The Spaniel Annals
working and living with performance spaniels
recent posts
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
Category: Freestyle
-
Sometimes it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate the results of all the training my dogs and I do together, and so often it comes in clusters after a long period of hard work. It’s work that I love to do! But it can still have challenges, frustrations and setbacks. Brian has had a wonderful few…
-
Blending choreography and cued behaviors in freestyle is harder than it looks! Below is the current opening to Brian’s freestyle routine to the music of “Arrival of the Birds” by the Cinematic Orchestra. The routine thus presents a bird theme. In this opening, Brian should be backing away from my wings into a “nest,” and…
-
I wanted to post an update on Brian’s “side” position for freestyle, which we will eventually evolve into a moving lateral side. But when I pulled out the camera, the progress I’d seen the day before disintegrated, and I had to pull out the loaded dish of food again to straighten him out: Was I…
-
In 2025 I’d like to add more content to this blog that goes beyond simply reporting about our training/competing life. Instead I hope to provide posts two or three times a week that might be helpful or interesting to readers who want to learn more about training various behaviors, especially if you have spaniels! Please…
-
Our household has been turned a bit upside down with the arrival of a new English cocker girl to our household in February. Her name is Blossom (which might yet be changed to something else, but is currently shortened to “Blos”) and she comes from an outstanding breeder of merit from Oregon/Arizona, After Hours English…
-
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…
-
It’s been far to easy to quickly document dog happenings in the past few months in short bursts on Facebook. That’s a bad habit if I really want this blog to be a journal of my life with dogs. Time to stop that! August was a wonderful month. Reardon earned two legs on his Open…
-
The past few weekends have been promising dry runs for some big shows coming up in August: in the 3rd and 4th weekend of this month, Reardon will debut in AKC Open, Journey will debut in Utility at the IWS specialty, and both will show for the first time in a freestyle competition. Yikes! I wouldn’t…
-
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…
-
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…
The Spaniel Annals 