Seminars

Welcome to the seminar listings.

There are various time slots available for seminars, the rest of the year I like to spend a little time with my family and my own dogs! First priority for booking is always given to the host of the previous year's slot, but a waiting list is held for any other interested parties.
I ask that handling slots are limited to 12, any number of auditors can be accommodated as long as some form of personal amplification is provided, so that auditors can clearly hear what is said to each partnership.

With regard to the seminars themselves, the most successful are the ones that have been carefully planned. There are two ways of approaching this; the first is by carefully defining the focus of the seminar. We tried this idea first with Skyline Agility Club in NY, they have a very capable organising team and we did a series of very successful seminars arranged around the needs and requirements of their own members. There are three main types of seminar that can be organised in this way: -

• The first revolves around maintenance of existing skills. These sessions are NOT designed to help dogs with “problems”, but rather to extend and refine the existing skills of the partnerships. Exercises can be based around contact equipment, weave poles, tight turns, speed into turns, distance work, layering, discriminations or “traps” etc.
  
  
• The next is a series of problem solving seminars, these can be as short as a half day, according to needs and requirements. Almost any topic can be covered. The most usual are weave poles, speed, entry, popping etc. Contacts and start line stays. Jumping “issues”. Stimulus control or “traps” and how to solve them. Turns, turns and more turns. Focus and how to maintain it. Motivation and reward. It should be noted that there are very few “problems” that can be solved in a seminar. In general what will be given is an analysis of the existing skills, together with suggestions for a plan of training to extend them.
  
  
• The final section is devoted to teaching new skills. For dogs, those can again include weave poles, contacts – including approach to as well as turns off, - jumping, turns, distance work, lines of drive, start lines, building independent performance etc. Next there's people skills: - course walking, memorising courses, how to build confidence. Body language and how to refine it, verbal cues and how to teach them.

The success of this type of seminar revolves around the idea that each person attending has a similar requirement and therefore time spent with one person will be interesting to all. It is very hard when a handler presents a difficulty with something such as an A Frame at a seminar; as an instructor it is hard to let someone walk away when they could be helped, on the other hand, there are the other handlers to consider. Seminars that are targeted in this way make life very easy for all concerned.

The second approach is to try and group handlers with similar dogs. Fast dogs face different “issues” to steady careful dogs. High drive dogs need to be trained in a different way and with a different structure to the more diffident of our canine partners. Handlers when grouped together in this way will find each dog in the group more interesting as the information and approach will be relevant to their own situation.

The final seminar suggestion is the “pre-agility” lecture/demo. Any number of people can attend, dogs can be any age, from puppy to adult. This lecture covers all the work BEFORE beginning Agility, from manners to specific skills, can cover one or two days depending on the amount of demo time required.

Seminar dates to be added shortly.