Griffin’s relatives are very, very busy and it’s been an overall very successful year for “the family.” High level accomplishments in agility, obedience, field work, and tracking. In an email his breeder sent out this week, she talked a little about the “richness” that the dog sports and training and Read more…
We went to do demos and talk with people at a “Pet Care Day” event. It was held at a fitness center, and much to our surprise, we were inside rather than outdoors! Griffin, as always, was great. We didn’t have a lot of space and we did have a Read more…
This week we had a training group discussion about building enthusiasm and having it as part of your criteria for behaviors. I definitely intentionally do a lot of this. When Blaze was young, I was constantly trying to suppress his behaviors and enthusiasm, but I did learn to direct it Read more…
In basic training classes, this is one of the questions I ask about each of the problem areas. Example 1: Client: My dog jumps on me every time I step over the gate into that part of the house! But he doesn’t jump up on my husband!Me: How important is it Read more…
A week ago I took Blaze and Griffin to a run at an APDT trial. Blaze is not a young dog anymore and I gave him too much of a warm up. But, even without the bonus exercise (I’m not letting go of his leash!), we passed and I think Read more…
I heard about this book only about two weeks ago. I impatiently waited, and ordered it as soon as the website was up and running. My book arrived! The only drawback? It’s written in French. Lucky for me, I can read it well enough to get through…with Read more…
My usual fish treat recipe is great. Sometimes when I’m short on time and won’t be able to bake that long or preheat the oven…. I use the batter and cook it like pancakes. It takes much less time, flip them over after a minute or two and then Read more…
Most dogs can fairly quickly to get to this point in class. For some teams, it takes longer to get to the dog demanding work. The first things we look at are making sure the dog is comfortable (worried dogs have enough to think about other than work) and Read more…
As a completion for a 4-H grant we received last year, we’re working on creating a few guides to go along with the workshops we did. The one I’m most responsible for is titled “How to Solve Training Challenges.” In the guide, we ask a series of questions. Each question-category Read more…
SCAMPER is a problem-solving memory-device tool. I originally learned about it for other purposes, but it’s something I use every day in dog training without having to think twice. It’s easy to get into the same patterns of thinking instead of looking at all possible options available.S: Substitute: Obviously in Read more…