Ep 81 Prepping for the Opens
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[00:00:00] If you train, compete, teach, or simply love the sport of dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence in Agility. Join me as we explore training, communication, handling, mindset, and all the little details that help build stronger and more confident teams both in and out of the ring.
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Welcome back. For episode 81, I would like to share with you what I will be doing to prep for the West Coast Open and the US Open. This summer was really abnormal for me and Sprint. It was full of interruptions, and we didn't train nearly as much as I wanted to, and we trialed [00:01:00] even less. The summer in the Pacific Northwest is supposed to be my main training season because we have lots of good weather, and our mornings are usually the perfect time to train.
But like I said, we had some interruptions that did set these things back. And while it derailed my summer plans, I am not letting it derail my fall plans. And for the fall, I have two main things that I'm focusing on, and that is the West Coast Open and the US Open. So because of these interruptions, some things kinda feel outside of my control.
Maybe I, I do kinda have in the back of my head that we didn't make so much progress this year because we didn't have the summer. And I'm sure that some of my listeners have felt this way before, which is why I want to share how I'm taking back control and making the most of the time [00:02:00] that I do have now that we are back in business and everything is kind of full steam ahead.
The West Coast Open is just a month away. We will start driving down even sooner than that, so we've got three solid weeks, uh, of left of prep, and then after the West Coast Open, we have about six weeks in between before the US Open. So this is happening really quickly Um, so after we got derailed this summer, and the short version is, um, Sprint had a terrible allergy flare that impacted her feet, and she had some infections on her feet, so we weren't able to do much of anything.
Um, one of her paw pads was, like, an open wound, and so she [00:03:00] was, you know, lame for a few weeks while we waited for that to heal. So not only could we not train, we also couldn't do much of her conditioning, and we couldn't get outside. You know, she was going for short leash walks just to get enough exercise to be behaviorally well, but we weren't able to maintain the level of physical activity that we're both used to.
So w- I, the very first thing that I've had to do before I could even think about going back to training is to get her reps back up in her conditioning program. So that time that we spent healing her skin, she lost a lot of progress in her conditioning exercises. So until she was back to a certain level of fluency in those exercises, I wasn't taking her to the agility field.
So we worked on [00:04:00] getting her reps back up, and we also spent a lot more time outdoors in nature. So I was able to watch her gait, watch her energy, um, make sure that nothing caused any abnormalities in how she moves, either pre, post, or during exercise. Um, and so w- after a few weeks when I started seeing enough improvement, then I started adding in agility training again, and I started with specific skills that would allow me to assess her stamina and the power that she was able to give me.
Um, because skill training is a little bit more controlled, and I can observe her a little bit more easily than, say, coursework sessions. So I feel like the risk of missing some problem or some small [00:05:00] injury is a lot lower in these specific skill sessions. So things like jump skills, um, a couple of collection jump grids, so very controlled, and certainly collection is something that she will have a very hard time with if she's not 100%.
So things like weave skills, particularly weave entries, I wanted to assess how she was using her body and preparing for the weave poles. Because if that wasn't back to 100%, we would need more time, uh, just focusing on the conditioning before we went back to course work. And I really wanted to retrain her teeter this summer, and that didn't happen fully, so I also added in some teeter training sessions to try and get that ball rolling just a little bit so I'd have some s- some teeter improvement to take into the fall.
Um, we've done one sequencing [00:06:00] session and one course work session, mostly because we both enjoy it, and that just happened recently in the last couple of weeks. So she's had all of July and most of August to focus on conditioning, focus on decompression, focus on those skill training, and then we've just kinda dipped our toes back into running agility together.
So now we are one month away from West Coast Open. We do have a trial this weekend. It is a local event. It's an international challenge event, so I'm really excited about those courses. We get to be outside, and the way that the schedule is, at least, um, I, I think, the international challenge event courses will be the first courses that we run, which I kinda like, uh, because I can treat those two courses as kind of rehearsal for West Coast Open.
You know, what do I [00:07:00] have, you know, without, like, a warmup run or without, you know, y- a run that means less? Like, how are we doing when we go into an event and the first thing we do is important? Because that is what happens at these big opens, is that sometimes the first run that you do is really important, and you need to do well at it.
