I’ve written for Clean Run magazine for many years and so I thought I share some of my articles here. I’m very grateful to the team at Clean Run for turning many of my ideas into coherent articles and for their patience and tact through the editing process. If you’d …
Most people arrive at puppy class with a list of behaviours they want to prevent – biting, chewing, “running off” being amongst the most common. There is a tendency to phrase concerns in negative terms and pups are called all sorts of names including “naughty”; implying a deliberate choice and …
We were delighted to welcome Zip this week, an 8 week old working bearded collie. Highly photogenic as you can see! What has he done in his first week? He has recovered from a 4 hour car journey, he’s learnt how to be without his litter mates – no small …
A friend recently disclosed that she had taken her dog off the start line 12 times for breaking its start line and was marvelling at how stubborn her dog was. I was stunned to say the least! So let’s begin at the beginning, behaviour is built through reward. Punishment inhibits …
At some point, almost every agility handler realises that timing of cues is a vital component of successful handing, no matter which system you follow. In October 2001, I produced an article for Clean Run magazine with the same title as this blog. It was in many ways, a response to the …
The Leading Leg What is it? If you’re learning about agility, sooner or later you’re going to hear about the leading leg and “changing leads”. There is remarkably little information about leads and lead changes, so I thought I’d address the concept here. I’d like to extend grateful thanks to …
Beginning Clicker Training In loving memory of Koda. 18/01/2005 to 16/10/2015. This is part of an original article that I wrote for my website back in 2005. It makes me smile as the article contained comments such as “digital cameras all have this time lag between pressing the button and …