# Obedience Resources



## DevWind (Nov 7, 2016)

Does anyone have some good online resources for competition obedience? Pilot is turning out to be extremely talented and has SO much potential. I’ve had a good dog before but he is leaps and bounds beyond the best dog I’ve ever owned. 

We are going to a Connie Cleveland seminar next month.

URO1 Twincreek’s Black Tie Affair RN CGC TKN (14 months old)


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## BriGuy (Aug 31, 2010)

The Fenzi classes are very popular:
https://fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/schedule-and-syllabus

I've take a few of these at Bronze.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

Which part of OH?


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## puddles everywhere (May 13, 2016)

Enjoy the seminar... Bridget Carlsen is also a great seminar to attend.

Connie Cleveland has a great online presence and CD/book/chart program that isn't terribly expensive. 

Sorry I can't be of any help with training locations but most seminars are given by obedience groups so if this is a convenient location they may have some referrals or classes. 

Beautiful boy, good luck and enjoy!!


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## Brave (Oct 26, 2012)

BriGuy said:


> The Fenzi classes are very popular:
> https://fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/schedule-and-syllabus
> 
> I've take a few of these at Bronze.


I second Fenzi! I haven't gotten to the Obedience courses yet (building my library atm and working with puppy level stuff) but what I have seen has been phenomenal. 

It can seem a little pricey. Bronze is the lowest tier where you just "audit" the class meaning you get all the lectures but there is no homework that is submitted and no one-on-one with the instructor and that is $65 per course. BUT you keep the course in your library and your library stays active for a year. So as long as you're taking a class a year, you're library will stay active (or you can buy a library pass for $50 a year).


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

Megora said:


> Which part of OH?


^^^^ I completely missed the "online" part of the question! 

Was thinking that there's lots of places in OH to train at depending on which area of the state you're at.  

The real question I should have asked is what are you looking for by way of online resources?

Are you looking for a main source of instruction? 

Are you looking for a problem solving source?

Are you looking for inspiration?

It all really depends on what direction you want to go.

My personal thing is whoever you take instruction from - you want them to be titled as high as possible. They are going to spend less time ruminating at the RN/CD level and get you going full speed ahead building foundation for the top levels in obedience, because the sooner you get those instilled, the better.

I'm saying that because I have to keep my lips zipped about one of my sisters taking classes from somebody who has gotten UD's on dogs, but not lately. And majority of her students are going for rally and CD. This is the big deal for them. So as with my sister's dog - they didn't introduce stays and fronts until he was almost a year old.  And he's not working off leash in any capacity yet....


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## DevWind (Nov 7, 2016)

puddles everywhere said:


> Enjoy the seminar... Bridget Carlsen is also a great seminar to attend.
> 
> Connie Cleveland has a great online presence and CD/book/chart program that isn't terribly expensive.
> 
> ...


Thank you! Even just reading would be good. I really don’t want to mess him up!


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## DevWind (Nov 7, 2016)

Megora said:


> ^^^^ I completely missed the "online" part of the question!
> 
> Was thinking that there's lots of places in OH to train at depending on which area of the state you're at.
> 
> ...


I’m in SW Ohio. I have been known to travel 2 hours for occasional field training. 

I train with people who have UD’s. They are great and help me a lot. I know I need to branch out to learn new things. He was doing stays and fronts when he was little. I’ve shown him in beginner novice. He did pretty good. He got a 193. He made puppy mistakes. I guess people with OTCH dogs complimented his healing. 

I guess what I need is to learn how to perfect what we do know right now. He knows all of novice and we’ve been working on open. He has been doing pretty good off lead. He’s learning retrieve over the high jump and broad jump. We still need to learn command discrimination and drop on recall. I usually put off drop on recall until they have their CD. 

Once he knows all of open, I’ll start teaching utility.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

For novice - the things that most people (including me) need to work on are ring entrances (entering and leaving) and transitions between exercises. If you enter the ring with your dog revved up and glued in to you and keep that attention like a thread from one exercise to the next, you won't lose many points. 

