Mailbag
Sarah here! 🕷️ This email made my day, and I had to share it with all of you.
A reader wrote in after last week’s spider story to tell us about her own long-term house guest:
When I read this week’s wrap up, I started shouting for my family to come read it! We have a “house” spider that lives on our kitchen window sill. She(?) has been in the same spot for close to 3 years. I named her Charlotte and she eats the occasional fly that comes in the house. If it’s a particular long dry spell with no flies then my husband buys a cricket from the pet store to feed her.
Three years on the same window sill! And I love that her husband is out there buying crickets from the pet store during dry spells. That is real commitment to a house spider!
Apparently her daughter has been telling her she’s “crazy” for keeping Charlotte around, but our reader pushed back:
My daughter wants me to take her outside but it’s kinda nice to see her everyday as I cook/do the dishes. I guess I’m emotionally attached to my spider too and I’m not ready to let her go yet but you inspired me to think about it…maybe in a few years.
Well, I don’t think you’re crazy! Or maybe we’re both crazy together! There’s something really sweet about sharing your space with a little creature who has just decided this is home now, and I love that our story gave you the nudge to think about what’s next for Charlotte, even if “next” is a few years away.
She also sent a picture of Charlotte, and I have to say, she’s a lot scarier than my former house spider!
Podcast: Performing Under the Lights
This week’s episode was inspired by an email from a listener. They had recently competed in their first finals with all the ESPN and AKC camera attention, and they described feeling mentally overwhelmed in a way that went well beyond ordinary nerves. They asked a great question: what can the average handler do to keep that stress from running down the leash and into the dog? Whether it’s your first finals, your first Excellent course, or that last QQ day on the way to your MACH, how do you stand at the start line and tune it all out?
I learned this in medical school and you’ve probably heard it too: when the pressure spikes, your body kicks into fight, flight, or freeze. Your heart rate goes up, your vision narrows, and the higher level thinking that you actually need to handle a complex course gets crowded out. That’s the tunnel vision our listener described, and it’s a real physiological response, not a character flaw.
In the podcast, we get into the agility specific tools that have worked for us:
- Build and protect your routines, before AND after the run. Routines anchor both you and your dog. The pre-run routine is the obvious one, but post-run processing is just as important and very overlooked. How you handle the moments right after a run, whether it went well or not, sets the template for how your nervous system files away the experience. Doing a poor job processing your run at a first big event can quietly set you up to avoid similar situations down the road. Here’s the conundrum: big events interrupt your routines. Live televised finals add unnatural pauses for commercial breaks. The rules are different, the schedule is different, the warm-up area is different. Knowing your routines will be disrupted, and having a plan for how to flex when that happens, is part of preparing for the moment.
- Breathe. A long, slow exhale is one of the fastest ways to take your nervous system down a notch. One easy structure is the 4-4-4-4 method (also called box breathing): inhale for four seconds, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. It works at the start line, and it works in the parking lot at 6:00 AM. Watch a quick demo
- Reframe nerves as excitement, out loud. On the podcast, Jennifer revealed her ultimate secret weapon, and there’s real research behind it. Telling yourself to “calm down” rarely works because your body is already amped up. Saying “I’m excited” out loud takes that same arousal and points it somewhere useful. Sarah was reminded of the Ted Lasso scene where Rebecca makes herself big before a big moment, which is the same idea in a different package. Watch the Rebecca clip
- Visualize the dog and the line. Jennifer and I put together a short, detailed document on visualization years ago, and it has helped handlers who develop that skill have more success on course. We consider it the core of our success under pressure, and we include it in all of our online courses and with our VIP members.
- Target your mechanics at the right level. I love focusing on mechanics, but you have to pick the right level of detail. If your front crosses are already automatic and happen in four steps, don’t start thinking about every step right before you run. That is how you undermine an automated process. Imagine a golfer tinkering with their swing by overthinking exactly how much force to apply, or a basketball player breaking down the mechanics of a free throw. In agility, the right level of mental rehearsal is more like “front cross in this general area, reconnect with my dog after the tunnel, lead out to the takeoff side of jump three.” General intent, not super detailed execution, although there have been times I focus on very small movements (like when I first learned to threadle).
- Expose yourself to the arousal in advance. This is the hardest one because televised finals are unique by definition. But to the extent you can, gradually put yourself in pressure filled situations so the feeling is familiar when it counts.
If you want to go deeper on the science, Dr. Sian Leah Beilock has a fantastic TED Talk called “Why we choke under pressure, and how to avoid it.” It is fifteen minutes long and we reference her work in the podcast.
Click here to listen to the podcast: Episode 391: Performing Under the Lights
Kentucky Derby Drama
Right after we finished recording the podcast, Jennifer mentioned that she had wanted to talk about something that came to her mind during our discussion about pre- and post-run routines.
Jennifer had been hyped about this year’s Kentucky Derby and was following one horse in particular: Great White, the largest horse in the field and a late addition after Silent Tactic was scratched earlier in the week. Just before the race went off, while horses were being loaded into the starting gate, Great White got spooked, reared up, and fell over backwards, throwing jockey Alex Achard and very nearly rolling on top of him. Both the horse and the rider walked away without serious injury, but Great White was scratched on the spot. A horse named Golden Tempo went on to win.
I’ll admit, I know almost nothing about horses, so Jennifer had to walk me through some of this. Apparently horses don’t really want to stand in the gate. They want to run. So getting them loaded, holding them there, and then unloading and reloading them is a real problem. Once a horse has been keyed up and put in that box, you cannot easily reset their state. Imagine a false start at a track meet or a swim sprint, except some of the swimmers are already in the water and now you have to convince them to climb back out and try again. That’s a routine disruption with consequences.
Jennifer’s first thought watching the incident unfold was, “what about all the horses that are already in the gate?” About half the field had been loaded by the time Great White spooked, and once he was scratched, every one of those horses had to be unloaded, walked around, and reloaded. Jennifer was so invested in the idea that “routines are important” that she actually went and looked up whether the winning horse was one who had been loaded and unloaded, or one who had not yet gone to the gate at the time of the incident. Sure enough, Golden Tempo had NOT been loaded yet. In fact, jockey Jose Ortiz told the AP that when he saw Great White react, he held Golden Tempo back from going in: “I wasn’t in there yet, so I was very happy. My guy wanted to put me in. [I said]: ‘No, no, no. He’s going to be scratched. Don’t put me in.'” The winner of the 152nd Kentucky Derby was the horse whose routine was protected.
This also ties back to a point Sarah made on the podcast that I think is one of the most practical things you can take away from this whole conversation: build a great start line you can rely on. If your start line is rock solid, you don’t have to spend any mental energy worrying about it under pressure. That frees up bandwidth for everything else you actually need to think about on course.
Got your own pre-run or post-run routine you swear by? We want to hear it. Email us at team@baddogagility.com!
Happy Training,
