#protection work

Confusing? Yes. Heartbroken? Yes.

There are ways to keep one self or there kids safe like the silver coin, or mirror protection even the bible (check out these post)

This working is a good one and old school one to keep them safe while at school.

First lift their soles up from their shoes. Take little bit of red brick dust (just a pinch) put that in the shoes under the soles then put the soles back. Using your finger take some Holy Water and make a few crosses on the bottom of the shoes with the Holy Water.

Hello, mine has thankfully worked. I used to get weird signs and dreams regarding her and things associated with her. Now it's silent.

-Overall, great experience. New training group was great to watch and I learned a lot of really subtle things I can't quite write down. Things like how to work a flirt pole better, tips for switching a dog from defensive drive to prey drive, ECT.

-I thought seeing all these nice protection dogs would refresh my desire to have a "proper" protection dog and I'm actually very happy to see that it didn't. I'm very happy with how I started Tassie and I intend to do the same with the next one. As he said in the beginning, it is very difficult to have a good sport dog and a good house dog in the same creature without years to settle in to the role. I had that with Reese and I don't want that again.

-On that note, this group spoke an entirely different training language for me and adjusting to each other was very difficult. There's absolutely nothing wrong with how they choose to start their dogs, I just do not intend to follow suit. To use balloons as a metaphor, they start their dogs by rapidly inflating the balloon and if it pops then they'll spend a ton of time fixing the pieces back together until it's a balloon with some problems again. Vs how I start my dogs, where I pinch the neck on the balloon and slowly inflate checking on the structural integrity along the way to ensure that it's properly inflated with no damage. I am not saying either way is better or one way or wrong! It's just two different ways of handling these very intense dogs and I like the way I do it better for what I want with my dogs.

-And still using that balloon metaphor, this was the only thing that annoyed me the whole weekend. It's no one's fault, again two very different training methods, this is his first time ever seeing me and my dog, and I absolutely am not offended or upset with him. I'm just irritated at how this happened but I'm not upset that it happened because I understand where the confusion was. Day One he tried to activate Tassie as a brand new dog and when Tassie didn't engage properly he said that Tassie didn't have it in her. I tried to give her permission to engage in the beginning, because Tassie is trained not to engage unless given permission, but I was told not to speak or she'd rely on me for everything. Which is fair, but what he was doing was trying to add air into a balloon that was already inflated and comfortable with the pressure so when there was no reaction he saw it as a lack of drive. Reiterating that I am not upset with his call, I understand that these two training languages are going to cause a bit of conflict, I'm just annoyed that Tassie was caught in the middle trying to figure out the rules of a whole new game in an entirely unfair situation. He did get her to engage in a stunningly short amount of time, but it wasn't fully because Tassie just didn't know the rules of what he was trying to play.

-Extending off of that into Day Two, our first run went a lot like the first day, and for my last run I informed him that I wanted to expose her to pressure first and then release her to prey drive. So I brought her down and did a heeling pattern to get her warmed up, then he had a few people move into the field. We started with them standing still and me heeling close to them, then they started moving around and pushing up to her, and this is where he started to get thoughtful. We switched to doing recalls through a line of people standing facing her and walking towards her, then T posing and walking towards her, and then crab walking towards her, and she was definitely uncomfortable but worked through the pressure by herself. Afterwards I called her into a heel and sat while he approached her other side, and we did have to correct the position a few times as he made the space smaller and smaller but by the end he was leaning into her ribs quite a bit (I was losing my balance lol) while Tassie ignored him and kept her eyes on my face taking food still. Once she was settled into the pressure fine I called it there and we switched back to the flirt pole.

-And the difference! He pulled it out and she started tensing up in excitement but still watched me, and when I released her into prey drive she was GREAT. Willing to deal with the pressure of new people, great possession, everything she should have been allowed to do on day one. He corrected his opinion and told me that she actually had a ton of drive, we just need to work her more, and he called someone else to practice their flirt pole skills with her as she continued to engage with new people once released. The dealing with pressure and engagement with high stress was what I was looking for from the seminar and we got it. Slightly disappointed we didn't get to do barking but next time I'll stand up for her better and get her into it.