The Dynamic Duo attends their second workshop

Swing and Hank attended a "Fit to be Tricked" workshop (hosted by Dandy Dog Training, http://www.dandydogtraining.com) yesterday, their second workshop in 6 months.  At 14 weeks we took them to a puppy agility type of workshop where they were the youngest participants, and I believe they were the youngest in attendance yesterday.  Regardless, it was a day packed with doing all kinds of exercises geared toward working muscles, manipulating bodies (yes, you should have seen some of the positions handlers had to get in to, hee hee) and just having a nice time doing something one on one with our canine buddies.

From the speedoggie website...

"Fit To Be Tricked"

Specialized Trick Training
A Fun Way To Optimize Fitness, Flexibility & Coordination

with

World Renowned Animal Trainer

Sassie Frankie Joiris

 and

Agility Champion and Guinness World Record Holder

Chris Ott-Parker

Comprehensive program designed with
Internationally Recognized Physical Therapist "Ria Acciani, MPT"

Our friend Linda Hartheimer of Grayhart Weims also attended one of these workshops and you can read about it on her blog at http://grayhartweims.blogspot.com/2011/12/fit-to-be-tricked.html.
It was a full day with lots of floor time to work the duo.  When we did take a break to pottie the dogs and let them rest, the majority of the participants were happy to settle down in their crates.  During the morning session Frankie and Chris focused on the mechanics of what we were going to do.  How the human component and what we do affects how our dogs will respond to the cues.  Where we hold our hand, how we use the treat and the idea that for static exercises you should not "release in motion" (but rather hand the reward to the dog) and don't stop when you are reinforcing a motion exercise (like when you are rewarding a good weave pole/contact performance).
We worked on the mechanics to teaching your dog to wave and stretching all from the sit, down and stand and they said your dog should be able to do that standing in front of you as well as at your side.  Howard and I stayed on separate ends of the room so that both pups could concentrate on what we were doing versus each other (before the day started we cut them loose in a yard outside of the training facility so that they could wrestle and visit, which they enjoyed tremendously).  The morning session allowed us to get the dogs comfortable on the floor before we moved on to the more physical exercises in the afternoon.

Swing and I have worked on balance discs and that is what the afternoon session started out with.  For these exercises we had to pair up and of course we were left working the duo together.  Both pups did well with the discs, placing their front feet on it and then learning to do side passing around it (with their feet on the disc).  Hank wasn't keen on the "nubby" side of the disc but once we flipped it over he stepped on it with little hesitation.  We had to have them put their back feet on the disc as well and the idea was to have them back on to the disc.  This is one thing Swing has not mastered so it required that I actually place her feet on the disc while giving her the command (I use "toes" for her back feet and "feet" for her front).  We'll play around with this one but the reason Chris teaches foot placement is to help her with her contacts in agility.  After the disc the ladies set up what they called "surf boards" which was a board on top of 3 discs.  The idea is that the dog learns to hold themselves on something that moves constantly and Chris commented that mastering that exercise has helped her dogs teeter work.  After a good break where Frankie showed us how her Pyr Shep Toggle jumps up on to her back (and holds on like a kid would do when ridding piggie back) and how she trained that, as well as showing her whippet Boing leap onto her side, we moved on to peanut work.

I mentioned the peanut, from Fitpaws, in a previous post and while they were demonstrating what we would be doing with the peanut I noticed that Swing was fixated on it and almost shaking from excitement at the prospect of working on the peanut.  What we did was have to dogs roll it forward and backwards, something we have been playing with here at home.  I was concerned that she would want to leap on to the peanut but she held her cool and did a nice job of rolling it forward.  She tried very hard to pull it backwards with some success.  We'll play with that one some more.  And we finished the day seeing if we could have our dogs between our legs, standing on our feet and walking with us.  This was challenging for handler as much as canine and I found it hard to manipulate foot placement using a treat so I resorted to putting her feet on mine.

It was cool to watch the eight month olds take all of the exercises in stride.  Oh, the one thing that Linda mentioned, and I really had fun with when Swing did it, was the foam ring work that leads to the dog learning to "catch" the ring on their neck.  Swing didn't try to grab it when I went through the paces of putting it over her head and then finally dropping it over her head, which pleased me since we are starting to learn to retrieve the dumbbell and we play fetch with the floppy flier frisbee.  Jumping through the hoop was fun too.

If you get the chance to go to one of these workshops, please do.  We had a nice group of people and dogs at ours and the girls kept things interesting and flowing.  Even though I was a bit tired from spending the previous night with a sick dog, I only felt like I was waning towards the day.  The school's owner, Joan, took some sorts of the pups and posted all of the pictures to Facebook.  I gleaned these shots from there.  All photo's are by Joan Dandy of Dandy Dog Training in Newville, PA.

 What is he looking at?

 Someone is intent on what I have (in my mouth no doubt)

 Hank's (Beau) handsome face

 Ok, a kiss to get me to spit out the treat

 Watching

Happy training everyone.  Next on the agenda for Swing and I is a breed match on the 19th.  We'll let everyone know how that goes in our next posting (unless we hear from our siblings beforehand).