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Saturday, June 20, 2009

Kiersten Lloyd Seminar

This weekend Bosley and I are attending a Kiersten Lloyd agility seminar.  I have taken seminars from Kiersten in the past, and I really like her style of teaching.
Today we ran the dogs through a short course, breaking it down into small sections at first.  The first thing Bosley did was take off on me to go explore the farm that the seminar was being held at.  Bosley and I then had a stand-off about his 2on/2off on the A-frame.  (He seemed to think that he didn't need to stop.)  The one thing that Kiersten is really big on is to set the criteria you want for your dog and then always insist that both you and your dog follow that criteria.  I had to struggle today to get Bosley to stick his A-frame contact to the point where I (and Kiersten) had to physically put Bosley in the correct position until he was staying there until I released him. 

What I was reminded of the most today was that Bosley can take a lot more pressure and correction than I give him credit for.  I always think of him as being a soft, easygoing puppy, but in reality he is a very confident (sometimes over-confident) dog who sometimes needs to to be told when he is doing something wrong.  He does not melt when I am stern with him and as Kiersten pointed out, I sometimes need to be more stern, especially on those times that he tries to "blow me off".

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