Seminar Review

The day started early- we were on the road at 5:45. It was sucky. lol. But it was a good day. :) The morning was spent mostly with talking about basic dog training and behaviour, and then she talked about some of the games she does as part of her foundation training. Mostly we talked about her version of the No Mugging Game. She does it a little different than what I am used to- actually giving the dog a verbal cue as permission to take the food from the hand, and breaking it down more to extinguish any mugging/bumping before the hand is even open. She also goes even further and works with the food on the ground quite a lot- again using a verbal cue to tell the dog to take the food. She had some good points about her reasoning behind this. We also talked about a game she teaches to help mulitple dog owners, or dogs that resource guard. She calls it the turn game. Using the dogs name to release only that dog, or allow that dog to take the food, the toy, whatever. It was interesting to watch her dogs- as soon as she said "Fido's Turn" the other dog noticeable relaxed and was okay with waiting for their turn...For a dog that is a resource guarder I could really see that working well. The afternoon was supposed to be distance- and I was hoping for some help with Pixel. She is just not super confident away from me, and my timing really bites. lol. It was very basic though so I didn't really get the help I was looking for. We talked first about the differences between Go On, Out, Left/Right, etc. And then she showed how she trains it. Really all she does is to teach the dog the equipment so well that no matter where it is the dog will find it. Once the dog will drive towards the obstacle no matter where it is and what your body is doing (nothing to start) then she will start adding in a physical cue. We each got a few turns to practice sending to tunnel on verbal only from across the room, and then from a chair, and then we did the same thing with a jump. Pixel was a rock star. Like I said, very basic. Still I am happy to have come away with a few new things to try. The thing with seminars is you never really know what you are going to get- it's a crap shoot. But I have learned to have an open mind, try new things, don't disagree (lol), and take what I like and forget the rest. :) On the plus side Brit was awesome on her first little road trip. She travelled well (although didn't sleep at all on the way there) and was great in the nw building with all the new dogs/people etc. She was able to work and focus right away, although was not interested in the toy at all. We still have much work to do with the toy drive stuff...