Michele and I had the privilege to spend our evening with Grace Heck (houndsofheck.com) and Stefanie Rainer (stefanierainer.com). These two women are not only sparkling stars in the agility ring but they are spreading sparkles around our community with their Power of Positivity Fundraiser (and T-shirts).

The dog training world has taken a huge hit in the pandemic. Not only were the mats rolled out from underneath all of the competitors but the trainers were left without students, without income and without the ability to pay their huge overheads on facilities, or just pay the mortgage on their homes. While the news has toted tails of loans and unemployment benefits, they're not easy or even possible to get for many sole proprietors, the typical business structure of your favorite agility trainer. 

So Grace watched this happening to her friends and training colleagues, the struggle, and fear of losing everything. Fortunately, with a fulltime job unrelated to agility but certainly related to positivity in the pandemic, Grace with the help of Stefanie decided they had to do something. 

They began the Power of Positivity Fundraiser where students like you, nominate your instructor and students like you with family and friends support your agility instructor through donations, shirt purchases, contacting larger companies, however you can to help these beloved teachers survive the fall. 

Listen and learn how they came up with the idea, how Stefanie is the prime example of an instructor with no income or way to obtain unemployment and how you can help. 

Our sport is in jeopardy to even hold trials again but you can't enter a trial if you haven't been training. While in our next episode we will discuss what you can do at home to keep your skills and your dog's skills sharp, nothing competes with what you gain from your trainer.  We know trials are a far cry ahead, but as many states start to slowly reopen and small dog training classes make the cut to resume, we have to make certain we help our trainers so they can come back in to show you how to be the best handler.

P.S. When you listen to the podcast, the first person from a West Coast state that drops a comment on our FB page under the post for this episode gets a free T-shirt from Startline Pod. Get listening, get supporting, get nominating.