by Denise Fenzi | Dec 4, 2013 | Brito
The past few weeks I concentrated on a few things with Brito: Play with toys. That is coming along pretty well. Less good outside but hey, he’s a baby. Play with me. That also suffers outside, but still…we’ll get there. Retrieve. Super! Good boy...
by Denise Fenzi | Nov 27, 2013 | Musings
If you’ve been following my blog, then you know I’m a huge advocate of playing with dogs regardless of your sport or personal interests. I also know that many people are a bit stuck. Stuck on where to begin. Stuck on how to progress. Good at one type of...
by Denise Fenzi | Nov 1, 2013 | Brito
Here is an eleven minute training session of Brito from this morning. You can see a variety of things. Shaping with a dumbbell. I normally hold it because he tends to put his feet on objects sitting on the floor. That is not a habit that I want to encourage. (...
by Denise Fenzi | Aug 20, 2012 | Cisu
Playing with a strong dog is a matter of leverage, not strength. I can usually play with a dog that is up to half of my weight – more than that and I will suffer. The trick is one of technique….the attached video will illustrate a few points. This is...
by Denise Fenzi | Apr 9, 2012 | Most Viewed Posts, Musings
For every one person who asks me about building food drive, nine people will ask me about how to build toy drive. Why is that? For starters, there is probably a strong genetic component. A newborn puppy has the drive to eat or it dies. That’s a...
by Denise Fenzi | Dec 6, 2011 | Lyra
Most of my training time with Lyra is really structured play – play that gets me the behaviors I want with maximum joy and energy. There are also a few skills that are more easily mastered when the dog is calm. For these, I use food as the reward. Food leads to a...
by Denise Fenzi | Nov 14, 2011 | Lyra
Here are a few things I’ve learned or changed in the past few weeks. I’m using more food. What can I say…it works. When I call her into the house, she now gets a cookie about 1/3 of the time. That’s up quite a bit from what I had hoped for....
by Denise Fenzi | Nov 6, 2011 | Lyra
Lyra has made great progress in her play and work skills. She consistently returns her toys to me – all types of toys including tug toys and stuffie toys. She knows what play and training are, and she puts herself into drive when we head for the training field....
by Denise Fenzi | Sep 29, 2011 | Training Videos - not my dogs
This is Ziva, a 12 week old Australian Cattle Dog. Here are a few clips from her first lesson. She is learning how to stand on a platform, how to retrieve a dumbbell and how to play with a toy (plus give it back!). These are all foundation skills that will serve...
