Blaze: A track. It was short, we went across some brushy areas that normally I walk around. He only hesitated a bit, checking other options before going through. We also had two places where we crossed a road, and he seemed to do fine there. It almost seemed too easy. Read more…
Let’s see what happens over a week of training. Every week is a bit different, but it’s good to check in and see how time is being used and if training sessions are actually productive. Blaze: – 1 track in the yard. He did well, I don’t know if I’m Read more…
We’re getting into a nice pattern of working at home, in town, at training group, and after classes. It’ll be easier once I have my crates set up in the car better and I can take multiple dogs, but for now we’re doing okay rotating dogs. Thursday night I worked Read more…
That’s the 4-H motto. Today I was at the Ohio 4-H Volunteer Conference. About 1000 adults and about 700 kids. That’s a lot of people. There were educational sessions and a big lunch-awards thing. In the morning, as part of the state dog committee, I helped with a presentation on Read more…
Last week we had our first 2011 practice with our club. We had 6 members attend (out of, I think 8?) and had a fabulous time. Typically on the first night, with not having worked the dogs in this environment (if at all) since early August, the dogs are a Read more…
Griffin is being taught to indicate a specific odor. And we’re having a REALLY hard time teaching this. It’s like a dog that only knows verbal cues…. visual cues are hard because they think nothing else will provide any sort of signal. Griffin doesn’t really understand that scent can be Read more…
On Saturday at a 4-H conference I’ll be doing part of the dog program talk…. specifically the agility games (fullhouse and wildcard) and rally part. The agility part I think is well done, we talk about the requirements and then look at course maps that are color-coded to help us Read more…
This book by Darcy Morey is now my favorite history-of-dogs book. It took me months to get through it, the book is a compilation of a ton of research projects done all over the world. And it’s not in the most easy-to-read format. There are parts about the different theories Read more…
This is the list of the activities we use in class and the typical order. Sometimes the order changes based off of previous training history or how the dog is responding. Collar Holds: We want this to be very good before we put it with any of the other recall Read more…
At vet conference, during one of Ken’s talks, there was a bit of a talk on recalls. He showed videos of the dogs in his “Pet Training the Shedd Way” show. They had great recalls, their buzzer sounded and the dog would careen around the facility in search of the Read more…