I am in Connecticut

What a pleasure it is to come to Connecticut to teach!I am very fortunate and get to come out to the fabulous East coast several time a year to teach. I get to work with the most incredible group of dogs and handlers. Today we worked on distance training in the morning and foundation in the afternoon.
The distance session was primarily

What would the perfect Foundation DVD include?

OK<>

If you could dictate the content, what would you like to see on your idea of a perfect Foundation Skills DVD? I know what I want to include but since my objective is to provide the information that the masses desire I am seeking input.

I will be looking forward to your replies :-)

So, we are back from Las Vegas! It was a truly great trip and we had a blast, but, I did have my fill of Vegas for a few years I am sure. We did get to see some great shows and I think hiked close to a hundred miles up and down the Las Vegas strip.

The whole idea of Vegas is almost other worldly, the people watching is incredible and the whole sort of lack of rules is quite amazing!

It is always nice to get home to the dogs though, well home in general! As I say this I am packing for a trial in New Mexico this weekend followed by about a month straight of road tripping to teach.

I will be sure to keep you posted on the weekends proceedings and most importantly, SoBe's dog walk performance :-)

So, please answer my inquiry about foundation stuff and have a most wonderful weekend doing whatever you love doing!

It was really hard driving home after going BLIND!!

What a fantastic opportunity I had, to work with German agility phenom Silas Boogk! I took a 2 day drive to have the pleasure of spending 2 days running like I have never run before, on courses that would have many running the other way! :-)

After being abused by Silas the fun continued with 2 more days with Linda Mecklenburg. Linda always makes you think and really evaluate your handling, criteria and overall "plan" for you and your dog, what an awesome 4 days!

Silas put forth courses that were like none I have ever seen, and I have competed overseas numerous times! I loved them :-)

We began the first morning by hearing Silas' training philosophy and then we were all to walk and run a 25 obstacle maze, I mean course.

After we muddled our way through the course utilizing what we felt were the best handling maneuvers for the situation, Silas spent about an hour explaining why "our way" was not the most efficient in most cases.

The reason for this is because we had the audacity to throw in a rear cross or two, more than enough "front crosses", and not many, well any blind crosses!

Silas is all about staying in front of his dog and therefore uses copious amounts of blind crosses in places that definitely brought the fear of God to us mere mortal handlers.

We were missing a couple of crucial elements, hmmm... like being 24, very thin, a man, and having the ability to run backwards with as much grace, speed and fluidity as even the most agile American runs forward!!! :-)

However, with all of that said, Silas, with his take no prisoners attitude, complete upbeat nature and overall energy not only got us to do it but to do it successfully! I can say in all honesty that the only blind crosses I have ever done have been at the exit of a curved tunnel, this really does not even count!

By the time we were done on Sunday night I had done at least 30-40 in places that no one would believe! What a complete and total rush!

I so wish we had a chance to use these awesome skills, super speed, and, balls out running style on more of our own courses.

My purpose for going to this seminar was to be pushed, well it was everything I hoped for and more.

Silas would work with each individual anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour at a time , everyone's tongue would be hanging out well before your turn ended. There was no such thing as I can't, there was no, I am too tired you just did it, and you did it willingly!

I cannot even put into words just how much fun it was and what a rush it was to run like that!

You really had to trust your dog and what you have trained, that was a serious high as well!

I ran the entire seminar with SoBe and she was brilliant! She showed her skills incredibly well. And these skills were equal parts learned and equal parts natural. Silas paid SoBe a huge compliment and commented on her incredible focus and athleticism, he called her perfect! :-)

It was all about perfection, a type A persons dream come true. You would work portions over and over and you would start over and over, it was awesome!!! Have I said that already?

After working until well into the night on both Sat. and Sun. Linda very wisely decided that we would start at 10:00 on Sat. good call!

Lindas incredible attention to detail was appreciated and the ability to go back and hone some basic skills after 2 days of definitely pushing beyond the limits was a very nice way to proceed for the next couple of days.

It was so nice to be able to practice what we are comfortable with but explore in much greater detail why we are doing it was awesome as well.

I did peter out on Tues. and admit that I headed home at about 3:00. I was simply mentally and physically exhausted at this point!

I am already looking forward to the next agility camp that I get to participate in and am thinking that the diet needs to start now!

Off to Vegas for a weekend of shows and time with my husband!!!

A day in the life :-)

So, we are in the middle of a 2 day wind storm that last night produced a few crazy blizzard squalls, the first snow of the year!

