fannygott.com
fannygott.com

Advent Calendar 2011

Count down the days until Christmas with Fanny and Thomas at fannygott.com. We will share training tips, videos, recommend products we like and share stories about what’s happening here at the farm.

Today is the first day of December and I have embarked on my count down project – trying one new form of work out or training every day. This is probably my biggest weakness as an agility handler – I hate working out… I can train dogs for hours, but not my self. Trying one new thing every day will hopefully be a fun (and painful) experience and I won’t risk getting tired of anything. Maybe I’ll find a way to work out that I actually like. Today, I did the only thing I kind of know how to do – jogging. Shejpa and I went for an hour run and it wasn’t that bad… What kind of work outs do you like? Recommend them to me and I’ll try to get the chance to try them before Christmas.

I will keep you updated on my project, but this blog will mainly focus on dog training for the next 25 days. Today, I will share a video that shows two exercises that I use on my dogs to increase their strength as well as their understanding of criteria for stand, sit and down. Many things that we want our dogs to do, like a balanced sit with back feet under the body, standing absolutely still for a longer time or lying down without shifting weight to one side requires strength from the dog. This strength can be trained gradually by some easy exercises like the ones I show in the video. Working on an exercise ball is also great for increased strength. I do stand, sit and down on the exercise ball and work on the dog holding his feet still for gradually longer repetitions.

  • reply Ashley Dickerson ,

    I am very excited for this! Thank you very much for doing this!

    • reply December | klickerklok.se ,

      […] blogg har jag påbörjat en adventskalender där det blir ett inlägg om dagen. Den kan du följa här. Det här inlägget postades i Allmänt av Fanny. Bokmärk […]

      • reply Adventskalender | Foxterriern Harry ,

        […] har en adventskalender på sin engelska sida där man får en liten filmsnutt med tips på träning varje dag. Härligt […]

        • reply Eva Fabricius ,

          Hej!

          Nu skriver jag på svenska här. Ursäkta!

          Jag vill bara säga att det verkar vara jätte bra övningar, båda två som du visar på filmen. Jag bara undrar om du även lägger på kommandot “stå” när du “puttar” på hunden eller om du är helt tyst? Kan man förstöra något om man lägger på kommandot?

          Varma hälsningar från eva 🙂

          • reply Fanny Gott ,

            Eva is asking if I’m using a “stand” cue when I do the first exercise in the video. And if not, would it be a problem to use one?

            I don’t use a cue for this in the video. Most of the time I just let the dog offer a stand or I use a hand target to get the dog in position. The reasons are:

            – If the dog makes mistakes repeating the cue often feels like just nagging the dog, and can take away that great feeling I want my dogs to have when I ask them to stand.
            – I feel like the dog is taking more responsibility on his own when I don’t ask him to stand.
            – I can start this training even if I don’t have a stand cue
            – My stand cue is about an active behavior (the dog lifts his front feet from the ground and then plants them). If I’m using a cue, I’ll have to think about that criteria too which can make the training more confusing.

            Of course, I will sometimes ask the dog to stand and then test his understanding in different ways (like pushing and pulling), but by then I want the dog to have a much better understanding of it than Epic has in the video.

          • reply Eva Fabricius ,

            Thank you so much for your answer! I thought so!

            /// eva 🙂

            • reply Suzanne Nanninga ,

              Succes with getting in shape. I know there are exercises for mothers and baby, were mother use there babies as a weight or a target. Maybe you can use the dog for that. 🙂
              …for instance: do sit ups with a dog at or on your feet…. Might be a new youtube hit “doggy workout” 😉

              • reply Suzanne Nanninga ,

                When looking for exercises that you can do with a dog I came across an exercise that might be fun without a dog:
                – place 12 targets in a big circle (4-6meters).
                – start in the middle of the circle facing the 12 o clock target
                – let someone call numbers between 1 and 12
                – run a fast as you can to those numbers and back while keeping your body facing the same way. So 10-12, 1-2 forward, 3,4,8 and 9 side way and 5-7 backwards.
                – do this for 60sec. Then 60 sec rest and repeat 4-8 times (depending on your shape)

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