Advanced Mastery Clinic day one - team challenges

On this day, we talked in the morning about how techniques are great, but that it is patience, trust and observation, combined with a dog’s motivation and confidence that come together to make an advanced team. We have to master these things and keep the joy in our work! These are my thoughts and shared experiences after 35 years of this wonderful activity and 11 years of coaching for motivation and performance. Each team was randomly assigned a different handling challenge and had to remain patient and observe their dogs while we all followed and learned a lot. These were blind training tracks (not double blind). The challenges were – maintaining a loose line and following, maintaining a long line and following, multiple corners where some turned and others passed by the corner, complex, urban environment and trust, and contaminated environment and patience. All of these teams displayed amazing work. I was so proud of everyone and loved watching the dogs. This group works hard and practices a lot on their own and it shows! On the next day, everyone received a training track that was only semi-blind, where they were encouraged to choose from all of the examples they saw or demonstrated the day before and decide when some of those handling techniques might help along the way. Stellar work by all.