Today we woke up to a blown in screen door, a shattered truck topper window, and... drumroll please, hanging insulation in my building with a nice gap between the building and the roof! I immediately started calling people, insurance company, guy who did south side of roof, guys who redid North side of roof, Geoff. To say that I am was a bit stressed is an understatement!!

It is the first real windstorm of the winter and we are already potentially losing property!

I am continuously in awe of the complete lack of Colorado contractors to build things with an understanding of just how powerful the wind is here! I am not even a native and I get it!!!

I do not want to wake up to another roof scattered around 50 acres. Tomorrow "the guy" in charge of North side of roof comes to check out the situation, I can hardly wait!

Anyway, I discovered the lovely roof problems when I took Merger to the building to work on revamping his contacts.

Geoff is now Mergers handler, but, of course I am still Mergers trainer :-) He is running so much faster these days and he and Geoff are really becoming a team! Part of his increase in speed has rendered the current version of running contacts pretty useless, well his dogwalk anyway :-)

I am teaching him to run to a mat and lie down on it, which he is doing brilliantly actually. The goal is to tech the mat as a separate obstacle and gradually move it closer and closer to the end of the contacts until it "becomes" the end behavior.

Why not just continue to work on the running dog walk you ask? Because I think Geoff will need a behavior that is more criteria based that he has more control of. I am also reworking his teeter so that he drives into a down at the end of the teeter plank. His sheer size means that he needs to lower his center of gravity to actually bring the board down before he is off and running!

Danger is helping me type this blog tonight, it is one of the pleasures of his life right now, freedom in the office while I am in here. He goes for his 8 week check up on Thursday and hopefully that will mean even a little bit more freedom! Right now he goes to PT once a week, gets 2 10-15 minute walks per day and a bit of freedom in the office with me, not much for a 11 month old BC puppy but we are getting by. He has figured out how to destroy anything in a matter of seconds with his incredible jaws and chainsaw teeth!

He has also increased his already mouthy self by barking pretty much continuously when not being attended to, it is very special indeed!

After Dangers Ortho appt. on Thursday SoBe, Wally, Danger and I are headed to Eau Claire, WI to participate in the Silas Boogk, and Linda Mecklenburg seminars. Wally is coming a long for the ride, Danger is coming to use the underwater treadmill and SoBe is working all 4 days of seminar!!! I am so excited!

Silas is known for his take no prisoners, balls to the wall running style, I should have probably been on a diet the past few weeks! Linda is teaching an International handling seminar 2 of the days, it is going to be a blast!

There is another very exciting thing happening over the weekend I will talk more about that when I get back.

Well, here's to less wind, good travels and lots of awesome agility!!

USDAA Nationals!!!

Need I say more?? Always my very favorite show on the planet, OK maybe World Champs are a little bit higher on the list, but not much!!

Although we were in a new venue this year and a totally new part of the country USDAA Nationals were once again a highlight of the year for me. :-)

It was really great to get to see and compete with essentially a whole "new" group of dog and handler teams! Since the Nationals moved East, not east coast, just east, there were a lot of new faces this year.

I know a lot of the people who were showing, however, I have not had the pleasure of competing with many of these people for quite some time.

The caliber of talent was definitely as good as years past and it was always exciting! Well, as exciting as it could be with a significant amount of down time. I must say this years Nationals were not without disappointments, I was just fortunate enough to have had some truly awesome runs with my dogs and being able to bring home some bling definitely allows you to forgive other flaws!

The atmosphere this year was not that of a National Championship in my opinion, it was more a very large trial or even Regional with very high caliber talent.

The energy that usually accompanies the National Finals is usually much greater, people are more involved and hang out to watch/cheer more.

There is generally a much greater sense of comaraderie than was evident this year and truly missing out on the evening events "under the lights" was a bit of a disappointment.

I think, however, the biggest disappointment was the lame turn out for the GP Finals. It is the premiere event, the reason we all come and to be honest it was not only anti climactic but just plain sad for the finalists.

Folks practically burned rubber to get out of there Sunday morning and they were rolling up the rings around the finalists before they even competed.

I stayed until the bitter end and was very glad that I did, it was a very competitive finals and a pleasure to watch, mostly though I wanted to be there to cheer everyone on!

I do not fault folks for leaving, it was 6 long days of inhaling dust and traversing the expo from one end to the other trying to find something to do!

Next year fewer days, less dust and a more cohesive schedule would make things 100% better!

I also vote for Perf. Speed jumping, Steeplechase, PGP and GP finals all be held as evening events finishing out the weekend with the team relay on Sunday morning and off we go!

Everyone wants to play in the night time events and these events always draw a much bigger crowd!

