It’s surprisingly hard to find large jingle bells. A few years ago I really wanted some so that we could do holiday-themed tricks during part of a December group class. After four craft stores I was finally successful and we had fun teaching the dogs to nose target the bells. Read more…
Long seminars are the best kind of training seminars. In 2-3 days you just barely get to understand the material, you maybe make a bit of progress, you start to get work done, and you start to get to know the presenter and attendees. Then everyone goes home. At longer Read more…
Occasionally our agility class will take a field trip to let the students see agility in real life. This gives them a chance to see what happens at trials, how the set ups work, how the rings are run, what the ring stewards do, and what agility actually looks like Read more…
Griffin needs to be able to be sent across the ring, past jumps, in the third level of competition obedience. We haven’t done any practice with a ‘real ring’ set up since spring. And surprisingly, his session looked really good. I really like his sharp turn when I ask for Read more…
It seemed like a good idea to do a day of agility and then a day of rally – and while the dogs thought that was great, it wasn’t the best for me. Last Friday we left at 5:30 to head down to Cincinnati for a CPE agility trial. Some Read more…
This has been one of my busiest summers. We went to several seminars, traveled to teach a camp, did some puppy sitting/training, taught many classes (mostly new topics!), went to an agility trial, trained my dogs a lot, and helped with the 4-H program at the local and state level. No Read more…
I’m back to teaching agility classes and I’m so happy to see some of my past students again. For the most advanced level class, we’re playing with having a ‘theme’ for three weeks so that we can really build on the skills. Our current theme is ‘distance’, and specifically working Read more…
5 years! It seems like I’ve had Griffin forever, but it also doesn’t seem too long ago I was driving across New York to meet him. In the last year we’ve done our first few agility trials, started and completed a rally trial, moved to off leash rally, did obedience Read more…
We’re almost done with our second go-around of this class and it’s one of my new favorites! I pulled self control related activities from basic class, agility class, and a few other activities. Most of the dogs taking the class have already had some (or a lot) of training, making Read more…
Luna’s now (approximately!) 9 years old. She’s been learning new tricks, getting extra treats, and stealing all the food puzzle toys from the other dogs.