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: Freestyle
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We recently received the happy news that Brian finished his Musical Freestyle Championship! I have to confess the certificate is bit misleading; the rules changed recently to allow scores above 90 to count towards a championship. Brian’s scores were 93 and 91, with a bumper leg of 92 at a recent live show. I’m thrilled…
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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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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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 Spaniel Annals 