For the past almost-two-weeks we’ve had Fanny here for an obedience seminar. It was great, we had so much fun and I’m very happy with all the training I accomplished with Griffin. We had quite a few people who were able to attend most of the 10 days (a day off in the middle – I trained with others on that day though) and most of the attendees were people we see a few times a year. It was great to work with such an experienced group of dogs and handlers.
Some of the days had special themes (self control, motivation, shaping, sequencing/ring prep, planning) and we had a day for repeat attendees only. The lectures were excellent and prompted great discussion. The dog work was really great – a variety of skills, measurable progress in all the dogs, and many teams were able to see -huge- amounts of progress. In a 2 day seminar you start to understand or make progress and then everyone goes home, but here we were able to do so much, challenge the dogs, and build off of what they learned. It was an amazing working environment and probably my favorite seminar yet.
Griffin and I got to do more work on some of the skills we’ve worked on last month and we started a few new projects.
- Scent articles: We’ve started on the leather articles (our training last month was wood) and adding in a temporary non retrieve behavior (nose target).
- Down from stand: We have a higher success rate for still paws and more obvious weight shift backwards.
- Group stays: One day we had 5 dogs – the other 4 with ring experience. Griffin was the least experienced and didn’t break.
- Distraction training: On one day cookies (as in chocolate chip cookies – not “dog treats”) were offered to anyone who could get him to break. On another day I was threatened to make cookies if my dog was distracted.
One of the themes for everyone was “balance.” In dog-training-vocabulary that often has a negative connotation to positive reinforcement type dog trainers and a good connotation for the average person reading about dog trainer services. It’s one of the best words to describe what we need from our dogs, whether it’s pet dogs or sport dogs. We need a balance of go and stop, close to the handler and away from from the handler, control and independence, and more. Many training challenges happen when there isn’t a good balance. A perfect balance is not quite something that happens – we have to work at maintaining the balance. This is one of the things I like about Griffin, in most aspects of training he is very balanced and the way it feels to handle him in those situations is just so nice. He’s aware of the possibilities, but open to take direction and go/do what I ask. He’s eager and ready – not passively waiting – but also not just guessing or getting worked up.
Another theme was challenging the dogs. Some of the activities or variations we have heard before and I’ve been too scared to try and I got new ideas on ways to challenge the dogs. Some errors tell us that we are providing challenge and not making the activity too easy. More challenging tasks and variations help us progress.
It was good to see some of our far away friends and meet a few new people. It was great to spend so much time focused on training and all the silly things that happen when you’re spending all day with the same people for so many days. It’s kind of like summer camp – you’re together all day for days…and then everyone goes home. Except this lasted much longer and we’re eager to do our training and make progress before the next seminar – as well as to see and hear about the training and trial successes of the other teams.