Moving into our last day of Critical Elements camp, I am a little sad to see it all end. It is so much fun being a student and we have such a great group of students — we are all accomplishing a ton.
Of the four goals I laid out for Swagger and I before camp I would say we smashed three of them and are having progress with the last;
1)Swagger did find joy in all we have done at camp (and I expect today to be no different).
2) He was able to recall off of every dog and puppy we tried.
3) His value for staying at my side in both a walk and a jog is now amazing. I am so thrilled with this because it has seem to take a while for him to catch on!
4) And we are making progress on dampening his desire to bark in his crate when he can’t see me. It is however a work in progress that is for certain.
I think one of the things I like best about being a student (besides the obvious . . . getting to train my dog) is the fact I get great ideas about teaching. This time around was no different. We changed up the format a bit at camp and I love how it turned out. More time for experimenting and seeing real progress.
We added a “one minute” evaluation slot to every work station and then another couple of minutes after it to plan and re-structure if necessary, your work session. From my point of view it worked great! Will see what everyone else thought about it.
On another front, if you are a newsletter subscriber you will be getting a newsletter early Tuesday morning that will give you the first chance to sign up for my live webinar I will be presenting this Thursday. This may be the first of it’s kind, a live stream webinar, with a well know seminar presenter, that will all be complimentary for participants.
I will make this opportunity available to others via my blog and facebook later in the week, but will be giving my newsletter subscribers the first opportunity to fill the seats.
Doing this webinar is really just kind of like what I do here on the blog; sharing my dog training advise with all of you. The difference on Thursday is that I will be speaking live (with a slide presentation) plus I will be answer questions at the end of it all.
Should be fun. Of course we have only so much bandwidth so unless the “geeks in the know” can come up with something before Thursday, we plan on limiting participants to 1000. Soooo when you get your invitation please don’t sit on it, accept and sign up!
By the way, if you are not one of my newsletter subscribers you can sign up right here on the blog (box on the right hand side). More info about the webinar to come later in the week.
Today I am grateful that Swagger and I get another day of Critical Elements camp!
I am thinking that if I want to be as awesome as you Susan I need to start writing out my goals and recording my successess and progress. After reading this I wrote out 4 things Elvi and I accomplished at Critical Elements and it is amazing.
Without writing it out it is sometimes as if it did not happen and never goes into a memory of success.
it is sooooo wonderful to see Swagger grow up – so wonderful for me to learn as well…
and.. whenever things do not go the way I would like them to go, I just check in onto this blog, read some posts and sure enough I find myself smiling again 🙂
thanks Susan and everyone 🙂
Thank you for posting those pics of you and the Swagger on your facebook, Susan! His focus on you is awesome and I can see the joy in his face when he looks at you! I know your heart melts when he looks at you; as my BC does the same to me. Gosh, I’m so happy to be a part your IC Peeps so I can see Swagger grow up! :o}
Swagger looked great at Advances in Dog Training!!! The 1-mintute evaluation seemed to be helpful when I was there, got everyone thinking and talking!I had a blast, cant wait to come back for the next one with a dog!!
Thanks Susan!
1) So looking forward to the upcoming webinar Thursday.
2) Your latest photos are spectacular
3) Our club hosted agility competition this weekend. I watched every handler-dog team with my Recallers transitions student eye. This was an excellent exercise. Ultimately, it is to grasp what agility really is. I watched what happened in the holding area, at the start line, the team performance state, whether the flow of action ressembled an extension of recaller games in any way at all, and the transition out of the ring.
To clarify, one can see where transitions in all of the above are present or not. Without which, it looks like a futile exercise. Hope I’m making my feeling clear…
That has been so heartening to read re: your goal No.3 and being at your side…my puppy too who is same age as Swagger has seemed to make hard work of RZ, I can now go back to the drawing board with renewed enthusiasm. Thank you Susan…..
Sounds like Swagger has had a great time, and learned a lot. I look forward to getting the newsletter!
Looking forward to the Thursday Webinar.
On Recallers 2, had a small problem with the proper place to post questions to be answered during the webinars. Thanks for help with this.
Early Tuesday morning….that means Tuesday evening in Australia. I’ll be checking my email 🙂
A one minute evaluation slot is very helpful. My young boy is very forgiving if things aren’t going well but that’s no reason to take advantage of his willingness to work through my poor preparation. I need to take that one minute evaluation step to heart.
lol Denise I was just calculating what time it would mean here too!
Susan, I have a question for you. Do you think dogs can be autistic? Or do you think it’s all a matter of training? (no nature, just nurture)
As a prior participant, I like the idea of the one-minute evaluation slot to re-think my plan and have another go at it. So much to be learned from the re-work. I’m anxious to hear what these participants thought about it.
You and Swagger are looking SWELL 🙂