In all honesty, I, too head to Nationals to make Finals, ALL finals but if I have to choose the most exciting it would be Steeplechase because we play at night!

How fortunate for me I made the Steeplechase Finals over the GP :-) Yes, there was a bit of sarcasm there!! I was a bit disappointed to be "in the stands" for GP finals but crap happens I guess.

As I said earlier though, I had a GREAT Nationals! SoBe decided to show me just how awesome she is and made it very clear that she is now wearing big girl underpants and I need to start handling her as if she were a big girl! Message received and so I will try to be the handler that she is asking for :-)

What a special girl she is!! She not only held her own all week but she finished out the week with a 6th place in jumpers, this was accomplished in the 22" class which had 331 dogs! Not to be out done, her daddy won that class!

Wally also made Steeplechase finals and finished 5th overall, I am ecstatic! Wally placed in the top 12 in 2 other classes as well and along with Maze got to play in relay finals!

Maze had a great Nationals from the standpoint of having fantastic runs, not such a great Nationals if you count the 1 glitch that occurred in all 3 tournament classes that kept him on the sidelines ultimately. Oh well, there is always next year!

I am so incredibly excited for next year!! Maze and Wally are running faster and better than ever, SoBe is a grown up girl and really ready to start competing and Danger seems to be on the mend! Yes, it will be a long road for him, but we are moving forward!

Well, I am off to bed big weekend teaching coming up and I am still recovering from the marathon we called Nationals this year.

Congrats to everyone who qualified for Nationals, here's to next year!!

Running dogwalk

Interesting factoids :-)

It has been so awesome to actually be home and have time to train my dogs this past week and a half!! We have really gotten some great work in and I have learned a few things too!

Interesting factoid number 1: even with a very limited test group, I learned that a 2on/2off dog walk simply cannot compete with a running. I know this probably does not come as a shock to very many people but it is always really interesting to conduct a timed experiment :-)

Maze has a pretty fast Dog walk and even with a fast lead in and an almost instant release he was consistently a full half second slower than Merger who has a minimally trained running dog walk that is still not as fast as I expect it to be as a finished product.

Merger consistently came in at between 1.49 and 1.52 seconds and Mazes fastest was 1.93 and there were generally closer to 2.0 to 2.1. SoBe who is but a tiny waif of a dog generally runs around 1.37

Of course there is still a bit of controversy regarding whether a dog with a running contact performance can turn tight enough at the bottom of the contact to make it worth it, I think yes but we will see.

Don't get me wrong I am still of the belief that a running dog walk performance is NOT for everyone but there are some definite reasons to consider it if you are looking for the fastest overall performance.

It also must be mentioned that there is a heck of a lot of training involved in a running contact criteria, more in my opinion, than a 2on/2off.

That brings me to my other factoid :-) Do you know that the word criteria is not even truly defined in the dictionary? Since I spend so much of my life teaching and since I use that word so very often with what I consider to be varying degrees of understanding by my students, etc... that I decided I was going to post the actual dictionary definition and have a bit of a chat about it on the Blog.

I went to dictionary.com and was surprised to find that it was quite difficult to actually find the definition of criteria. This particular word is a derivative of criterion and what I did find as a definition feels a bit vague to me. It is as follows, "Criteria, to form correct judgement regarding the intended goal." This is quite ambiguous if you ask me, very open ended to say the least.

Why was I even on this particular, quest? Well, I was hoping to sort of do the old in your face regarding how incredibly gray we seem to be in our criteria establishment and maintainence.

Kind of hard to do utilizing that definition!

However, it does not change the fact that in the world of agility maintaining our established criteria is absolutely crucial to any amount of consistent success.

I truly believe that people do understand this but it does not change the fact that even at the most base level, the place where we start to teach the dog what the criteria of all of the basic behaviors, obstacles, etc.. are we fall short.

There is way too much humanization of our canine counterparts and we allow rationalization and reasoning to determine whether a behavior is actually trained, how many parts we lump together, and, ultimately why the dog may or may not have been successful in their attempts at offering the intended behaviors.

We also have an incredible and very honest desire to help our dogs and make them successful, therefore we "help" them with the hard stuff.

The very best help you can offer a dog is to clearly define the desired behaviors, break them into pieces that the dog can truly learn and understand, increase your criteria as new pieces are learned, proof these pieces and ultimately the final behaviors and maintain the criteria that you have set forth.

This is so very hard!!!! However, the payoff is huge!

Rome was not built in a day and a dog cannot be trained in a month, but, Rome is beautiful and so is that Q ribbon. Happy training!!