Two Exciting Seminars: Agility and Flyball
05 Jan 2011
I’m very excited about two upcoming seminars: “Can You Handle It?” and “Building a Solid Foundation for Competition Flyball”. I am giving both seminars in March. Now that the sponsors have contacted their members, I am letting everyone know as far in advance as possible so there is time to check your schedules and sign up.
Can You Handle It?
For Your K9 in Melrose Park, IL asked me to give a "Can You Handle It?" seminar. It is a full day agility seminar geared toward helping teams who are competing and looking to improve their handling on course. The seminar will be on March 6th in their great new facility. There will only be 10 working teams and unlimited auditors. So if you are working a dog you'll get a lot of hands on time. Here's the blurb from the flyer:A seminar aimed at intermediate and advanced agility teams looking to improve their handling on course. Steve will help you see handling alternatives and help you choose ones appropriate for your team. Teams will run courses and get detailed feedback on improving their execution. Steve encourages and challenges handlers to step out of their comfort zone to find clearer and faster handling for their dogs.
In order to focus on handling and improving handler execution, all dogs must be proficient on all equipment; no remedial equipment training will be covered
We’ll be running full courses, breaking them down into interesting sections to concentrate on specific skills and then putting it all back together. I’ve got the courses designed (I was inspired by the USDAA Championship Grand Prix Finals course for the standard course) and I’m working on the handouts with a collection of my handling tips. Eventually I’ll post them here in the blog.
My students know working on improving handling to clarify (and consequently speed up) the path for the dog is one of the things I love about teaching agility. The other aspect I enjoy is helping handlers identify course handling possibilities that can benefit their team. This should be a lot of fun and I’m really looking forward to it!
Here’s a link to the flyer with more information.
Building a Solid Foundation for Competition Flyball
Over the years I have developed a pretty successful training progression for teaching Flyball to dogs and handlers. The folks at Stone City Kennel Club in New Lenox, IL wanted to offer a seminar aimed at giving more than just a quick overview of the sport or a demonstration. They were looking to have me introduce the steps in the training progression and explain/demonstrate how the training continues to the finished flyball run.
This seminar gives an overview of the entire training progression for training a dog to run Flyball with diagrams, video, hands on work, and demonstrations. We’ll watch some tournament video, cover the basic rules, handling (yes there is handling in flyball), building value of rewards, recalls, jumping, and my progression for the Swimmer’s turn on the box. It is a lot of information packed into a 1/2 day seminar!
I’ve always taken my students through this progression little by little in a weekly class format. I think laying it all out in one comprehensive seminar will be beneficial for people new to the sport and for trainers teaching Flyball. There are only a limited number of working spots, but I think auditors will get just as much out of this seminar. My goal is have everyone who attends understand how they can take a dog through the training steps and get started playing Flyball with their dogs.
Here is the SCKC flyer with more information about the seminar on March 19th.
I’m thrilled to present these seminars and hope to see you at one or both of them!
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