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: training
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Training the utility scent discrimination exercise is a long process, starting in puppyhood and involving many moments of seemingly 1 step forward and 2 steps back. In the end, Brian must find my scented article of either wood or leather in a “pile” of 8 similar articles, several feet away from me in the obedience…
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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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Kerrie is now 15 months and working on her heeling. Since I’m trying so many new things with her training, I’m keeping a video journal to review and have them for future reference. Sharing them here will help renew this blog! What kinds of new things am I doing? Starting with Brian, I committed to…
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A hectic school year dealing with re-entry into live teaching after the COVID shut-down has taken me away from this blog. Meanwhile Roz has continued to age, struggling far more than she used to. Brian is maturing, earning his first freestyle titles (through virtual shows) and preparing for live obedience trials this fall/winter. And we…
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Once Brian and I progressed to moving circles in his heeling, a lack of clarity emerged in his training: his commitment to heel position. Small dogs especially tend to heel wide, to get away from those big human feet and to be able to look up and see the handler/trainer’s upper body. I’ve been sloppy…
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Brian has been a student in the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy “TEAM” program, a program that teaches and tests fundamentals online. I highly recommend it, and while any dog/handler team can participate just through the program itself, Fenzi’s classes are superb in their level of instruction and feedback. We took the Level 1 course with…
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Another new adventure was coming along with the big dogs to the training building, and having Brian’s first little training session. While watching the other dogs train, the first day Brian put up quite a shriek of protest, and I had to just wait him out for a quiet moment in order to give him…
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Our house has seen dramatic change in the past year, with one dominant personality leaving us last November with Reardon’s passing, and then we lost Journey in March, after a valiant battle with cancer that was diagnosed in January. For some weeks it was clear she wanted very much to stay with us, but in…
The Spaniel Annals 