Frustration at a new high!

So, I am not frustrated by dogs or even their handlers, I am increasingly frustrated by this Blog!!! I am so happy to see that people are enjoying it and even happier to get feedback that tells me that they are learning not only how to train certain behaviors but learning something as important as what kind of personality type they are working with. 

The problem is that my time is short and I have been really having a hard time staying current on updates of training progress, etc... 

So, last night after a long day of teaching I parked myself on my Hotel bed and wrote, and wrote, and wrote only to once again realize that the Hotels WiFi was essentially worthless and the blog was once again not auto saving. No worries I thought, i will just save the text as a document and import it later and send. 

Sounds great except that although I can pull up the file no matter what this computer illiterate tried it absolutely would not import to the Blog, more time wasted, so here I sit complaining and once I finish the complaining I will essentially rewrite what has already been written!

I will stick with it though because I have become rather addicted but I do need to stop wasting so much time with these doggone technical difficulties!!

Anyway on to brighter topics, 2 great days of teaching seminars in CT. I had a wonderful group of people and dogs who, most of which, I have had the pleasure to work with many times before. Because of the fact that I know these dog and handler teams quite well we were able to really dig deep into the handling process and go way beyond the basic front cross here, rear cross there handling philosophy.

Today in particular we really picked apart the whole course strategy and analysis process as well as dealing in depth with how use your training time in a manner that promotes success and reinforces what you want to see on the course on any given Sat. or Sunday.

I stressed the point that when training you need to be able to let go of the need to "do the whole thing" and be prepared to break whatever the exercise is into as many parts as necessary to insure that you are only accepting behaviors that you would be happy with on a competition course. 

Your primary objective as you walk on to the training field may be to negotiate a 10 obstacle exercise but for whatever reason you and/or your dog are having a terrible time getting the turn from 2 to 3 with the efficiency, collection and flexion that you want, instead of just making it work so that you can move on to obstacles 4 thru 10 you should stop there and work out the issues with 2 to 3. 

Once you have worked out the problems associated with this short sequence and rewarded the dog for their successes and your mistakes, and, you achieve an outcome that you would like to see on course you can move on to the next piece.

training is a dress rehearsal for the big gig and you need be prepared while training to stop more than you go. I stop and reward when I really like a behavior, I stop and reward when I make a mistake, I stop and reward after my dog works out a trouble spot, the moral of the story is I spend a lot of time rewarding, tweaking, training, playing, etc... the small pieces make up the big picture.

We talked a lot about the dogs trajectory over obstacles and how influential handler position is to setting the proper line for the dog. We worked on establishing proper lines and creating course flow that makes it appear that the dog designed the course. It was a great day!

We also talked at length about keeping an open mind to new ideas and handling options, as well as the importance of not becoming sedentary in your handling and continuing to hone your existing skills as well as learning and practicing new ones.

It is so easy to get to a point at the upper levels that you quit trying new handling maneuvers because you have developed a comfort level with the ones you practice and practice and practice.

If you allow this to happen you will ultimately paint yourself into a corner that you will not be able to handle out of, I don't know about the rest of you but I will never be willing to forfeit a run because I have not practiced all of the available handling options.  

So, with me and my dogs it is an ongoing quest to improve both mine and my dogs skills never believing for one moment that we have learned all that there is to learn. There is always room for improvement and there are always new skills to be sought after and perfected! 

Well, I am off to bed tomorrow I get a whole new group with a whole new set of skills to perfect :-)