Long seminars are the best kind of training seminars. In 2-3 days you just barely get to understand the material, you maybe make a bit of progress, you start to get work done, and you start to get to know the presenter and attendees. Then everyone goes home.
At longer seminars, you get to know everyone, the material, the routine, the concepts, and you are much more fluent in the training which makes you more successful practicing on your own at home. I understand not everyone can stay or commit for so long due to the cost of events/travel and the cost of not working and not everyone has flexible enough schedules to make it work, but after these experiences I’m just not satisfied with two day events!
We just finished our Fanny Gott seminar week/s. Last year we had 5 days of obedience but that just wasn’t enough so this year we had 4 days of obedience and 4 days on teaching/instruction. It was so valuable that we’ve already started planning for next year.
Even though we finished on Sunday, I finally just had a good night of sleep. Throughout the seminar and afterwards I had a very hard time sleeping as I thought about what we were learning and how I was going to apply it to my training and my classes. It’s going to take me a long time to sort through all of my notes.
It was a good working environment with enthusiastic attendees. Most of them had taken online classes with the instructor so we were able to jump right into training and spend more time training than explaining. It was very efficient and we got a lot more working time compared to some other events I have been to.
The instructors portion was really great, we spent the mornings on lecture and group work and the afternoons doing hands-on-instruction in front of the group. Client teams were brought in to help us (we have the best clients!) and it was fascinating to watch the sessions and the feedback. I’ve never been to an event like this, most seminars attract a lot of dog trainers but the themes are typically more of dog training rather than actual teaching. It was a very good experience and I enjoyed watching the teaching portions. I haven’t been taking my own dogs to classes for a while so I don’t get to watch as much teaching as I used to.
We’re so excited that plans are already being made for next year! If you are thinking about attending, I highly recommend taking her next online foundation training class to get the most value out of the seminar.