Dog Training….Unraveled

Some dog stuff

So, I joined a dog training club last month, to, you know, train my dogs. “But aren’t your dogs already trained?”, you ask. Why no, no they are not. A fact that was made blatantly obvious to me when I joined the club and asked my dogs to perform a simple stand for exam. Hahahahahaha! [...]

Occasionally

Every now and again I still get calls for dog training. Mostly everyone knows I’ve retired, but since I’ve had the same phone number for 6 years or so, there are still a few cards floating around out there. I got one this morning, from a guy with a new puppy. I called him back [...]

Rescue work

Ah, well, the reason I do rescue work is to give back. Dogs have supported me my entire life, so I feel it is my duty to give something back. But oh man, is it ever frustrating. I only do rescue work in addition to training, there are people out there who rescue is all [...]

Wags for Wishes ‘08

Wags was somewhat of a disappointment this year. Yes, there were extenuating circumstances, the fair extended it’s dates, which threw the horsepark out of whack, which in turn simply knocked Wags off the calendar. I know the organizers scrambled to find a venue large enough to accommodate all the activities and vendors and did the [...]

Huh?

“Is your dog housebroken?”
“Ya, he’s great, only sometimes he still barks at people at the door. But I think that’s because he’s a dog and stuff.”
True story.

Bear update

Some of you may remember my first post about Bear who came for some basic education about life.

Great news, he did lovely. He ended up spending about three and a half weeks here and learned all sorts of good stuff, all the basic commands and important things like Fire Hydrants Will Not Kill You! He [...]

Natural Nibbles – yum!

We recently received a sample packet of Natural Nibbles to “test” and the beasts love ‘em!! A nice little treat without wheat, corn, or soy, it is one that goes nicely with our efforts to feed more natural, high quality foods. It comes in four different flavors – salmon, chicken liver, and two types of [...]

The Real Reason

One of the things they tell you to look for when hiring a professional trainer is what titles that trainer has achieved with his or her own dogs. I don’t have many – Redwood, Rowan, and Jester got their CGC’s, which is a pretty basic, easy title to get. Never got around to it with [...]

June

Hmmm, somehow I managed to completely lose June. Somehow it slipped by without me even noticing. I can’t tell you what I did really, except I’m pretty sure I walked a lot of dogs and cleaned up a lot of poop. Yippee. Already the 4th has come and gone, hope you all had a lovely [...]

New kid on the block

Well, as my “official” retirement date draws nearer (July 1st), I find myself piling on the work. This is difficult, because I really don’t know how to not work. I have a dog here for two weeks of training, another two showed up today to board till Saturday, and yet another comes on Saturday for [...]