I hear excuses from people all the time.  Today I overheard a young man saying he was too old to start a new endeavor.  According to him, people in the industry would prefer a younger man.  He was willing to throw away his goal based on age.  I took a…

Failure is a word that has a bad bad bad rap. I mean the poor word really did get the short end of the stick. People just have it all wrong. They see failure as something bad. Failure means you’re not good enough, you didn’t try hard enough, people look…

Sportsmanship. It’s a word we hear often. It’s written in every AKC competition catalog. It’s bandied about in professional sports. Lots of people have different opinions on it. We know what it means. But for the most part we don’t really think about it. Except we should. Sportsmanship is the…

When I first learned to train for competition obedience, all problems were solved with more “drive”. “Drive” being loosely defined as getting the dog as “high” (aroused) as possible, i.e., tugging, playing, chasing food, games..anything that increased a dog’s arousal level, which is pretty dangerous when you pair a dog…

We are, on the whole, a pretty pessimistic society. We focus on what is going wrong, what went wrong and what could potentially go wrong. Which means, inevitably, things are going to go wrong…and prove us right. If we do find something that works for us, we stick to it.…

Labels. That’s a sticky topic in the best of times. A landmine in current times. Because I’m not adept at navigating minefields, I’ll look at it in dog terms. We label all the time. We label a dog according to breed. Certain breeds have certain traits. Certain strengths and certain…

New Heeling Clinic with Petra Heeling is a complex exercise requiring a lot of thought for an extended period of time. I break heeling down into three parts: focal point, engagement and position. The dog must understand exactly where position is and that it’s their responsibility to maintain it for…