We
believe in training each one of our dogs, partly so that they are nicer to
live with, partly to develop and strengthen our bond with them, and partly
because it's fun!
We start all our dogs going to training
classes as soon as they have had their vaccinations, between 10-12 weeks,
the sooner the better in our opinion. All of our dogs work towards both their
Kennel
Club Good Citizens' Awards and towards more formal competition obedience
work. The KCGC
Awards concentrate on practical tasks, such as walking without pulling
on the lead, learning to play and at Gold
level more advanced tasks such as remaining relaxed whilst being left alone
and stopping in an emergency. Khizhi was the first
of our dogs to complete the (relatively) new Puppy
Foundation Award.
Chacha the Spanish Water Dog has
been quite different from the TTs to train, as she has
a much better attention span, and really seems to enjoy working with me. She
loves retrieving, so that is something which I
might find a bit easier than with the TTs, especially
Yeshe.
Rachel
The
competition Obedience classes progress in difficulty from
Pre-Beginners
to
Beginners,
Novice,
Class
A, Class B, Class C and Championship Class C. The dogs which compete at
Crufts in the main ring are competing in Championship Class C, the highest level
of Obedience competition.
Competitive
obedience requires an ability to produce much more sustained and accurate heelwork,
including staying close while the person turns around ('about turn'), and changes
direction to left and/or right. For obedience heelwork, the dog is required
to work on the left of the person at a constant distance from their left leg,
making right turns much easier to teach than left turns (try it with your dog
if you don't believe me!). Of course, there are several demanding things about
teaching a
Tibetan Terrier to do
heelwork,
one of which is their size, especially when they're
puppies,
and the other most obvious is generally their attention span!
Whilst
heelwork is perhaps the most difficult and certainly
the most sustained exercise in competition work, at different levels dogs are
required to complete other exercises, such as the recall, the sendaway,
scent
discrimination, distance control and of course the
retrieve.
Tibetan Terriers are not natural retrievers in the same
way as some gundogs can be, but I have found that with
Khizhi,
my second competition dog, I encouraged retrieves during puppyhood, which made
it much easier later on.
