This past trial weekend in Texas has given me a lot of time to think about the difference between dreams and goals. In both cases, there is an aspiration to attain or achieve something. However, I do believe that there are differences that may be overlooked. In short, a dream is when one sets his or her mind on something they would like. However, the individual does not necessarily have a plan in mind or means to attain that dream. A dream can be described as a fantasy. It is perhaps a lofty goal that may or may not be attained. On the other hand, for something to be a goal, the individual must have a plan for reaching the end. In other words, the person carefully thinks through what means are necessary to reach the goal. Goals may or may not also be attained, but one does not rely on good fortune alone to determine if the goal will be reached.
I have both: dreams and goals. My dreams are both specific and not so specific. For Layla, I dream of making it to an agility national someday. I'm not sure the means I will go about to get to this point, but I do dream that we will run together at an agility national. At this point, I consider my desire to get a UD on Layla more of a dream than a goal. This is simply because I have dedicated so much time to agility lately and very little time to practicing obedience. I am not pushing to get back to the obedience ring anytime soon, so we will just see what happens. My goals with Layla are to get running contacts, to earn our MACh, and to earn a versatility title (VC or VCD). I do have plans to reach these goals. I do not expect results overnight and I will work my butt off to get there, but I know all of my hard work should pay off if I stick with it.
For Jade, I consider everything I want to do with him at this point as lofty goals. I am not pushing very hard for anything at the moment. He is just a baby and I want to make everything as fun as possible. We are definitely working foundations for agility and obedience. In agility, I want a quick agile dog who performs obstacles as efficiently as possible on a course. I am confident that if I train for it, we will go far as a team. I want to also go as far as we can in obedience. I would like to jump into tracking, CCA, WC/WCX, and possibly K9 Nosework as well.
In Texas, I saw that neither Layla nor I ran well together at 24. Layla has no problems making the jumps, but air time is really taking too much time in our runs. She jumps so much more efficiently at 20. I realize that if I had the time, I could probably condition her to jump 24 better, but I need to dedicate this time to her contacts and making our runs tighter. I know I can push for speed much more at 20. I changed Layla's entries to 20 for the Golden National and I entered her at 20 in another trial in Colorado during August.
I remember opening a fortune cookie one day that had a note that said, "In dreams and in life, nothing is impossible." I believe we can certainly dream anything. I also believe that our accomplishments are only limited to the time and dedication we put forth in our training. We can set goals as high as we can imagine. It is the effort that we put in that determines if we can attain these goals.
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