Beanwood
Administrator
Last Sunday was the final Group 3 Gundog training class of the year. We had such a fun session! A bit of a Christmas theme in the Scurry Challenge, leaving your dog in a sit stay whilst you legged it over the straw bales, dressed up in a silly hat, stick and bag, then legged it back!
Right at the end SWMBO produced her own Santa bag, and gave us all a Christmas gift of a target stick! But uh oh....there was a challenge attached to the present.
. The challenge was we all had to go away and work on getting our dogs out to 50 yards and stopping at the target stick. In any way we wanted, SWMBO wasn't giving away any training clues at this point! Luckily Bramble was used to targetting the stick, but then I thought, hang on...I don't want her to target the stick...but stop at it. So I decided to use my "go back" cue, rather than confusing with the target cue I had originally used. Now the stop whistle at distance is not one of our strengths, so we went back to basics.
I started by popping a large piece of sausage at the target post, sending her to it from about 10 paces., then blowing my stop whistle as she reached the post. Faded out the treat at the post, blew stop whistle when Bramble got there, clicked for her stop, then threw a piece of sausage. Rinse and repeat. Gradually increased distance. After I clicked I would come forward, and throw the treat so it landed either at her or a fraction behind to prevent creeping forward. We had already worked on this so this was just breaking it down, setting Bramble up to succeed whilst building confidence in the task, before increasing distance from the post. Mostly I walked forward after the stop was blown, and I had clicked, so a few seconds elapsed before I got to reinforce the stop behaviour.
We still need a bit of "tidying" up but we are getting there! This was Bramble, stopping at the target stick at 50 yards
Right at the end SWMBO produced her own Santa bag, and gave us all a Christmas gift of a target stick! But uh oh....there was a challenge attached to the present.
. The challenge was we all had to go away and work on getting our dogs out to 50 yards and stopping at the target stick. In any way we wanted, SWMBO wasn't giving away any training clues at this point! Luckily Bramble was used to targetting the stick, but then I thought, hang on...I don't want her to target the stick...but stop at it. So I decided to use my "go back" cue, rather than confusing with the target cue I had originally used. Now the stop whistle at distance is not one of our strengths, so we went back to basics.I started by popping a large piece of sausage at the target post, sending her to it from about 10 paces., then blowing my stop whistle as she reached the post. Faded out the treat at the post, blew stop whistle when Bramble got there, clicked for her stop, then threw a piece of sausage. Rinse and repeat. Gradually increased distance. After I clicked I would come forward, and throw the treat so it landed either at her or a fraction behind to prevent creeping forward. We had already worked on this so this was just breaking it down, setting Bramble up to succeed whilst building confidence in the task, before increasing distance from the post. Mostly I walked forward after the stop was blown, and I had clicked, so a few seconds elapsed before I got to reinforce the stop behaviour.
We still need a bit of "tidying" up but we are getting there! This was Bramble, stopping at the target stick at 50 yards
