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
Category: Gordon Setters
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To you, a tennis ball might be a lowly object, a cheap amalgamation of rubber and fuzz, easily substituted by an exact replica and easily discarded. But to me, a tennis ball keeps chaos at bay. A house without a tennis ball is a house with a raging Gordon Setter puppy mouth, happy to fill…
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I’ve been tracking with Reardon off and on since he was a puppy, and I’ve been very impressed with how it educated his nose. Now Gael is joining him, and we have some deadlines approaching: the English Springer Spaniel National, which is in Oregon in October, offers a tracking test, and there are several tests coming…
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When Susan Desilver described Gael’s litter to me over the phone, one of my first questions was, “which puppy likes to carry things around in her mouth?” What I was looking for were early signs of a natural retrieve. In my earlier posts about the natural retrieve, I talk about how much it reveals in…
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The most important thing a puppy can learn is how to learn–that learning is fun, that it comes in relationship to a human, and that it’s something she is good at. After 6 days with me, I’m so impressed at Gael’s attitude, drive and intelligence. Beyond the socializing I need to give her in the first…
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I had no plans for another dog. And not a Gordon Setter. For months after I lost Vita, I daydreamed of a Gordon puppy, but as my grief eased, my daydreams stopped and life moved on. Then I caught a phone call from Susan DeSilver, the accomplished and well-respected breeder of Gordon Hill Gordon Setters. Susan breeds…
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