My blog Training - Obedience & GundogFor about a month now, Maddy and I have been attending a "beginners" obedience class. Maddy is alot of fun to work with as she´s just so eager to learn. We hope to be moved up to the KC Bronze class soon and we´ve been told this is likely to happen in the next couple of weeks....woohooo! The same trainer also does gundog training, so I´ve been taking Millie along to a "beginners" gundog class. At 7yrs young, Millie is probably a little old to be starting out doing gundog training, but when you don´t come from a shooting background it can be difficult to find a gundog trainer, and I´ve been asking around locally for years, so I´m really pleased to have finally found Denise Hubbard. Millie & I are on week 3 of a 7wk course, with week 7 being Assessment Day, when an outside examiner will be present to either pass or fail us...yikes! Millie is pretty good though I do say so myself (I´m in no way biased hehehe!). Her sit/stays are fab and her recall is very good. We need to do more work on walking to heel on/off lead and we also need to do a bit more work on Millie´s retrieve as she has a tendancy to drop the dummy at my feet, so I need to get her to present it nicely. Millie will sit nicely to the whistle, and recalls to the whistle, but I have to work on stopping her half way to me, but we have a few little exercises to practice so hopefully we´ll master these things. I´ve also learnt that the obedience walk to heel and the gundog walk to heel are different. Obedience dogs are taught to look to their handler whilst walking to heel, whereas gundogs should be looking ahead so they can "mark" the game/dummy. We also have to walk to heel at slow, med and fast pace, slow being the most difficult but also the norm for a gundog. There´s alot to learn for all three of us, but we are really enjoying ourselves. http://www.waggtails.me/  Comments  13 Mar 2012 07:25 Good News!!! Millie passed her KC Good Citizen Silver Test last night and I´m very proud of her. We now have a short break before the Gold class starts on a Thursday night, so really going to have to step up the offlead heelwork and practice our stop whistle. Meanwhile, little Maddy can now join the Silver class on a Monday night.  11 Oct 2011 07:38 Way to go Millie you are a clever girl, im sure you´ll pass the silver with flying colours.x 10 Oct 2011 21:42 Maddy and I have been working towards the KC Good Citizen Silver Award and we had been due to take a progress test tonight, but Maddy has finally come into season for the first time so Millie has stepped into the breach, and passed the progress test with no problems, and will now be taking the silver test in place of Maddy. 24 Jul 2011 12:30 Considering your both new to this type of work l think CONGRATULATIONS are in order, well done. 24 Jul 2011 10:51 I know, it was disappointing, especially as everybody else passed and the lady with lab got a distinction which means she got 90%, so she was just brilliant. Training in railway/supermarket car parks sounds extremely difficult Vena. I do take Millie over to our park where there are rabbits, birds and a pond and I took her for a last training session early on Saturday morning, and she was pretty good, though I know I have to work at keeping her nose off the ground during the heelwork. I really need to take her to different places to do this because for her new places or places she hasn´t been to for a while really get her nose twitching. Anyway, I know we´ve come a long way since we started this back in May, so I´m pleased with the progress and the examiner and our instructor were very encouraging and helpful so we´ll try again in the near future. 24 Jul 2011 08:18 AH! shame you never passed but for first attempt i think she done rather well. When i was training for competitive obedience l used to train ,in railway/supermarket carparks and outside schools at lunchtimes, it did get them used to distractions, in Millies case if poss train by ponds or in public parks when there is lots going on. xx 23 Jul 2011 21:27 Millie and I took our Beginners Gundog Test today and we got 60%, but unfortunately we needed 70% to pass. The offlead heelwork was our downfall. We had to walk offlead to a specified marker (we got 2/10) and return (again 2/10), for the 1 minute stay we again had to walk offlead to the marker, Millie has to sit/stay (she did a lovely stay), I then had to return to Millie and we had to do another offlead walk to heel back to the starting point (we got 6/10). We then had to walk back to the marker, where Millie had to sit and wait while I walked back to the start marker and recall by whistle only (she did fab recall so we got 16/20 here). We had to do 2 retrieves (1 in clear view and 1 in light cover, both approx 15yds) - Millie did an excellent first retrieve and we got 20/20. On the second retrieve, Millie got somewhat distracted by the fact it was near the pond (!) so we ended up with 5/20, which was disappointing considering how good she was on the first retrieve. Finally, we had to do a steadiness exercise, which involved Millie sitting next to me and our instructor throwing dummies around in front of her, which she had to ignore. She was brilliant here and we got 9/10. All in all, I´m obviously disappointed that we failed, but the heelwork formed a large part of the marks and Millie was just too easily distracted by scent etc, so this is something we´re really going to have to work on, before taking the test again. 10 Jul 2011 20:34 I know! I got a phone call Friday lunchtime from the examiner. I will find out more tomorrow when Maddy and I attend our first Silver class, which I´m assuming/hoping will be run by Denise´s assistant. 10 Jul 2011 17:50 Millie´s Beginner Gundog Test has been postponed due to the illness of our instructor, who was taken into hospital on Thursday night with high blood pressure. 