Midwest Boykin Spaniel Club

Transcription

1 Midwest Boykin Spaniel Club Winter Edition January 2012, Volume 1, Issue 1 Special Interest Articles: Purpose of the club? Does Sit Mean Sit? Role modeling and using pressure by Bill Hillmann Welcome to the first edition of the MWBC newsletter. We hope that you ll find it informative and a help to your training. Please take special note of the Upcoming Events section so that we can set the dates as soon as possible. Upcoming events Individual Highlights: Sit Means Sit 2-3 Member Feedback 3 Role Modeling 3-4 Using Pressure 4-5 Parting Thoughts 5 New Members Alesha Ronat-Illinois Brad Dutson-Minnesota Chad & Dana Fox-Tennessee Daniel and Diana Willbrand- Missouri David & Susan Ladd-Florida David Polzin-New York Duane & Teresa Glick-Ohio Eric Hicks-Ohio Fredrick J Butchers-Indiana Hank Ahaus-Indiana Jim Blum-Indiana John & Bennita Kennedy-Indiana John & Janice Nelson-Michigan John Eichelberg-Illinois John Hadrick-Michigan Josh Ward-Indiana Mark Anderson-Michigan Mark Myers-Indiana Matt and Angela Madej-Kentucky Melody Robinson-Ohio Phil & Karen Hinchman-Indiana Rob Ratliff-Ohio Rod Payne-Indiana Sam Shine-Indiana Scott St Clair-Indiana Thomas Cirks-Iowa William I Hill-Alabama Purpose of the MWBC All too often, special-purpose clubs like ours begin to exist solely for the purpose of participating in the different dog games. From the beginning, the MWBC board has had a vision of offering more for members than hunt tests a couple of times per year. To that end, we would like to solicit feedback from club members on preferences for the club s charitable involvement. Initially, we decided to provide a $100 donation in the name of the MWBC to Boykin Spaniel Rescue. The Boykin Spaniel Foundation was also considered because of their leadership in Boykin-related health issues, including funding of an Exercise-Induced Collapse (EIC) study specifically within the breed, the first of its kind for Boykins. Smaller donations will also be given to the Boykin Spaniel Society to help defray its expenses in running two national events, the BSS Upland Field Trial as well as the BSS Retriever Field Trial. At the BSS Upland, the club donated a Mojo dove decoy ($50) and decoy set as part of the auction. If you have other suggestions or feedback about where you would like the club s charitable donations to go, please info@midwestboykinclub.com Upcoming Events The club would like to hold a training day/social/mock field trial either May 2 or June 9 at Phil and Karen Hinchman s Brandywine Creek Boykins. If you are interested in attending or have a preference on one of the two dates, please info@midwestboykinclub.com.. Due to the success of our first BSS-sanctioned upland hunt test this past October, we are planning on holding a two day event either the weekend of September or October 27-28, The location will most likely be at Glenns Valley Conservation Club in Waverly, IN. Again, if you have a preference on weekends, please info@midwestboykinclub.com.

