Blog
In the blog we write about the book, clicker training and our thoughts about gun dog retrieving and field trial training.
Interview with the winner of the Spaniel Championship 2017: Anna Lindholm
Anna Lindholm, Spaniel handler and breeder, won the Swedish Spaniel Championship 2017 together with her dog Wildphoebe Nighthawk "Penny". She also received a prize for the best Swedish bred dog and became "The Spaniel Champion". The latter means that Anna and Penny...
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Two Years of Laughter and Tears – Two Years of Learning
My ”puppy” Quling turned two years old a while ago. Among other things I love him because he’s the cuddliest dog I’ve ever had. Every morning when I wake up, he literally comes to hug me. Wiggling his entire body, he slides into my arms, puts his paws on either side...
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Tassla’s First Field Trial
Tassla and I started in a Beginner’s trial (B) for spaniels a couple of years ago and I thought I'd share that experience with you. Beginner’s trial (B) is the easiest trial there is for spaniels and the purpose is to judge the dog’s ”spaniel qualities”. When it comes...
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Ludde has crossed the rainbow bridge
In mid May, we had to make the most difficult decision a dog owner have to take - to let go of your beloved dog. Ludde was my first dog and my master guide into the world of dogs. When I bought Ludde, my only preference was that I wanted a white golden retriever and...
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Getting Your Dog Used To Game Early On
I’m convinced that introducing the dog to game already during puppyhood is for the very best if you want a dog that feels that handling game is the most natural thing in the world, and the very best thing too. When I meet friends, acquaintances and students whom are...
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When The Hold Isn’t Good Enough
A while ago I had a project with Tassla. The goal wass to improve her hold. She’s always had a leaning towards a somewhat loose hold and most of all; she’s been likely to chew the objects that she’s retrieving. In order to develop a firm hold, I’ve been playing with...
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Winner’s class with Kat
I made my debut in the Winner’s class for Spaniels the other day. With me was my teacher, the Cocker Spaniel Kat. She’s my bonus dog this autumn. Her owner has a few too many dogs and her extra family lives close to me, and since they don’t hunt or train their dogs I...
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Tassla’s First Trial Of The Season
I wanted to share the story of Tassla’s first trial of last season with you, so here goes 🙂 Tassla is in Novice, which is the class you can enter if you have passed the water trial. The next class up is Open, which is the highest class. In Open, you can collect legs...
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When almost everything comes together, but yet not…
What a day! I’m emotionally drained. That handling a Spaniel can be this exhausting! But today, Tassla and I had our best trial so far! We had two runs. The first one lasted maybe 20 minutes, and had quite a stretch in tailwind. Perhaps I did let her run a bit wide...
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The party of the year: Summer camp
Every year we have a gun dog summer camp which is just so much fun so we wanted to share a story from our second summer camp a couple of years ago. The previous year’s camp was amazing and this camp was at least as fantastic, according to many of those whom...
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The Seven Deadly Sins
When we had made some progress in writing the book (Retrieving for All Occasions), we played around with creating a summary under the caption ”The Seven Deadly Sins”. Unfortunately the text couldn’t fit into the printed version of the book, so we’re publishing it here...
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Back to basics
I claim that one can pass a novice cold game trial in Sweden through working on deliveries, steadiness and heeling (providing, naturally, that the dog is interested in hunting and will pick up game). I constantly go back to those basics, both in my own training and...
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Is it Okay to Train a Puppy?
Both Elsa and I train our puppies from the moment they move in with us. Since the puppy is like a clean slate, we want to be there from the beginning and teach her the right things. Puppies are resourceful and learn all the time – no matter if we teach them what they...
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Challenging Water Work
To train water work is both fun and challenging. Most spaniels and retrievers love water and sometimes they get too excited as soon as they approach water. Therefore, we prefer to do a lot of calm exercises instead of training marked retrieves on water, which might...
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Working at a Distance from the Handler
To stop at a distance – why is that sometimes so difficult? We often have students who think it is a huge challenge to get the dog to work at a distance from them. They usually also think that it is difficult to get the dog to stop when she hears the stop whistle...
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The unplanned rewards
Lisa Winbo is the latest addition to Klickerförlagets group of instructors. Lisa has been thinking about dogs rewarding themselves for behaviors we really don’t want to reward. With two gundogs in the house one needs to be one step ahead at all times… 😉 The fact that...
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Walk up
When we were in England at a summercamp with Dogs for life and Philippa Williams a couple of years ago we did a lot of ”walking on a line” or rather a “walk up” because that’s what it is called. It is one way to hunt and the dogs and handlers walk on a long line a...
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Gun dog work on film and in photos
We’ve now made some nice changes to the page called Gun Dog Retrieving. You can read a short description of all the different parts of a field trial as well as see films and photos of these parts. We’ve added more films where you can both SEE what hunting, blind...
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Singing the praise of the switching game
The switching game is one of our favorite games. We use it to train everything from taking and holding to the full retrieve. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to show and explain the game – particularly when we don’t have our own dogs with us – so when we were...
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The second day with the Spaniels
When going through my notes I found some interesting ones from a seminar I attended several years ago and thought I would share it with you. We’ve had our second gathering of the foundation class for Spaniels with Catharina Fahlberg. Remind me to never ever plan to...
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