I have a crazy, busy, wonderful life, filled with love and learning. What can you expect to read about here? You’ll be treated to glimpses into my thought processes, training plans and videos, updates, and escapades from my babies (both 4 and 2-legged). There will no doubt be some brags, and probably at least a few rants.
I hope that you will find my words helpful, or at least entertaining. We’ll see what the future holds! For now, I’ll leave you with this quote from Neil Degrasse Tyson, which also describes my philosophy.
“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”
Obedience Handling Notes from Patty Ruzzo
As I was cleaning up and organizing my files on my computer (hard drive is full up AGAIN), I ran across an old text file simply labeled "Notes - Patty Ruzzo". I don't actually remember when/where I made them. I think *probably* they are from her "Compete in Joy" book,...
Video tools to make recording your training sessions easier
These are a few of my favorite things... If you are like me, you train almost entirely by yourself. Training by yourself makes it harder to stay motivated, and also a lot harder to stay objective about your training. Recording your training sessions on video helps...
Dog Checking Out? Check Your Delivery!
Have you ever been in the middle of a training session, and your dog suddenly leaves you to go sniff something? Or maybe your dog is sniffing the ground for HOURS (subjectively speaking) between each rep before coming back to you? Did he really catch an irresistible...
Go out challenge – cheap, but effective
Since Rugby finished his CDSP Novice title this spring, we've been working on prepping to compete in Open later this summer (or fall, we'll see how I feel. I don't want to commit officially yet). His Drop on Recall has been solid (and pretty damn fancy, if you ask me)...
Weight shift is real, ya’ll!
This is going to be geeky to the extreme, and I am completely unapologetic! Beautiful heeling is a highly subjective thing. Everyone has their own aesthetic sense of what “beautiful” means… their own picture in their mind of perfect heeling. And that’s totally fine!...
Non-dog favorites for #trypod month
I recently found out that March is #trypod month. Which is PERFECT timing considering my own podcast was just born! So to celebrate #trypod month, and help spread podcast love and knowledge through the universe, I wanted to share just a few of my favorite podcasts...
Oops… my bad!
Earlier today I was working on Rugby's hold portion of the retrieve behavior, specifically looking to build a strong hold on the glove. He's got very terrier tendencies (as expected), and has a high frequency of thrashing and shredding soft materials. So I anticipated...
Does splitting take longer?
Question: Does breaking down a behavior and teaching individual components take longer than teaching the whole thing in big chunks (*coughcough* lumps)? Answer: Nope! Not at all. (or not if you're doing it right.) Most people will agree that breaking down a behavior...
Did you know… feelings ARE behaviors?
Did you know… feelings ARE behaviors? How many times have you heard me hammer on the concept that *every time we are training a behavior, we are shaping an emotional state AT THE SAME TIME*? Maybe a few (bazillion)? It’s kind of a theme for me, and it strongly...
Retrieve Over the High Jump
Retrieve Over the High Jump Your dog knows how to jump, and he knows how to retrieve. Let’s put it together. The hard part about the retrieve over the high jump is getting back and forth between the jump standards, especially considering the unpredictability of where...
Should I stay or should I go now?
One of the challenges of learning “stay” from the dog’s perspective, is humans often want to teach it in a very vague manner, which leaves the actual stay itself very poorly defined. It’s compounded by the fact that we usually aren’t thinking very much about sitting...
How long should you wait for behavior?
Common myth: Shaping means standing around waiting for the dog to spontaneously do the right behavior. (or worse “free shaping”… don’t get me started…) No, wait! You know what? Let’s DO get me started! Somewhere the internet got the idea that in order for training to...