Going for gold?

I have a lot of friends in agility, and one of the biggest things lately that they/we discuss is the competitiveness in agility. Usually it rears it head in the form of someone saying to Mum, 'you are sooo competitive!'

Yes, Mum and I both consider ourselves competitive, actually. In her opinion, why would you want to do anything without giving it your all? And I say hear, hear! Especially since we love it and we love competing together as a team!

So what is competitive?

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This com·pet·i·tive /kəmˈpɛtɪtɪv/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuhm-pet-i-tiv] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation –adjective

1.	of, pertaining to, involving, or decided by competition: competitive sports; a competitive examination.

2.	well suited for competition; having a feature that makes for successful competition: a competitive price.

3.	having a strong desire to compete or to succeed.

Well, that doesn't sound like it's bad.

It's not that Mum is competitive against others, no way! And she will defend that fact forever if you want to debate it with her. Neither of us are that way. We are competitive in the sense that we want to be the best we can be, better than we were in our last run, last month, last year, always striving for faster, tighter, smoother. We do admit that we don't take any run, whether in practice or in a trial, without our fullest attention. It's just not our way.

We are extremely happy for our friends who do very well. And, yes, sometimes we gauge ourselves with the top dogs as a form of our own measurement. But sad/upset that someone else won and we didn't? Nope, it's not us! And are we upset that we didn't Q? Nope, we just look at it as learning something new.

But, while some folks go for the gold, and talk about gold as a form of investment, (they say perhaps one of the latest and hottest precious metals investments today), we say 'we' are our best investment, with our goal to be the absolute best that we can be, to learn as much as we can learn, give it our all at all times, and see where it takes us.

Oh and one more thing - we absolutely love agility, it's fun, it's exciting, we get great endorphins going, we are sooo glad that we found it, and can't imagine our life without having fun doing agility!