It's All About The Journey

I'm learning how to help students in my Virtual Classes when I'm not there to demonstrate something they ask about.  Here's a video I put together with Jason about Hand Touches for students.  Hope this might help a few of you too.   Hand touches can be very powerful when you need to get your dog to want to work with you, or to get them back from a distraction.  It's also a good Warmup for training, along with making sure you DO have a dog before training - i.e. Will they take a treat from your hand and then look back at you - Will they take a treat from the floor and then look back at you - Will they do a simple task (like sit) and refocus again?   These warmup exercises along with hand touches are fantastic!!  If your dog doesn't want to work, then don't push it.  Give them a break and try again later.  You want them to want to work with you.  These are only a few of ideas to use. But here's the hand touch method and how to do it. https://youtu.be/rjN9MXjuR

Here's a video I want to share. This was a Rally course for my Virtual Rally Advanced class this week. I had both of my dogs do the course for a demo. Students can watch this on their own.  We work on the signs individually in the class and I make comments after each student does a sign.  They do all the signs and sometimes there's time to do 2 or 3 signs together so they can work in the transition between signs with comment.  Teaching virtual rally is interesting because students have to learn how to set a course, so that's part of the training as well. SIGN #115. Halt - Stand  SIGN #315. Double Left About Turn - Right Turn  SIGN #112. HALT - 180° Pivot Right - HALT  SIGN # 215. Stand-Left Turn-Fwd  SIGN # 202. HALT - Stand - Sit  SIGN # 213. About U Turn - About Turn Right  SIGN # 117. HALT – Pivot Left – Forward  My Novice dog is almost 3. I handled him much differently than my Master dog, almost 11). My Novice dog got lots of treats. He's doing so much better s