I didn’t know it at the time, but I was an hour away from sheer terror when the photograph below was taken.
I’m the one without the mustache
Here I am on live TV thirty minutes later – still oblivious to what was coming.
All I had to do was hold a sign and smile. Piece of cake
As a writer for the PBS affiliate in Denver, I was recruited to write scripts for the annual art auction fundraiser. The work was enjoyable until our Executive Director would show up, a woman so high up on the totem pole as to be in the nose bleed section of movers and shakers. Intense, driven, and humorless, she was a veritable institution in the world of Public Television Broadcasting. Most of us were terrified of her.
Big ticket items alone warranted her appearance as an auctioneer on camera, and her entrance into our midst signaled that it was time for a major piece of art to be moved. As she strode past my small group, she paused long enough to curl a finger and wiggle it at me to follow. When we stopped, she instructed me to feed her information about the piece she was about to auction, then turned me by the shoulders to face a television camera seconds away from transmitting us live to millions of viewers.
To this day, I’ve never known such terror.
I was about to humiliate an important woman on live TV because I didn’t have information about a piece of art I hadn’t seen. I was pretty sure I would never work again. Seconds evaporated off the clock as panic gripped me. I couldn’t breathe and considered clutching my chest and gasping, “It’s the big one,” before collapsing at her feet. I was “this close” to playing with the woman’s dangling earring to feign insanity when the floor director suddenly held up three fingers of her hand, then two, and finally just one as she mouthed, “You’re on!”
About the time the camera light blinked from red to green, a tiny voice in my throbbing head whispered: ”Look – at – the – painting.”
I looked at it. And then something glorious happened. I recognized the artist. I knew this piece! My life wasn’t over after all. I would live to experience fear another day.
Fear that would come at dog shows.
The terror I experienced in front of the camera that night was justified – I could have lost my job. I’ve never fully understood, however, why some of us (okay, me) are sometimes gripped by nerves before entering a ring at a dog show that we paid money to enter for fun on purpose. There’s been no rhyme or reason for my own jitters. I’ve had butterflies when mine was the only dog entered in the breed, but have also felt completely calm the times I’ve competed in Best in Show rings.
What the heck?
I became so fed up with what amounted to stage fright at one show that I bought a bottle of Rescue Remedy for myself an hour before entering the ring. I wasn’t sure which was worse: Surreptitiously chugging the stuff behind a dumpster, or cackling like a lunatic to myself at how bad this must have looked. The Rescue Remedy didn’t help, nor did my state of anxiety bode well for a promise I’d made to a friend to show his terrier at Westminster the following year. I’d never shown a terrier before, let alone at the Super Bowl of dog shows. What had I been thinking when I agreed to help him? I fretted over the promise for months - but when the time came, I strode onto the green carpet under the lights of Madison Square Garden with confidence and inner peace.
It was infuriating. Why couldn’t I be this calm in my own breed ring?
I came to recognize a pattern in the times I felt flustered going into a show ring. When I entered the ring at Westminster with my friend’s terrier and looked at the other exhibitors, I remember thinking, “Not my people, not my breed.” If we did lose, I had nothing to lose. Similar thinking went into my Best in Show experiences; I was showing an uncommon breed at a time it wasn’t getting much attention in group judging. In my heart, I felt I’d already won just by being among the seven dogs left standing at the end of the day.
If having nothing to lose was at the root of my nervousness, did this mean that I felt I had everything to lose the times I was nervous? And if so, what exactly did I stand to lose?
I’ve come to decide that for many of us, nervousness isn’t caused by fear of our dog being judged. It’s caused by subliminal fear over our being judged by our peers. If there is nothing so sweet as recognition among our own, surely the flip side is looking like a loser in front of that same group. At the risk of speaking “psycho-babble” with the psychology degree I just now gave myself, could nervousness equate to fear of showing vulnerability, and ultimately, risking rejection by people whose good opinion we want, if not value?
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As children, we perform for our families with confidence and boldness because we know that no matter how goofy we look, we’ll still be loved unconditionally. In the dog fancy, however, acceptance by our peers sometimes feels conditional upon the value of our dog. Put another way, everyone loves a winner. Some years ago, a dog I’d bred and showed did a lot of winning, and I privately marveled at the “friends” I was accumulating with every group placement. People I didn’t know would hang around or escort me to the show photographer and hold spray bottles or point out a misplaced foot. It was baffling – and seductive. Relatively speaking, I hadn’t been showing dogs as long as many people in my breed whom I respected. I had the remarkably good fortune, however, of recognizing that no matter how much my dog won, there were people who would always know more than I did, and that was humbling. If I hadn’t had this realization, however, if I thought my value hinged on my dog’s success, suddenly I’d have a lot riding on winning and it wouldn’t be about the dog anymore. Winning would be about me.
