Training Day

We had a lovely training day on Saturday with Natalie Mitchell. I’m increasingly picky with who I train with, but I’ve known Nat for a long time (and Kai is Dylan’s half sister) so I know how she trains and handles.

There are some “local” trainers that I avoid, in some cases simply because I don’t think their methods are going to work for my dogs. I’m sure they’re great trainers, just not for me. From my point of view, I do not respond well to being shouted at, even if it’s done in a “lighthearted” manner. I also don’t respond well to being told flat-out that I’m wrong (I have some other thoughts on that which I’ll post later!). Nat doesn’t do that, she discusses and tells me how to improve what we have. She also explains why, and that’s important for me as well. That is the kind of training I respond to, and I have a bunch of things to work on from this session.

Having said that, Dylan really surpassed my expectations. His Aframe and Seesaw were beautiful, his jumping was super, he was fast and responsive. We worked on rear crosses and push-outs (or round-the-back), and it turns out that we are both much better at that than I thought we were. His dogwalk was initially slow but improved as he got more comfortable with the equipment, which was frustrating but what I expected.

His waits were actually great, which I was very pleased with. I am working on his wait a lot, and we have plenty of other things to do until it’s perfect. One of which is going to include throwing some of my runs in competition, but there we go.

Mainly what I got was some tweaks to my handling, which I really needed. We’ll see if I can remember them all when it comes to Hare’n’Hounds in a few weeks time.