A few weeks ago Griffin and I helped the training center at a giant pet expo. We did 3 “show” a day in the main ring and then talked to pet owners about training for the rest of the day. Griffin, a dog who has a hard time ignoring people Read more…
A year ago Blaze finished his Level 1 (APDT) rally title. Last November he finished his Rally Novice (AKC) title. That left us with not much else he could do while on leash. We still could try UKC rally or tracking and non-titling AKC subnovice classes. Blaze has an abnormal Read more…
We helped to host an APDT/WCRL rally trial last weekend. It was a great experience and even though we were new to hosting a trial and most of our workers had never been to a rally trial before. It was actually much easier than I thought it would be! I Read more…
At the Ohio 4-H Volunteer/Teen Conference last weekend I helped with a few presentations and led one on “Foundation Skills.” I wrote about it a while back (and here). I was fairly happy with the end result. We talked about body language of excited, relaxed, and stressed dogs. We Read more…
Update from the future – this page gets a lot of views – what prompted you to search for this book? Send me an email – afmdog@gmail.com. I heard reference to this author being a good resource on nutrition and conditioning information for sporting dogs. Through an online search, I found Read more…
This book has been on my table for a year now. It’s a giant book with chapters on everything from cars to noises to muzzle training. There are chapters on almost everything that a dog could be nervous about and chapters on all the training and management strategies/tools that a Read more…
Blaze is now 12 and not too different from before. He’s a little slower, but still faster than me. He’s starting to loose his hearing and sometimes needs help getting into the car. But I still have to manage his life to keep him safe. People who have puppies or Read more…
This comes up regularly in class. Ultimately, many people decide to just let their pets up. If the concern was hair, they get washable covers. If the concern was injury for a small or older dog jumping on and off, they get those little stairs or put a nice Read more…
Griffin and I are taking a Field Trial Foundations class and we’ve only done about 4 weeks so far. The first two lessons have been exactly what we need for obedience… relaxation and steadiness! There really aren’t many option for people seeking positive reinforcement training for field work, most attempts Read more…
Part 1 from last year. Some notes about the system I was using at the time. And another short post about computer and paper records. Training records can help a trainer monitor progress over time and be more efficient in training sessions. I’ve been reworking some of my record keeping system Read more…