Nell and Co

16/11/2024

In our Thursday Tricks Class, Dot, Edie, Flint and Grace did some more work on hold, out/drop, pick up and retrieve.
We break all these elements down into stages so that no matter what the experience level, everyone has something to do, learn or tweak!
Edie and Grace are just starting out with tricks, and it was amazing to see how much progress they made in just this session! Dot and Flint, worked hard and were sharpening up some exciting skills to make the overall behaviour more polished!
Really great class with fantastic dogs!

15/11/2024

In our Scentwork class, Dot, was joined by Edie, Ficek and Grace!
In today's session, we started with some work on our indication, as Edie and Ficek are newcomers to the sport, so we're learning all about how to start building a nice foundation, whilst Dot and Grace worked on adding more duration to theirs!
We went through a bit of theory, setting up searches, moving your dog on/retaking, how to set up a few indication games and ideas on how to set up at home searches!

Really nice session with great work from everyone!

14/11/2024

December Classes will be up and ready to book soon! Our Scentwork and Tricks classes will be switching to pay per session for the month, what with it being Christmas and all🎄
If you can't make a class, then when not join us Mantrailing! It's a great way to get out for a few hours, and if you do your intro before the 22nd December, you can join us on our Special Events and Workshops!

Drop us a message for more information or head over to https://nellandco.as.me to book your space

12/11/2024

Lovely but nippy Scentwork class this afternoon! Teams Lottie, Teazle and Tully worked on buried, deep and high finds! We threw in a couple of tricky ones, that took a little bit more working out but all finds were, found!

Great work everyone and thank you for joining us!

If you would like to join us for Scentwork, we have *one* regular place available on our Tuesday session.
If you can't make every week, but would like to slot in, drop us a message to go on our reserve list!

09/11/2024

We ended Thursday evening with our Tricks class!
Regulars Dot, Flint and Nico, were joined by Grace!
This month's trick is a bit of a twist on Christmas 🎁 and whilst Grace settled into class and got used to her team mates, the others worked on hold, nose touch, drop and parts of a retrieve!
Really good work from everyone, all the dogs settled quickly and cracked on with the work, and Grace took everything on her stride and started work on the nose touch!

08/11/2024

First up yesterday we had scent class where we set teams Dot and Rebus a challenge. Could they search with distractions?
Yes they could!
We changed the search area and finds around to increase or lower the difficulty, moved the finds around, changed the carrier, and added in some more distraction ,they both sailed through it!

Absolutely fantastic work!!

07/11/2024

Venom at her first ever breed club show!
Thanks to Northern Provincial BTC for such a welcoming show and Villensia Bull Terriers for entrusting us with one of your puppies!

06/11/2024

Stocking up on Christmas goodies over at The Lancashire Dog Company 🎄🎁⛄
This time we took Venom (sorry Flint!) who was on her very best behaviour!
She patiently waited for treats, tried some outfits on for camping and winter shows and then took over the shop chair (as is standard for the Nell and Co crew🤣).
Natural born poser!

If you haven't been yet, you really do need to go pay Helen a visit at the shop! She has everything you could ever need for a dog, from collars and leads, to treats, to toys🤩 so many toys.....

Venom is all grown up now 🥰 She visited the shop today to start her Christmas shopping and was also treated to a cosy new fleece 💚 Venom goes camping and also spends time at shows waiting to go on so the new Ancol cosy fleece with keep her lovely and warm 🥰

Vee was such a good girl in the shop and she definitely got fussed off all the customers 😁

05/11/2024

We were back indoors today at our Tuesday Scentwork class!
We opted to set up several search areas, so we had a line up for them to practice ORT, an "audience" type setup with bags and jackets, a jumble/random article search area and then a room search using the main entrance.
All, bar the lineup, had multiple finds, so teams Holly, Lottie, Teazle and Tully had their work cut out for them.
We used different carrier for the scent to make sure they don't just look for gun oil paired with one type of carrier, then we upped the difficulty a little by making the novel area finds deeper.

Absolutely fantastic work from everyone, especially in the room search and the novel area, and also a huge well done for one team for being able to keep working with an extra distracting scent.

Keep up the good work and we shall see you all next week,where we will be back outdoors!

04/11/2024

Surviving Adolescence: Part: Nobody gets left behind or forgotten.

WTF are they talking about now we hear you ponder?

Let us explain.

This post is aimed towards multi dog households, like us, and not particularly based purely around adolescence, or any life stage per say.

It's more about, not forgetting your other dogs, the ones that have been with a you a few years, the ones that you made the time to train and do things with, the ones that had one to one time when they were puppies and adolescents, and now are maybe overlooked, not on purpose, but are not so much in need of your direct attention because they're retired, injured, won't rip a gas fire off your wall, or break into your kitchen and raid your cupboards, or need taking out every 20 mins because you're toilet training...

