Hi All,
As many of you know, I spent last Friday to Sunday with Sam-WOW! at a workshop with Susan Salo. This is the 3rd workshop we've done with her and I can't express the importance of teaching your dogs good jumping skills. Susan Salo's workshops focus on building great jumping skills for your dogs and the focus is also based on building confidence with speed. If you would like more information on Susan Salo, you can check out her website at: http://www.jumpdogs.com.
Sam-WOW! was brilliant all weekend and showed lots of improvement from the last seminar (actually, all the dogs showed lots of improvement from the last workshop). I'm looking forward to teaching the exercises from the workshops to all our students. Lisa has taken a couple of Susan's workshops with Marshall and she'll be passing on the importance of jumping to the foundation classes as well. Too many trainers forego their dog's jump education and I feel it is a real shame that lots of people do this or are unaware of the importance of the dog's jump education. I know that sometimes the jump work can be "tedious" & sometimes "boring" work but it is essential work that can only benefit profoundly in your dog's agility tool belt. Sometimes, as handlers we don't see the results immediately but over time, your dog will gain confidence and speed over jumps because it will become confident enough to perform those jumps properly with a good skill set.
At this seminar, Susan spoke to us about being a "team" and working in unison with our dogs. Because I've been a instructor for a really long time, I learned a long time ago from a brilliant trainer (Wendy Volhard) that students learn in either an audio way or in a visual way. I'm going to write out some points for reference for those students who need the visual so that hopefully, we can all work towards being a better team with our dogs. If it's in writing, it's been said by both me and Lisa to our students and if you didn't "hear" us, then maybe having just these small tips written out will help those of you who need it in writing as well.
Remember......
