We will be forming a training club under the Service Dogs of America. We are hoping that this will supplement people's training who train for schutzhund and offer training opportunitys to people that may not want to train for sport.

Tentatively we are planning on meeting Sundays, as most local clubs, including mine, train on Saturdays. We hope to install night lights later. We do have a wall, jumps, and a couple of blinds for the use of all and will be adding equipment. Training area is fenced in and we have a couple of acres of field directly behind the training area for tracking.

I chose SDA to organize the club under for several reasons. They are schutzhund friendly, so no one would have to train for two different styles of ob or tracking. The entry level titles are much more attainable then a BH and can give people experience in trialing, and it is a family friendly type atmosphere. Kids can come and start learning how to train the family pet along side someone that has competed well in sport.

Training is on my property and my home will be open to all. For that reason I do reserve the right to approve anyone coming out for either just training and to decline a prospective member. I am located in McAlpin Florida which is in the Live Oak/Lake City area.

This is the link for Service Dogs of America. http://www.servicedogsofamerica.com/index.html If you are interested please let me know. The plan right now is start meeting the first week in March, with perhaps an organizational/planning meeting this month. There are plenty of titles to train for at all skill levels. So if you want to add a different venue, or get on another field with a different group of people and most importantly just have fun with your dog let me know!

We have started traning regularly on Saturdays now and am getting ready for a couple of trials.

New People are Welcome!

Just thought I would give a quick update on this.

We have a good core group of people training on Saturday Mornings with us and have an excellent decoy. I still manage to stalk Will long distance by sending him unedited training video and once his headache subsides from shaky camera syndrome he has been pretty pleased with the steady progress of dogs AND handlers.

I think the true test of a trainer is not bringing up young green dogs but going back and fixing problems with an older dog. John, our decoy, has done this with Mr Problem child, Doc. We are finally getting control on him in protection and make steady progress with him week after week.

We are putting the paperwork in now to become a formal SDA club and hope to host a spring trial.

We also have another SDA club in the Ocala/Citra area, Central Florida SDA, that we train with regularly. Very talanted members there that have trained and titled dogs in multiple venues and are very generous with their knowledge!

If you are in the area, shoot me a PM about training! We really, truly are having a lot of fun.