05 Jul 2011 12:16 Thank you Vena re Maddy. She did well especially as there were lots of distractions to contend with - an audience of cows watching her doing her sit/stay for one thing ! Whenever we work outside at Lachlan Dennis Village Hall, the cows all stop munching grass and wander over to line up along the fence to watch lol. It is quite comical but also slightly sinister lol! I´m dreading Millie & the bunnies. In fact, it´s giving me nightmares lol! 05 Jul 2011 09:57 Well done Maddy´ and you Jacqui all your training has paid off, good luck on Friday would love to see poor Millie and the bunnies. x 04 Jul 2011 21:47 Maddy and I took the KC Good Citizen Bronze Test this evening AND WE PASSED!!! We had a couple of sticky moments, but we did it and of course I´m very proud of her especially as she´s still a baby really. Now all I need is for everyone to pray the bunnies stay in their burrow on Friday evening when Millie and I are taking our Gundog Beginners Test, as I can´t see us passing otherwise as Millie is going to find it almost impossible to ignore them if they´re popping up all over the place. 02 Jul 2011 20:27 I am so proud of Millie today. we had our final gun dog class today and we´re probably going to take our Beginners Gundog Test on Friday evening. today we went through everything that´s required in the test - offload walking to heel which Millie did very well; Sit stay (really long distance one too) - Millie did not move; recall to whistle, she was brill; retrieving dummies from left and right on hand signal, she was really good at this too and is now bringing dummies back to my hand. She´s now learning to sit while I throw a dummy over her head and then direct her to go back for it with hand signals and she´s getting pretty good at that. To finish today as it was so hot our instructor took us to the pond, where all the dogs had two retrieves from water. Millie has never done this before and has always been more of a paddler rather than a swimmer, however with slot of encouragement from me she did the two retrieves so I was sooooo proud of her. 18 Jun 2011 07:40 Poor Millie, it must be torture for her trying to work with all those bun buns teasing her heeeeeeee!but im sure shell do you proud when time comes xx 18 Jun 2011 07:14 Millie & I attended this week´s gundog class last night as our instructor is off to Anglesey today for an exam (I think she´s being assessed for accreditation as a gundog trainer). Suffice to say, it was very difficult last night as the local rabbit population were out in force and Millie finds these impossible to resist...she disappeared on a mini hunting trip grrrrr!!!! The upside is though I found out we have 6wks of training and 7th wk is assessment, and whereas I thought wk6 was assessment...it´s such a relief to know we have an extra week! We just had wk4 though so no time to be complacent. I think walks will have to be off for a bit, it´s gonna have to be training, training and more training. Referring to Maddy, just looking at the requirements for passing Bronze and I think I can relax a little here as I know Maddy can do it. We will still be doing lots of training but I don´t feel the pressure with this one like I do with the gundog test. 14 Jun 2011 19:47 No, you´re definitely not boring me. That´s a great tip and we have the ideal hallway to do it hehe. I will try that. Thanks xxx 14 Jun 2011 17:18 Thats good, once your confident she wont drop it, during your bit of heelwork with it, turn and face her again dont make her sit just take it from her, and build on it from there. Ah! you mean drop on recall, that´s what we call it hee! l used to start this off in hallway, l had a fairly narrow one, id put old broom across where i wanted to drop them, don´t try going to far at first, and just stand behind broom, when you call her as she reaches broom give command you use , it takes time but gradually you can move further back and remove broom when shes got the message,. lf im boring you please tell me Hee! 14 Jun 2011 17:06 We do "watch me" too, and we start off the retrieve by teaching to "hold" first too. I´ve been trying Millie this afternoon with the dummy on the chair idea you suggested, and it´s working, so that´s great. I´m also trying to teach Millie the "stop" whistle. She will sit to the whistle when she´s next to me, but I need to be able to recall her and then get her to stop half way so to try and teach this we´re playing a game whereby I throw a treat over her head, she noses around the grass to find it and when she does she should stop and sit where she is, and then I throw another treat. Once we´ve got this, I can add-in the whistle. It´s easier said than done, coz Millie tends to come and sit in front of me lol xxx 14 Jun 2011 14:21 lts all new to Millie im sure she will soon settle bless her xx Not sure what methods they teach at you obedience club, but first thing l did was teach the words watch me !!! for retrieve i always started off by teaching the dog to ´hold first, before i attempted to throw it, if you need any help just shout, different ideas work for diff dogs xx 14 Jun 2011 14:13 Thanks Vena. Yes, we´re all enjoying ourselves. It is fun, but definitely a learning curve particularly for Millie & me with the gundog work. I will try your suggestion with the dummy on the chair. Our most difficult moments are when Millie is supposed to be sitting quietly next me and the trainer is explaining something...Millie gets distracted by a bird landing in the distance or decides to go and investigate the pond lol, but as soon as I recall she comes straight back. I can definitely see how the "send away" must be very difficult to teach. 14 Jun 2011 11:19 Sounds like you are really enjoying your dogs ,im sure Maddie will get her Bronze no probs. Millie seems to be enjoying herself to, must be tad confusing on doing different heelwork, but she will soon pick it up, even if she dont reach the dizzy heights its a learning curve for you, and keeps both on their toes. Have you tried placing dummy on a chair, when she picks it up walk opposite way and call her to heel, dont face her or make her sit, just take dummy and praise, i find this best way to stop them dropping ´dumbell´ at my feet xx lt has taken Heiko quite some time to grasp the ´send a way´´ i always find this the hardest to teach, we spend most of the time getting them to come to us, but sending them away gets confusing for them. Happy Training xx 14 Jun 2011 08:54 Last night´s obedience class went very well, and we´ve been moved up to the Bronze class for next week yeeeehaaaaa....the downside of this is that we will be taking the Bronze test on 4 July!!! So I´m really going to have to pull out all the stops with the training practise. |
©PetStreet 2009 Website built and designed by