We’re attending a very long seminar with Guy Penning, an experienced clicker trainer from Belgium. Most of the attendees would like to compete in various dog sports and some of them are already competing. A quick summary of our learning: 1) Most of the problems are related to a poor Read more…
Last week I stopped at the used book store to get a few more copies of my favorite trick book to donate to a 4-H raffle. I ended up finding someone’s dog sport book collection and couldn’t -not- buy some of the books. I greatly respect Richard Curtis. He’s been Read more…
Obedience and agility are my areas of focus with Griffin. Sometimes we work on other things. One of those is field work/retriever work. It’s great to see him do what golden retrievers were intended to do and he loves the running parts and the water parts. We also don’t Read more…
This weekend was the Ohio 4-H Dog Expo. This is a yearly event that has been going on for a long time. I remember attending as a 4-H’er with Blaze 9 or 10 years ago. It was the first day I ever saw him get tired enough that he chose Read more…
This weekend was another great seminar. Shade Whitesel from WA. She successfully does Schutzhund and very much likes well done obedience. I appreciate that! She was exceptional with the very different types of people and dogs and while not all teams could work on precise what they wanted to do, Read more…
When I was going through the final stages of getting my school paperwork processed, one academic advisor laughed and with the most sarcastic voice possible, “French! That’s something you’re going to use!” By that point, I’d already completed those credits and it had been a requirement to have foreign language, not Read more…
One of my favorite nights of class ever, I had two very enthusiastic classes working on basic skills with no serious problems causing distressed humans. We worked on really challenging recalls, walking, leave its. And somehow came up with really great excuses for poor behavior. The best was “His previous Read more…
This book was on clearance when I was purchasing something else. I’m really liking the short single-topic books that Dogwise has been putting out. It makes things more readable, it’s nice to get an indepth look at one specific topic. And I feel a lot better about saying “Go and Read more…
My grandma died over 10 years ago and we’re still slowly and steadily going through her things. Under a pile of paper plates/napkins I found a set of paper dog placemats! They’re printed by a company called “Springprint” from Springfield, Ohio. I can’t find any reference to this design Read more…
Griffin’s training for eye drops was put into use last week when he had his annual CERF exam. CERF (Canine Eye Registry Foundation ) exams are a great opportunity for an eye specialist to look at your dog. For dogs that have had exams and the paperwork submitted, you can view Read more…