Occam's Razor and Agility

Okay, so you're probably thinking this is going to be a long, rambling and BO-RING blog post about scientific stuff.

Sorry to disappoint you. Well, some of you. The rest will be relieved to know it's fairly simple.

Occam's Razor (Or, Ockham, for the purists) states that, "If you have two theories, which, both explain the observed facts then you should use the simplest."

In other words, "When two options are presented and will have equal outcome, choose the simple one."

The term razor comes from the German "Ockam's Messer" which translates to "Occam's Knife" and refers to distinguishing between two theories either by shaving away unnecessary assumptions to get to the simple explanation.

This is my philosophy as an agility handler, if I'm honest. There's so much fuss in the agility community right now about all these fancy handling moves. Front cross, rear cross, blind cross, reverse flow pivot, the list can be endless.

I often joke my handling method is point and pray. I point at the obstacle and pray my dog does it. But there's more to it than that and a lot more factors. I'm disabled and unable to run very fast. So I had to add layering skills and rear cross confidence in my dogs' repertoire.

But the more I trial, the more I realize the handlers who do things with the most basics possible are the ones that excel. they scorn the "Style of the Week" handling fads and stick with what works for them. I'm not saying this is the best way, or the right one. But I think a lot of NQs and mistakes could be eliminated if we all went back to basics and stopped trying to do the nifty popular moves and stuck with the time tested and proven basics.

Why do a front cross if you can not do it and get the same result? Why do a reverse flow pivot if you can simply call the dog to you and push them away to the next obstacle?

Occam may have been talking science, but he could have been talking about any dog sport!

Until next time, folks.