- Location
- Herefordshire, UK
On Sunday our local dog training school put on a Rally Workshop with a lady called Jo Pay who has apparently been on TV although I have never seen her myself.
It was such a good day, the ideal thing to do on yet another Very Wet Weekend in the UK. I've never wanted to do "obedience" but have secretly wanted to have a go at Rally since doing a "taster" course when Cass was a puppy.
Jo is very nice and made everyone welcome, during the day we worked through each individual station and how to train the desired behaviour, with a small course at the end of the morning and a longer one to finish things off in the afternoon. 11-4pm was a longtime for dogs to maintain the learning, after all no one would train for that long otherwise, but it was interspersed with rest breaks for the dogs and tea and cake for the humans.
There was a mix of dogs, I think Cass was the oldest. I was so proud of her , she rocked most of the manouvres, when her handler got it right, mostly really buliding on gundog training in the early years and more recently what we learned at Dog Club last year. But things like learning "stand" and getting up to heel position from "lie down" and "lie down" using front end first were new enough to stretch her mentally.
I am looking forward to practising on our walks, more ammunition in the war on scavenging. I never thought in the early months and years of her life that we would be getting so many complements from a trainer, after so many times of her disrupting classes and so much time on naughty steps (she didn't care!). I am so very grateful that we now have a wonderful dog training set up locally , they call themselves "All Positive" and indeed they are, for dogs and owners a like. No one is made to feel inadequate and every dog behaviour is accepted and managed accordingly.
We are going to be sent pdf s of the stations with accompanying notes on how to train each thing - so plenty to keep us busy through the aurumn and winter
It was such a good day, the ideal thing to do on yet another Very Wet Weekend in the UK. I've never wanted to do "obedience" but have secretly wanted to have a go at Rally since doing a "taster" course when Cass was a puppy.
Jo is very nice and made everyone welcome, during the day we worked through each individual station and how to train the desired behaviour, with a small course at the end of the morning and a longer one to finish things off in the afternoon. 11-4pm was a longtime for dogs to maintain the learning, after all no one would train for that long otherwise, but it was interspersed with rest breaks for the dogs and tea and cake for the humans.
There was a mix of dogs, I think Cass was the oldest. I was so proud of her , she rocked most of the manouvres, when her handler got it right, mostly really buliding on gundog training in the early years and more recently what we learned at Dog Club last year. But things like learning "stand" and getting up to heel position from "lie down" and "lie down" using front end first were new enough to stretch her mentally.
I am looking forward to practising on our walks, more ammunition in the war on scavenging. I never thought in the early months and years of her life that we would be getting so many complements from a trainer, after so many times of her disrupting classes and so much time on naughty steps (she didn't care!). I am so very grateful that we now have a wonderful dog training set up locally , they call themselves "All Positive" and indeed they are, for dogs and owners a like. No one is made to feel inadequate and every dog behaviour is accepted and managed accordingly.
We are going to be sent pdf s of the stations with accompanying notes on how to train each thing - so plenty to keep us busy through the aurumn and winter
and you are right to feel so proud of her. That sounds like a fab day 
