Starting Point

For those who don't know me and/or my dog, Maggie, here's some background info:

ME: 20 yo college student with a passion for all things canine, animal science major with behavior/wellbeing specialization and psych minor, president of Campus Dog Owners' group on campus (new website is at http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~cdog thanks to my wonderful bf and his new web design company :) ), Animal Science Abassador, ANSC Mentor, well you get the idea. I alternate between procrastinating on everything and being super busy, go figure.

MAGGIE: 6 yo spayed female Border Collie, adopted from the Bloomington Animal Shelter (check out their pet listings on http://www.petfinder.com) at 11 mo. When Maggie came to live with me, she was severely undersocialized and was an escape artist (jumped a 5ft fence from a stand still on the first day home). People who meet her now say she is a completely different dog. Currently she has 2 Jr. Handler titles with the United States Dog Agility Association, works with me as a Delta Society Pet Partners therapy dog team, holds a Canine Good Citizen title through the AKC, serves as a clicker training demo dog, and is an all around highly accomplished canine member of the family. Maggie is the reason that I am into dog behavior lol.

So you're prob wondering what this blog is for aren't you? Well here's the idea: I need to work with Maggie on various training goals and I figured this would be a good way to keep my nose to the grindstone and increase accountability. The original goal was to document Maggie's training as a detector dog (I visited the National Detector Dog Training Center this summer and got to work a few dogs there; I figured Maggie could be my guinea pig), but I think I will make this into a general training log.

Now on to the main attraction!!