I had a great time at the Breeze Thru CPE dog agility trials over the weekend. Blue Angel and I greatly improved our afternoon performance. For several previous trials, Blue Angel had not been interested in competing in the afternoon. I’d show her a tunnel and she would walk over to the edge of the ring distracted by everything else that was going on. None of my yelling at her was improving our performance. I decided to try something different since what we were doing clearly wasn’t working.
My performance in life is greatly impacted by the management of my diabetes. When I get a low blood sugar from taking too much insulin, or strenuous physical activity, I don’t think straight. I suspected the same thing might be happening to Blue Angel. My plan at the agility trial was to feed Blue Angel lunch. Normally she only eats 2 meals/day. My reward to her for her good performance at the trials normally doesn’t have many carbohydrates: hard boiled eggs, mini meatballs, carrots, and cheese. As an experiment, I gave her a normal portion of kibble and canned food. To my surprise, she was her normal self in the afternoon. She enjoyed competing and stayed focused on my handling. I tried it again the next day with the same result. We ended up with nine first place blue ribbons out of 10 in total for the weekend!
Ironically, on the last run of the weekend, my blood sugar was dropping precipitously shortly before our appointed run. I considered scratching when I saw the 120 blood glucose with double down arrows. I could tell my thinking wasn’t as clear as I would like. I downed several small bottles of emergency grape juice. I decided to go for it anyway. It was a tricky Jumpers course that circled this way, then around about the other way. Thankfully I spent the afternoon memorizing the path. The most difficult part of the course was the opener where I pointed my body 180 degrees from the direction of travel. Just as Blue Angel started the jump, I turned in the opposite direction to run. From what I remember, Blue Angel followed me throughout the course, and we made it successfully.
I consider this weekend to be successful not only because of the blue ribbons but also because I learned a valuable lesson. Blue Angel loves agility too much to willfully disregard me in the agility ring. She couldn’t pay attention to me because she was running out of steam. Just like me, at the end of the day, our blood glucose levels impacted our performance. I consider this to be a most excellent weekend learning that lesson.
Course Judge credit: Trisha Stall.
