We asked someone that lives and breathes dog sports what her opinion was of Antinol…
It’s no secret that we love highlighting our Antinol families and what ‘getting it right’ from the get go looks like!
Today’s glow up is on one of our biggest supporters, Shell Gurney and her gorgeous floof Bitty (or Obi-Wan when he’s misbehaving!) the Finnish Lapphund. Bitty is the newest addition to Team Pawformance. (Check them out here).
If there is one person we value the opinion of, it’s Shell’s. Shell is a die-hard dog sports addict, training and trialling in more than ten different sports with her Lappies. She instructs in obedience, rally, flyball and agility, sits on several committees and is a licensed lure coursing and flyball judge. Shell is also a Dogs NSW registered breeder, under the Pawformance prefix.
Results: Dogs Raised With vs Without Antinol
We asked Shell if she noticed the difference between raising a dog without Antinol and what it was like raising one WITH Antinol and this was her response:
“This is the first pup I’ve been able to raise on Antinol and I’m just amazed at the difference it’s made in him compared to both his mother, Slinky, and grandmother, Squiggle at the same age.
While my older girls were always pretty switched on and have gone on to compete and title in a bunch of different sports, Bitty blows them both out of the water when it comes to training!
Not only does he learn really quickly, but he’s also been making huge leaps in his learning from the time he was a tiny little pup. He smashed through all of the normal early puppy training I do faster than I was expecting so we moved onto more difficult training really fast – immediately he started offering heaps of new behaviours in shaping sessions and putting complex behaviour chains together like they’re nothing!
His memory was (and still is) *immaculate* so we don’t need to repeat behaviours over and over again before commits them to memory. Even his balance (despite the fact he grew like a weed!) was much better than both of my older girls.
At times his training has been eerily easy! A few times now I’ve asked him to do something my older dogs know how to do and having never taught him, he just does what I’m asking. I still have no idea how he learned “stand” as an obedience exercise or where he learned to calmly take an object from me and then give it back on cue but he just knows it! It took me weeks to train my older dogs to do those things with the same precision Bitty has.
Bitty has only just started doing high impact training in the last couple of months so we didn’t put pressure on his growing joints but now that he’s 19 months old, he’s finally able to more flyball and agility training while still keeping up his training for obedience, rally, herding, scent work and trick dog.
We’re also working to build his fitness, strength and conditioning for lure coursing and backpacking which he loves. Having already gained his Australian Championship in the show ring, I can’t wait to see what he’ll be able to do in the sports ring! Bitty has big paw prints to fill with his mother and grandmother around but the sky really is the limit for him! He’s been so much fun to have around, and while we still have some of the normal entire male teenager issues, I wouldn’t change him for the world!”
We talk A LOT about the benefits of starting a puppy on the right foot with Antinol. If you would like to learn more, check out our blog on the in’s and out’s:
