Sunday, November 1, 2015

Clicker Expo Europe 2015 - just pure fun!

Clicker Expo Europe 2015




Wow!! I had one the best days of my life. Expo was very well organized by Positive Animal Solutions. We had wonderful expo shop were we could fill our library with dog training books and dvds. I bought a big pile of them to get even more information but the best part was still the lectures. There’s lot of topic choose from. I wanted to see as many of faculty speak as possible. My plan really paid off! Each speaker had gave a lot to think and learn even though some topics were familiar to me. One person I waited the most was Ken Ramirez and he sure didn’t let me down. He was just super at giving lectures. Very lively and I got lot of insides in both topics I went to hear. Actually all the lecturers were just super! So big thanks to the whole faculty!

I learned so much new training techniques and also new stuff for my old training tools that it will take some time to get everything in use.  Since I have come home I have made new training plans for own dogs and I have started design a puppy class. My plan is to build up more course plans as digest all the things I have learned but first my own dogs will be my little test animals. I have tested already some training protocols like Do As I Do. It is still an ongoing progress but I have had a little taste of it how it works. One thing I have also given deeper thoughts has been back chaining. I have used is a lot but I had little wakening in Cecile Kostes lecture how I can use it with even more power. I will tell more about the things I have learned but now I show you few things we have done since I came back home.

Platform work – Michele Pouliot


Platform work has been something I have read about many times but always thought that I wouldn’t have any use for it. This time I wanted learn more about it and I found out that I would have more than one thing I could use it for. My goal is to teach Pixie more dog dancing tricks so we can enter to a competition and I will use platforms to teach Freya a working dog trial recall. So I started to do some foundation work with my dogs. Here is a bit of our work so far:







Paw Crossing


I have seen paw crossing trick many times but finally I had energy to start building it up. I used had target to get the paw movement going. Now later on I learned that it would have been better to use a target stick because the dogs got really stuck to any movement of my hands. In the end I got what I wanted. I want to make this work with a verbal cue and with a leg cue. So far I have given the movement a cue but still use hand as a help but most of the time my dogs don’t need it. Here is a video of our second session:




Orijen Tundra

Pixie waiting for Platform training


It has been also wonderful to test our new sample from Orijen. This time we had a new Orijen Tundra. This is grain free kibble with lots protein that is comes from multiple sources like venison and goat. My dogs went just wild with it! It smelled very yummy for them and we did all our training above with it. I use a kibble for basic training to keep my dogs calmer and in right drive to learn new stuff. Also by this I can control better the energy in take. Orijen Tundra was almost too good but it gave my dog nice high drive to work. I love to use high protein treats in our training and Orijen Tundra was just a perfect for it! 

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