Lately, the comparison gremlins have been popping up in interesting - and annoying - ways. Sometimes they tell me I'm not succeeding at work; other times, I should be doing more with my dogs. Just yesterday, Facebook suggested a friend because of mutual connections, and I thought, "What...

Every one of us could entertain a campfire crowd of people with tales of how our plans went awry. Memes are devoted to it: You make a plan, and God laughs. Plan is a four-letter word. Anything about the pandemic. My point is that it's a universal experience to have plans fall apart,...

If only we had any control over other people! But we don't, and sometimes people can be downright awful to us and others. It's that yucky part of our sport that we could all do without. And while I wish it were fading away, bad behavior will probably always stick around. Sigh.

This is on...

So by now, you probably know I'm obsessed with goal setting. It's more than coming up with goals, rather it's creating a plan to make sure they come to fruition. We all have goals, but we don't all have plans.

{If you're unfamiliar, I have a whole methodology that spurred an online course,...

I'm going back and re-watching all three seasons of Ted Lasso. (We can discuss my denial that the show ended some other time - haha!) Any-who ... One of the (many) great concepts from the show is Ted's insistence that we should all "be a goldfish."

Ted (an American coaching football,...

Of course they do! And with good reason, right?

I mean, we cry because our hearts are broken, or we're disappointed, or we're so happy that only tears will do.

Just this past weekend, while walking my dog at an agility trial, I cried out of frustration. I wasn't mad at my dog or even at myself, I...

June can be kind of intense, especially in the AKC agility community. 

(For those of you untouched by this madness, June 30th marks the last day to qualify for the Invitational in Orlando in December.)

And while many of you are "marked safe" from the craziness of qualifying, we...

Because I know you're on pins and needles wondering how my games-only weekend was with Moxie, I'll share. (heehee)

The short answer is that I stuck to my plan, and I hope progress was made (more on the progress in a moment). But as always, there's a little more to the story....

Ever have a really good day and feel less confident as a result? It can happen for a few reasons: 

• We fear we can't repeat the excellent performance, that it was just a fluke (imposter syndrome).
• We're afraid we set a new standard that we have to live up to (pressure).
• We want to...

I did something I never do. I entered an agility trial where I only entered one games class each day for all four days. No standard or jumpers classes, just FAST and T2B.

(For those of you who don't do agility, stick with me for a minute.)

If you know me, you know I enjoy competing;...

Not too long ago, I did a podcast episode on why everyone needs a mantra (Ep #96). Lucky for me, Susan Garrett's team liked it so much that they wanted me to do a shorter version for their Agility Nation (yay!). And while that was super cool, rethinking that topic reminded me of how often we...

Back when I rode horses, it was common to take longer breaks - sometimes six weeks of horses just being horses in a field. When I started competing with my dogs, I was surprised that handlers and dogs just seemed to compete all year in addition to taking classes. Where was the break?

...