MAC Trial
Well another one in the books. It was cold and snowy here the first day I arrived in Minnesota, well dah. It is Minnesota and it is February! A really well run trial. The girls from Omaha were up and I have to thank Brittney [...]
Back to the future
When Feature was a puppy I used to shape new behaviours with her all the time. One week I challenged myself to come up with a different, unrelated behaviour to shape each day for a week. That was fun. None of them were shaped to [...]
Crate Games, it is not just for breakfast any more.
Group shot of Crate Games graduates. I had small workshop here yesterday with 9, mostly adolescent dogs, and their handlers. It went quite well with a few "aah ha" moments and the odd "oh my" thrown in to balance things out. We [...]
Effective Transitions
Being sick sucks. I have been laid up for the last few days but today I think I have turned the corner (just in time, as I have a bunch of teaching coming up). This weekend there was a Chiropractic-Veterinary workshop at our place. That [...]
A New Goal for All of Us to Aim For
The trial I was at on Friday was a small one. There were two standard runs and in the second one, Feature was the only 26" dogs (video included below). However with this very small trial there where still 3 people (that I knew of) [...]
The Trophies are in a Box in the Basement
Here is a comment posted to yesterday's blog that I think is worth highlighting. It came in from Trish who asked: Wondering… as a handler that is ‘watched’ every time she competes - what pressure do you feel (externally or internally) to make each run [...]
Winning When You Lose and Losing When You Win
I got a note from a student recently that was thrilled with her performance at a weekend trial, earning her first ever "double Q" in an AKC trial, the first step toward her MACH, gathering a boat load of mach points in the process as [...]
Omaha, Nebraska, good times, but stay away from the organic diners:)
Well I just spent the weekend with a great group of Mid-Westerners in Omaha, Nebraska. Lots of laughing, it is always a bonus when you can have a great time when you go to help people with their dog training. It was an unusual training [...]
A Critical Key To Training the Running Contact?
I have had a few of you email me privately and one post to my blog why I thought a "fool-proof method of running contacts was unlikely." I don't pretend to have all of the dog training answers and I am not a pessimist about [...]
2×2 Weave Pole Training with a Food Only Motivated Dog
Now that there are so many of you excelling with the 2x2 process I thought I would answer a few questions that you have sent in about training dogs that are not toy motivated. First of all yes, this method works well with all dogs, [...]
Doggie Diction
I talk to me dogs. I don’t mean I talk to my dogs the way normal people do, saying things like -- ”yeah boy, get the stick”. I mean I talk to them like I expect, at any moment, they are about to answer back. I don't [...]
Running the "baby" dog
Well Feature and I had a chance to get to know each other better as a dog and handler team while we were in Florida. First of all, we worked together at camp for three days and then we had two weekends of trialing. I [...]