Um, and then the rest of the trial, I get to use as training. Because I don't have a ton of time to do a full trial and then kinda repair everything that a trial naturally breaks down, I really love that I can have a kinda shortened two-run test trial, and then I can take all of the other local runs to reinforce good habits.
I can choose to take a toy into the ring with me if I think that that's a good idea. I can choose [00:08:00] to run a shortened version of the course and just focus on the things that I want her to do well and then get rewarded for. I can, of course, use fix-and-go if something does break and I need her to show me that she can do it before continuing on.
So I can just be a really good trainer without worrying about Um, scores for the rest of the weekend. Okay? And then after that event, um, the rest of our time before West Coast Open will be focused on continuing to build strong bank accounts for our skills. Um, our dog walk, our teeter, her weaves, uh, and, and just her jumping skills, um, because I'm always trying to keep those bank accounts really full.
Uh, n- we were lucky enough to see that two of the judges, um, [00:09:00] were judging at the Canadian Open, they will also be judging at the West Coast Open, Grace and Roman. So it was really great to see some of the challenges that they put up, because I can take small pieces of those and just run little test versions and again, add that to our bank account.
Just making sure that anything I have a question mark about, I can try and remove that question mark in the next few weeks of training time that we have. We might do some light coursework sessions, maybe one or two more before the West Coast Open. Mostly depends on weather and how much time I have for training and course building and things like that.
And the light coursework sessions look a little different than, you know, my clean run training sessions, because I'm not looking to do a lot of clean run training right now because I want to maintain really good, [00:10:00] high bank accounts. So light coursework sessions for me are kind of looking at the course and going, "Okay, I'm pretty sure I could do this the fir- the first time, but where are the hard parts that I want to reinforce?"
And so I will run it like I'm running it for real, and then when she does something really great, I will stop and reward her We will spend so much time in nature so that going into the long travel days, long days in the car at the event, um, just the, you know, overwhelm that travel and competing does for both of us, does not completely deplete our emotional cup.
So we'll be spending a lot of time in nature between now and then. Um, we already do quite a bit, so we'll be spending even more. And we will continue our conditioning programs, both of us , um, with, for [00:11:00] Sprint, no new exercises right now. For myself, I completely... I don't make those decisions. My fitness coach, Liz Joyce, makes those decisions for me, but I know that she will lead me into both of these events in tiptop shape.
Um, and then after the West Coast Open, we will take a little time to recover from that, and you guessed it, we will be in nature to recover from that. Because it's such a short downtime between the West Coast Open and the US Open, I don't want to do a full let's do nothing break. Um, especially because she, um, just got back up to a certain level of conditioning.
I wanna make sure that we stay in that zone between the two events. So probably the first week that we get back will just be time in nature and rest. But then we will repeat a really similar process that I'm g- [00:12:00] doing now before the West Coast Open. So we will train anything that stumped us at West Coast Open.
We will continue to put money in the bank for our skills, and we'll continue our conditioning program so that we're not looking for massive gains between these two events because the gap is very small. But we do want to maintain what we have, um, going into both events this fall. We don't want one event to drain us and then we're going in with a little bit less.
We want to do our best to, to maintain what we have, and what we have right now is really cool, and we both feel really good, so that's a bonus. Um, but everything will be focused on going into the US Open as fresh as possible. So making sure that while we do want to maintain a certain level of physical activity so that the US [00:13:00] Open isn't a spike that will fatigue us, we also don't want to you know, overdo it or skip recovery from the West Coast Open.
So- This also goes into my decisions about travel, when I travel, where I stay, you know, what I eat, what, what... Every, every decision goes into making sure that the both of us can be at our best for both events, even though there's not a ton of time in between these two events. So that's my plan, and I hope that hearing my plan kind of helps you think about how you prepare for a specific event, or if you're also going to both Opens, maybe this helps answer some questions you've been having about how to balance two massive [00:14:00] events in such a short period of time.
I'd love to hear your thoughts, so come on over to the Fans of Evx Agility free community to discuss how you prepare for events and if I'll be seeing you at either Open.
Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to leave a review, share it with an agility friend, or connect with me on social media. Your support helps more handlers and teams find the podcast and be part of this community. You can also find all of my training programs, coaching, and resources at fxagility.com.
Remember, excellent agility is built one training session at a time, and every small step forward matters. Until next time, happy training