2 Page 2 of 5 The article below is reprinted with permission of Ted Shih, an amateur who field trials labs with several appearances at the Amateur and Open Nationals. Contained within are some thought-provoking gems about what our standards are and how consistently we teach and enforce the standard, even if you never aspire to making it to the last series of a field trial. It was originally posted on the Retriever Training Forum. Ted s website is You may think sit means sit, but my guess is that it really doesn t to your dog. I can discuss this subject because in many respects, I am an expert. By expert, I mean that my dogs are known offenders (one having broken in two different trial in the fourth series where we were on the leader board) and I am, in no small measure, to blame. First, some background. My dogs are professionally trained by Cherylon Loveland. She does not run trials, I do. In the off-season, I train every weekend. In season, I train Thursday, then jump in my dog truck. Second, it doesn t matter what you do, the dogs know a field trial (or hunt test). I don t care what you do, you cannot replicate battle conditions, only approximate. At a FT, there is no collar. There are lots more people, dogs, and truck. The dogs sit around longer. There are more guns at the flyer station. They get a shot duck or pheasant - not a pigeon. So, if you have a high powered dog, he is going to be jacked up. That is a given. Third, if you have a young, jacked up dog, your obedience problems can be exacerbated. One partial solution is to wear the dogs out. When my dogs were 3 and I was running in the AA stakes, I would run blinds in the morning before the set up dog ran, run blinds after the setup dog ran, run blinds after the marks, run blinds after the blinds, etc., etc. etc. I found that when I was able to do this (not always possible because of grounds near FT, running numbers, etc.) I MIGHT have a chance of keeping the dogs RELATIVELY mellow. They would still race out after the birds, but be more considered about it. If I didn t run the blinds, I was doomed. The dogs were just too pumped to be a FT. If they had to sit in the truck and wait, they would be running all over God s country in the first series. Things got somewhat better at age 4, but they still needed the blinds to blow some of the steam out of them. Last Spring, my two 4 year old littermates each had a win and each needed two points to qualify for the National. So, I pushed hard... I ran too many trials in a row... and got nothing. What s worse, the dogs line manners got worse. So, Cherylon and I dissected what was going wrong. There were some things that we could not address or did not want to address. Neither Cherylon nor I wanted to take the drive out of the dogs. It is too big a part of what we enjoy about the game. We thought (and this year may tell us so) that age would probably take care of some of the problem. Then we started to work on me. And we discovered sit did not mean sit to the dogs when I was running them. They knew that the standard was different for me than for Cherylon. Ok, so what do I mean when I say sit means sit. Training Article- Sit Means Sit It means in training (and of course at a FT) It means that you don t get out of the dog box until I say so. It means you don t move after you get out of the dog box until I say so. It means that when I am walking to the holding blind (and I use a very short lead - a 6" climbing rope with no loop attached to a choke chain, which makes it easy for me to identify surging by the dog - and which can remain on the dog for land marks), the dog must sit when I stop.

3 Page 3 of 5 It means that when I call for the birds, ANY movement calls for correction (either 6" lead or stick). It means when the dog returns with the bird, repositions, and sits, ANY movement without my direction calls for correction. It means that after the dog gives me the bird, ANY movement without my direction calls for correction. My guess is that if you videotape yourself, you will find that sit really does not mean to the dog Member Feedback and Stories As we hope you ve gathered from the first page, member feedback and participation is crucial to the club s success. A portion of each newsletter (we plan on two newsletters this member year) and then three next member year. Please do not hesitate to Matt at info@midwestboykinclub.com with any comments/suggestions you may have. Part of the involvement, we hope, includes member submissions about their activities with their dogs. Stories, whether hunting oriented or not, (with pictures if possible!), will help everyone put faces with names and allow others to keep up with your progress in enjoying this great breed. Role Modeling-Bill Hillmann Our next two training articles come to us, reprinted with permission, from Bill Hillmann. Bill has trained more High Point Derby Dogs (dogs under the age of two) than anyone in the history of Field Trials, including Hawkeye's Coast Guard ("Cutter") who won the 2008 National Amateur and was the 2008 High Point Amateur Dog, and also received the Purina Award for the 2008 High Point Amateur Dog. He has produced several DVDs, information for which may be found at and Statistics show that it costs $16,400 to raise an average sized dog to reach age 11. Can you even calculate what it costs to raise a dog for competition? Nobody even wants to know the answer to that question. So wouldn t it make sense to do the best job possible in the process of training a dog for competition? Yet in my experience many dogs are trained in a haphazard way. There is no plan, no procedure, no way of calculating results other than by a hit and miss process. The solution is what can be called role modeling. Role modeling is when you pick someone who is getting the results you want, and then you duplicate exactly what they do, in order to get the same results they get. Some examples of role modeling are, for instance, a friend of yours saves $12,000 per year by putting $250 per week in the bank. You like those results, and you say, Look at the end of the year this guy has twelve thousand bucks. Man, I m going to do that too. So you start to save money except you put in $100 per week.