As discouraging at it was at the time, showing an uncommon breed kept me grounded since I probably walked out of more rings than I stayed in to collect a ribbon or rosette. I became philosophical about showing in group which probably accounts for the level of comfort I have in that ring now. The breed ring, however, is a different matter. It’s personal. Friends and not-friends are inside the breed ring or outside of it watching. To use a tortured analogy, the ad line, “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” is great if you don’t live in Vegas. But if Vegas is your home, you never escape what happens there. A breed ring is like Vegas. We remember what happens there. All of us.
Few of us mind losing to a better dog, but there’s no worse feeling than knowing that something we did or didn’t do kept a worthy dog out of the ribbons – and that will cause nervousness, too. If by now you’ve gotten the feeling that it’s all a vicious cycle, you’re right. Nervousness begets nervousness. How on earth do we break the cycle?
Different things work for different people, but I know what has never worked for me: Rescue Remedy, for one thing. Professional handler, George Alston’s suggestion to visualize also never helped, mostly because my vivid imagination conjured up images of me gliding around the ring with ease just before flying monkeys pecked at my head and tripped me causing my skirt to fly over my head and get snagged on my front teeth. Breathing exercises, meditation, singing a little song – these all failed me.
So what has been helpful? What might you consider trying to conquer your own heebie-jeebies?
- First, know that you’re not alone. How many of us are good at parallel parking when nobody’s watching, but when a spouse or in-law is in the car, we choke? Barbara Streisand couldn’t perform live for 27 years after forgetting some lyrics, and John Lennon was known to throw up before going on stage. That “game face” we see on a fellow competitor just might be the expression of someone beating back their own nerves. If misery loves company, know that some of your competition is nervous, too;
- Know what you’re doing in the ring. Being insecure or a little “fuzzy” on how to perform an “L” pattern with your dog only makes jitters worse, so try to eliminate surprises. Also, know what to expect from your judge. Show up early at a ring in which the judge is working and study how her or she runs it. Minimize surprises;
- As crazy as it sounds, don’t fight the fear. Start thinking of your anxiety as a sign that you’re amped up, not freaked out. Coupled with my next suggestion, embracing your edginess can be an advantage;
- The single most helpful suggestion I’ve ever gotten just might work for you, too; Handle your dog in slow motion. Nervous people tend to move like a bird: fast, jerky, and anything but fluid. It’s unattractive, makes your dog feel that you’re out of control, and feeds anxiety. Handling in slow motion admittedly feels goofy at first, but in reality, it causes us to move at a more normal rate of speed and can actually slow down our heart rate. This is especially helpful when setting up a dog for examination;
- Listening to an effective CD en route to a dog show is as helpful as having an “coach” in the car teaching you coping tools. “That Winning Feeling” is written by Jane Savoie, an U.S. Olympic dressage squad member, and while she’s an equestrienne, her techniques translate nicely into all competitive sports including dog shows. Dr. Claire Weeks’ “Pass Through the Panic,” is like having a kind and wise grandmother whisper in your ear. Her CD doesn’t target performance anxiety, but she speaks compassionately about how to overcome anxiety with tips that can work anywhere. And finally, a reader suggests “Positively Ringwise” by the late Patty Ruzzo. Patty was an obedience competitor, but her advice works well for any kind of performance anxiety, including public speaking and the conformation ring.
While George Alston’s “visualization” technique may not have been a good “fit” for me, his suggestion to eat mints was. Alston’s theory is that mints mask the odor of adrenaline which telegraphs our nervousness to our dogs. From a bit of additional reading, I learned that anxiety can put a bad taste in a person’s mouth, and that many people aren’t aware they had one until it’s suddenly gone. Perhaps a mint serves as an oral “cue” to our body that we’re no longer apprehensive. Chewing on a “curiously strong” Altoid is, to understate it, distracting, anyway. Chew through the contents of eight boxes of the stuff and you’ll have forgotten that you were ever even nervous. Also, that you ever had a tongue or mucous membranes in your mouth.
My final suggestion is not one I’ve tried but have read about. In a study that appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers discovered that athletes who clenched the fist of of their non-dominant hand (or squeezed a ball) before competition were less likely to “choke.” Why? Because in the case of someone right-handed, the left side of their body is controlled by the right side of their brain, and increasing activity in the right hemisphere decreases activation in the left hemisphere. Simply put: Squeeze a ball.
As a fan of owner/handled dogs, I’m saddened that too many people I know stay out of a show ring because of nervousness, if not abject terror. It’s hard to be encouraging if you’ve ever known what it feels like to be so terrified that you’re content to watch your dog from afar (or fake a heart attack on camera), but if there’s a chance that one of these suggestions might help – please consider trying it. Never, never, never give up.
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