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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It’s 2 days before Reardon and Roz debut in the novice obedience ring, in the obedience trial put on the regional German Shepherd club. Based on weather reports of a few days ago, I chose today to train at the show site, Carco Park in Renton. I figured I’d put up half of a ring,…
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I’ve been re-reading Patricia McConnell’s great book For the Love of a Dog, and came across the point she makes about stays: that they teach a young dog not only physical control, but also emotional control. She’s so convinced of this that she even has an addendum in the book with the details about teaching sit stays. …
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Journey is 6 weeks pregnant with 8-9 puppies (!) and soon she’ll be heading over to Colleen’s to whelp her litter. But right now, she’s still eager to work despite the fact that she’s becoming quite rotund. I’m not sure if this picture really illustrates how full Journey’s belly is, but those 8 puppies are…
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As I mentioned in an earlier post, Journey the Irish Water Spaniel, is happily back with us for additional obedience training. I’m stunned to report that she has learned her scent discrimination articles in slightly over one month. Journey arrived here in early December; she’s now at the stage where she is selecting the article…
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In Scent Work Part 1, you saw two springers, Kani and Rozzie, at the opposite ends of their training in the scent discrimination exercise. Reardon’s right in the middle stage. He’s had literally months of developing confidence with cheese strips on the articles. The cheese strips have been gradually faded to where they’re really just a dot of…
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Human beings are always fascinated by the dog’s ability to use his nose. While our primary sense is our sight, the dog’s nose dominates his perceptions of the world, through scent receptors that are thousands of times greater than ours. So training a dog to do scent work is really diving into a world we…
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Sunday we headed to a fun match held by our local spaniel club. In a “fun match,” we get to practice our obedience exercises in a show-like setting, with volunteers acting as judges and stewards. It’s not the real thing, but a busy, well -run fun match has much the same feeling as a show. This match was…
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I’m plotting a series of articles on the natural retrieve for the Springer Spotlight, the parent club’s national publication, so bits and pieces will be showing up here. Spaniel field trialers speak confidently of their spaniel’s “natural retrieve,” lauding it as a mark of superiority over spaniels that must be taught this seemingly simple task. By “natural,” they mean the retrieve behavior seems to be in-bred, presenting…
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New Years’s Day was a perfect day to spend with a training buddy of mine, Terri Pope. We rented an obedience building in Olympia for a few hours and helped each other with our dogs. Today I wanted to see how Reardon’s heeling was coming along, so we made a video. Videos help immensely with seeing the…
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The rest of my life (“real” life? “unreal” life?) has stalled our training and my blogging: fighting to get my energy back after surgery, then catching a cold, then the pressure of getting final writing portfolios graded. Meanwhile, Reardon and Rozzie are clearly saying, “I’m ready!” Through many physical behaviors (their primary language after all),…
The Spaniel Annals 