Crossroads Canine

04/18/2025

Some good Novice dogs !!

04/18/2025

Rocking our stand stays using Janice Gunn’s stand boxes beautifully made by Beth Harless.

04/14/2025

Congratulations to Susan and Jigsaw who earned their Rally Intermediate title this weekend!
We are so happy for you!

04/14/2025

Congratulations to Alesa and Dexter!

Four QQQs this weekend with a HIGH TRIPLE SCORE!!

04/13/2025

04/11/2025

04/07/2025

Thank you Beth Harless for the custom stand boxes! They are beautiful!

04/06/2025

Saturday April 26, 2025
Open to all Crossroads Canine Students
Rally and Obedience Practice Runs
Rally Runs start at 11:30
Obedience Classes to follow Rally
Will be cancelled if not enough interest.
Please Private Message which Rally levels and which Obedience classes you will run.

04/06/2025

That first Novice A leg is one you always remember. Congratulations to Liz and Nikki!!
Welcome to Obedience. We are so excited for your journey.

04/04/2025

What is the best or most creative new puppy gift you ever received??

04/02/2025

Hey guys. Unfortunately one of the minisplits is out. I have the other one blasting overnight and I’ll have an extra fan but dress accordingly. The soonest I could get it worked in is Thursday.
Apologies.

03/31/2025

Congratulations to Gina and Allie for their invitation to the RNC!!

03/28/2025

Dexter and Alesa were invited to the Rally Nationals!! Congratulations!!!

03/19/2025

Handler mechanics:

This is one of the most important things you can change to make an impact in your dog's learning. Training is about communication. And communication is about clarity and comprehension on the dog's part. That is on us. How we convey information matters.

Think of your handler mechanics as tools for communication. Your communication should be on a continuum, a linear path, horizontal rather than vertical. In a line, rather than stacked on top of each other.

Have you ever tried to listen to 2 people talking at once? It’s difficult to understand one of them, let alone both of them.
The only 2 things that should happen at the same time in terms of handler communication is the behavior and your marker. They are one. Everything else, food, your lure or hand signal, reaching for your reward, praise, feeding: these should come after your marker, never overlapping.

This matters more than you know. Working in a linear fashion allows the dog to take information from each piece and not miss any of the ways we are communicating to him. Learning is hard! Providing the information is our responsibility. Once we do that it becomes much clearer for the dog and you will see the speed of learning increase.

If you mark at the same time you reach for your treat or toy, then you block your marker and your dog isn't thinking about why he is getting the reward, only that it's coming.

If you give your verbal cue at the same time as your physical cue, your verbal cue loses both meaning and value. All of the information is in the signal, so there is no reason for the dog to even consider your verbal cue let alone learn it's meaning.

If you hold food in your hand or your hand in your bait bag, it can distract the dog from how to get that food.

If you feed your dog at a location that doesn't benefit the behavior you are missing out on an opportinity to communciate. For example: If you feed from across your body your dog will find less value in staying in position.

These are all things you have control over. These are all things that can either help or hinder the learning process. All the props in the world won't fix ambiguity from the handler.

Know this won't come easy. Habits are hard to break. Our bodies act without consciousness. Whether it's a habit you want to break or a habit you want to create, we have to work at it, concentrate on it, be aware of it. This is the key to becoming a great handler.

We tend to look outward at what our dogs can do to indicate our skill as a handler. If our dogs are doing well there is no need for change. We never consider how much better our dogs could do if we became really good at communicating through clean handler mechanics.

The most important thing you can do if you want to see changes in your dog's understanding and skill is to concentrate on your handler mechanics in communicating as clearly as you can.

Author: Julie Flanery
Shared with permission

03/19/2025

Goodbye winter! See ya next year!