The Spaniel Annals
working and living with performance spaniels
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about
I’m a retired English instructor, now devoted full-time to training, showing and enjoying my spaniels in many sports.
- agility
- Behavior
- competition
- conditioning
- dockdiving
- dual champion
- English Cocker
- English Springer Spaniel
- Fetch!
- field work
- Freestyle
- Gordon Setters
- heeling
- heeling journal
- Irish Water Spaniel
- match
- mental preparation
- new freestyle behaviors
- puppy training
- rally obedience
- retrieve
- scent work
- TEAM
- tracking
- training
- Uncategorized
- Utility obedience
Month: July 2012
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Due to the miracles of modern science, we now have confirmation that Gael has hips and elbows! More importantly, functional hips and elbows! This is what the all-important x-rays conducted at 2 year of age confirm. These tests catch hip and elbow dysplasia, and any other skeletal abnormalities in these joints. Gael just has her hips…
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Today I pushed the restart button on Journey’s freestyle routine. First, I won’t be asking her to put any of the sequences together for at least another week, while we work on the individual pieces of the routine, trying to build her confidence and speed. Those pieces are: rightside heeling, spins in different positions (in…
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Out of all the dogs sports I’ve done, I find freestyle the hardest to train. I tend to resort to obedience moves and more regimented body movements, which many freestyle judges don’t like. Then when I start loosening up and throwing in dance moves, my dogs get confused due to all the mixed signals I’m…
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The picture below, taken yesterday on my patio, seems to capture the essence of Rozzie, who is Reardon’s sister and Kani’s daughter: an endearing and classic spaniel expression, and a little buzz-saw tail that never stops wagging. But for the past few months, I’ve been puzzling over what to do with her. While she’s very much…
The Spaniel Annals 