't get consistency with her - we are going to be in for a tough agility career.
Oh wait - this was supposed to be about FILMING!
I think you see how valuable this tool is. Look at my contacts have cooties video and the difference in her good ones versus her not so good ones and look at me. You can see that I need to get consistent, and I need to proof. If I had looked at one of those as a single video - that wouldn't have been so clear.
Thanks for reading this Mommy-ism!
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