Post-MACH Reflections (2-2-10)

Post date: Feb 2, 2010 6:43:11 PM

When Trevor and I finished our MACH victory lap a few weeks ago and walked out of the ring, one of my oldest agility friends accosted me. "What does it feel like to get your MACH?" she asked me.

I knew what she meant. She and I have both been plugging away in AKC agility for years, but neither of us had ever managed to get a MACH before. In her case, her fast, brilliant dogs never finished their double Q requirement. In my case, my slowish female lab racked up the double Qs, but never finished her point requirement.

The paradox of the MACH is that with a little luck and the right dog, you can work your way through the requirements and finish the title pretty handily. However, anything that disrupts the MACH marathon can spell doom. Because it is a marathon. You have to go to a lot of trials and keep the drumbeat of double Qs and point accumulation going.

If you or your dog has health issues, it can derail you for months. My foot problems and Touki's recurring nail problems probably cost us her MACH. My friends' dogs had heats, pregnancies, and joint problems. Any issues in the ring can also derail you when you're trying to get your MACH. Both my friend's dogs and Touki had bar-knocking issues. When you multiply this over years of trials, it starts to add up.

Trevor and I are not the most dazzling team out there. We are simply steady, consistent, and just fast enough to accumulate points at a decent rate. And thus we crossed the MACH finish line with an ease I never expected. The last 150 points Touki needed seemed like an unbridgeable chasm by the end. Trevor's last 150 points melted away like magic. It's so binary that way.

In any case, if you've never gotten a MACH before, it starts to take on an almost intimidating mystique. Even when Trevor and I were within 20 points of finishing, it was hard to believe that it was actually going to happen.

Then it did, and we stepped through the looking glass. So to answer my friend's question, what does it feel like, speaking as someone who was on the outside looking in for so long?

First of all, I wondered if I would feel empty and depressed once we reached our goal. "Is this all there is?" etc. etc. Nope, I'm just as happy about it 2+ weeks later as I was the day it happened. I set a goal, and I reached it. Trevor and I worked hard. We came together as a team. We had a blast on our journey. I cherish every practice, every run, every day we spent doing agility together. I'm happy with it right where it is, no matter what we do or don't achieve in the future.
As people with multiple MACHs have told me, the first one is the hardest. After that, the mystique is gone. You are only a MACH virgin once, I guess. So I don't think I would be as nervous with any future MACHs, whether with Trevor or another dog.
How does this make me feel about Touki? I wondered if it would deepen my regret about not getting her MACH, and I even wondered if it would give me a new determination to finish her MACH no matter what (she's pretty much retired now). No, it's just the opposite. Touki and I dabbled in a lot of different venues. We experimented. It took us a long time to get into a good groove, mostly because I was a new handler just learning about agility. I wish I knew then what I know now, so that I could have been a better handler for her. But once again, I'm perfectly happy with things right where they are. In my mind Trevor's MACH is also Touki's MACH, because we are standing on her shoulders.