17/2/2014 0 Comments Rally WorkshopUnited Spaniel Association hosted a Kennel Club Rally Training Day and invited Kim Hunt to do the training. I took Fart who attended in the morning, Cinder who did some advance training whilst the second session were having their talk and Trek who did the afternoon session. Sadie came to help out both me and the committee and i have to say that the both of us are absolutely knackered now. Thanks to Gina who did the catering and Ant who also came and helped out, but also was persuaded to run his IWS in the afternoon. The help was appreciated.
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20/1/2014 0 Comments Christmas Comes Late to George
29/12/2013 1 Comment Blackpool Rally TrialCinders and I went to the Blackpool Kennel Club Rally Trial and ran in our first Rally Level 1 a class and were good enough to gain a qualifying run of 186. Big Grins all round. Below are some photos of the trial and the new friends we made.28/12/2013 0 Comments Blackpool Beach Walk
11/12/2013 0 Comments Rally TrainingTook the Fart Rally Training tonight. Not done any obedience since doing his Bronze Good Citizen about 5 years ago. Since he likes receiving treats i hoped he would like to try the activities.
For the most part he was more successful than I expected. The one thing that he wasn't too keen on was the final course when there were lots of multiple sits. As he was keen on watching the treats, which were in my right hand he kept trying to come round to the front to get to them. It did make me more conscious of the conversation i had with him as we were training. The one thing he did really well was the call front and sidestep. I will take him to the rally taster day to see if we can progress a little more. Next week is Christmas fun and games week so may have to look out the reindeer outfit! 7/11/2013 0 Comments Rally TrainingThere was only Mya and Cinders at training this week. This meant we got to do two mini courses and bonuses. This was level two courses and we had to do it as if we were in competition, which meant off lead and no treats until the end of the course. Mya did the first course and with only a couple of faults she would have got a score of 201. Cinders and i were not so good. Cinders didn't understand the not getting treats situation at least at some of the stations. We were DQ as she went the other side of a cone. The second course she was at least a little better but her sits were no longer nicely position beside me, she sat 90 degrees to me staring at me for those treats. We also had a distance Down from a sit, which we hadn't practised for a while but were slowly getting the hang of that.
23/10/2013 0 Comments Rally TrainingAt Rally Training we tried something different for class. First all dogs were left in the cars at the beginning. We walked the simple course of about 10 stations which had both level 1 and level two activities in it. After walking the course to understand the activities we were then asked to do the course with an invisible dog. We all thought this was funny, but the idea was to make us think specifically about our body shapes and positioning, as our dogs have learnt to anticipate (and not always correctly) what our body position says we are going to do and wants them to do. We all had perfectly behaved dogs but it did look as if we were more like runway models than rally handlers. Next we did the same course with the lovable Mia (Pictured Left) who was very easy to handle but depending on where we positioned our feet, shoulders, hands etc. We also had to change our voices as Mia was very excited to be working for us, so we had to give calming signals to give her commands. Finally we did the same course with our own dogs (at least we knew what we were supposed to do now). I took Cinders off lead and did the course, but was told i needed to stand more upright as she tended to heel away from me as i slouched ready to give her a treat. Once i realised this we had a better run, though i still have difficulty keeping the number of steps backwards in the recall forward, back one, two, three. Lots to practice for 2/10/2013 0 Comments Rally TrainingRally Training tonight was hectic as i was running late from a job interview and my treats were still frozen. I parked up and rushed into class with treats and then couldn't find my treat bag, so started with a handful of treats for each activity. Ten minutes in, the caretaker i spoke to last week came in holding up my treat bag It seems it fell out when i got out of the car and some nice person handed it in to him.
We were a small group tonight Mya and Cinders were the regulars and there was a new chocolate Lab that joined tonight. The latter was a bit bouncy and fixated on Rebecca's Mia. We went back to some of the hard level two activities that we had tried last week. One was the CALL (DOG) FRONT-1, 2, 3 STEPS BACKWARD. The other was the LEFT ABOUT TURN. We were better at this than last week but it was still the handlers who had more difficulty than the dogs. Cinders was especially good at the former one, with me not even having to give her a command to follow me. We then did the HALT-180 DEGREE PIVOT RIGHT-HALT , HALT-LEAVE-CALL (DOG) FRONT WHILE RUNNING, and the HALT-FAST FORWARD FROM SIT command. Considering this was the first time we did these activities i think we all did quite well. 29/9/2013 0 Comments Stoke on Trent GundogTook Trek, Cinders and Fart to Stoke on Trent Gundog. Sadly there was only my dogs entered in Breed but Judge Lynn Hunter seemed to like Trek and Cinders. Trek was BOB and Cinders RBOB. Fart was 3rd in Veteran under replacement judge Jinty Gill-Davies. There was a nice camaraderie with the Sussex, Gordon and Yankie folk around the ring. Sheila Rees took Cinders in for the challenge and I helped out Karen Sanders out by taking in her lovely American Cocker puppy into the challenge. It was that sort of show.
18/9/2013 1 Comment Rally TrainingWent to Rally last night and Katy's dog Digger a large GSD who she rescued and had up till now not accepted any dog working near to him has decided that Cinders is his best Buddy, so we sat near him during the session and though noisy he seemed better and Cinders just ignored all his antics. We got there only to find the room we expected to be in had been changed and we were in a very room with a lot of echo. We started with just doing heel work and left and right turns and then moved onto a mini course which we were allowed to walk through and then do a practice run. We were then asked to do it again and this time we were videoed and this will be used to help us see what we are doing wrong. Our final activity was to practice the stand and walk around. We stood our dogs in front of the chair on which we put a small pool of treats. We give the stand command and then give a treat. We then do the same and take a step away and give a treat from the chair. We quickly moved to standing behind the chair but in front of the dog and giving a treat from there to being able to treat at the stand command and to walk all the way round the chair and dog and then treat at the end. Cinders focus was totally on the treats on the chair that she wasn't bothered what i was doing.
I then did this with the down command with just having the pile of treats in front of her on the floor. started the same way and very quickly was able to walk round Cinders (something we had been struggling with) so the last time we did it i allowed her to have the full pot of treats on the floor. Have to say i was dead chuffed after this session. |
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November 2017
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