Archive for the ‘Training’ Category

Posted on October 19, 2009 - by Guro

Leash Training

Here’s Frøya trying to learn how to walk on a leash. Leash training is pretty basic; still it is not that easy to learn! First of all it’s essential that the doxie pays attention to you - and not all the others that may be all around you! Treats or toys are usually good ways to get attention! Once you have the doxies attention you give the command for walking, e.g. “foot”, and then start walking - left leg first. You always start with the left leg when you want the dog to follow you, and remember to reward often! Changing the tempo between normal walk, fast walk and slow walk also help keeping the dogs attention on you. The same goes for right and left turns, or even a full turn. You should not give any commands when making turns, only when you change the tempo. When you stop, the dog shall sit down without any command - use treats when practicing this!

Posted on September 30, 2009 - by Guro

Competition - LP1 Skeidbanen

Skeidbanen, 20.09.2009.
Summer vacation is long gone and it’s time for obedience training, and even an obedience competition to get going again! We haven’t really been training that much this summer and fall, so I wasn’t sure if this was a good idea. However, Aurora has been doing very well on training the last couple of weeks, so we gave it a shot!

Here’s a summary of the exercises:

1. Greeting and Teeth Inspection (”visning av tenner”): 9 points - it was difficult to sit still today!
2. Down and Stay for 2 minutes (”fellesdekk,2 min”): 10 points - I was very nervous, but Aurora did a great job!
3. Walk on a Leash (”lineføring”): 5,5 points - we’re still struggling with this, it’s too easy to get distracted!
4. The Heel (”fri ved foten”): 6 points - same problem as above, however the last part of the exercise was not too bad!
5. Down after stop (”dekk fra holdt”): 5 points - don’t know why we struggle with this one at competitions, first she was slow to sit down and then she wouldn’t sit up at the end of the exercise!
6. Recall from Sit (”innkalling fra sitt”): 8 points - not sure what we got points off for, I think she did this very well - maybe a little slow at the start!
7. The Stand (”stÃ¥ under marsj”): 7 points - a good stand, but lagging behind on the heel part of the exercise!
8. The Jump (”fritt hopp over hinder”): 0 points - I still can’t believe she didn’t jump; she’s been doing this without any problems lately!
9. Overall Impression (”helhetsintrykk”): 6 points - we need to work on better contact/control between the exercises!

In total we got 127 points - a new personal best for us!

Posted on July 8, 2009 - by Guro

Down and Stay - Over Again!

This time it’s Frøya who needs to practice the Down and Stay Command! She just started the obedience training at the end of April, and so far she had great progress. This video is from her 5th training session and it’s only the second time she practices the Down and Stay in line with other dogs. It’s not easy with all the distractions all around!
The challenge here is to be patient and just keep on trying - don’t lose your temper like the one episode in this video!!
After 2-3 more training sessions Frøya was doing much better, she stays for more than a minute, not quite at 2 minutes yet! Let’s hope she still remember how to do this after the summer break!

Posted on June 25, 2009 - by Guro

Aurora - On The Blood Track

Here’s Aurora working on a blood track. The blood track is 6 hours old, and the distance is about 250 meters. There are several corners and one place without any blood for about 6-8 meters.
At the start she takes off in the wrong direction, following our footsteps back from the end of the track. We walked past the starting point on purpose to see if see would follow this track or the blood track. So, she needed a little help getting started on the blood track, but once she was on the move she had very few problems following this track.
The place with no blood for 6-8 meters was no problem - maybe still following my track? A bit later I had gone off the blood track for a few meters, and it looks like she followed this track as well. It didn’t take her long to get back on the blood track though, and she found the end of the track with the deer hoof! She was very proud of her job and was not willing to let go of the hoof for a few minutes!
It’s not easy to capture all this on video, but hopefully you will get an impression on how well she works on the track!

Posted on June 17, 2009 - by Guro

Obedience Competition - LP Klasse 1

Skraperudtjern, 26.04.2009.
This was our second start in an obedience competition, and it did not go very well! It was the end of April and we had not done any training outdoors at that point, so we were really not prepared for an outdoor competition. Still, it was an experience to learn from… next time we will be better prepared!
It has taken me a long time to be able to edit this video; it was really depressing for me to watch this, so I had to let the files rest on the computer for a while!!
There might be something to learn from it though, like the first exercise of the day (visning av tenner)!
Anyway, I have tried to make this video somewhat funny - so have fun watching it!

In case you were wondering, the score for these exercises were: 0 - 0 - 0 - 5 - 5 - 6 - 0 points!