Finally!

Finally, finally FINALLY I've found a trainer who's got boat loads of knowledge and is actually willing to HELP me with Psyche's trial/stress issues. :hail:

I am involved in an agility club that has some GREAT people. And all of which are VERY knowledgeable. However, all of them are very busy with their own dogs and often times just don't have time or desire to help me with mine. Once you're done the standard classes in our club, you're kind of on your own. No 'walk-thrus', no weekly training sessions where one person watches and critiques, etc. The best we get is that in the winter we can train all together in the barn, but even then, we're divided into Saturday and Sunday and Saturday is schutzhund day for me and agility day for everyone else, so I go out Sunday and there usually aren't many of these people out and about.

So after seeing about a handling clinic with a lady I know from around the horse and dog world I had a light bulb moment. So I messaged her asking about privates for Psyche's issues (Tinky and Mom's too!) and she's VERY interested in helping and is already getting together a game plan. I don't know why I didn't think of her sooner.

She lives 2 hours away, so we'll have to go to her, and likely will only end up doing two a month, max, but STILL! I am SO excited to actually have some direction on what to do with Psyche to make her more comfortable and confident.

Sorry. Just had to share my excitement.

Yay! That's awesome. Lucy and I have issues with trial settings too--it's hard to replicate that atmosphere correctly for training!

Don't say sorry! That's great! Congratulations

So our first lesson won't be until the 20th of January, but STILL!

That is so awesome, Congrats on finding a trainer that is willing to help you

That's awesome!! I wish I could find someone around here to help me work with Fudge although it's not so much trials that bother him as the actual classes. He finds it over stimulating but unfortunately all I can ever seem to find around here is group classes.

Do you crate him while he's got 'down time' in classes? With Bella she found other dogs working really stimulating and so I'd have to crate her, cover all sides but one little spot where she could only see me, click treat for calm behaviour, until eventually I had all sides uncovered and she could calmly watch the others.

That's what I do at trials but in the classes if I'd done that then he wouldn't have got to work at all! Since it was a group class we usually began by practicing different obstacles seperately so he had to be out and working around the other dogs and as he's the "fun-police" sort of dog, it would drive him wild watching them play and he couldn't focus on me. I was able to work him up to short periods of work around other dogs but I was always tense and ready to grab him or down him and it just wasn't fair to him or fun for me. I do want to get back to it because we were at one trial over the summer just doing a jumpers round and he lit up when he got in the ring.