- Location
- Herefordshire, UK
Another good session at Dog Club this week. I'm so glad I decided to give this a try!
We spent half the time on improving heelwork/looselead walking , which is forming the basis of this block of lessons, which is great for me as I really didn't get this right with her as a youngster as I was struggling to do +R training more or less on my own. In those days I knew what I didn't want to do eg the neck jerks but not how to replace that with force free.
While it is based on "proper" stuff for rally/obedience/heelwork etc it is up to us to decide how we want to fit into our daily lives as long as we are consistent with our dogs . So we have been working on making sure our dogs are engaged with us right from the very first step, and keeping that connection as we go along. I learnt that she quickly disengages with me and that I need to wait while she eats her treat so that she isn't thinking of that while I walk merrily on! I often expect her to do things too quickly.( Maybe a hangover from the first 5 years when she went everywhere at 90 miles an hour?
)We did various exercises to establish this behaviour. For me the take away thing is to keep the connection and recue after rewarding.
We worked on proofing our verbal cues by choosing 2 behaviours to work with, I picked hand touch which is well established and she loves it - touching my hand wherever I place it is no problem -- she knows that verbal cue. "Loop" is a new one which needs more work.
We finished with middle, taking it forward as a useful game. For me, I've never built up duration and again am inclined to do things too fast!
So plenty to work on in these short December days. I find that she is happily attentive in the class, and happily relaxed afterwards. This makes it better than scent club, after which she was like a dog possessed and really had trouble coming down from the high of the work.
We spent half the time on improving heelwork/looselead walking , which is forming the basis of this block of lessons, which is great for me as I really didn't get this right with her as a youngster as I was struggling to do +R training more or less on my own. In those days I knew what I didn't want to do eg the neck jerks but not how to replace that with force free.
While it is based on "proper" stuff for rally/obedience/heelwork etc it is up to us to decide how we want to fit into our daily lives as long as we are consistent with our dogs . So we have been working on making sure our dogs are engaged with us right from the very first step, and keeping that connection as we go along. I learnt that she quickly disengages with me and that I need to wait while she eats her treat so that she isn't thinking of that while I walk merrily on! I often expect her to do things too quickly.( Maybe a hangover from the first 5 years when she went everywhere at 90 miles an hour?
)We did various exercises to establish this behaviour. For me the take away thing is to keep the connection and recue after rewarding.We worked on proofing our verbal cues by choosing 2 behaviours to work with, I picked hand touch which is well established and she loves it - touching my hand wherever I place it is no problem -- she knows that verbal cue. "Loop" is a new one which needs more work.
We finished with middle, taking it forward as a useful game. For me, I've never built up duration and again am inclined to do things too fast!
So plenty to work on in these short December days. I find that she is happily attentive in the class, and happily relaxed afterwards. This makes it better than scent club, after which she was like a dog possessed and really had trouble coming down from the high of the work.
To be fair it was a foul day and I wasn't that keen either - it's cold in the training barn - no amount of enticing would get her off said sofa! The message was clear - you go if you want too but I've just got comfy here 
