We’re back from our whirlwind adventures, and I’ve been getting a ton of questions like “How’d the dogs do on the plane?”, “Hotels were ok with the dogs?”, and “What were the competitions like?”, so I thought I’d hash those all out here, in a multi-part series on being an international dog traveller. In this first installment I’m going to deal with planes, trains, and automobiles. Actually, mostly just planes, since we didn’t take any trains, and renting cars is just like the US (except smaller and with more stick shifts).

For those of my fabulous readers who don’t participate in dog sports, you can think of “titling” as “leveling up”. Titles are false goals; they shouldn’t be your end goal, they should be bi-products of your end goals coming to fruition.

Meet Marvin. He’s a Bumblebee. You see, Marvin represents anxiety, negative thoughts, self-judgements, and put-downs. He has a tendency to crop up right before entering a ring, or on my way to a trial, and he impacts my performance on everything from course plans, to walk thrus, to actual runs. As a result, I’ve worked very hard over the past year to come up with some coping strategies for Marvin, and thought I’d take the time to share them here.

If you know me, you probably know that I am a Planner. That’s right, planner with a capital “P”. I’ve got contingencies for my contingencies, and then I prioritize those contingencies lol. But what if you aren’t a planner? Or what if you are, but just have no idea where to start when it comes to Agility? Well, read on, as I lay out “Grace’s Tried and True Method for Agility Planning”.

For those of you who don’t know, 3 weeks ago I did something kind of awesome…I competed in the Master’s Agility Championship at Westminster. I know it’s been a few weeks, and you may be wondering “what gives”, but I needed some time to process the weekend. Westminster was a maelstrom of emotions unlike anything I had ever experienced. I was excited, nervous, frustrated, disappointed, exhilarated, sad, and exhausted all in one day. I needed some time to figure out where I was, what I was feeling, and how I was going to move on.

Each reinforcement builds our behavior bank, and asking for that behavior under various circumstances can either add to our bank, or deplete it. If my dog gets in the car to go for a hike each day, they will begin to learn the car predicts a hike and so have a positive association with the car. If I take them to the vet instead, the residual negative association with the car will likely be much stronger, and so take many many more days of associating the car with a hike to undo.

If you haven’t noticed, I have a few dogs…3 to be exact, and at some point there will likely be a fourth. But what I pride myself on, is that when you come to my house it doesn’t FEEL like a lot of dogs. There isn’t barking, lunging, snarling, snapping, chasing, stealing, mayhem, even for the non-dog lover. That’s because in addition to training my dogs for agility, I put a lot of time and effort into training them to be good house-hold citizens, and making sure they are welcome where ever we travel.

What’s in a crate? Well hopefully your favorite canine companion, but I know there is a lot of angst and misinformation out there about crate training, so hopefully I can shed some light on the matter and help you see the value in teaching your buddy this life skill.

Gradually over time I realized Ri wasn’t the social butterfly he had been before. He didn’t enjoy strangers petting him, and I had to start warning kids that he wasn’t friendly. I think somewhere deep down, I realized that Riley’s happiness meant more to me than that dream of having the consummate well socialized dog. I gave him the space he wanted.

Trust me, I get it. I work full time, have 3 dogs, teach on the side, and am also trying to function as an adult. I don’t have time to hand feed every piece of kibble or babysit a puzzle toy that only holds 9 treats. That’s why I’ve curated this list, which will exclusively discuss strategies that take less than 5 minutes of setup and / or require very minimal supervision.

Getting Fin pup was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made. Could I even handle a Border Collie? They’re a crazy high energy breed who needs a job and structure, could I provide that? Or would I end up frustrated with a dog I couldn’t live with.

There’s something about this time of year that always gets to me, probably largely due to all the hype around New Year’s resolutions and setting goals for the year to come. Slowly I’m coming to learn that being uninspired is ok.

As Westminster approaches, and we enter the home stretch of what, for Riley and I, has been a year long journey, I’ve been thinking a lot about failure and what that means to me. In many ways, I’m so lucky to have had Ri as my first dog, fi

Anytime I start working with a new dog, my first question is always “Are their physical, mental, and emotional needs being met?”. In my experience, a lot of behaviors minimize when these three things are being met, which then makes our jobs as trainers a whole lot easier (not to mention the pups are happier). So let’s break these down one at a time for a minute.

Every once in a while I get puppy fever and decide I’d like to add to my pack. To counteract these feelings, and keep from being featured on the next season of hoarders, I bring a foster pup into my home. This week’s post is all about Faith, my current resident foster pup!

It’s fitting that the title of this blog, and the first post should be about the Demon. Living and training with Casey has been a tale of dichotomies: she’s horribly independent, and excessively clingy; she’s confident and sassy, and highly needy; she has a stubborn terrier streak a mile wide, and the cutest sad eyes you’ve ever seen.