Hey peeps! After suggesting on another thread that we all help one another out with some motivational training over winter, Nick has suggested I make a separate thread here so, here it goes! A few of us, including me, have been or are struggling to stay motivated to train regularly right now. It's eternally wet, dark, cold, icy, flooded, windy, you have a head cold, you have a busy work life - the list is endless. I have an idea for a "Winter Wins" series but it would be great to hear from you all first how you stay motivated when the days last just 5 minutes and getting out of bed early to train is too painful for words. What are your strategies? Are there particular things (games, tricks) you are training at the moment to motivate yourself? Are there any hardcore "I train in the rain" folks here? I'll share my idea if you share yours!! X

So I am rather selfishly using the video footage I shot today on how I taught/am teaching contact heel for my daily training post so I apologise @Samantha Preece but here you go! I did a couple takes as to begin with it looked like I was too close to the camera to be able to see what I'm doing! But once I sat down properly to watch it it's not that bad. Hopefully all explained in there but please ask away if you have questions. For anyone else reading this, I am NOT a professional trainer (or fashion icon) by any means and welcome constructive criticism and/or discussion on other ways of teaching this. It's very much a work in progress for us too so sit back and enjoy the training beacon visible from space.

Cannoli knows places pretty well, in the sense when I say the word he goes to his place. However, what I need to work on more is extending his time on place, and not leaving until he gets the break command. We worked on this a bit. Having him go to place, and then when he got off I walked him back. After a handful or so of attempts, he seems to have gotten it a bit. He’s now staying longer on place( couple minutes). Still needs a lot more work, but I’m happy to see some results!

Would you rather lose the ability to read or to write?

Yesterday I announced the premium tier of this community and so I need to get to work on our first webinar! What topic would you most like us to cover?