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: mental preparation
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Recently I stewarded at an obedience trial, and was struck as I always am by the unstructured, unfocused way many teams enter the ring. Often the handlers will rush in to the ring, completely disconnected from their dog, and then suddenly attempt to get the dog into heel position, after the dog has been pulling…
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There’s always the first time of taking a dog into the “real” ring that all the matches can’t really imitate, where there’s a real judge, an audience (however small), and the requirement for all the aids to disappear, at least temporarily. I’ve learned to make these first times very targeted in my goals, and typically…
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Two Sundays ago Reardon and I hit a milestone in his tracking career: earning his TD! In winds up to 20 mph, he completed a 455-yard track that had been aged 35 minutes. Here’s the judge’s map: The 1st, 3rd, and 5th legs of this track had crosswind, and I was very impressed with…
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Yesterday on the morning of Reardon’s obedience trial in Lynden, WA, my mantra was: We’re double winners! I like mantras; Jane Savoie, the Olympic equestrian competitor and author of many books about the mental game, encourages adopting words or phrases to chant the weeks before a competition and on that day. How are we double winners? …
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I’ve been watching the 2012 Olympics much more obsessively than in several years past. I loved them as a child, and for some reason my interest has been re-ignited this year. With my recent focus on the mental aspect of dog performance sports, much of my attention in these Games has been on the sports requiring precise,…
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The wonderful news is that Reardon has been certified for entering tracking tests, and our first test is tomorrow up in Bow, WA. Tracking tests only require one pass to earn a title, so tomorrow could signal a new title and a step forward in our training, or it could mean a long wait for…
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The first obedience trial weekend of the year at the Puyallup Fairgrounds affirmed the mental and physical training I’ve been working on the past few months. Lanny Bassham, founder of the Mental Management program and an Olympic gold medalist, described the difference between accomplishment and attainment: “accomplishment” is the fulfilling of external goals. “Attainment” is…
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To guide me in my physical training of my dogs, I look to great trainers in the dog world. But for my mental preparation, I often look to other sources. One is the horse world, where the mental preparation and attitude of the rider has been a topic of discussion for decades, if not centuries. The…
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