It has been a long time since I have done agility — over two years in fact. One of my local dog clubs hosted a trial this weekend and so I both worked the trial and competed with Sparkle.
People are not heading back to agility trials in pre-pandemic numbers in our area. Did they realize there is more to life, I wondered at first, than dog events every weekend?
But as the weekend went gone on, I realized that a dog event is actually many of the things that makes life wonderful in one short burst of time.
Sparkle at the trial site
There is often travel, which is just fun all by itself. I got to be with my community — with my friends. People like me.
Agility courses require thinking and strategizing and having fun. They shift us out of what passes for normal life and into a whole new space — it is like being temporarily transported to a happy place, no matter the outcome on a course or in a ring.
Life has so many demands and stressors, and this is especially true in a pandemic. We all need protective factors that boost and support our resilience. For me, dog events provide several of the resiliency protective factors at once and so not only are they fun, dog events also help me handle the rest of my life.
An agility trial or dog show may not be your thing but I hope you are able to identify what does provide oxygen to your Little Soldiers. It turns out that FUN is actually not optional if coping well is one of our life goals.