Sunday, January 27, 2013

To video tape or not

I keep telling my students you should video tape your runs. Sometimes you think a run was horrible but once you watch it, you say, it really wasn't that bad.

Aside from judging yourself, video taping is such a good learning experience. With my youngest dog, Pace, I video taped every training session I did with him. It is so much fun watching him grow up and learning all about him. It doesn't take much time to set up a tripod and put your camera on it and press record. Sometimes you can even ask a fellow classmate to press record for you. They really don't mind :-)

I have learned so much from video. I've learned how honest my dogs really are. They do exactly what I tell them.

Another benefit for video taping is being able to watch those videos 10-12 years later and say, OMG, how did I ever get my dogs around a course! And, OMG, my dogs are brilliant :-)

Most recently I have been watching videos of my dogs from 12-14 years ago. Dogs that I don't have anymore. It is so much fun watching the joy in my dogs and me even though my handling was terrible. We still had fun! They didn't care and didn't ask for "a better handler". They just loved to play the game

Video tape your training session, your runs and just for fun. You only get this dog once.

1 comment:

  1. Great advice, Mary. I just ordered a book about how to best use the video feature on my Nikon; once I get that, I should be able to video our classes.

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