Salti Vizslas

Preparing for Puppy May 13, 2013 One of the puppy homes suggested that I talk about puppy proofing a home. This blog post could go on for a LONG time, but I will try to boil it down to a couple of simple bits of advice. In my experience, Vizsla puppies love dirty socks, dirty underwear, toilet paper, paper towels, glasses (eye glasses and sun glasses), lip gloss, chapstick, lipstick, stuffed toys of all kinds, and soft plastic anything. Children’s toys must be placed high

Puppy EvaluationsMay 4, 2013 I often get asked about how I evaluate puppies and line them up with their forever homes. Evaluation begins the instant the puppies are born, but it’s nearly impossible for one person to have a clear, unbiased view of a dog’s many traits. It takes a team of people to assess various traits - structure, temperament, trainability, birdiness, prey drive, etc. I prefer to have people that specialize in these areas help me make the final list of qual

Reprinted from April 10, 2013 I have been listening to DVDs and reading quite a bit on motivation in dog training. In agility, it’s much easier to motivate dogs with lots of drive. "Drive" is a combination of extreme passion, intensity, speed and focus (think Border Collie herding sheep or a Parson Russell Terrier intent on chasing a ball). On a scale of “drive” from one to ten, I think Vizslas are somewhere in the 5 - 8 range depending on the dog. They can be extremely i

Reprinted from April 4, 2013 Back to the topic about dog training. Since my last entry, I have run across a couple of articles/e-books that are well written. Here is an e-book that gets into details about dog training concepts (rogerabrantes.wordpress.com/2013/02/04/the-20-principles-all-animal-trainers-must-know/). It may be more than you wanted to read, but it’s free and you might pick up a few new ideas. Another great read to inspire your training is on a recent Susan Garr

Reprint of blog posted March 30, 2013 In my last entry, I mentioned that I observed an obedience class recently and I was very disappointed with the method of training being taught. The list of issues is long, so I want to address them one at a time. Today, my topic is the choice of commands used in training dogs. OK, I will concede that this particular class was being given to basic average pet homes, so the instructor needed to keep it simple. However, should any of tho

Reprinted from March 22, 2013 OK, so in my previous entry, I started to talk about dog training. I recently watched a local obedience training class and I wanted to jump in and grab the instructor and shake him/her up and rescue the dogs from his/her outdated training style. Choke chains, pinch collars, popping the lead, shouting commands, luring - and dogs that predictably looked worried, weren’t interested in the treats, and were more interested in the dog on the other si

Reprinted from March 18, 2013 (slightly modified) I’ve been around awhile. I have spent many years training horses and dogs. I’ve been around since the days of dominating your dog, jerking the lead for corrections, using shock collars, etc. It’s quite sad now to read the old style hunt training and obedience training books. Most of the old books leave me wondering how anyone could have thought those methods were acceptable, but that was a different era. I’m happy to say,