Buzz at the Lams' Conformation Class



Click on any photo below to see it in a larger format.

Tom and Kay Lams are (a) married to each other and (b) both very successful animal trainers - all kinds, it sounds like, not just dogs - trainers, handlers and judges. They retired from the Bay Area dog scene several years ago and moved to Vancouver, Washington. Due to popular demand, they came to Sunol and gave a few one-day clinics on conformation showing.

Nancy, the owner of Buzz's father, Sava, offered to take Buzz and work him. I went along as an auditor and photographer. It was too dark to take good photos, but I hope these will convey the flavor of the event.
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The clinic was 8 hours of concentrated information, although the Lams make it pretty painless. They have a zillion stories to illustrate their points, they both have great senses of humor and they zing each other pretty mercilessly. The first picture below is of Tom. I couldn't get any photos of Kay; she has a form of muscular dystrophy (I think) that has affected her mobility, so Tom does the hands on stuff and Kay works the loudspeaker and explains what he's doing. Anyhow, her job kept her behind a table and in a dark corner pretty much all day.

The first 2 hours or so of class is spent in "lecture", sans dogs - Kay & Tom explain the underpinnings of their system, what you should expect to get out of it, etc.

In the meantime, the dogs have been divided into three groups - in our class, I think the groupings were based on size. In group 1, there was a small terror, a miniature Schnauzer, and a King Charles Spaniel. Group 2 had 3 (count 'em, three) Airedales, two Newfoundlands (although one was correctly called a "Landseer", I think - it had white on it) and a doberman. Group 3 had two Vizslas (yah!), two goldens and another dog that I can't remember at the moment.
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After the lecture was over, the first group of dogs were brought in and worked through the first set of objectives, which had to do with identifying issues with the way the dogs moved out and suggesting and trying approaches to addressing the problems. When the first group was done, those dogs would be retired to their crates, and Group 2 dogs would show their stuff, followed by Group 3. Since many of the problems were common to many of the dogs, the first group was "on" for much longer than the other groups. We rotated through the groups about 5 times during the course of the day.
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As can be seen, Tom works with the dogs alone, the handlers alone, and then coaches the dog/handler teams in the task at hand. Down below you can see, Joye, owner of Jester, the other Vizsla, being coached in walking out, which was a very common problem that caused many of the dogs to pace instead of trot.

In one row of photos, Buzz is having a tantrum and Tom is working him through it. It took about 2 minutes. Whoo Hoo! After that, as you can see, Tom had him "stacking" very nicely indeed.
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The rest of the time, Buzz worked with Nancy. He had a really hard time with staying in one place while he was being handled by a simulated judge - his evil twin, Mr. Wiggles, kept showing himself. However, Kay said he moved beautifully, although she may have just been being kind.

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Buzz was pretty funny. During his first two outings, he didn't even look at me. After all, he was with his new best friends, Nancy and Tom, who both seemed to share his interest in seeing and being seen. As the day wore on, Mom got more and more attractive - you can see in a couple of the later pictures that he's finally looking at me. By the time we left, he was ready to be my puppy again; he was tired of being a Big Dog!!

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The other Vizsla besides Buzz was Jester, who has already finished his championship. He was gorgeous and knew most of the skills that were being taught. However, he was useful for goal setting. While I was walking Buzz, a couple of handlers said "Some dogs just make it look easy. Must be nice!" It was well after we parted that I realized that they thought I was with Jester, not Buzz. Oh well, we'll take any compliments we can get, earned or not.
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There wasn't actually a room full of Vizslas, although between the mirror and Buzz's activity level, it seemed like it. The other dogs were there in full force and were wonderful to watch. Unfortunately, I didn't get photos of all of them. The Newfoundlands were being handled by the same small woman - it was great contrast in sizes. And the multiple Airedales, two of whom were named Jazz, were also fun to watch - what attitudes! As Tom said, "They aren't conceited, they're convinced!" The Doberman, Rocky, was as impressive as Jester was. His owner was clearly an experienced handler, and they were a pleasure to watch.

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