Hot take: Failing improves confidence

I've recently gotten into a new dog sport and it's reminded me that I have a different relationship with failure.

I've started tracking and my instructor is behind us pointing out every mistake in real time. Stop. Go. Let line out. Go up the line. Don't anticipate. Get to the article faster. Pay attention to what your dog is telling you. Don't do that.

It's a barrage and I love it.

Driving home from my 6am lesson I realized why I love this style of feedback: it reminds me of my horse days. My instructor in the middle of the ring calling out all the things I was doing wrong in real time so I could change them in real time and see the results right then. I don't know if I learned to like this style because I started riding when I was five (I do remember a LOT of tears!), or if I'm somehow wired for this amount of constant feedback, but it feels like progress to me.

Weird, right?

A lot of handlers would hate this style of feedback — and that's okay. We all learn very differently, so finding an instructor who fits your learning style is wildly important. And communicating to your instructor what you need is just as important. But I digress.

The reason a lot of people would struggle with this style is that the constant barrage feels like a laundry list of failures and shortcomings. To me it's feedback. And that was my little epiphany on the drive home.

I'm okay with failure because, to me, it's information.

Don't get me wrong — I get mad, sad, frustrated, discouraged, embarrassed, and feel like giving up on a regular basis. Trust me. The difference is, I don't tell a story about my identity based on those failures. I don't tell myself that I'm a terrible handler, or that I'll never get it, or that everyone is going to think I'm an idiot. My mind is constantly processing what I can do with the information I just got back from my "failure," even if that means stopping in the middle of a training session. Because stopping is information too.

That epiphany followed me into the weekend.

I was having a conversation with a fellow competitor who usually does agility but was frustrated about her rally scores. Agility competitors tend to be a lot more comfortable with failure because we fail all the time. My friend agreed — she thinks nothing about an NQ in agility. It's part of the game. But because she only does rally trials a handful of times throughout the year, not getting a good score hits her harder. Fewer times at bat means the runs are more precious. A smaller lifetime data set means we feel each one more.

When we are training, we are usually fine with failing because the environment is set up to support our mistakes. Make those same mistakes in the ring and we feel like we've been tossed off a high wire without a net. Yet the mistake is the same. The actual actions taken by handler or dog are the same. It's the meaning we ascribe to it that changes.

And that meaning — the story we tell about what the failure says about us — is exactly what shreds our confidence. Not the failure itself. The narrative. "I'm an idiot for making that mistake again." "I'll never get this." "Everyone saw that." Every time we attach a story like that to a mistake, we take a little chip out of our confidence that no amount of good runs fully restores. Failure isn't the problem. The storytelling is.

I promise you this: when you change your relationship with failure, so much improves — including your confidence. Getting feedback just means you have clarity about what needs your attention. That's not a verdict on who you are as a handler. It's a direction.

So no, you may never want a barrage of feedback. And yes, you are absolutely going to feel overwhelmed by all the things you want to fix. But when you no longer see failure as personal — as a measurement of who you are — everything shifts. Your recovery improves. Your resilience improves. And your confidence, counterintuitively, grows.

Because confidence isn't built by avoiding failure. It's built by learning you can handle it.