'Secrets of Russia' from Svetlana Tumanova!

The nice folks at AgilityVision.com sent me a couple of DVDs the other day to test out. They have a new service they are providing to the agility community - DVD's and Video on Demand's of some of the great seminars they have been holding recently.

Last night we watched "Secrets of Russia: Foundation" by Svetlana Tumanova (with translation from Olga Chaiko). And we had a great time learning some new tips and tricks on foundation work.

I have to tell you that I love watching European agility competitors, and I love learning from them. They just have this desire to build drive, motivate, create distance and have a lot of fun with their dogs early in their foundation work. Silvia was our first introduction and we weren't disappointed with Svetlana.

We understand from reading that Svetlana doesn't teach agility, she instead concentrates her time training her own dogs. And this is the first time Sveltlana has shared her secrets for building a strong foundation in the agility dog with those in the US.

Until just last year, no large dog from the United States had ever won a medal in individual competition at the FCI World Dog Agility Championships because Svetlana has been on the podium every single year since 2001

So what did we think of the DVD? We thought it was great! We learned a few things I thought I'd share to give you a taste:

• Like Stuart Mah, Svetlana teaches her dogs to be very obstacle focused from the early stages.
• She concentrates on teaching the dog to constantly work ahead, building drive and confidence for the dog and she does this by throwing rewards.
• The video shows working a dog on 1, 2 and 3 jumps in a row, 180's, 270's, how she handles front crosses, serps and threadles.
• Her main focus during the seminar is helping you and your dog best communicate with body, hand and verbal signals; in a very easy to understand manner.
  

The video isn't your 'basic' foundation work video, it starts right off sharing info on helping your dog learn to work away from you, learn the obstacles, and learn some handling moves and sequencing at a low jump height. It breaks down every single move to help you learn how to teach these things from the beginning.

We think Gracie (and I, even though I'm a pretty good distance dog) will really benefit from some of the things we learned from the video. We've been wanting a way to help her be faster, work away from Mum more, and build her confidence. The info we learned will definitely help.

The VOD from AgilityVision.com is $14.99 for three days of viewing. The video is about 2 hours long, so it gives you plenty of time to watch it a few times and take notes. The DVD is $49.99. And we hear that they may have a Masters level DVD with Svetlana coming out soon.

Here's a trailer of the DVD, enjoy..oh, and we think Olga did a great job of translating!