Spring’s first obedience training session

This year’s first training session for a group of LVASK members and their friends, were held in the stadium of Upesciems, and were organized and led by trainer Ilze Krivane. Of course – all COVID precautions were taken, including number of people in same location, and the distance between them.

What did the participants do? They were learning to apply the knowledge from previous training sessions, increase the bonding level of dogs and their “humans”, and the means to fight against stresses like “everyone is looking at me” “my dog is the least obedient” “oh my, I look very bad in this tracksuit!” etc. And all of this was done as a sports even, with places awarded.
Ilze Krivane thinks that she, as a trainer, and her “pupils” are becoming better when they “step out of their comfort zone” (which is individual one-on-one work in the training fields). It was also interesting for her to see how these “comfort zone” skills are used in real life scenarios, in Upesciems stadium. This environment was foreign to both the dogs and their owners – new location, lots of onlookers, stresses – dog doesn’t follow orders, doesn’t know what to do (both the owner and the dog, we might say). This lets them understand that the usual training location isn’t as ideal as they used to believe. Sometimes need to hold and wait for someone else whose dog has ran away, and lots of other interesting stuff happening around.
That said, both Ilze and the participants say that it was both fun and – in the end – not that  complicated. It’s always important to concentrate your attention and adequately detect the dog’s capabilities at any given moment – when to give “a carrot”, when to do the “bad dog!” routine. And, also, self-control emotions in situations like this.
Ilze promises to organize a similar training session some time in this May. If you’d like to participate, please contact Ilze Krivane.
At the same time, Ilze expresses her gratitude to the photographers Katrina Aboltina, Inese Pablaka, Katja.
Scroll down to check out some of these photos, which nicely show the atmosphere from this session – fun and friendly, like a sunny Sunday morning deserves.

                                                  

Information prepared by Ilze Krivāne.