A quick post today, tomorrow is my second cataract surgery so I'll be a tad less productive for a few days. It's been glorious the last few days; here are a few photos to share: Here's Maggie from last weekend after one of her sessions. The fall colors came out so fast we could almost see them change. Some lovely color on the way home: Here's one on me: I was working Maggie at home just a few hours ago, and took this photo of her unable to see the sheep (see the white butts to the right of the tree?). And then we I walked up a few more feet toward the gate on the left, exactly where she'd been looking: Yup, trust your dog. I like this photo of Maggie bringing the sheep to me at the gate; a rather nice shot of speckle-faced Beyonce, on the Read More
Archives for October 2019
The Challenge of Pet Dog Training
A top handler said, after Maggie and I had had a rough run at a sheepdog trial last month, "You're in good company, this is hardest thing I've ever done". Bless them for their compassion. I've probably heard that ten times this summer, from people who in their other lives are accomplished professionals who work challenging jobs. Doing well at the highest level of a sheepdog competition is indeed a challenge--the number of factors that influence each and every one of your split-second decisions are endless. That said, I want to take a moment to look at pet dog training, and give a shout out to everyone who does it, both personally and professionally. The fact is that it has its challenges too, the primary one being that we are "training" our companion dogs every second of the day that we Read More
Ready or Not . . .
We finally had a few days of sun last week. (The round, bright yellow thing in the sky that hurts your eyes if you look at it, just in case you forgot). But of course, it rained again, and since the ground never dried out we seem to be living in a second "mud season". Typically, "mud season" was in spring, but given all the rain this summer and fall, we've had it seems that we'll be living in the equivalent of chocolate icing until it freezes up. (Never has frost looked so good!) Needless to say, that means lots of muddy paws around here, which reminded me how much I love the cue "Ready". I've written about it before, but bring it back every five years or so because it is one of my favorite cues. It'd be great if it was part of every family dog training curriculum, hey? Here's Read More
Dog is Love by Clive Wynne
The author Clive Wynne sums up his book's thesis in its title: Dog is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You. He argues, compellingly, that dogs aren't special because of their intelligence, but because of their social bond to us, which after extensive research, he is happy to call "love". One might say that this is not quite as unique an argument as he suggests, but there is no better scientific explanation of our astoundingly close emotional relationship with dogs than in this book. It contains so much interesting information that I first began trying to summarize all the studies myself for you. Bad plan. Trying to rewrite his entire book in short form was probably not a good idea. What I'll do is list a few, just to whet your appetite. Before I do, I should mention that some of the Read More