Well, my world is going to be full of trick training over the next two weeks… perhaps to a fault.  I’m hoping to keep up on my blog posts… but I may end up using some videos and photos…which I’ve been told is not a cop-out.
This year I’ll be doing two demo’s for a local organization’s fundraiser, Dogtoberfest.  My go-to demonstration is normally frisbee, for the obvious reason, but this event is held in a parking lot and there is no safe place to play.  We still wanted to show off what you can do without prong collars, choke chains, and leash corrections so I came up with other demonstrations we could do.  Another positive trainer is demo-ing Rally-O and a more “balanced” trainer will be demonstrating obedience (with her dog on a prong)…so I had to come up with something else.
I figured Shayne could demonstrate nosework games.  It’s an outdoor venue with lots of dogs and no real boundary to the demo area so I’m hoping that she stays in the search area and is focused on the game.  I need to prep her this week and next week on outdoor searches in parking lots.  She’s done quite a few outdoor searches but always at my home and never in a populated area…so we’ve got some work to do in that respect.
Shayne also has a large repertoire of tricks so I said I could do a tricks demo mixing up some obedience, freestyle, and traditional trick training.  Rio … well I haven’t really worked on too many tricks and the ones we’ve worked on are no where near proofed.  So he’ll do some of the tricks he does in frisbee and I may try showing some “in progress” tricks.  He’s mainly going to be a chance for Shayne to have a break.  Shayne will be doing a short trick routine with some freestyle-like moves then I’ll be demo-ing her opening and closing her crate, doing a foot-stall and back stall, and maybe a handstand (maybe!).
I gotta get out there this week to some populated parking lot areas to practice in that environment.  With all the prep work I’m going to be quite busy!  Maybe I’ll find someone who can film our demos so I can show you the end result!