On Cues
Last Fall, I attended an amazing workshop featuring Bob Bailey at Say Yes! in Canada. I think the highlight for nearly everyone was the presentation by Bob on the second day where he coached one of the attendees through the process of adding a cue. The steps are subtly different…
Know Before You Show
I had a hiatus from obedience for over 15 years. If I ever knew the tips and tricks I’ve discovered over the past few years of showing Lackey and now Arya, I must have forgotten them. Competing is stressful enough if everything goes smoothly, and it becomes more stressful if…
When can I wean off of treats?
That’s the question most people—especially those not already primarily using positive reinforcement (R+) to train—constantly ask. Often the answer they often get from R+ trainers, while correct in many instances, just doesn’t feel emotionally satisfying. This answer will be some variant of “Why would you want to—you don’t work for…
Can My Puppy Train Me to Be a Better Trainer?
Meet Arya. She joined our household about two weeks ago, when she was eight weeks old. She came to me with the best foundation imaginable, but she is a baby, and she is a Cattle Dog. So I have a lot of work to do. Learning from the Past When I got…
Puppy Planning Checklist
We’re planning to add a new puppy to our household. Needless to say, it’s been over three years since the last time I brought a puppy home. And it’s been over 20 years since I brought home a puppy to a household that already had one or more dogs in…
Managing Excessive Barking
In my last post, I commented that I was concerned by Lackey’s barking during training and that I intended to address that in an upcoming post, but I didn’t get into specifics. In the intervening weeks, I have shot and analyzed a lot of my own training videos, as well…
The Drop on Recall is in the Details
I’m a bit superstitious about the AKC Obedience title CD (Companion Dog, if Obedience isn’t your thing). Every dog I have ever put one on has had a debilitating health problem that meant they couldn’t continue in Obedience, or worse, died, before they could get more than one leg into…
Consent in the Year of the Dog
I was on vacation for the first week of 2018, so naturally I binged on dog training podcasts. One that made more of an impression on me than I thought at the time was one of Hannah Brannigan’s “Drinking from the Toilet” podcasts, “Five Key Concepts for 2018.” This was…
Hello world!
Hi, and welcome to my blog. My name is Amy, and I have an Australian Cattle Dog, Lackey. We have had some decent scores in Beginner Novice Obedience and Rally Novice, but I want to push to get that elusive 200 score (100 in Rally). Join us in our journey.