Being used to Sasha who climbed up his ramp to the grooming table without a second thought, it brought me up short when Salma simply refused to even step on it. This reminded me that Sasha had been doing simple agility from puppyhood and accepted doing all kinds of strange things as part of normal [...]
Some years ago during a trip to Guatemala they told me this joke. "A man went to the market where he saw a fishmonger who had two wooden barrels on his stall. In each barrel there were shrimps. One barrel had one price and the other a different, higher price. One barrel was open and [...]
Our aim is that the animals we work with should be present throughout the activity. Only when the animal is aware of what is going on can he assimilate the experience and learn from it. We must always offer them that crucial "pause" so that they can process the information. For the very same reasons [...]
For the most part we are impatient. In our world of instant gratification we want all difficulties to be resolved with a wave of a magic wand, but that is not how life is. When we are working with animals, it pays to celebrate each tiny step forward. Each tiny advancement takes us just that [...]