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
- Choreography
- 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
Category: English Springer Spaniel
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You might be wondering how the choreography for a freestyle routine is developed, and then how it gets written down for future reference. There are plenty of options, but I thought it would be helpful to see my messy notes for Kerrie’s new Advanced routine. Later this “roadmap” will get more developed, but this was…
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I’d like to start using this blog to show how I build up and create a canine musical freestyle routine. Kerrie has two routines she needs to develop this year: one is her InSync routine (also called Heelwork to Music), which is now at an Advanced level. The other will be her Musical Freestyle routine…
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Kerrie’s heeling has been coming along quite well, but one bug-a-boo was her tendency to look around and/or drop her head on the about turn. I’ve found in problem-solving little isues like this that it’s always good to go back to foundations, and use foundational tools. Over and over again I’ve found the pockethand method…
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Kerrie and Brian had run-throughs of their obedience routines last weekend, and I’ve posted excerpts of Kerrie’s run below. She’s made excellent progress in terms of focused heeling for longer periods, and is not lacking for joy in the ring. All good! Things to work on are: continued focus work on her about turns and…
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Kerrie’s heeling needs to increase in duration and focus to prepare for AKC Novice obedience. One of the major ways I work on duration is through Laura Romanik’s heeling grids. Laura is an outstanding trainer in Ohio who introduced heeling grids to me in a seminar many years ago. I’ll explain them briefly here, but…
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Kerrie’s Beginner Novice legs gave me good information for our heeling training in the next several weeks. In the ring, I got many moments of solid engagement, and then sporadic look-aways, especially on her about turns. So in a recent training session, I set up an open lid of food on top of a bucket…
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I got some lovely photos of Brian and Kerrie in the obedience ring from the last weekend in January, thanks to Nina Sage, so wanted to share them here. First are some photos of Brian jumping in the Open ring. I can’t help but post multiples, since we’ve worked long and hard on his jumping…
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The end of 2024 brought some initial disappointment when I assessed my dog training goals for the year. Neither Kerrie or Brian achieved the titling goals in obedience that I had laid out, ones that I thought at the start of the year were quite achievable. In AKC obedience, I expected Kerrie to finish her…
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The AKC has created a new titling event called “Fetch,” part of their “FitDog” program to encourage more dog owners to participate in various activities with their dogs. The Fetch program is, of course, all about retrieving. It starts out fairly simple with 3 30-foot retrieves with mild distractions, and progresses up to blind double…
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Good things are happening with Kerrie and Brian as they continue to show the fruits of their training. I’m more and more engrossed with the world of freestyle, which combines training, connection and musical creativity. In early November, Kerrie earned her very first leg in a video freestyle competition in the “Entry” (a required pre-novice…
The Spaniel Annals 