A reasonable amount of time is devoted to teaching our dogs to hold a position, which we usually term “stay” or “wait”. I used to teach both stay and wait. Stay meant to hold the position, no matter what. Wait meant to hold the position until otherwise directed. My first Boxer truly understood the difference between the two commands.
I’ve been competing with my 20 month old puppy in Open A. Until we started Open, I could say Daisy had never NQed on anything. Well, I can’t say that anymore. There’s a reason Open A is referred to as the heart-break class. Arguably, it is the biggest jump in training your dog will ever make.
There’s no substitute for repetition in learning. How many times do athletes run drills? How much practice does it take to get to the Olympics? How much work does it take to earn an OTCH?
Because of the Pandemic, AKC laid off a substantial percentage of their staff and workers. The remaining staff must be overwhelmed trying to keep up amid the chaos. I have always counted on AKC to process the results of my efforts (scores from events), record and send the titles we’ve earned, and they have done a spectacular job.
How do you determine when to start teaching which skill? Figuring out the differences are part of the adventure, and it’s what keeps us growing as trainers.
Zooming. Most of us have heard the term. A dog running in big circles around his handler while the handler feels helpless to stop or control the behavior.
It is a constant dilemma in our sport: How do we cultivate new participants? Clearly, exposure is a primary requirement for recruiting new handlers to join us. People can’t become interested in something if they don’t know it exists. News and television coverage reach a lot of people who might want to train their dogs. Unfortunately, the catch 22 is that you generally can’t get such coverage unless people already want to see it. So we have to find other ways to increase our exposure to the public. If we don’t, Obedience may slowly fade into history.
AKC had to cancel the RNC and NOC in July due to CoVid 19, but shifted it to Orlando in December 2020 replacing the AKC Classic. It is an interesting time to compete in dog events of any kind.
