We went to our 2nd Greg Doud workshop. It’s a long drive to Albany but totally worth it. Indra is doing surprisingly well, especially since she has limited experience in bitework. The last workshop was in January and before that she’s only been worked around a month (as a puppy) during summertime.

I got to see Debbie Zappia working a Rottweiler, Doberman and a Shepherd. She’s a completely different league and it was amazing how Greg and Debbie worked the dogs. I learned a lot just from watching them, especially about praise, markers, and clear commands. 

Judge was a riot. Everybody had so much fun watching him. Especially since he didn’t really know what to do in the beginning. He hadn’t done any bite-work before the workshop. I used his ball-drive for SAR and didn’t tug with him at all. I wanted somebody, who really knows what he’s doing, work him for the first time. since he’s so young and just got out of teething You could tell from the beginning that he’s got it in him. He knew he had to do something and barked and barked and barked some more until it made “click” and he bit. First he played with the tug, than he learned to actually tug and hold onto it, so you couldn’t simply take it out from under him by pulling on the lead.
This is Judges 3rd Session with Greg and it’s amazing what he has learned just within those three sessions.

Indra and I never had any formal obedience training at all. What you can see in this video is what we have taught ourselves by recording everything we’ve been doing it and watching it over and over and over again. Anytime I am training the heel, I am recording and literally obsessing over it. I sit there all night long, watching it over and over again, breaking it down and over analyzing what we do.

The thing is, I can see what we do wrong. I can see every mistake I am doing, the problem is, I have nobody that kicks my butt and points it out right there and then. Like when I am opening myself up and she swings her butt around and follows my body… that is my fault but nobody is there to yell at me so I keep my body straight. 

Same with walking faster. She’d be much flashier if I’d walk faster but I have nobody to remind me to walk faster.

Anyhow, we could be much better than we actually are but we could do worse. We are doing okay. Just wished I could go to formal obedience training. However, this is the first time I sent a dog over the hurdle to retrieve and it was more playing anyways. I wanted to see if I ever learned something from watching my parents doing it for years. It went amazingly well but I know that I am way ahead of us. We shouldn’t do stuff like that already. However I am not doing that to compete. Pretty much anything I do is for ourselves. 

It seems like yesterday when I drove all the way to Austria to pick up Indra from the Sattelberg Kennel. She is everything I had hoped and wished for. 

Horst Moosmann, her breeder is one of the most caring breeders I have ever met. It doesn’t matter what kind of question or concerns I have, he’s always ready to answer, When we bought Judge from him, he said that if we had ever any issues and couldn’t keep him for whatever reason, we could always send him back and he’d even pay for the flight if he had to and just enjoys seeing them grow.

Watching Indra grow is an amazing experience. Sometimes I wanted to pull out my hair because she got herself into all kind of trouble. Most of the time I was laughing about her being such a goof and funny girl. It’s amazing to see how they grow, progress and become adult dogs. Especially whey they have such a strong personality and that glow in their eyes.

She is getting better and better. She picks up so fast, it’s amazing. One thing I have to work on is the “Out!” though. It has gotten sloppy and that is unacceptable.

In the last run, the helper, for the first time, went out of sight. When Indra came back she thought she could get away with a sloppy indication. It is important to not cut them any slack. The indication is fully trained and she knows what to do, doesn’t mean that she can’t try to get away with it. After all they are not stupid. 🙂