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: Uncategorized
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I’m frequently on the look-out for a “second sport” for my dogs, one that might be more freewheeling and less intensive than the obedience training we do. This second sport needs to fulfill these criteria: Doesn’t take up a lot of costly or time-consuming training time; Ignites and utilizes my dogs’ instincts or drives (thus…
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Rozzie, Reardon and their littermates, out of Duffy X Kani (Ch. Donahan’s Definitely in Style UD, NAJ, JH, WDX and Melchris Constitutional UD SH RN WD), turn 10 today, and I want to wish them all a very happy birthday! This was one of David Hopkins’ experimental crossings of show and field springers, with their…
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I’ve often thought that living my life according to the principles in The Lord of the Rings works pretty well. And so a few weekends ago, I was reminded of this crucial scene where Faramir realizes he needs to release Frodo, so Frodo can continue on his quest: How could this possibly relate to…
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I wrote about Ruckus in my last post, the visiting Irish Water Spaniel who is enjoying his new job with me in obedience and most likely freestyle. He is smart and willing, and so I told his owner that, yes, I could have him ready for Rally Obedience at the National. That National is now…
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Ruckus is a highly accomplished show Irish Water Spaniel (Best in Show and multi-Best in Specialty Show + hunting titles), who is visiting us to work on his rally and novice obedience. He’s a very willing, athletic young dog who has learned many obedience moves very quickly (scroll down for more on this). However, understandably…
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The end of a dog’s working career is always extremely difficult for me to face, in ways that might be hard for a non-trainer to understand. For years, usually from puppyhood, any particular dog I’m training will work with me several days a week. I’ll plan out her daily training carefully, take her to classes,…
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I started a draft a few weeks ago to reboot this blog, and found it full of tiresome excuses as to why I haven’t been blogging. Instead, let me just say that Kani’s death 3 years ago seemed to drain the fun away from recording the training adventures with her and her offspring. While the…
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As Gael gets ready in earnest this summer to enter obedience competition, I’m fussing more than usual with her equipment: which collar to show her in, which toy to get her focused on me outside the ring, which dumbbell size (especially to reduce her mouthing of it). After spending way too much money on a…
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Gael is currently on a no-food-during-training diet, and the results have been promising and fascinating. This training “diet” will go on for another week, and while I’m not seeing the brightness I get when I train with food, I’m certainly seeing commitment to the task and willingness to keep going. We had one terrible training…
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In July the Oregon club, Dogs Gone Dancin’, hosted a freestyle competition in Kent, WA. This was my first foray into the Novice level with Reardon, and just for fun I also entered Gael in a non-titling, demo class called Innovation, and put Rozzie into an evening match. While Reardon didn’t pass on Saturday, we…
The Spaniel Annals 