The DC trip I didn’t really write about.
I’ve been reading dog things online for a long time. Many of the blogs I used to read no longer updated or are now more businessy than sharing/recording training.
In the last year I’ve also started reading some horse blogs – and what I’ve found is that the horse blogs are much more entertaining/informative. Many of those people train and compete with their horses, though a few are professionals. They document their training, lessons, general care, new equipment, and show results. They share the successes and not so successes.
Training my dogs that I don’t write enough about.
There aren’t as many dog training blogs that do that – I think some people have moved to facebook/other forms of sharing and I’m not sure why else? Once you’ve seen a few dogs learn to do a trick it’s not as exciting? Desensitization and counter conditioning updates aren’t very eventful? I’ve only seen a few dog blogs that are regularly updated with details on the training choices, successes, and struggles. It’s a bit puzzling to me! I want to read more about what people are actually doing – both those who do a lot of training and activities and do it quite well, as well as those beginner training enthusiasts – when I come across those blogs I get a lot of insight into what my students/clients may be thinking/doing/struggling with, etc.
That time I traveled really, really far away and didn’t write much about it.
I used to share more about my day to day training and at some point I reluctantly moved my blog onto my ‘business’ site on the recommendation of a business person. That’s great for putting traffic to my website – but the challenge is that the audiences don’t usually match up. I primarily teach pet clients/behavior. I primarily (want to) write about teaching, competition training, and things that are not pet dogs/behavior. And the result is that I don’t post as much as I used to. I have to think through how useful it may be to clients who read it or if the competition focus may turn them away or if posting about my challenges maybe isn’t something to share. For about six months I’ve intended to post a lot more about our regular training and teaching – but I just haven’t done it. Hopefully this will be my motivation to do so!
KPA things that I never wrote about.
What dog training blogs do you read? What do you find most interesting to read? Why can’t I seem to find what I want to read?
6 Comments
Carol Schmitt · February 28, 2015 at 1:01 am
I think you are right, that people have moved to Facebook “Groups” like Shade’s Fenzi course group. I learn most from watching videos of amatures and Professionals alike in their training successes and oopsies. And it’s reassuring that I’m not the only one making mistakes☺️Your competition blogging is inspiring as I probably would never get to that level but love the beauty of it!
afmd7525 · February 28, 2015 at 1:11 am
Great comment!
I’m barely anywhere with our competition training/participation despite working at this for a very, very long time. It wouldn’t be unrealistic for you to get to where we’re at now – I can definitely see either (or both!) of your dogs doing rally later this year!
Laura, Lance and Vito · February 28, 2015 at 1:34 am
What horse blogs do you read? I don’t know much about horses and never thought to look at blogs. But I love training blogs!
I feel like my blog has become more of a trial record, and then puppy notes. I should start writing about the others obedience training and tricks again. Mainly I just write for me, but it’s so nice to be able to look back and see what we were doing and what we still need work on!
afmd7525 · February 28, 2015 at 2:16 am
Yours is pretty much the only one that has obedience things and is regularly updated (even if it’s not always about obedience) – the few obedience ones I’ve found/used to read are not updated anymore. You post a lot of training stuff and I really enjoy that!
Horse ones – I start at this one that is someone who does clicker things: http://rdxhorses.blogspot.com/ – she wrote more about the clicker work before and that’s what caught my interest. Now I click on various other blogs from there. It’s a bit different from the dog blog world in a lot of ways.
Blog notes are kind of for me – I keep rough notes on all training but some of it’s not as meaningful later because it’s such shorthand and not efficient to search through and I don’t note some of the cute things and narrate my thoughts as much as when I blog.
Fanny · February 28, 2015 at 8:57 am
I’ve been thinking a lot about why it’s hard to blog like I did 10 years ago. I think that one reason is the pressure to be professional, but I also know that blogging is what made me a professional at one point. I wish I did share more, because I think it would be good professionally.
Another reason is that things now are neither as black/white, nor as dramatic as they were 10 years ago. I would say that I’m less sure of a lot of things now than I was when I was a new clicker trainer (but still with years of experience in dog training). It’s strange, because of course I know more now. It’s also professionally bad to not be sure of everything. With “dramatic”, I mean that the things that were a big deal to me in training and raising dogs 10 years ago aren’t really a big deal now. They might be to others, but that makes blogging more like teaching and less like sharing your journey.
It’s not that I’m not still learning and experimenting. I don’t know if I’ve thought this through yet, and I have been thinking for five years…
afmd7525 · February 28, 2015 at 2:55 pm
The “professional” thing is hard and a big part of how I limit things.
Think about it more!
Comments are closed.