We're saying, don't forget, that in the midst of a puppy arriving or having to concentrate more on your adolescent gremlin, that those other dogs are still there, and should still get some time with you or be involved in training.

We aren't saying each dog needs a different hobby or you need to be spending a fortune or training for hours.

You can train in your living room, for 5 minutes, with 10 treats each. All at the same time.

Some ideas for this:

*Stationing (aka, getting your dog to stay in one place and wait their turn aka on your bed) is a great group activity that you can involve all your dogs in (as long as they all get along).

*Name games. Is similar, in that only the dog your talking to gets the treat for something and if the others moved, you have them go back to their station.

*Group tricks. Tailored to the dogs skill levels )this can literally be down/sit/stand!)

Obviously the more dogs you have the harder this is, but if you've previous taught the same game to the others, it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to achieve.

If you haven't got stationing, then you can start that for your training. Give each dog a spot, pay them for getting and staying there, release them, repeat. If needs be start this one at a time with the others in a different room or crated. Up it to two dogs, rotate, then add in the next and repeat.

Spending individual time with each dog can be harder, but still achievable if YOU make the time.

This can be anything, but our frequent go to's are:

*Grooming. Giving one a brush (or start to strip), nail check/nail clip/foot balm.

*Petting. Now this is obviously down to the individual dog, so if they don't like petting, then don't do it! If they do, a belly rub/chin scratch/back stroke can go a long way!

*Target training. This can be a paw, chin or nose, doesn't need to be a long session, can be 10-20 treats or 5-10 minutes and targets are useful when wanting to train other behaviours or to use when grooming.

*Scentwork. Again, doesn't have to be a long session and can be as basic or random as you want. You could teach an indication, or work on searching. Use food or their toy, or use gun oil or clove. Get them hunting round the room or garden for sprinkled kibble or digging in your cardboard recycling. The possibilities are endless with this one.

If you're out at a training session or event, you can still have individual time with the ones not training! When getting them out for a p*e, do it one at a time.

Have a mooch with them.

Do a bit of Scentwork/heelwork/target/tricks practice for a few minutes or generally messing around with them to keep their attention on you (once they've p*ed of course!) all are ways of spending quality, and/or individual time with them.

One, or multiple of these things can be used no matter what the age of dog. It doesn't have to be a full on formal training session, just like it doesn't have to be a full coat strip session.

It doesn't have to take hours, it can be minutes.

Many of our training sessions here are either group or 10-15 mins long when individual, sometimes they're no longer than 5 (especially if it's a p*e break!). It's not about quantity, but quality. So try and make the time, like, waiting for the kettle boiling, the microwave to finish, shop to open, programme to start, commercial break...yes, your time can be this short, but it's still enough for some quality time.

So. What are you waiting for?

03/11/2024

This has to be THE deal of the year!
Treat yourselves to an early Christmas present with one of our membership passes!
If you want a year round discount to our classes and sessions, then look no further!

In conjunction with Mantrailing Lancashire , we have our Mantrailing Pass, which entitles you to 10% off all things mantrailing.
That's right, ALL things Mantrailing!
That includes progression sessions, special events and assessment levels.

Then we have our Ultimate Membership!
This gives you 10% off ALL classes and sessions across the board!
That's ALL our regular classes, plus any special events AND includes everything covered under our Mantrailing Membership!

So what are you waiting for?!

Message us here at Nell and Co or Mantrailing Lancashire for more information!

01/11/2024

Halloween Scentwork, saw teams Dot and Nico working on hanging finds, creepy blockbuster, pumpkin garden and then, an, erm...haunted car boot!

A sneaky Barbie video hide didn't stop these two from finding the scent! Fantastic work!

30/10/2024

We had a spooky Scent Class yesterday, which included a Birthday for one of our Handlers! Happy Birthday Ann!

From Pumpkin Patch to Creepy Cottage, teams Gracie, Holly, Lottie, Luca, Teazle and Tully searched high and low to find their scented articles!

Absolutely fantastic work from everyone, especially on our pumpkin pool at the end! Some nice directing from the handlers, and, even with the creepy witch (aka the Mantrailing creepy baby!) spooking a couple, they worked through it really well!

28/10/2024

Why "Surviving Adolescence"?

Some of you are probably wondering the reason why we started our "Surviving Adolescence" satire/blog/tips series, so we thought we would explain.

At the time we started writing, we were living with an adolescent Ginger Grinch. He wasn't too bad, there were some things that he tested our patience with but overall, he was pretty easy to deal with, then of course we resurrected the blog as we now have Venom (aka the White Hippo), who is a *tiny* bit more trying. Lovely and exactly what we were looking for, but trying.

Which leads us to why we started it in the first place.
It wasn't *just* because we had an adolescent at the time, it was because we know how hard things can be when you hit this stage. Most of our enquiries for 1-1 or regular classes, are from people hitting or fully in the swing of this stage, and it's hard.
It can be mindbogglingly hard!

