Fenzi TEAM Titles

Hi! It's Cinnamon ;-)

Ooops! We didn't post anything for nearly a half year... Yes, Mum has been busy as you may have guessed, so she couldn't help us write posts for our blog.

Well, since my last post about Rally Freestyle Elements (Rally-FrEe), both of us have gained a Rally-FrEe Intermediate Title and a leg toward a Rally-FrEe Masters title. Also, in Musical Freestyle Mint gained his Musical Freestyle Novice title and I gained my Musical Freestyle Veteran Novice title.

Do you think I am talking about titles too much? I agree. To be honest I don't care about them. It's only humans who care about them. After all they don't bring us anything we can eat unlike local dog sports events where we can sometimes get food as prizes :-)

Having said that, I am going to talk about titles again as the title of this post indicates. The difference is that the titling program that I am going to talk about involves FOOD!!

Do you remember that Mint gained his Trick Dog Champion title last year? When he did that through video submissions, he was able to enjoy food rewards during his exercises. So was I when I did exercises for the title I am going to talk about ;-)

Fenzi TEAM Titles is a new program launched recently by Denise Fenzi, the CEO of Fenzi Dog Sports Academy that offers a wide variety of online courses. Mum is a big fan of Denise because she is always cheerful and supportive. Thanks to Fenzi courses, Mum has learned to make our training lots of fun for us as well as for herself, instead of putting us under pressure and stress.

In the Fenzi TEAM Titles program, as the name TEAM (Training Excellence Assessment Modules) indicates, the progress of your training is assessed and tracked, unlike real obedience competitions where only the accuracy of the finished product is judged and compared.

For example, the Level One assessment comprises the following exercises:

1. Engage the dog for 10 seconds without formal cues and show focus in heel position
2. Find “heel” position from 6 ft (2 m) away (three different angles) AND pivot 180° with foot target
3. Find “front” position from 6 ft (2 m) away (three different angles) with foot target/platform
4. Position changes from 5 ft (1.5 m) away with a foot target/platform
5. Go around an object AND back up
6. Send dog to vertical target placed 5 ft (1.5 m) away
7. High jump or bar jump (height or width must be minimum of ⅓ dog’s height)
8. Touch a retrieve object 
9. Identify correct article (out of 3) by scent
10. “Stay” under distraction with handler close by

Also, this program's stance on dog training is symbolised by the "Not Yet" designation that is given to unsuccessful attempts. In general the results of examinations are either "Pass" or "Fail". But, in this program you never fail. Receiving the "Not Yet" designation is like you are advised that you need to learn a little more to achieve the required level of excellence, and the judges always let you know why you were "Not Yet" and how you could improve.

And, the best part of this program is that in the basic levels you are encouraged to use food as external reinforcements and you can do it at home where there are no other dogs around! Yay!! That perfectly suits me!!

It was so much fun to try it out and here is my successful submission for the Level One, after a "not yet" attempt where Mum made a few mistakes.

It looks like fun, doesn't it? Would you like to try it? For more information about the program, visit the Fenzi TEAM Titles website.