The "Hit It!" Board and the "Touch It!" are the inventions
of a joint partnership between
Mary Lou Hanlon and Jim Burnett.
An
agility enthusiast for a decade, Mary Lou Hanlon owns
a Golden Retriever named Ginger, and two Border Collies,
Snap and Wizard. Ginger, Mary Lou’s first performance
dog was the first female dog of any breed to go from Novice
A to earning both her MACH and OTCH.
Winner of several Dog World awards, Ginger, now twelve
is retired from performing. Her current full-time occupation
is overseeing the two Border Collies. Ginger feels that
excelling at being the "Fun Police" is a demanding job
and she deserves to be rewarded with cookies constantly!
Snap,
now 4 years old, is 1 Jumpers leg short of her ADCH and
well on her way to her MACH. Snap was a Grand Prix semi-finalist
in both 2004 & 2005, as well as a finalist in the
AKC 2004 World Team tryouts.
Wizard,
aka Motion Potion, is Mary Lou’s latest family member.
Only 9 months old, Wizard is learning the importance of
stationary positions and currently earns most of his cookies
for being still, something that does not come natural
to him!
Mary
Lou teaches all different levels of dog training in Warren,
New Jersey. Jim first met Mary Lou when he called her
up for dog training lessons.
A resident of Bridgewater, New Jersey, Jim has been an
animal lover/owner all his life but never had a performance
dog.
Audrey, his beloved Cairn terrier will be making her agility
debut in 2006.
After
several lessons Mary Lou recognized Jim’s commitment
to his animals as well as his knowledge and creativity.
With the growing interest in teaching running contacts
as well as the training challenges they represent, Mary
Lou presented Jim with her idea for the development of
a training device. Jim agreed with the need for such a
device, the two shook hands and the rest is history.
The
"Hit It!" Board took about a year to develop. It went
thru many revisions and was crash tested on many different
breeds. Especially instrumental in the testing of the
product was the Say Yes dog training school in Ontario,
Canada owned and operated by internationally renowned
dog trainer Susan Garrett. (www.clickerdogs.com)
Susan
Garrett is the developer of the widely acclaimed 2 on
2 off nose touch contact training method. The nose touch
portion of this training methodology is critical to its
success. Often times teaching the nose touch is a mechanical
challenge for many trainers.
Jim and Mary Lou put their heads together to develop their
second positive electronic dog training device which is
now known as the "Touch It!" to aid trainers to meet this
challenge.
Both
the "Hit It!" Board and the "Touch It!" are a part of
both Clean Run, (www.cleanrun.com)
and Max 200, (www.max200.com)
product offerings. Both products have been sold to many
dog agility enthusiasts in the U.S.A. including many top
trainers and prior world team members. They have also
been sold to trainers in Europe & Australia.
