Highlights of the Steve White seminar

Posted on May 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

On May 7-8 2012 Mindful Behaviors hosted a Steve White seminar on tracking and scent detection. We all enjoyed learning from Steve whose knowledge of canine scent work and animal learning theory is very impressive, he is also a phenomenal speaker. I’m already looking forward to inviting him over again.

The first day we had a workshop on Hydration Intensified Tracking Training (HITT), a method developed by Steve for teaching tracking on hard surfaces and under challenging conditions. The whole method is based on error-less learning Continue reading →

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Posted in Conferences, Tracking, Training with movie links

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Practicing scent detection (or random poking?)

Posted on April 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

We had the pleasure of having Sojo from Oracle Aussies to stay with us for a week, I’m taking Sojo as my demo dog to Steve White seminar on Scent Detection hosted by Mindful Behaviors . I decided to experiment with both Sojo and Forbes and try and teach them to indicate a scent, which I chose to be tea (easy enough to get!). Continue reading →

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Posted in Finnish correspondent Salla, Tracking, Training with movie links

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Getting a puppy? Do your research.

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 2 Comments

I have been thinking of writing this blog for a while now. The topic has been prompted by my Life Skills students who have done such a wonderful job rescuing dogs or puppies from puppy mills. Continue reading →

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Posted in Behavior, Everyday training, Life happens, Training people to train dogs

Time to get organized with tracking training

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 1 Comment

I have been training tracking with Forbes for almost a year now, we started off with tracking on hard surfaces using Steve White’s Hydration Intensified Tracking Technique (HITT). I tried to be systematic about bookkeeping in the beginning but since then things have become inconsistent and our training has been kind of aimless. It has been hard to keep up the motivation when training alone all the time. Continue reading →

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Posted in Everyday training, Tracking

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First Rally trial with Forbes

Posted on March 9, 2012 | 2 Comments

Today March 9th, Oracle’s The Billionaire and myself got our first qualifying score in Canadian Kennel Club Rally Novice B trial. The trial was part of the big Purina show so the venue was big and busy. Continue reading →

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Posted in Obedience training, Trials

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Simple but certainly not stupid

Posted on February 20, 2012 | 2 Comments

Last Friday, Feb 17th, myself, Caryn of WhattaPup! and Andre of When Hounds Fly drove up to Barrie to train chickens in a much-awaited one-day operant conditioning workshop by Katherine Ferger and her husband Len Silvester at Canine Company. I have long been beating myself for not having attended a chicken camp back home in Finland, where the guru himself, Bob Bailey, came a few years ago to do camps. As soon as I heard that Katherine is doing them up in Barrie the Bob Bailey way, I was determined that I wanna do one.

Why chickens?! Continue reading →

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Posted in Behavior, Conferences, Training with movie links

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Why I prefer Cranky Canine to private reactive dog sessions

Posted on January 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

Aino Mutka has kindly provided Cranky Canine a lot of amazing photos of her Finnish Lapponian Herders, Pi and Rho.

A new year has started again and it is soon time for our fourth series in Cranky Canine program for reactive (I’m always tempted to use quotes around this word!) dogs to kick in. Why did we start doing this program, what do I know about aggressive behaviors in dogs? Continue reading →

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Posted in Behavior, Dog reactivity, Training people to train dogs

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