Spicey and I just attended two days of instruction by Mary Ellen Barry on Sends and Recalls, using Linda Mecklenburg’s mostly natural cues. it was a wonderful learning experience for handlers at any level. When you think about it, every complex agility course consists entirely of sends and recalls. Using the very simple (but not always obvious to humans!) cuing system Mary Ellen taught us, everyone who can move can be ahead of her dog on the course.
I love going to inspiring seminars at this time of year– just as I am getting my equipment into my mostly-thawed yard to work on all these new skills.
The distractions for my dogs are at an all-time high in the spring too–peepers, woodcocks, robins, turkeys, hares, deer, turtles, voles, moles, porcupines and even bear are vying unintentionally for my pups’ attention! This is a great time of year to work through those distractions.
At the moment, I’m planning to include lots of my newly-learned handling cues into my classes and private lessons this summer. It is amazing the complex sequences you can handle with a green dog by using motion cues the dogs are born understanding.
