I'm still recovering from a fantastic weekend attending a seminar with Kamal Fernandez from England. Kamal is a motivational obedience trainer who has competed in Crufts. Clip of him competing in 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYcO9YkWy00
The seminar was not about the style of heeling but about the motivational methods used to achieve it and maintain the dog's interest in training because it's fun.
Kamal covered many areas of training including using the heirachy of motivators and how to use them to the best benefit, training problems, achieving focus and how to maintain duration of heeling and of stays. He also briefed us on maintaining the dog's focus between exercises in the ring.
I had put my hand up to be a handler with Paxy during the seminar. OMG! what a workout (I really need to get fit). It included lots of tugging, moving and running on occasion to help rouse the dog's drive! One of our problems is Paxy's inclination to basically just blow me off and if she's not interested in something she'll run off or just not do it. So I have some more tools in the toolbox on how to work on that now.
There were quite a few handlers with dogs, some very experienced and well known who also were given pointers on how to improve their dogs performance, although small problems in some cases but just finessing. The best thing was you could see it happening in front of your eyes!
I also had a private lesson with Kamal and he was quite impressed with Paxy's drive and the way she worked. We have a little way to go with some things but the weekend was just fantastic. Wonderful to see dogs tugging and chasing balls and having fun while training!