Recently we traveled to Wisconsin to attend a seminar presented by Bill Hillmann. Bill Hillmann is a long time field trial trainer and has trained many top derby dogs.
Throughout the seminar Bill stressed the importance of practice, practice, practice. He suggested that you may need to practice a given skill hundreds of times to make that skill solid. This is particularly true when it comes to obedience with field dogs.
The seminar also covered starting a young puppy retrieving through force fetch, basic marking, land and water blinds.
Bill demonstrated how he trains what he calls an “on and off switch” into the puppy by first getting them excited with a bumper then working on the sit command.
This youtube explains the technique:
Here are some pictures of my friend Deb and her puppy Gypsy working on this:
The seminar moved on to drills that a trainer could do while training alone such as the Star Drill, 7 Bumper Drill, and Home Plate. We liked Home Plate a lot because it works on the dog being steady and marking.
Bill has several YouTubes demonstrating this drill. Here are the first couple:
For more YouTubes, here is the link to Bill’s channel.
Throughout the two day seminar Bill showed several different drills. Hubby and I found the demonstrations of the drills very helpful. My only complaint was that Bill used mostly dogs who were already proficient with these drills to demonstrate them. Of course they did them without mistake. I would have liked for him to use a dog or two who has never done these drills to show some of the issues that could crop up and how to deal with them.
My other complaint with the seminar was that we spent entirely too much time on swim-by. I guess people at our seminar were interested in teaching their dogs using this technique, but we were not. Our dog is past that point in his training so for us the seminar got a bit bogged down at this point.
On the whole we came away with ideas on drills and techniques to use in our training program. We also stayed an extra day to train with Bill in a small group setting. I will have more on that in another post.
Yes we too think it would be better is he used dogs that were not proficient in the drills Kind of defeats the objective using dogs that know what to do. Have a terrific Tuesday.
Best wishes Molly
I wish we could visit one of this seminars (and with Easy we had an unexperienced dog too, lol). Many thanks for sharing his videos, I will watch it tonight, to learn how I can “switch” Easy on and off will help a lot.
Great follow up on the Hillmann seminar. I was there and agree complete on what you said. Thank you for the video’s and link to his site.
Did you at least have the opportunity to ask questions about how to handle situations that cropped up? I would hope they had time for those.
I’ve always said the same thing about training videos. It’s good for them to show us the example of a well-trained dog, but then I’d like to see them work with an untrained dog so we can see how to deal with it – how we should react to the dog’s disobedience. Sounds like you got some good info out of the seminar anyway.
Sounds like a very interesting seminar indeed.
Lots of Woofs from Earl and I at Earl’s World!
With any kind of training demo, I almost always think it’s better to use a new dog. and not a well-trained one or the trainers dog. It may not perform as wanted, but then you get to see how it works with a new dog and get opportunities to demonstrate struggles along the way. I’m always skeptical of trainers of any sort who demo only with their own dogs.
Despite the drawbacks, I hope you got a lot out of the weekend! Sounds like the small-group hands-on would be incredibly valuable!
My favorite obedience seminars were where the instructor took one of OUR dogs and used them to demonstrate, and then walked us through how to do it ourselves.
Practice makes perfect you know. It seems that in every seminar they always spend too much time on something we don’t care much about but we try to focus on the helpful stuff we do learn.
Hi Y’all,
Guess he just wanted to demonstrated what you’re aiming to achieve, but it is a shame that he didn’t use at least a couple of dogs that weren’t proficient. On the other hand he may have been afraid of getting a dog that would take up to much time and he had lots of material to cover.
I’m enjoying hearing about the seminar.
BrownDog’s Human
I’m glad you got the extra day in, hopefully that made up for the time you were bogged down here.
Thanks for sharing the videos, very informative stuff particularly the on/off switch. I’m familiar with some of his marking techniques, but I always see something new or am reminded of something I’ve forgotten when I watch videos like this.
I am using his puppy video right now with 4mo Lab, am trying to decide whether to spend $150 each on Hillman’s Water and Land Foundation videos. I have whole Lardy program, but was so pleased with puppy video am tempted to switch. Do you think from what was presented at seminar it would be worth it?
To be honest, most of what he covered on those two areas have been covered by others elsewhere. I would say that if you want to see those techniques demonstrated by another trainer then they may be helpful. Or you may hear something presented in a clearer way or a tip you did not know. If you go to his YouTube channel, there are snips from some of the things he covered at the seminar and in the videos. That may give you a better idea. Good luck!
Hillmann YouTube