I thought I would tell you about a clinic that I attended a couple of weeks ago. The clinicians were Peter and Connie Scherk and Florian Knabl from Team Heuwinkl in Germany. Those of you that follow Schutzhund more will know that Mia Skogster and Horst and Michaela Koche are also members of that small but very talented (and successful) club. They were hosted by Hardy Ernstein of the Podium Belgium Shepherd Working Dog Club.
In addition, they brought their dogs to use as demo dogs! Bendix vom Adlerauge and Yannik von Bonum Bono as demo dogs - those are some mighty fine demo dogs. Bendix is a multi-titled world champion and is now retired at 10 years old. Yannik hasn't won any international events ... yet ... but he's been pretty close. I believe there may be some Yannik puppies in the U.S. in the not so distant future :-)
It was a 3-day clinic with about the first 1.5 days devoted to obedience and the remainder to protection. I was unable to attend the first day so can't tell you too much about their approach ti obedience. I can tell you that their dogs perform beautifully in obedience and appear to be very happy and confident in the work. They use a dressage whip as an extension of the hand, in a way that reminded me of some of the work that I've seen demonstrated by Bart Bellon, though I don't know the details of either methodology or who started first.
By the time I got there they were focusing on the obedience exercises within the SchH routine, starting with the retrieve. They had done much on focused heeling and the out of motion exercises on Friday.
Before I get into the specific exercises I want to describe, as well as I can, a few things that I observed that were quite a bit different than other methods that we are all familiar with. First of all, they didn't use markers in the way that we are familiar with. When I asked about it I got a sort of cursory response that wasn't very explanatory. I didn't want to push since I assumed that they had explained it on Friday and they made it clear that they were not going to spend much time reviewing. They did use markers, just not purposely as much as many of us do. They definitely used a no reward marker and the word that they use to release their dog to the toy/reward clearly becomes a marker.
Secondly, they train their dogs ALOT. And coming from me who also trains my dogs Alot, by most people's standards that is saying something. Obedience every day, at least once; protection 3x a week; and tracking about 4x a week.
Thirdly, along with the amount of time they spend training goes the number of repetitions that their dogs get. I have no doubt that the majority of their core behaviors, and maybe all of their behaviors, reach a level of true fluency, as defined by the likes of Bob Bailey.
Fourthly, their methodology is definitely motivational but I would call their application of it very rigid. For example, they really don't seem to worry about generalizing behaviors to multiple locations. They seem to get true fluency first and then generalize to variations later. On one of the games that they showed us for building the retrieve, they talked about playing this game exclusively with their puppies for months before moving on in their training. I think that this is pretty key to their getting the true fluency that I talked about above.
Fifthly, they start working with their puppies on basic fundamentals as soon as they get them. They certainly work on handler focus and the out from day 1 or 2.
Finally, they aren't really theoreticians. I don't know whether this is true outside of the clinic setting but they definitely did not have any interest in discussing other ways of doing things or the reasons behind their methods. They were there to present their approach and that was pretty much it. To be fair, they had plenty to do in the time available. Plus, I came in a day late with no connections to the club or people there so no real opportunities for me to try to discuss things on breaks or ... But they are definitely not cut from the same cloth as the likes of Michael Ellis, who if you give him dinner and a beer or good glass of wine will sit and talk about training theory all night after the seminar is over. I have seen him do that time and time again ... However, this was their first clinic in the U.S. Their English is quite good, but I am sure that it had to be difficult for them. Plus, they don't understand our dog training culture yet ...
OK, I lied, one more thing, when it came to fixing problems in the dogs at the clinic, their approach was pretty traditional - correct the heck out of them on a prong and then make sure that they didn't get a chance to repeat those problems. That was disappointing.
OK, I feel like I am writing a book here. So, I am going to stop with that for now and go unpack a few more boxes. I promise more over the course of the coming days. They had some very interesting approaches and games that they had developed.
No comments:
Post a Comment