During my trip I got to see many different dog activities and training. Here are few notes about what we did, learned, and observed
Sheep relaxing
Herding: Early on in my trip I was at a herding seminar. The dogs made amazing progress in two days, it was impressive how the training progressed – part of it was a great presenter and experienced attendees, but it also was dogs that had the genetics and interest. One evening a few people stayed after and the experienced dogs were taken to a larger pasture to do some other training tasks. I’ve seen retrievers work at similar distances to how far these dogs were – and these dogs were responding to quiet cues. I truly believed we had to be louder so the dogs could hear over the grass and brush and their respiration – but apparently not.
On another day I got to go and watch Thomas teaching a short herding clinic for some club members, there were more varied dogs and less experienced handlers. I had to stop myself from getting up to teach the humans about flight zones – it seemed like if they had a better idea of what made the sheep move they would be able to better help the dogs learn! It was great to see the differences in the teaching compared to the seminar and how the activities and instruction were modified for the different audiences.
On many days I got to see the resident dogs training or moving the sheep between pastures (…or getting loose sheep back in). One day we had three people and two dogs taking ~20 sheep and lambs to another pasture. We walked them 1.5-2+ miles along small roads and past houses and farms to get to that area. One of the lambs got tired and I had to carry him most of the way. It was difficult to keep the sheep on track, they had other ideas about what would be enjoyable, but they were very happy to arrive at the destination.
Obedience: We did a lot of obedience training. Griffin was great! I tried to balance between working on skills (stand to down, heeling turns, scent discrimination, long stays) and trial skills (ring entries, me responding to the judge’s cues).
We did some practice in other locations, in the nearby town, in a bigger city, and at an area dog club. One day there was an obedience seminar/training day and that was excellent. Griffin did well, I was incredibly happy with his work. We also did two lessons with Maria Brandel – that was excellent – now I hopefully have a plan for scent articles and I got some good feedback on our stand to down.
Swedish/FCI type obedience is quite different from what we do in AKC, the basic elements are similar but the applications seem much more challenging. The performances are longer, often outdoors in open areas, and more skills are needed early on. It’s quite impressive – and especially to see young dogs doing so well with the tasks.
Agility: On the second day there we went to an agility trial at a beautiful horse arena. Note that the separation between the two rings is blankets over horse jumps and that one side of the ring is a line of horse jump bars on the ground! I noticed many more young kids and babies than I’ve ever seen at a dog event. Some toddlers were carried through the course during walk-through and one parent left her baby in a stroller right outside the ring during that time. Dogs would come out of the ring to get toys setting in the area between the two rings or be tugging while waiting for their turn. In the morning the electric timers weren’t working properly so stopwatches had to be used – it looked way more professional the the CPE trials I’ve been to where stopwatches were used! Two people were timing and they would move to be in line with the start and end jumps. Dogs could be rewarded on course with a toy pulled out of a pocket and some people made that choice if something had gone wrong earlier in the course – they would pick another area to reward. At the end of the day there was a short awards presentation and there were prizes for class winners (and maybe other placements?) – people snacks or dog snacks or toys or other things, the person would pick from what was set out. I was really impressed with how well the dogs and handlers did, I loved watching dog after dog run the same course (huge classes!) and too see so many success. I’ve watched European (“international”) agility livestreams for some big events and various individual runs on youtube, this style of agility seemed much more achievable seeing many different ‘regular agility enthusiasts’ on the same course. I wished I could get up and try parts of it! Fanny’s dog Squid finished her agility championship that day – so it was an extra exciting day.
Each week there was a drop in agility handling class at the farm and the first one (or two?) I just watched, but later on I felt more confident that Griffin would stay with me so we tried joining in. It’s such a different style of agility than what we’re used to and we just haven’t trained for pieces that were common and familiar for those students – back sides of jumps! Super difficult weave entries! Interesting 270’s! Griffin is technically on restricted activity so I didn’t work him much – I can’t wait until later in the summer when we can set up and revisit the challenges to train some of those skills. I did run him and we didn’t do that horribly – we just made poor attempts at some pieces or didn’t even try a few of the back sides or picked really inefficient handling so I could be in a better position to help him. With many other parts he did well and was putting in a lot of effort, I really liked how we was working. He had some handling pieces that were quite nice and there were some big sections of the sequences that felt comfortable.
A few times we watched groups or other people training and some of these were very, very experienced teams. It was great to see how they chose to structure their training time and what behaviors/moments they chose to reward. I’m very inspired to be training agility!
Field: We didn’t work on this much, but it was good to see the other dogs work and see where Griffin lacks some fluency. Again, the best part was watching the choices an experienced trainer (Thomas) made for setting up the session and when and how to reward his dogs. It’s so different from what’s typically done – even in the R+ attempts I see/hear about – yet it made a lot of sense.