Obedience Training Days

Training Day with Vikki Wong 17th October 2010

Held at Gate Helmsley Village Hall
near York.
Thanks to Sue Beavers for the photo's

Di & Tuggs

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Sylvia & Leo

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Dawn & Badger

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Dawn & Badger again!

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Trainer Suzanne Jaffa, held at Baginton village Hall, nr Coventry 20th Feb 2010

When I heard that Suzanne Jaffa was holding a training seminar for NASA I just had to make sure I got my name down as quick as possible! Suzanne is known for her excellent training ability in both Working Trials and Competitive Obedience. For those that don’t already know she is one of the few trainers who promotes and practices pure clicker training or ‘operant conditioning’ as it’s really known; this stuff floats my boat!

The venue was situated in at Baginton Village hall, nr Coventry which, for me and my friends was quite a trek but we were all looking forward to what Suzanne may be able to offer us, so none of us made a fuss about the 5 hour round trip! The venue was good, although perhaps a larger hall would have given more scope to do some longer stretches of heelwork but as everyone knows, trying to find a venue is just so difficult these days what with health and safety and such like. Outside, the venue was brilliant as it had a lovely sized grassed area but as per the ‘British weather’ it decided to cover everything in that white stuff, plus February is never the warmest so we all trained indoors.

Suzanne started with a brilliant introduction, explaining fully why and how she trained which, did get quite theoretical at times but was explained very well. This is especially difficult when there are many trainers with dogs of all ages, practicing different styles of training and at different ability levels, however, the one thing we all had in common was we were all there and owned by our brilliant Aussies.

There were lots of different areas of training covered which included Working trails and Competitive Obedience and the great thing was Suzanne spoke to the whole group whilst teaching and then offered to answer questions if anyone was unsure.

Personally, I worked Maverick, my 6yr old who is working C, and needed to look at how I could improve the consistency of his work. Basically, he would sometimes ‘just do stuff wrong’ even though 99% of the time he would get it right?.... this baffled me! The message I needed him to understand was….

“We get one shot at this in the ring Mav and we have to try and get it right the first time!”

…Anyone else have this problem? I bet you do…LOL

Suzanne suggested that I only accept and reward the whole exercise as I know he can do it, and not allow him to gain a reward by including mistakes in the chain or patching stuff up. Simple? Yes… and this made perfect sense but of course it can only be put to use on a string of behaviours that a dog understands very well, guess what! IT WORKED! Sometimes it just takes a fresh pair of experienced eyes Phew! Another of lives mysteries sorted

All in all I had a fabulous day and so did my fellow Yorkies. We enjoyed meeting new Aussie folk and catching up with friends. The day was very successful and raised a fantastic £ for Aussie rescue, that is just brilliant!! So, a big thank you goes to NASA for arranging such a great day that was enjoyed by all and raised money!

Lastly and certainly not least, on behalf of everyone concerned a huge thank you to Suzanne who gave up her day, educating lots of Aussie stars and their owners to raise money for the Aussie rescue fund, traveling miles, and ensuring that everyone thoroughly enjoyed their day and learned lots of great new stuff. THANK YOU SUZANNE!!!

Happy Dogging Everyone!

Vikki Wong