An Intermediate Smith Seminar weekend with trainer, Rick Smith was held May 2nd through May 4th at Craig Steinbach’s Fly-n-Gun Kennels in Thorp, WI. If you’ve never been to a Smith Seminar before you need to check it out. This was the intermediate seminar which means you needed to attend a foundation seminar prior to this one.
I always look forward to seeing Rick. I consider him my mentor and good friend. I’ve known him for more than 20 years and I’m still amazed by his knowledge and ability to read dogs (and their owners). We’ve visited each other’s homes and shared meals and stories together. We, along with his wife Kaye, even got him on the ski hill chairlift in Big Sky, MT a coupled of summers ago. But as usual all talk leads back to dogs.
Friday of the seminar was less than ideal as far as weather. It was a cold and rainy day. Kinda miserable. Luckily we had a nice kennel building to hang out in while Rick gave his talk before we headed out in the field for the hands-on experiences. It was evident that people had been working with their dogs because there were a lot of dogs on the chain gang while we listened to Rick and they were all well behaved and quiet for the most part. A lot of work was done on steadiness and standing for distractions. Each dog was walked out in the field and stopped. The owners then went back to the sidelines and watched their dogs. It took a bit for every dog to figure out they had to stand alone and wait but eventually we had every dog standing all together in the field as people walked through them without them breaking. We ran some braces then and worked on stopping dogs in the field.
Saturday I had a prior engagement so I wasn’t able to attend the seminar that day.
Sunday was a whole new weather situation with it being very warm and sunny. After laying foundation work in the morning and reinforcing steadiness we headed out to the far field to do some bird work. All dogs were stopped and made to stand until released as a group to run the field. After being stopped by the collar in the field birds were released and steadiness was in play.
There was so much more to the seminar but I won’t go through all of it here. The weekend was a wealth of information and gave everyone something to work on at home. A lot of questions got answered and everyone learned something. I’ve been coming to these seminars for about 25 years and I always feel like I learn something new to take away.
Check out SmithKennels.com for upcoming seminars.