Win-Win Dogs

Wishing all of my clients and their dogs a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Saturday Retrieve Club resumes in January - train your dog outdoors in company! The specific Saturdays are 5, 19 and 26 Jan and January Club membership is 30 pounds which covers admission to all three 1 hour sessions. There are two different groups: the 10am session is suitable for post-Foundation dogs and the 11am session is suitable for dogs who already know how to retrieve. Please message me to book, or for more information!

New Gundog Skills and Behaviours Foundation Courses are starting in January 2019! Please message me for more information or to book.

Look at clever labrador Max signing his own Christmas cards at only 18 weeks old! I would like to wish all my wonderful clients and their lovely dogs a merry Xmas and a happy new year! I have had quite a few pre-Christmas 121 sessions squeezed into the last few days with the session today being my last until the new year. If you’ve had your 121 training session with me in the last few days, please be assured that your personalised training plan will be sent out to you this week.

This is when the thermal lining of the Treat & Train cover comes into its own. Freezing cold temperatures in Russia but the machine still works! ❄️❄️❄️

Congratulations to our Gundog Foundation Xmas graduates Pebbles, Bobby and Harley! Awesome work folks!

Treat yourself at Christmas! The approach outlined in this book, combined with relevant modern training techniques from the world of dog sports and performance, will create gundog behaviours with a fantastic balance of drive and control 👍

I have had a great morning catching up with lovely labrador George whose owners are doing a fantastic job with him. He is super enthusiastic about everything he does and he loves to offer behaviours which is really great from a shaping/training point of view. It is so important to take the time to build a great foundation as this creates a “training language” for you and your dog to start using when the time comes to train more complex tasks.
Just look at how well trained this rat is, and see if you can spot how some simpler behaviours are eventually chained together to create more complex behaviours. Many thanks to local agility club Freymor Dogs for alerting me to this fantastic video showing the power of using positive reinforcement in animal training.

Instead of your dog going self-employed in the woods running after deer, rabbits, birds and squirrels while you are out for a walk, teach your dog to enjoy hunting for something for you like a ball, toy or gundog dummy. It allows the dog to enjoy the same types of behaviours but in a controlled and constructive way that builds, rather than weakens, your relationship.
In this clip (which I have condensed and speeded up to save time as this hunt lasted around 5 minutes which i...s a long time to watch any video on Facebook) you will see my dogs hunting for something known as a snipe dummy which is a very small and heavy canvas dummy which sinks deep into the cover. This means that the dog cannot see it and has to rely on using their nose it to find it.
The reason the dogs have had to hunt is that this session began as a seen retrieve over a high stone wall to obscure the last part of the fall. After several successes, the dogs both failed to find this particular retrieve when sent over the wall, so I climbed the wall myself and asked them to hunt when I got near where I thought the dummy might be. Without the dogs, I’d have no hope of finding it as it gets completely under the bracken, brambles and bilberry bushes and becomes invisible. Not wanting to lose the dummy, I vowed to keep hunting until it was found. My initial estimate of where it landed was about 2 metres out from where it was finally found, so I didn’t mark it too well myself!
Anyway, a key thing to teach the dog is to 100% LOVE to give you the item because it is the passion and drive this creates that’ll keep the dog hunting for something like this for as long as it takes to find it. This usually has to be taught as the dog is not normally born with the same interest in a dummy as it has for game and even if it is, you need to create great drive for them giving it to you rather than keeping it for themselves. A second key thing is to try to be near the item so the dog learns that the best finds are near to you. This’ll keep them hunting close with the cue to hunt new ground coming from how you move/progress and communicate with the dog using your body language.
I did not choose this ground at random. I had seen three deer move through this clearing as we approached it and I wanted to put my young dog to work over some fresh deer tracks to help her choose not to follow them. I made the bet and thankfully her desire to hunt the snipe dummy was stronger than her desire to track the deer (she has a very strong desire to find and chase them unlike my other dog). If I had noticed her being unable to work in this environment I would have found some other, less gamey, ground to work her on.
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Today was water treadmill day to help keep the girls strong and fit for the activities they do. It also allows us to observe their movement and identify their normal performance which means we are in a position to spot any deviations from normal. This was their last session at the ARC in Huddersfield before the Christmas holidays. We will resume this work again in January. If we expect our dogs to work and/or compete it is a good idea to do as much as we can to make sure they are as fit as possible for what we are asking them to do.

