05/10/2026
Fryish Labradors\Roseloch Spaniels
COVID was a funny time for me, I drifted away from being competitive during that time and never really found my way way fully back into it again, and it seems it was the same for others, and I don’t think it’s spoken about enough because from the outside people assume you either still do it or you don’t. That you either stayed committed or lost interest, When actually for some of us it was never that simple.
There was a time when my entire life revolved around working dogs. Working tests nearly every weekend outside of shooting season, picking up all winter, training constantly, trial days that started at ridiculous hours of the morning where you’d drive halfway across the country on barely any sleep because the chance to run your dog under judges you respected felt worth absolutely everything. It becomes your routine, your friendships, your conversations, your weekends, your identity even. You stop seeing it as something you do because it becomes the framework your life sits inside.
And when you’re deep in that world there’s a momentum to it that carries you along. Everyone around you is doing the same thing, training, improving, preparing for the next test, the next trial, the next season, you don’t really stop to analyse it because you’re too busy living it.
Then Rumour had an accident out training, Last retrieve of the day, summer training on dummies, complete freak accident and she was impaled, broke ribs and collapsed a lung. Nobody was reckless, nobody intended harm, it was just one of those awful moments where reality suddenly cuts through something that had become normalised through repetition.
After that, something shifted in me whether I admitted it at the time or not.
Then Wilson got caught on a fence another time out training and I started noticing something I’d never really experienced before, Hesitation.
That split second where instead of simply watching the retrieve unfold, I found myself holding my breath wondering whether what I was asking could end badly.
Not dramatically, not irrationally, just an awareness that had never really existed before.
And I think that’s the difficult thing to explain unless you’ve experienced it yourself. It wasn’t that I suddenly stopped loving working dogs or stopped appreciating good dog work. If anything, it was probably the opposite, the relationship deepened and became more conscious.
Because when you spend enough years immersed in something, risk can quietly become background noise. Not through carelessness or cruelty, just familiarity. Most people involved in any competitive world accept a level of risk emotionally without really thinking about it because if everybody stopped before every fence, every hard retrieve, every icy bank, every river crossing and fully absorbed what could potentially happen, very few people would move through it all with the same confidence.
But once something goes wrong in front of you, especially with a dog you love, you can’t unknow it afterwards. You can’t unknow how quickly a completely ordinary moment can turn catastrophic. You can’t unknow the consequences that can happen in a split second when you ask a dog to do something and it goes wrong, and I think that’s the part I’ve struggled with most, because once that awareness arrives it doesn’t politely disappear again just because you miss the sport and want to get back into it
Then COVID happened and the whole machine stopped.
No tests, No training groups, No constant movement and noise and pressure and routine, and in that silence I ended up rediscovering my dogs outside of the structure of sport.
We walked, we cycled, we just existed together without every interaction needing to build towards something competitive.
And oddly, for some I imagine, I was happy.
Because I always assumed if I ever stepped away from the intensity of training and competing I’d feel lost without it, but instead I found myself enjoying a quieter relationship with my dogs that didn’t revolve around preparing for the next thing all the time.
I still love working dogs, I still love good dog work, I still love going to trials, stewarding, judging, watching talented handlers and talented dogs doing what they were bred to do. I still love picking up and always will, None of that disappeared.
But I also know what it takes to compete seriously at that level and if I’m honest, I think part of me no longer wants to live in that constant state of pressure, analysis and expectation again, and maybe even more honestly, I’m not sure I want to ask the same things of my dogs that I once asked without a second thought.
That isn’t criticism of the sport or the people still deeply involved in it because I still understand exactly why they love it. I understand the pull of it completely, but I think some of us came out of that pause differently than we went into it, and there’s an odd feeling in standing with one foot in a world you still love while no longer fully fitting into the mindset you once had inside it, maybe that’s where I currently am, Not fully out of it, Not fully back in it either.
Because the truth is, I do want to get back into training more seriously again. I miss parts of it deeply, I miss the people, the atmosphere, the satisfaction of good work, the shared understanding that exists inside that world. But something has shifted in what I’m willing to ask of my dogs and I haven’t fully worked out where I stand with that yet.
Maybe that awareness is age, Maybe it’s experience, maybe once you’ve seen enough things go wrong, responsibility starts to feel heavier than ambition sometimes.
What I’m struggling with now is what comes after that realisation
Because the dog world, like most worlds, is very geared towards progression, more training, competing, success, titles, growing achievement. There’s always a next level waiting, but nobody really talks about what happens when your priorities quietly shift while your love for the dogs themselves remains exactly as strong.
What does participation look like then?
Do you return, but differently?
Do you train without chasing the same intensity?
Do you focus on the parts that still bring joy while quietly stepping back from the parts that no longer sit right with you?
Do you mentor more, steward more, judge more, pick up more, and compete less?
Or do you eventually find yourself pulled fully back into it once enough time passes?
I genuinely don’t know yet, not got a clue 😅
But I suspect the important part is that whatever comes next has to survive the awareness you now have. Because pretending you don’t feel it anymore usually just creates a conflict inside yourself that nobody else can see.
And maybe that’s why this strange middle ground exists for so many people now. Not because the love disappeared, not because the respect disappeared. But because once awareness arrives, you can’t fully return to moving through something on autopilot again.
So maybe the answer isn’t returning to exactly who we were before.
Maybe it’s finding an entirely different way to belong in that world of sport
