Clean Run - January 2015 - 59

Anna has two simple goals for the future:
"I want to be a member of the Hungarian National Team
and run clean at the FCI Agility World Championship with Dú."
If she achieves that goal, she would be running the ﬁrst Bull
Terrier competing at the FCI championships. Ever.

For a while, Anna trained and competed
while pursuing a career as a journalist
and editor, first for the Hungarian dog
magazine, then for a weekly women's
magazine. "I only had 23 free days in
the year. It was not quite enough for trials and seminars. When I got too many
invitations to hold seminars, I decided
to quit my job at the magazine and become a professional trainer." That was in
2009. Today she competes with her Border Collie, Nevian, who is 10, and her
3-year-old Miniature Bull Terrier, Dú.

On the Road
Without a training facility of her own,
Anna does most of her teaching at seminars. She and husband Thomas spend
at least five months abroad every year.
Anna gives eight to twelve five-day
seminars in Germany every year, so she
has a steady routine there. "After I wake
up and take a short walk, Thomas and
I build a course. I train with my dogs a
little bit, then have breakfast." The training seminar goes from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.,
with a lunch break and a free afternoon
on Wednesday. "If I have two groups, I
train my dogs during the lunch break,
too. After the training, we use the sauna, have dinner together as a group, and
then I train again with my own dogs."
If the seminar is only for a weekend, she
usually will not train her own dogs, as
"my brain is too tired."
When she is in the city, at the small flat
she shares with her husband in Budapest,
mostly during the winter months, she
will do some training at a facility a half
hour away, but running agility is more or
less on hold. She visits family and works
around the house. She keeps up with her
agility business organizing seminars, anJanuary 15 | Clean Run

swering emails, using Facebook, watching videos, and the like. "We only go for
a walk with the dogs or do clicker work
in the flat." If she finishes all of her domestic responsibilities, or she is "just
fed up with everything," she will travel
about 45 minutes into the mountains,
where they own a cottage. This is also
where she spends time when she is in
Hungary in the summer. "Here I have a
dogwalk, long jump, tunnel, weaves, and
three jumps, so I can train."
Most of Anna's training consists of sequences focused on skills. "With Nevian,
I did a lot of basic training both for me
and for her on the weekdays. Then, once a
week, my friend Ildikó Halász and I would
train courses with 30 or more obstacles."
Now, however, she trains on her own and
rarely has the time for such extensive
coursework. Dú's body structure also dictates shorter training sessions. "She gives
me 100% and then she will be tired very
fast." Much of her training time with the
little terrier involves running contacts.
"If I have just a short time, like a lunch
break, I very often train the turns. I'm
putting them on verbals. Dú can turn
very, very tightly, but she doesn't like it
if I don't have enough motion, so I try
to help her with the verbal cues." Anna
will also use these brief sessions to train
weave pole exits and entries, or dogwalk
exits, or tight tunnel exits. "Generally I
like to train independent obstacle work
and distance work. If I train these skills,
I am using a clicker a lot for the turns,
the weave pole exit, and the dogwalk
contact. If I train sequences or coursework, then I won't use the clicker. With
sequences, I try all the possible handling
options on the same combination."

Style Points
Anna considers herself first and foremost a practitioner of positive agility.
That means not only being positive with
the dog, but to be what she considers a
positive handler. "I always show the next
obstacle very clearly and don't hide the
possible trap." She says she gives the dog
as much information as possible, with
her voice, her body, and her hands, and
is very consistent in her cues. She is also
positive when teaching others, aiming to
eliminate the phrase, "My dog can't do
that." She says, "Either the handler can't
do it yet, or the dog wasn't taught it."

In the System
While she used to say that handlers follow systems, now she thinks that so
many things are natural for the dogs, that
no one can say, "it is my system or your
system or her system." One of the things
she feels strongly about is using what she
refers to as the dog-side hand-the hand
that is closest to the dog. "When I first
invited Jaakko Suoknuuti to Hungary
in 2010, it was really great to train with
him, because he was working like me.
He was always using the dog-side hand,
just like me." It is also the reason that
she found it easy to learn so many kinds
of blind crosses. "I like them very much.
If I need to get to a very important point
where I have to help my dog, I can shorten my way. Or I can shorten my dog's
way because, due to the blind cross, my
body and my chest can show him earlier
the way where to go next. For example,
Jaakko turn versus post turn or German
turn versus front cross-I only do the
blind cross if it makes sense."

59
Clean Run - January 2015

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