We now have four shipments of reserved covers in transit which were sent by air from Russia on the following dates: 26/11, 30/11, 4/12, 8/12. We have a fifth batch due to be shipped this week and I have another batch to to order on behalf of folk this week. This is an incredible rate of production for my friend who makes them. We are trying really hard to meet the demand. However, the Parcelforce tracking shows that the shipments have still to make it to the UK (they have lef...t Russian customs). For the shipments sent in November this is an unusually long time. We have not shipped near the Xmas period before but it is clear that the increased demands on the postal service are affecting shipping times despite sending by air. However, it also means that I cannot order any more covers for folk until I receive payment for the covers in some of these batches. It is still possible to reserve covers, but I cannot order them until some of these shipments have arrived and been paid for.
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Winners goes Grade 7 in one day with 4 wins at DV Oakridge!! I can’t believe it! Crazy dog!
It’s a relief to have her back on form after so long not training or competing. Also a relief not to have to worry about winning up.
Inky did two jumping runs as her running DW is not ring ready yet and she did the run of her life in the medium combined 4-7 jumping and got a fifth place, only a couple of seconds behind Winners which is good for her.
... I love the venue! Cannot believe how fantastic the cafe is and the Xmas decorations created a great, festive atmosphere.
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Handsome 15 week old Labrador puppy Max showing off his free shaped down during his first 121 training session with Win-Win Dogs. His owners have done an amazing job with him so far and I can’t wait to see what he can do by the next time I visit!
For interesting information on the type of training we use, check out the following blog article https://www.clickertraining.com/shaping-s uccess

Excellent tips on using shaping in dog training. These concepts are taught to all clients attending my Foundation courses as well as 121 clients. Training is a process and sometimes the process does not look like the product. This is particularly true for things like recall where it is futile to try to train in high distraction environments until greater handler focus and connection is achieved in lower distraction environments. A great recall comes from a dog having a strong... desire to be close to their handler and it is very tricky to train a good recall without that being in place. With your hard hunting self-employed gundog it is essential to create this desire to avoid losing control of the dog altogether. Our puppies often give us this great focus and connection “for free” and we should not take it for granted because as the puppy matures it can easily be lost.
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If you are going to DV Oakridge on the 8th of December and want a brand new Treat & Train for 75 pounds, let me know and I’ll bring one. Just got new stock in.

I recently held a “win a Treat & Train machine cover” competition over on my own timeline and here you can see Treat & Train cover competition winner Lindi Venter’s dogs Cassi and Delta enjoying their new red cover in Canada 😍

Well done Winnie! Fourth place in the Olympia at Wyre Show after such a long break from agility! An injury early in the year put an end to her season in March which meant I didn’t get the chance to compete her in the summer as a two year old. We carefully restarted training at the end of August and I decided that the first thing we would work on was to retrain her stopped contacts to running as this would have less impact on her body. This show is the first time we tried our running contacts in the ring.

I have some brand new PetSafe Treat & Train machines in stock. I’m selling them at 75 pounds each if you are local and can pick up at training or directly from me in Leeds, West Yorkshire. I’m also at Wyre tomorrow. I realise I missed the boat here and you all probably got one already on Black Friday 🙈
I have no idea how much they are to package and post out yet. If you would like me to investigate that, I will 😊

Me and my 10 year old Border Terrier Woody have just done a Gundog Fundog Foundation Taster workshop, which we really enjoyed. Liz did a great job of catering to the level each of the dogs were at and how each of us could grow the games we played. I would highly recommend having a go at this and would love to do more of this with both my dogs.

I did a series of beginner gundog workshops with Liz at Win-Win Dogs and my 1 year old Cocker Spaniel. I've never done any gundog work before and I'm not interested in ever pursuing 'real' gundog work, but the training was great for me and my dog. It really helped us build skills like control in exciting environments, activities to do with me on walks that are better than ball throwing and keep her from obsessing about birds, and some fun whistle and hand signal skills too. I would definitely recommend them to anyone with any type of dog. As they are positive-based methods they are very encompassing for all.