Silvia Trkman Crazy Or A Genius?

[RallyValley]

Ok so if you have not heard of Silvia Trakman her website is here: Click here

She believes and teaches many things that are the total opposite of mainstream, yet she is hugely succsesful.

Some of her beliefs are:

- she prematurely aged her Samoyed by retiring it from agility when she should have kept running it to keep it young (it had HD)

- she believes if she misses agility training for more then 3 weeks with her epileptic 10yo dog it will have seizures

- she starts her dogs training at 7 weeks, she starts jumping at a young age but does not do jumping drills as she believes that occasional jumping (at less then full height) at a young age is less stressful on joints then waiting till a dog is 12 months and suddenly jumping it high

-she teaches running contacts to all dogs because she believes that if your not going fast thier is no point

Anyway I am in awe of her (wether she is crazy or genius) as her Pry shep La is probably the most succsesful dog ever. Just wanted to see what some other thoughts were?

(Or anyone else feel a similar way about abother trainer?)

[Staranais]

I love her videos and articles too.

- she starts her dogs training at 7 weeks, she starts jumping at a young age but does not do jumping drills as she believes that occasional jumping (at less then full height) at a young age is less stressful on joints then waiting till a dog is 12 months and suddenly jumping it high

I actually agree with her, since she specifies in her articles that she keeps the jump heights very low when the dogs are young.

Remember that she runs very small dogs, too, only about 10kg, which mature faster and are far less prone to joint issues than large dogs are.

-she teaches running contacts to all dogs because she believes that if your not going fast thier is no point

At the level she competes at, she's probably right!

[RallyValley]

The more I think about it I mostly agree with her too, especially about always teaching tricks to keep her dogs minds sharp!

But I can see people out there who would read her methods wrong and start jumping drills on thier 8 week old puppies.

[Kavik]

Sylvia's dogs are pretty amazing! And she doesn't do lead outs either, runs with them the whole way! Not sure what I think of the jumping issue. I wouldn't start jumping a dog really young, most I think I would do is get them used to going through the jump wings with bar on the ground, for sending and distance. I haven't read or watched as much about jumping as other obstacles (only watched one DVD, and started another - though there are more jumps in agility than anything else!)- I know there are some people that like to jump them only their competition height and some that like to start lower.

When Greg Derrett was here for the World Dog Games and seminars, he said the system in the UK is very different to here. Here you get a quallie towards your title if you get a clear round under time. In the UK you have to place as well as get a clear round under time. So this means there is more emphasis placed on time and speed than there is here. He said he wouldn't bother to enter unless his contacts were under a certain speed (from memory 1.6sec dog walk, under 1 sec A-Frame), though he runs BCs and does 2o2o contacts. He said if he ran little dogs he would do running contacts but not trained ones, would just run like the dog would naturally stride over it. At the moment he doesn't think the running contact methods out there are 100%, and even Sylvia misses them in big comps as does Susan Garrett, but that running contacts certainly will be the way of the future for speed.

[JulesP]

Interesting. I liked a lot of what she said.

[RallyValley]

She sure is different to the majority.

Still not sure my contact method yet but I would love to teach Toby running contacts.

[Kavik]

I think the main issue with running contacts is that you really need your own equipment to teach it properly. It requires LOTS of practice to get consistent striding (regardless of the method you are using to teach it). And Sylvia's method which does not use a target but teaches them to stride the whole way, you would certainly need your own equipment for that! I think she also starts with the board on the ground and gradually raise it and increase the angle?

Also there is the issue of different codes having different size equipment. If you are doing ANKC and ADAA, the ADAA equipment is bigger and the A-Frame is steeper as well as longer. This would make consistent striding for running contacts more difficult to achieve.

[RallyValley]

WA has very few ADAA events, so that would be less of a concern. But the more I think about teaching contacts the more I don't know which method the more 2o2o seems sensible.

[JulesP]

I really liked that she kept emphasizing training the dog as an individual.

The section about speed was interesting too. My Brock is very slow. I ran like the clappers at agility this week and he doesn't keep up with me at all. Still just trots along. Hadn't really thought about getting him running fast on the flat. Most of my shadow handling has been done at a trot.

I asked for alternative training methods yonks ago and I think I was looking for something like this.

[The Spotted Devil]

I really liked that she kept emphasizing training the dog as an individual.

The section about speed was interesting too. My Brock is very slow. I ran like the clappers at agility this week and he doesn't keep up with me at all. Still just trots along. Hadn't really thought about getting him running fast on the flat. Most of my shadow handling has been done at a trot.

I asked for alternative training methods yonks ago and I think I was looking for something like this.

JulesP - there was some discussion, recently, on training for speed on the Yahoo Clean Run Group which might interest you, although you've probably already read it