We’re having a pretty extreme vinter for the south of Sweden. We have about 85 cm of snow and more coming this weekend. I don’t mind a bit of snow, as it makes everything brighter and cleaner, but this is really too much. We can’t train or teach in our normal riding facility, as it is closed because of the snow (some buildings, like tennis centers and riding facilities, have collapsed because of snow on the roof). Because of that, we had to find a new place for last weekends seminar on jumping. We did, but then it started snowing, and the roads and trains just broke down. Our instructor, Vappu Alatalo, was on a train from Copenhagen to Örebo, but never got here. She spent 24 hours travelling, but got nowhere (she eventually just tried to get back home). So the seminar got cancelled.
As long as my training field was plowed, I was okay. We could do herding, obedience and a lot of foundation work for agility. Now, we’re still waiting for the snow plow to come bye again, but it seems like we’re waiting in vain. I wish we had our own tractor. On the positive side, you can really tell that spring is coming. It’s so much lighter in the afternoons now, and the sun shines on our fields. We didn’t get any sun in the middle of winter, as we’re surrounded by trees that blocked the sun for a couple of months.
Thomas and Pogue did an obedience trial in class II on Valentine’s Day. It was a bit early and not everything was perfect, but they got enough points to be able to move on to the next class. They will focus on search and rescue trials this spring and summer, and then do more obedience (class III and elite) in the fall. They are a wonderful team to watch, you can really tell how much Thomas loves that dog. He is only 16 months old, one month younger than Squid, who hasn’t done any trialing yet.
Here is a video of Thomas and Pogue training scent discrimination, the first step towards the exercise with scented articles in class III and elite:
Here is a video of Squid and I doing some shadow handling:
And we’ve also started training weaves with the 2×2 method:
DogNerd ,
I get such inspiration from watching all your videos! They really help me get off my lazy butt and train my dog even when I’d rather not.
I do have a question for you…what breeder did you get Pogue and Shejpa from? I’m looking into getting a working cocker as my next dog and am currently very much in the research stage.