Podcast Guests: Lena Gunnarson and Elsa Blomster
Elsa Blomster is a Swedish dog trainer, instructor, and author of the book “Retrieving for all Occasions”. She has one Golden Retriever and one Labrador Retriever and she trains and has competed in working tests, field trials, obedience, rally obedience, tracking, and has obtained official qualifications in all these disciplines. In her every-day life, she works as an organizational developer in IT for a construction company.
Elsa is a popular instructor – teaching courses in Sweden, Denmark, Norway Finland, Switzerland, and the UK among other places – on retrieving and clicker training. When her pupils said to her “training this way is so great and it’s so pleasant not having to be harsh to my dog”, “Why didn’t I come to you earlier for gun dog training” and “You should write a book about it” – it certainly warmed her heart and Elsa started to write the book “Retrieving for all Occasions” together with her ”partner in crime” Lena Gunnarsson. Together they own a publishing company – Klickerförlaget Göteborg AB – where they publish books, films and arrange clinics and courses about positive dog training.
Lena Gunnarsson is a Swedish dog trainer, instructor, and author of the book ”Retrieving for All Occasions”. She has three cocker spaniels and she trains and has competed in field trials, obedience class III, tracking and she also trains scent detection with her dogs.
Lena has been training animals for all her life and dogs for the past 18 years. Her experience of training horses, dogs and educating people has taught her quite a lot about the learning process. For almost 20 years she has as an organizational consultant with a focus on supporting people to solve problems and encouraging them to take on challenges — which has made her a confident coach. Add the fact that Lena is a journalist, the step to writing “Retrieving for All Occasions” and starting a publishing company – Klickerförlaget Göteborg AB – together with Elsa Blomster was not a big one.
In this episode we discuss:
- What are the most important foundation skills for gun dogs?
- What’s the first thing you teach a new puppy that you have retrieving/field goals for?
- How are gun dog foundation skills different from other sports? How are they the same?
- What are the misconceptions about raising a puppy for hunting/retrieving?
- What do you look for in a puppy to know you’ve got a good candidate?
Links Mentioned:
- Elsa & Lena’s Book, Retrieving for All Occasions. For more information, including a 50% discount through April 30th, click here.
- Heelwork Webinar ( to be released on May 1st)
- Online Courses with Elsa & Lena
This podcast is supported by: Zero to CD
Zero to CD is an online group mentorship program designed to provide support, structure, and accountability for people who are new to competition obedience and looking to earn their Novice level title AND to make competition obedience accessible to all dogs and handlers through force-free, positive reinforcement-based methods.
The next round will begin May 1, 2019
Enrollment will open on April 24. Click on the link to find out more about what this program is about, and stay tuned for enrollment details!
