When I went to Minnesota last week to take the dogs to the rehab vet specialist we also did a Canine Good Citizen(CGC)/Community Canine (CGCA )test to raise money for my friend’s foster dog and his veterinary expenses. We had six people and seven dogs participate and a group of Read more…
Something interesting happened after the post. We hosted a WCRL rally trial on August 23rd. Griffin is not allowed to be running yet so we did the Level 1 (on leash) class. I haven’t been training him on any of these skills because he’s not supposed to be moving very Read more…
I read this blog post today, “Perfection in Training” which is about taking a realistic look at the situation when a dog is ‘perfect’ in training but not in competition (or real life – I hear it a lot in basic manners classes). When I work with students/clients I often Read more…
We went to Minnesota again to visit the excellent rehab vet and help our friend Megan with a work project. The travel went well and once we actually left, the traveling was more relaxed than our first trip. We attempted to stop at state parks in Wisconsin but apparently you Read more…
In the past I rarely used a dog to help with demonstrations. Concerns: Part of it was that my dogs weren’t really appropriate (Blaze – unpredictable/impulsive, Luna – nervous, Griffin – not trained in manners), part of it is that my dogs weren’t trained to be calm and present until their Read more…
My first few attempts at this post were 5x longer. Even with only one flight experience I learned a lot. Read more about our adventure here. In the past I had said I would absolutely never fly a large dog – it was probably too dangerous and stressful. Now I’ve Read more…
Griffin has been on restricted activity all month. We managed to still do a lot of training – it just was the things I should probably do rather than the things that are more fun to work on. It’s been hard to not do the sequencing and trial prep we Read more…
Last weekend we had Dr. Julia Tomlinson come to present to us about dog health and ‘sports medicine’ type things. She was an excellent at presenting and interacting with all of the the people and dog attendees. She’s also very enthusiastic about her topics and that made everything even more Read more…
Friday was “Take Your Dog to Work Day.” There’s a nice picture of Blaze and Griffin at work with their friend Marsh. My dogs think that’s great. They get to go to work with me most of the time. When we go teach lessons they sometimes go with our car Read more…
Before our spring adventures we found out about an injury that Griffin has had for a long time. We elected to wait to do treatment until our after planned activities – otherwise he would have had to stay home doing nothing. After seven weeks of travel and learning and extensive Read more…