Did you know the average age that people re-home a dog is 6-18 months? And what does this coincide with?
You guessed it, adolescence.

Now whilst the series is slightly satirical, and you would be forgiven for finding it amusing, we do try to cover topics that if you aren't prepared for or you have a few things missing in your training somewhere, this life stage will hit you like a wrecking ball smashing into a train going full sp*ed.

Obviously we haven't and can't cover every eventuality (we do have a living to make too😉), we do try our best to cover things that can cause people the most stress or be the most stressful to both dog and owner, and try to offer multiple ways to either ride something out, train through it, or get through it with some semblance of sanity left at the end.

This time around for us, it just so happens that we have a particularly spicy adolescent, that is making us think even more outside the box than usual, which is great for testing skills and tweaking our training (not for our sanity!) but, if we are sometimes having to massively think outside the box, break things down into smaller pieces, use trial and error and still sometimes hit a brick wall, and we train dogs for a living, imagine how hard it can be for people who haven't or don't have access to the information and training we have had.
It can seem like an almost impossible task.

Sure, we are a little bit biased and offer the information in a way that weighs heavily on how we choose to train our dogs, and we also tend to come up with the next post when we are struggling with something or have just experienced something, but it works for us, and it is (in our humble opinion) a really nice way to document parts of our training journey.

If this series helps someone relate or gives them ideas on how to survive, great!
If not, then, they might know someone else who it might help, or it might crop up for them later or with their next dog.
For some, they might hate the way we work (or write) and that's also fine! (Remember the post we did on choosing a trainer😉...)

We write, sometimes sporadically, about surviving, in a way that hopefully keeps your relationship with your dog, (with some sarcasm and satire thrown in, remember, we are also having to survive this!), and come through the other side with some semblance of a trained dog and sanity intact.

This is why.

25/10/2024

Dot had Scent class to herself yesterday, so we mixed things up with some room searches followed by s**t Blockbuster searches!

23/10/2024

In our Scentwork class, our teams of Lottie, Luca, Teazle and Tully worked around decoys and distractions, with low and high finds!
It was a little windy in parts, which made things a little more difficult, but it was a great opportunity for the handlers to see their dogs work their way into the scent!

Great work everyone!!! They all worked hard, especially with the squeezy cheese distraction!

Next week will be pumpkin based, to fit with the best day of the year 👻

22/10/2024

Join Nell and Co and unleash your dog's inner detective!

Join us on a Tuesday afternoon for a fun filled session, where you and your dog will learn the art of indication, spruce up your searching skills, and sniff out the scents!

Open to all breeds and ages, our scent detection class will not only open up your social circle but set you dog up for scent success.
Whether you are starting out, a social searcher, or a scent trial pro, we accommodate everyone!

Head over to https://nellandco.as.me to book your slot, or message us for more information!

21/10/2024

Surviving Adolescence Part: Food Manners

So, usually as a puppy, we teach food manners (or food refusal).
That was before we got a Bull Terrier. If you think Labradors are bad for food, they have nothing on a Bull Terrier. A bull Terrier will have eaten your snack out of your hand before your brain has even registered you're holding something.
We like good food manners (with the occasional sneaky steal), all dogs should have good food manners (with an occasional sneaky steal), what we currently have is a flying bulldozer, that thinks they're starving and all food is fair game...we are aiming to change that (not completely, we aren't stupid enough to think we can change that wiring🤣).

We spent a lot of time working on taking things nicely, or on cue.
We mastered that, and we start the session we are sharing in the video with it.
We are using a game based on Susan Garrett's "it's your choice" to work on "just because the food is there, doesn't mean it's yours".
There is no cueing, we don't ask Venom to do anything, if she tries to get the food, we close our hand, or put our hand back over it. What she needs to do to get the food, is back off, but she's got to choose to do it herself. Hard when even the slightest hint of the smell of food (or drink )has her acting like she hasn't eaten for 6000 years...

So that's what we worked on. Now, we will confess that in the session before this, we were working on a send away/send to bed, which is why at one point she goes to stand on the mat, BUT for a dog that will usually take someone out for a crumb, that's a pretty epic achievement, so even though we had switched what we were training, we still paid her for getting on the mat. We want the mat to be a good place, and also, it *did* meet our criteria of backing off from the food. Double win!
(Remember when we did the post on how criteria can change during training and if they throw something spectacular out, that you want, to reward it? Well, if you don't, that's what we did).

Whilst this is still a work in progress (she just tried to drink our coffee **edit** and eat a shoe), there should be enough information in the video for you to try it (no cues , cover the food if they try to eat it, pay them for backing off).

Once they have the idea, you can up your game and try other foods or a toy...
It all helps with teaching a little impulse control (aka, manners)...we hope...

Without further ado, this 2 minute video is the sped up 6 minute session we worked with Venom