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Foundation Class Countdown

Just four days left before we start the second round of our new and improved Foundation Class online. We’ve been very happy with the class, and the feedback we get from our students shows that they are too. Here are some comments that we got from our American student Sara Pisani, who now has gone on to take our preparing for trials obedience class:

“I loved the Foundation class and if I was not so busy working with you on the next class I would take it again. What I most liked and what really changed work for Finn was the station for breaks during work. It really increased his drive. I also really loved the switch command. His retrieves are so much faster! Of course, the backwards heeling has really helped as well. Your feedback – both of you – has been spot on and greatly appreciated. Thanks so much and looking forward to continue to work with both of you!”

There’s still room for more people in our Foundation Class. Read more and sign up here

Here is a picture from yesterday. As you can see, we still have very mild weather – no snow or ice. I love it! One of my goals for 2014 is to get my dogs out more in civilization. We mostly hang out on the farm or in the forest, and they really need to get to see more of the world. I guess our Italian tour will help too.

Squid and Epic

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! It’s going to be a good one, I hope. I’m finally starting to see the end of the rest and rehab tunnel that both my dogs have been in for the past months. I really, really hope that they will be able to get started with some serious agility training when we spend February in Italy. I am also waiting for my new puppy to come into this world. If all goes as planned, puppies by Epic will be born in a month from now.

I also look forward to going abroad to teach this spring. First out is a seminar in Wrocław, Poland in January. It’s my first time in Poland, and I really look forward to it. When I get back from Poland, I will pack my dogs in the car and start the long drive to Italy. In Italy, I will teach at least two seminars (one in Onigo and one in Rome) and try to get a lot of training done with my own dogs in between.

Italy Seminars

When I get back from Italy in the beginning of March, I hope to have dogs that are ready to compete again. My eyes are set on agility try-outs for EO and World Championship in the beginning of May. Please keep your fingers crossed for my amazing dogs. All I want is for them to be healthy and strong this year. The rest is easy! In the beginning of April, I hope to welcome my new puppy to our home. After the try outs, I will go back to the U.S. and PosiDog in Ohio for another 10 days of seminars with some of my favorite people!

PosiDog Seminar

Thomas will also have a hectic spring, where he is training Paxa (german pointer) for mountain hunting trials in the beginning of spring, commuting to Norway to finish his masters degree in ethology, training border collies for herding trials and helping 40-50 lambs into this world.

On top of this, we always strive to bring our online students quick and helpful feedback. Every day. Next online class is our Foundation Class, starting on Wednesday January 8th. This class is good for anybody that wants to know more about our way of training. Here is a video made by one of our students from this fall – Lise Pavard with aussie Lulla:

We’re also at lesson 2 with our class “Obedience – Preparing for trials“. It’s so much fun! You can still join us if you want to give your dog a boost before the trial season begins.

New Online Classes

We will offer a few different classes this winter. We asked you what theme you wanted to work on for a month, and many people wanted to do heelwork, so we will offer a month of all aspects of heeling for those of you that want to focus on that. Class starts on November 18th and you can post as many videos as you like for us to comment on during a month.

We are also offering a brand new class, that will help you prepare for obedience trials. Obedience trials are about so much more than just teaching the dog to perform exercises. Teaching the behaviors and exercises is approximately half the job. This class covers how to prepare for trials. You don’t need to have all exercises trained to perfection to enter this class – it’s great training even for young dogs. Class starts on December 9th.

Our new Foundation Class was a huge success and a lot of people have asked us to do it again. The new Foundation Class includes more skills and cover some aspects that the first version of the class didn’t. We really love teaching it and look forward to helping new students teach their dogs great skills. There is also an option for old students to repeat the class at a discounted price. Class starts on January 8th.

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Help us decide!

We consider setting up a new one-theme online class in November-December. Last year we did heelwork in October and November, and retrieving in January. In our one-theme classes, we present a lot of material and different games that will help you teach a certain exercise or behavior. Then you have a month to train, where you can submit as many videos and questions as you like in the classroom. You can also join as an observer, and have access to all videos and all discussions without posting videos of yourself.

Now for the question: What theme(s) would you like us to focus on this winter?

You can answer in the comment section below, or on our Facebook page

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Field Trial and hunting capercaillie

Working cocker Kat has been to her first field trials. First she passed the retrieving test on water which is required for spaniels to enter field trials. In this trial the spaniel has to show steadiness to the shot and a thrown retrieve on water. The dog should be able to see the game in the air, but it should fall into reed so the dog cannot mark exactly where it lands.
Little Kat (<10kg) picked the duck up by its wing, but delivered perfectly to hand.

