Only a few weeks until our training friend Fanny Gott is here for a 2 day trial-prep seminar! We did the online class version of this a few years ago and loved it.
Rally:
We’ve been doing some trial prep for a change. Last weekend we did a rally fun match for our students/instructors. Our new provisional judge also got an opportunity for some judging practice.
I did some not so great things with Tonks and Viktor in the last year when we entered a rally trial without practicing with the signs setting out. As a somewhat experienced handler, I didn’t need the practice with the signs. But my young, curious dogs would have benefited from that. It wasn’t fair to them to have their first experience seeing these rally signs to be in the trial ring.
But that’s changing! We did a practice! Surprisingly, Viktor did horrible and Tonks did fairly well. On our second turn, I had Tonks do more of a training round where I focused on her attention rather than going through the course. Viktor did much, much better and heeled through most of the course with minimal barking. Now I need to decide if I enter him next weekend or not – ‘sacrifice’ the first run with lots of treats (disqualifying) to minimize barking and distraction and then likely have a better second round? Or wait until he’s more experienced?
I found it very helpful and I hope we’re able to do more of this!
Golden Retriever Working Certificate:
The golden retriever club has a somewhat instinct test for field work. Two of Tonks’ siblings passed recently (13 months!) and one of Viktor’s two siblings passed last spring (18 months!). Viktor and Tonks are nowhere near ready, but once I know they’ll happily return with an item this will be easy!
Old picture. Griffin’s grand-sire Goose. They look very similar!
I took Griffin to a practice yesterday – I thought he was either very close to being ready for the test or very, far away. Happily enough, he was very good despite being much less experienced than the other dogs present. Most of the group either trained dogs for others or had spent time training with a professional retriever trainer (some of the dogs had spent time away for training). It was also fun to see an aunt of Viktor run – very similar looking and in personality. There was also a dog very, very like Tonks in appearance and behavior but unrelated.
Griffin needed a short warm up on ducks as he’s only had two very short experiences with them in the past. After 1 minute of warm up he was then happy, even on new ducks. He did his first longer distance retrieves on ducks. He did his longest marks ever. He saw wingers (machines that fling the ducks!) , plus the noise of fake-guns. He wasn’t interested in visiting the people nearby (a problem 2.5 years ago last time we tried this!). He immediately came back!
We have a few things to work on but really, it was quite awesome given how little training he’s had and how long it’s been since he worked on this. I’m so, so happy! We’ll likely be entering the test next month with a reasonable chance of passing.
“Real Practice” On this theme of trial prep/preparing for the ‘real thing’, we’ve also added in an intermediate level manners class at the training center. Two of the four modules are “real life scenarios” and “distractions.” I’m looking forward to having our students work on those things!