Teamwork Is the Key: Love Is the Reward

The team to beat (L to R) Justice, Crimes, and Orion. photo: Erika Slovikoski

Meet my sporty dog Crimes. He’s successfully competed in dock diving, fast cat, barn hunt, and nose work. He trains in flyball and agility and so does my new puppy, Justice. We are a playful household. 

One of the agility facilities where we train is Golden Gate Dog Sports, and among its very first criteria requirements is team engagement. This shows that you and your dog can focus on each other amid distractions, and this goal may be achieved in many different ways. 

Orion (L) and Crimes (R). photo: Erika Slovikoski

For instance, Crimes likes food and he’s okay with taking it during training but, for him, toys are life. So when we started training at Golden Gate, we sometimes spent the entire class time playing tug and deliver-to-hand with his toys, just being silly together while the other teams worked around us. Yes, the exercises where we worked on stay, recall, and handling maneuvers were also important. But, if you have good engagement first, you can do all those other things in time. 

Orion the wonder dog. photo: Erika Slovikoski

It’s hard to see dog/handler teams who have worked diligently on stays, recalls, and obstacle focus who haven’t really spent time on engagement and play because it’s equally important. In dog sports, it’s a deal breaker if your dog prefers to focus on other dogs, other people, or just the interesting environment around them and not talk to you at all. Just like many human sports, your team engagement is the foundation all other sporting skills are built on. 

If you bring your dog to a hiking trail or a crowded park where you take off their leash and you ignore each other, you’re doing yourselves a huge disservice. If you’re interested in dog sports in even a casual way, that lack of engagement might make sports very difficult or even impossible for you and your pup.

In fact, the first thing you need to learn for any dog sport is to make it totally fun for you and your dog to stay engaged with each other in public places, on open fields and beaches, and around other people, dogs, and wildlife. If you don’t know where to begin, try a class on engagement and play or book a private lesson with a fun trainer. 

Eventually, competing will be the test of your training and engagement. And, of course, it’s rewarding to see that you achieved the thing and got the ribbons. But we’re only here for a short time so I personally want to stuff as much joy and greatness into every day as possible.

Looking back on those ribbons and titles after a dog I loved has left this world, I remember all the time, commitment, and mutual joy we had together. I think of my beloved Orion, my favorite guy and my very first sport dog who’s no longer with me. He changed my life and taught me and my younger dogs so many things. 

I’ll never forget Orion and the ribbons on my wall are a reminder of that love that I’ll carry with me forever. That’s teamwork at its best.