Should have listened to Oprah.....

What Oprah Taught Me About Dog Training

This morning I was getting ready to head out and go tracking with Steel and Amber and had the TV on and happened to catch Oprah on her network. She was taking her audience through a series of examples from her show on where people should have listened to that little voice in their head warning them of something. Or people who did and it led to something monumental. She quoted someone (can't remember who) that said that life is full of whispers. If you don't listen to the whispers they become louder, then they become pebbles then they become rocks and then they become an entire wall falling down on you. Much of the time we are clueless until we get surprised by the wall - even though the clues or whispers were there..

Sunday is a great day for tracking here because most stores are closed until late and there are lots of good opportunities for variable surface tracking. However it's starting to get warm during the day so I was rushing to get going and opted to skip Steel's breakfast and feed him when I got back. His food prep is labor intensive and conventional wisdom suggests that dogs track better when they are hungry (because they are in theory looking for food). However the tiny voice in the back of my head whispered that Steel does not do well skipping a meal. He has zero body fat and due to some health issues does not tolerate a lot of foods that should provide long term energy. But I ignored the whisper, after all we were ready to go and I was in a hurry and was focusing on getting what I needed to bring. Since I wanted the track to age a few hours I was in a rush. Like all that hurrying paid off.....Not.

The track was basically a trainwreck. A sluggish start with some unimpressive problem solving, I stopped it 3/4 of the way through and should have stopped it halfway.  If I hadn't also tracked Amber (rockstar but she also got breakfast) it would have been a total waste of my morning.  So, like Oprah says, pay attention to the whisper. It was telling me what to do and I ignored it. Next time I will pay more attention - hopefully....

Steel sleeping in his kennel with his tongue sticking out....