When it comes to competition, maintaining a positive mindset is often championed as the golden ticket to success - after all, nothing positive comes from a negative mindset! But is there such a thing as "too positive?" Or "too grateful?" Sorta. Both positivity and gratitude can go to the toxic dark ...

On the heels of what ended up being a very impactful podcast last week on fun (who knew?!), I heard about "The Rule of Thirds."

While I'm sure there are other versions out there, the one I heard was from the perspective of an Olympic athlete being told about the Rule of Thirds by her coach. The ...

We are anthropologically wired to look for the bad stuff. To look for the danger, the things that might go wrong. This behavior has kept us safe from bears, and fire, and toxic cave-people (I assume). When we scan our environment for danger to find none, we can then focus on the task at hand - but w...

Last week, I didn't send a newsletter (did you miss me?), and as a result, I beat myself up. I enjoy writing to you weekly, just as I enjoy recording my podcasts, yet missing one week had me feeling guilty.

It was easy to tell myself it was no big deal in the scheme of things, yet it reminded me...

This month in the Q-Membership, we are talking about how we lie to ourselves when measuring our progress. The weird thing is, we don't lie to ourselves on purpose; we just aren't very honest about how we're doing.

For instance, we are much harder on ourselves than the facts show. We let our emot...

We are taught that this world is explainable and has a reason for everything. The moon's phases, weather, and even math (inside joke) have logical reasons for being. Then, a grade school teacher tells us that if we work hard, our efforts will be rewarded, and our parents back this up. Our lives take...

Have you ever felt worse after a successful weekend of showing? Ever felt terrible though your dashboard is decorated with ribbons?

It's a weird feeling, but it happens more than you might think. We have a fantastic weekend only to wake up Monday with the after-trial blues. How could that possib...

Every once in a while, I get kinda fixated on a concept. Right now, that's our energy as handlers and how it impacts every aspect of our dog sports.

Spoiler alert: This week's podcast and the Q-Membership for August are all about energy.

Energy is a huge part of how we show up for our dogs a...

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 my mind...

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 repeat that pe...

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; I would ...

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 have ne...