Beyond novice - things you can start working on right now are the foundation for gloves, directed jumping, and go-outs (same exercise as directed jumping, but taught separately at first), and also articles. 

Everything in utility takes a while to really finish up... so starting now helps. And everything has ten million ways to teach it + ten million ways to make it fun and exciting for the dogs.

Open - with the jumps after you finish getting him to retrieve over the jump, start training him to retrieve "bad throws". 

And drops can be taught the same time as training for novice, depending on how you are teaching them. Don't do formal drops. Whether you are throwing the tennis ball or treats, you are sending your dog away and dropping them at different points to get them anticipating the drop and dropping fast. If you are using treats, you can turn it into a fun game. 

Directed jumping can be taught the same way right now, with you tossing the treats forward up the middle past the jumps and then directing the dog to take the jump on the way back. You are training the dog the hand signal for the jumps and getting them used to maneuvering side to side to either jump. 

Go-outs - you have 3 different things you are motivating and building and reshaping before putting the whole directed jumping exercise together. 

You are training the "mark" (if you are doing field, you know how to train this with your dog) to get your dog clued into the go-out target. Most places have middle stanchions which are targets that never go away. 

You are training your dog to run a straight path across the ring, up the middle to that marked spot. 

You are training a distance called sit. Early on that might be connected to whatever you have trained your dog to do at the target (most people are teaching the dogs to paw the stanchion, you can also train a nose-touch, others still load the spot with bait to attract the dog's attention and they never know if that bait is there, others put a bait bag or something else which has to be retrieved back to you for the dogs to get what's inside, lots of ways). Down the road you will train called sits about 1 mat distance from the stanchion. 

Each of these steps are built up, motivated, rewarded, before the whole exercise is shaped and trained formally. 

Once they are trained - you then have to train in different places where depending on the clutter on the sides or different ring-set up, your dog might lose his focus on the middle stanchion. <= I did a fun match recently in a different place where there was agility stuff piled up on the left side behind the ring gating. And the stanchions were odd colors (faded). The agility equipment drew my dog's attention off the middle stanchion and I had him going crosswise and forgetting what he was doing....  We have a lot of fun matches to be done in all 3 places where I would trial in utility or GO ahead of us so that never happens in the real thing.

I'd watch LOTS of youtube videos to find those big trainers out there who are doing what you want in your dog when competing. Don't just watch the trainers at trials or trial videos, watch the training videos and audit seminars. Some people out there do things in training which are beyond what is necessary and what you may want to do with your dogs.


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## Alaska7133 (May 26, 2011)

Abeille said:


> Does anyone have some good online resources for competition obedience? Pilot is turning out to be extremely talented and has SO much potential. I’ve had a good dog before but he is leaps and bounds beyond the best dog I’ve ever owned.
> 
> We are going to a Connie Cleveland seminar next month.
> 
> URO1 Twincreek’s Black Tie Affair RN CGC TKN (14 months old)


Most trainers have YouTube pages.
Connie Cleveland is Dog Trainers Workshop. Lots of great videos
Janice Gunn TNT Trainers
Bridget Carlson.
All 3 are golden retriever people. Connie Cleveland has more OTCH dogs than anyone else on record. Connie Cleveland and Janice Gunn are the only people to have put both OTCH and FC titles on the same dog. 
Because all 3 are golden retriever people, they understand goldens better than anyone.


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## TheZ's (Jun 13, 2011)

I'd second the recommendation of Janice Gunn. She has lots of obedience YouTube videos of various obedience things from introductory training for a very young dog to upper level competition obedience exercises. I also like to watch the YouTube videos of successful competitors' actual performance at trials. There's one of Dee Dee Anderson and Dream doing a 200 Novice performance that I love to watch.


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## DevWind (Nov 7, 2016)

Thank you everyone! I will be checking these out!


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