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Vela - Dog Dancing It's been awhile since I've added to this website. Not so much because there hasn't been anything to add. Quite the contrary. One of the things I've been missing is film documentation of it all. Ok, let's start where we left off. Vela had finished her puppy school and then we went to so-called Young-Dog school, again with the Hertigs, or more properly, Frau Hertig. Many good tips here, but it was also clear, that we had a very high-strung, super-friendly, overly-sociable Flat-Coated Retriever. Vela simply had to greet everything and everyone. To add to our "worries", she was also turning into almost a one-man-dog, listening better to me than to Susanne. Thanks to a tip from our new Flattie-friends, the Truttmanns, we visited a lady outside of German Rheinfelden, Frau Sandra Fuchs. Susanne started going to Sandra for individual instruction and in order to promote herself in Vela's eyes also to demi-God status, she then fed Vela her meals by hand, requiring Vela to perform such things as heel, turn, sit, lay down, stay and much, much more. This has improved their relationship enormously. Now we trade off, who feeds Vela by hand: Susanne with Dummy-Training (see below) or me with Dog-Dancing, meaning that Vela gets at least 2 10-minute training sessions a day. Susanne also started working with hunting dummies together with Sandra. It's not that Susanne will want to actually hunt, but many aspects of hunting duties require an educated nose and Vela loooves to look for the dummies and of course, being that she's a Retriever, bring them back. I, on the other hand, got some books on dog tricks and Dog Dancing and started in. I had some measure of success with such tricks as shaking hands, leg weave, walk around and such, but also soon realized, that I needed help. Not so much that I actually want to dance. I did want to deepen the bond between us though and noticed how much more attentive she was when I was working with her - and how much she seemed to enjoy "working" for treats. Anyway, we started working with Claudia Moser the very end of December 2008. Vela was at first extremely nervous and almost too excited to "work" but did settle down. And in the course of the training with Claudia I ran into that which is often used to describe Flatties - that they bore easily because they are so intelligent that they combine different actions themselves. She'd actually learned the "routine" long before she'd perfected it and got easily bored. Claudia suggested I not actually DO the routine with her anymore, but just isolated aspects of it. The upshot was, that on May 19th as part of an informal demonstration of Dog Dancing at the BEA in Bern (a kind of farm exhibition in Bern, Switzerland) we premiered our "Peter and the Wolf" routine. Unfortunately it was not possible to film this premiere in Bern, but it went off very well. Vela was right there with me the whole time EXCEPT when the crowd applauded when she successfully brought the Moorhuhn back to me. She did a complete 360 seeming to bathe in the applause or maybe asking "What the heck is THAT?". Anyway, it was a glorious start. Since there isn't a film document of her first performance, I made this film above today 24. May 2009). We're doing this routine in September at a Fun-Tournament and will have to do it on mowed lawn, so this was a nice opportunity to try it on one before hand. As you can see below, there were cows in back of us, but you don't see the sheep looking on in front of us - a great distraction for Vela. She did quite well though - only slightly missing the bow at the end and the 2 backwards steps during "the hunt". Since the camera is so loud and the music was very softly coming out of my iPhone, I cut the original sound and added the sound track after-the-fact. In another version I cut in some laughter where the public in Bern laughed (sneeze) and applause at the end, but Susanne thought that might be a tad over the top for YouTube. Script: Get it?? Thanks for watching! And thanks to Claudia Moser for all her help and tips! BTW, I do not want to actually compete in Dog Dancing tournements, but would love to do Therapy Dog Training with her and use a Dog Dancing routine to break the ice with the people we visit. And otherwise it is just so much fun - I do believe for both of us! ------------------- Well, we're now working on our next Choreo. This one is based upon charachters from Mozart's "The Magic Flute", is almost twice as long as Peter and the Wolf as well as being quite abit more complicated. We have 2 scheduled performances coming up:
In both cases I will NOT be entering a competition class, but rather in the so-called "open" class, which receives no graded evaluation, but instead comment from the judges. Also, in only this class is a food reward allowed. Both dates will be filmed and I will post films of these perfomances as I complete thm and the films become available. Vela knows her tricks to about 80%. Sometimes she forgets this or that, more small inaccuracies than total mess-ups. I, on the other hand have to co-ordinate dog, props and treats. And try to do a little bit of acting, at which I'm not terribly talented. I find I have to rehearse 10 times as much without Vela as with her, just to get the timing and co-ordinated body movements under controll. One small example: In the course of about 8 seconds I have to:
We're both looking forward to these performances! International Copyright © 2009
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