It’s been a mega busy weekend for Aggie and I 🥵
Yesterday we were in Evesham at Helen Phillips Clicker Gundog for fun with the Puppy School gang working on our retrieves. Aggie was a little super star 🌟 (see video)
Today we had a great day in Devon with Dogs R Dogs for a livestock workshop 🐏 The pocket rocket 🚀 was a bit tired 😴 from the day before and struggled with the exciting new environment and focus on me but we still learnt loads to take away and work on 😃
Thank you Mr PBP for holding the fort at home (especially since I was at Crufts last weekend 🙊 too) and tolerating me playing with dogs again 🐶 all weekend 🧡
Yesterday’s training session was a little bit meh 😕 not the training session itself but our performance.
You see, the thing is, dogs have off days too 👎
Aggie was, from the moment we got out of the car, completely wired 🤪 and she just wanted to hunt.
It may have been the heightened smells after all the rain ☔️ we had but my money 💰 is on her lack of rest lately 😔
Aggie has taken up a new hobby which is slightly concerning me; spider 🕷 patrol!! This means that she’s on constant lookout and is just not switching off, at all, ever 😳 This is really not good for her well-being and needs addressing.
I’m happy with her daily exercise but I do feel I need to increase her mental stimulation to help her feel a good tired 🥱 That said, with the awful weather we’ve had, I’ve slipped back into training indoors which I know, from previous experience, isn’t good for Aggie as she struggles to view the house 🏡 as a calm environment. We’ve also been around a lot lately so she hasn’t been shut away for good sleeps as she normally would. I’ve also started a new ‘settle’ training programme with her and taking opportunities to reward just doing nothing 🙌
I’ve still got a few ifs, buts and what’s keeping me awake in the small hours of the night but 🤞 this is just a blip 😵💫
Life for us trainers and our dogs 🐶 is just like yours; same boat 🛶, different sea 🌊
I make no secret 🤫 of the fact that teaching Aggie to walk nicely on the lead had been and very much still is a bit of a slog 🥴
Her spaniel nose 👃 takes over and she finds it hard to engage with me at times. The environment is just too overwhelming 🤪
I talk to owners about managing your expectations probably to the point where they’re bored to tears 😭 of me saying it but I practice what I preach 🙌
I know I can not get this wriggly spanner 🔧 to walk nicely on the outward run; in fact I am certain that there are plenty of people in my village who very much doubt my credentials as a trainer when they see me skiing up the Lane (it’s not the bad, well maybe it is 😬). However, I’ve set my criteria, we do the best we can up to the field, allowing plenty of sniffy time and stopping/reversing if Aggie gets too much followed by a good blast around the field 🚀
This morning I had time to do some whistle training and Aggie was on point 👌 politely going through gateways (another issue I’ve been readdressing). Then, we walk to heal back home 🏡
I think she’s done pretty well, don’t you? Now to work on the outward walk too but let’s face it, Rome wasn’t built in a day 😆
#englishspringerspaniel
#spanielsofinstagram
#spanieltraining