4 Page 4 of 5 Role modeling is training precisely the way the person trained from which you want to get the same result Bill Hillmann Don t forget to offer feedback on the date of the spring training day and the fall upland test!! info@midwestboyk inclub.com Role Modeling Continued At the end of the year he s got $12,000 and you ve got $5,200. You didn t do a good job of role modeling. Lance Armstrong rides his bike 6 hours a day, does 2 hours at the gym, and doesn t drink. You want to win like Lance but you ride the bike 2 hrs a day, workout at the gym for 30 min a day, and drink two martinis before dinner and eat a big steak, and top it off with a piece of apple pie. Lance wins 7 Tour de France s and you don t make the team. Role modeling is training precisely the way the person trained from which you want to get the same result. So you can t take one technique from one trainer and another technique from another trainer, another technique from a third trainer, put them all together and hope to have the same result that you want. You can t use cookies to train a dog to fetch and use maximum e-collar pressure to make him sit. You have to have a program that is coherent, one that blends together all the aspects of training. You can t expect to get good results with a haphazard program modeled after a variety of people that do not necessarily meet the criteria that you are interested in. So, in training retrievers, if your hero is Rex Carr or D. L. Walters or any other person, even your neighbor, if you want the same results that they have do exactly what they do. If you follow their program 70% of the way, you might get 70% of the results that they are getting. Using Pressure-Bill Hillmann It is the sign of a poor trainer to use too much pressure right off the bat. ----Bill Hillmann Several years ago there was a group of us training dogs at Rick Bauer s in Wisconsin. On Friday night we bought six really beautiful rib eye steaks, with a big baked potato and a salad to go along with them. When it came time to do the cooking, Ron Ainley, the well- known trainer and manufacturer of custom dog carrying equipment, declared that he would be cooking the steaks. Several eyebrows went up but he was allowed to grill the steaks. We were all starved so we waited anxiously for the meal to develop. Ron diligently flipped the steaks while expounding on several aspects of the discussion. I kept wondering why it was taking so long because I had repeatedly made it clear that I wanted my steak VERY RARE. I mean still wiggling. OK... Here we go. I took my first bite, guess what? Gray all the way through. It was virtually inedible, almost like trying to chew the edge of a baseball mitt. But later, I used the occasion to illustrate an important lesson in dog training. Training and pressure are sort of like cooking - if you do too much, it s ruined. If the meat is too rare you can always throw it back on and add more heat. In training also, if you re dealing with an issue such as getting in the water or force fetch or taking the correct cast or any other lesson - -go easy at first because you can always add more pressure later. It is the sign of a poor trainer to use too much pressure right off the bat. The results can be very disappointing and may require weeks of back tracking to get to the point where you were before you even began. Even worse, a dog can be ruined and many have, for life. There are countless stories of heavy handed trainers who have done great

5 Page 5 of 5 Using Pressure-Continued damage to dogs, some which never recovered. This may seem obvious but watch, it happens all the time... too much pressure too soon... and the results are usually miserable. It s a much better idea to use pressure or force, whether it s a stick or e-collar or choke chain, a little more judiciously than just wading in with both barrels. Be careful and use respect and kindness. So what is the moral of the story? The moral is just because you can build a great dog box doesn t mean you can cook meat. Thanks to Bill and Mary Hillmann for allowing us to reprint these two articles. There s some great wisdom within about proceeding cautiously but with a specific plan in mind. Speaking from my own experience, I caused much confusion in my Boykin by borrowing a little from here and a little from there. What are your goals for your Boykin? How do you plan on getting there? Find a program that tries to produce similar goals. MIDWEST BOYKIN SPANIEL CLUB info@midwestboykinclub.com Board Members: John Eichelberg Phil Hinchman Karen Hinchman Matt Madej Josh Ward Parting Thoughts We hope you enjoyed the first edition of the MWBC newsletter. Be sure to give us some feedback about what you would like to see. Look for the second edition in April!