Hey all, here's another quick post from the Ring Confidence Facebook group: When a dog is stressed at a trial, the instinct is usually to calm them down. Slow things down, keep things quiet, wait for them to settle. But lowering arousal to an optimum level doesn't always look like calming. Sometimes our bodies need motion to regulate itself. Think about what we do when we are the ones that are anxious. We might bounce our knees. Tap our fingers. Twirl our hair. We can't sit still. And while...

Hey all, here's another quick post from the Ring Confidence Facebook group: I was recently talking to somebody whose dog had started trialing in agility and seemed to crush their first trials! They were responding well and blew through the novice level courses. And then things started to fall apart. This is a story I hear quite a lot and across a variety of sports. Many dogs do tend to do well in their first trials if they are not a dog who more obviously seems anxious. Some dogs notice the...

This summer has not quite been what I expected to accomplish with the dogs' training. Way too busy with moving stuff, but it will hopefully be done quite soon! Loot was successfully able to do another agility trial and did quite well despite some struggles he's had recently in class with some higher-pitched barking from adorable puppies! Ravioli is still struggling with figuring out his GI stuff. We will be changing again to a different hydrolyzed brand. But we are making some nice progress...