We’re both happy for a chance to catch up on sleep and very sad that so many of our training friends have headed home after the seminar. We had 8 great days with many experienced dog people and so much enthusiasm for training.
The event has been good for me to get better at training, more motivated to work towards our competition goals, and to see how others are making their goals happen.
Griffin isn’t as tired as I am, but we did spend most of our seminar time playing and I know we’re both sore from the play. I’m giving him some rest from that type of activity and then we’ll be carefully and gradually increasing the amount of play. I have a lot to think about, many notes I need to go over, and many skills I need to practice without him before I try again.
Sometimes I think more about training than spending time actually training, but in the end it’s more efficient to do planning before starting a session. It’s good to look at the behavior as behavior, not what you think the dog is experiencing and working towards limiting any bias you may have.
We really miss everyone and spending all day training and talking about training. Even though I get more of that on the average day than most people, I very much enjoyed it and can’t wait for the next big seminar!
For Griffin’s birthday next month, we’re going to a reunion with his extended family that is also a field (retriever) training seminar. It will be fun to do something new and different and to see people and dogs that we read emails about every week but haven’t actually met yet.