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If You Can’t Trust Your Dog Who Can You Trust?
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If You Can’t Trust Your Dog Who Can You Trust?
© 2002 Ed Presnall
 TRUST as described in the Cambridge dictionary is to have belief or confidence
in the honesty, goodness, skill or safety of (a person, organization or thing). Trust
however is not a one way affair -- reciprocity is always in play.
If you want to have your dog’s trust you must trust your dog as well. If you do not
then you may find yourself faced with continuous, exasperating failures when it
comes time for you to do your track on test day. You and your dog need confidence
in each others abilities to perform your respective tasks.
Confidence comes in no small part from being able to trust each other and the
trust comes from working and training together for many weeks in all kinds of
weather at different times of day. There is no effective short cut to hard
work. What you might skip around in TD level training will surely come back to
haunt you in TDX or VST level work.
Remember that not all breeds are suited to track. As might be expected all breeds
cannot retrieve, run a lure course or point game. If you are working with a breed not considered
as a strong candidate then you must work all the harder to compensate and learn what your dogs strengths and weaknesses are.
Your trust or the lack thereof will travel down the lead to your team mate and in
a sport which has so many environmental factors in play you cannot afford to
believe in anything more than your dog.
Photo © Judy Strom - 2002
Ed Presnall working with Judy's Welsh Springer Spaniel Quark, Ch This Quark is Charmed, JH, TD, AX, OAJ.
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