Skärmavbild 2013-09-23 kl. 14.33.29

The next day she entered her first field trial (on pheasants). This trial was a beginners trial where no birds are shot, which I think is a nice introduction to trials for young spaniels. Kat was the first dog out. We started in quite rough cover for a young dog and I helped her a little with discrete hand signals to go into cover in the beginning. But soon she got going and she hunted along nice and tight with great speed and true cocker style with hardly any whistling from my part.

There were no game in this piece of ground, but after a short break we got into the “hot area”. She got a little sticky on some fresh scent, but soon added even more speed to her hunting and I needed to turn her on the whistle a few times. She flushed two pheasants and was steady to wing and shot when I blew my whistle. To play it safe, I walked up close to her when a third pheasant flushed.

The last part of the trial was two thrown retrieves which she did perfectly.

Kat got the following scores (on a scale from 1 to 5 where is best):

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Hunting drive 4, Hunting pattern 4, Speed and style 4, “Will to please” 5, Steadiness 3 (whistle and body language), Reaction to shot 4, Marking ability 5, Will to retrieve 4,  Grip 5 (soft and balanced), Overall impression 5.

The week after the trial I spent in the forrest hunting capercaillie and black grouse with the german pointers and cockers. We had a wonderful week.

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There are still some working spots available in the Field Trial Foundations Class.
We have just started on lesson one, so join us now.

 

Retrieving trial for pointing gundogs

Thomas’ young German wirehaired pointer Paxa participated at a Norwegian retrieving trial for pointing dogs last week.

She did very well and got a first price both days. Day 2 you got full score both on land and on water and the judge wrote:

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“Paxa does a perfect retrieve on water” and “Paxa does a perfect retrieve on land”.

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The retrieve is essential not only in trials, but also to get all shot game back, even runners. It’s also great fun to train. A well trained retrieve opens up a lot of new possibilities for you to use the retrieve as a reward in steadiness training.

Steadiness, retrieving and a lot more is covered in the online class
Field Trial Foundations starting September 2nd.

New and Improved Foundation Class!

After two years of foundation classes online, we’ve found that we want to make some improvements for our next class. Mostly, we just found a lot of things that we wanted to add. Instead of having one theme per lesson, we’ll try to cover more behaviors and mix from different themes in every lesson. This makes this class much more than a Foundation Class. It’s the perfect opportunity to learn how to teach the behaviors that make our training fun and unique, like:

  • Getting your dog to love tugging
  • The “switch”-game with two toys
  • Picking up objects fast
  • Shaping skills
  • Holding positions until release
  • Reversed luring
  • Send to station and wait
  • Turn around and run to reward
  • Backwards walking to teach heeling
  • Rear end awareness
  • Around the pole game
  • Nose touch to hand
  • Nose freeze to hand
  • Jumping stand
  • Foundations for retrieving
  • Go outs
  • Stand to down to stand with paws still
  • Adding cues and stimulus control

Class starts on August 7th. Read more and sign up here.

Agility Foundation Training With Win

Squid has to rest from training for a while. She was lame last week and although she looks fine now, after more than a week of rest, I will not let her do any training until I’ve got her checked up thoroughly. My local vet took a long look at her earlier this week and we took x-rays of back and toes, but we didn’t find much. Next step is a visit to a physiotherapeut on Monday.

In the mean time, I’m glad that Thomas has got so many nice dogs that I can train. I do some agility with his cockers, but right now I really feel like I want a third border collie to run, so I’ve started some foundation training with Epic’s sister Win. She’s a very nice dog and easy to train. Works with enthusiasm, but relaxes well when I run Epic. Here’s a video of our session today. We had five sessions for a total of 12 minutes, and I have compressed into a three minute video:

Keep your fingers crossed for Squid!

Obedience Class III – Metal Dumbbell Retrieve

My plan was to finish my series of videos of where we’re at with the exercises in class 3 by the end of December, but here we are in the beginning of May with three more exercises to cover. I’ll show a video of our metal dumbbell retrieve today. We can finally train on our field again, as the snow is gone and grass is starting to grow there. Squid was very reluctant to grab the metal dumbbell, but she will do it now and she has done the full exercise. I focus on speed in both picking up and running back to me at the moment. I will try to train all parts, but keep focus on speed to get a really, really fast retrieve.

Foundations for down from heel

When working with our online obedience class, I realized that I didn’t have a video that shows how we teach stand/sit/down from heel. We’ve done it for years, and I think that most people in Scandinavia is familiar with the process, but I found that it’s very new to a lot of people from other parts of the world. So, here’s a video showing part of the process (the part that might seem most weird). It starts with a offered down, so it’s important that the dog can offer behaviors without any help from us. We then start to walk slowly backwards and want the dog to follow and then offer a down. We gradually increase speed until the dog can do a nice backwards heel (which means that we sometimes have to reward the dog for just following to) and offer the down.

Questions?