The Seminar...

The seminar this past weekend was wonderful. Carolyn Scott is spectacular. Reyna and I both learned a lot from her. This was brand new material for us, since we've never done canine freestyle, just basic obedience. There were a few other newbies there, but most of the folks had at least some experience with it. There's really no one doing the sport in the Raleigh area, but it seems to be taking off a bit. I met a girl there who's a dog trainer in Raleigh, and she's planning to start offering lessons in March. There were 4 shelties, 8 border collies, 3 goldens, 1 cattle dog, and Reyna, the only GSD.

It turns out that Carolyn has trained two GSDs to do canine freestyle, so she was very good with Reyna. Totally understands a GSD bitch, both by gender and by personality. Reyna only had a couple of barking incidents....and all Carolyn did was tell me to put her in the corner for a few minutes. It was great. Typically, if Reyna does something, its assumed to be her fault, I get fussed at, and then I get mad. And Reyna's behavior alters based on my attitude, so when she knows I'm annoyed and agitated, she actually gets worse. But thats another rant...

We spent the weekend working on learning some new moves and how to teach them to the dog, as well as choreography and picking out music that suits the team. Reyna picked up the moves very quickly, once she realized that it was okay for her to be out of heel position. It also helped that one of the girls there had some awesome training treats that Reyna'd never had before. She even tried to take my fingers off to get to it. And after two days of junk food, it took Reyna a day to recover. She finally started eating her regular food this morning. I know Reyna got bored a few times, but she was a real trooper all weekend. Even realized Friday night that she wasn't supposed to bark at all the new noises, just at something that might actually affect us.

I would like to take this time to point out that my dog is awesome. She was able to take all the new moves that she just learned, be off leash in an area with a bunch of other excited dogs, and complete a (thankfully brief) routine that her poor mother choreographed in 20 minutes. And she did it flawlessly. Its possible that we may have found a new activity for the two of us. Cause we needed something else to do....