Anyone Done Ruff Love

[SkySoaringMagpie]

I think his obedience is holding 'reasonably well' but I really don't know if that's good enough.

This is the first dog I've had in many years. This is the first dog I plan to trial (in obed and agility). I'm a newbie who's not quite sure what my expectations should be.

Poodlefan has done the hard yards in obedience and agility, and I think her counsel is wise.

You have a teenager, often teenage problems require time and management, not further hammering.

I am a shocking a-type and one thing most of us have to be careful of is keeping our egos in check. I think one of the best things you can do for your dog is to develop a hide like a rhino, so that if it is non-compliant in public you don't immediately react by pushing harder (you or him). Or if you have to say "nope, I'm not doing that" you can do so immediately considering your dog's best interests rather than whether someone is going to think you are "not trying". Stressing out on "standards" is a good way to send a lot of anxiety down the lead and ruin the relationship.

After all, your dog cares about how rewarding it is for him to work with you, he does not care about what other people think, or about ribbons. I'm not saying standards don't matter, but it's better to get there slowly, than burn out.

[Cosmolo]

I have one dog who never looks that enthusiastic when she is doing obedience- she is precise, her obedience is excellent and she lights up for her reward but during the actual exercises, she doesn't do the prance/ wagging tail look. We don't trial now but when we did, it was commented on. I don't think its always a bad thing- she clearly has a different style to my young boy who looks like a grand prix dressage horse when he's heeling!

Part of the problem is that some of the obedience we do is boring- long drop stays while working with clients dogs etc. She does light up for a tug toy and this is what we normally use but we tried something dfferent today that worked really well.

Cosmo loves targetting and it instantly gets her excited and bouncy so we broke up her training today with targetting and the usual ' don't want to work for food' attitude was gone. She did some great work AND looked like she was loving it. What about letting Barkly off lead and doing some targetting straight away?

With some dogs i find the more you deny them environmental rewards, the more they want them and it can be problematic because you can't always control the rewards while still having the dog out and about. I don't think you need to deny a dog from playing with dogs/ greeting people etc to get reliability and compliance- you may need to tweak your training of course but i think you can do this while still allowing the dog to have fun away from you. It doesn't have to be one or the other.

[Luke W]

FWIW

He gets around an hour off-lead at the park or beach per day. We do about 10 minutes of training during this time, plus periodic recalls for treats.

He has free run of half the house (he's an inside dog and I'm home all day). He has his chew toys.

I tend to play with him around 5 times per day inside (tug mostly, short sessions)

His crate door is always open.

He gets cuddles and pats and wrestling.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Luke W

[Luke W]

You know guys, I really appreciate all the replies.

I'm starting to think that my expectations are simply too high and maybe I am pushing him a little too hard.

Cosmolo

- on our frequent good days, often(?) when we work, we are both in the zone and he is a joy to watch. His tail wags, he smiles, his eyes light up. His sits and downs are fast. He runs to retrieve and sprints back. His heeling is lively, head up, tail wagging, trotting gaily! On good days!

- he also loves targetting - it's one of his favorite things

When I go back to school next weekend, I'll hunt down some of the experienced triallers and see what they think.

[Erny]

It's hard .not seeing dogs face to face--- I would also be thinking barkly needs a bit of free time...

I didn't really begin to train Mandela to any obedience commands until he was about 5 months old. What he did learn in the interim was only because he 'offered' the behaviour, and I chose to 'shape' it so that it would be easier for me later on. Once he learnt the exercise, I left it be. I concentrated mainly on playing tug and just to break that up a bit, some ball fetch. But mainly building drive. I do somewhat more of the obedience exercises he now knows and work that into my "drive training" routine, but it is still a lot of tug and play. I am pushing for a bit more (eg. maintaining 'sit' under distraction, but I don't do a lot of it. I keep it simple. And keep it fun. I use TOT and this has helped with 'focus' immensely. I can put him in a sit and wave his tug toy around, but he watches me, not the tug. I do a little of the 'difficult' and a bit more of the easy, and I make it fast. The greater percentage of time is spent tugging and running around.

When I have him out I only recall if I know he is highly likely to come back. If I'm not certain, I go get him or do something else that encourages the recall and then I throw in the command. I've not had him fail a recall command yet and don't want him to at the moment (or ever, although I expect that is likely to happen at some stage).

If I am in an environment where the distractions are too high for me to be completely confident of a recall and where I can't NOT try to recall him away from something, then he's on lead or a long-line.

Mandela loooooooves other dogs. They are the highest distraction for him at the moment. I was down the park the other day, thinking that due to the lateness it was unlikely anyone else would pop along. Wrong! From behind the thicket of trees two people each with a dog came. This was about 20 metres away from us and we were headed in their direction. Mandela went to run towards them and I quickly called his drive "on-switch" followed by "come" and he stopped sharp and short, turned on a sixpence and flew back to me and enjoyed his game of tug, ignoring the other two people and their dogs.

I was very pleased ;).

I don't over work the recall, but when I do I go all out to make sure that it is 'value' when he gives it. I don't fully trust it yet but I'm happy to be patient and spend my time playing in drive and having fun, with just the odd sit, drop, and heel (position only at this point) thrown in. I'm adding in the stay work. But I don't practice each of the commands every session nor even every day.

He's only been in this world for 7 months. I'm happy to ask for more incrementally, but not expect too much.

ETA: I didn't mean to turn this into a "this is what I do" ..... the purpose of this post was to agree with what Persephone said above. You can have much time fun with just a little bit of practice here and there on the obedience for it to still work.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Erny

[corvus]

Another good cure for anxiety is putting yourself in control of things for the animal so they know where everything is coming from and when.

Ummmmm .... would you please clarify what you mean? Because the way I'm reading it, this is essentially "leadership", which is what I'm saying.

I was agreeing with you but putting a different spin on it. I don't see it as leadership so much as giving an animal the tools to predict. Nothing puts my hare at ease like knowing how things are going to roll. Unless he knows they're going to roll badly for him, that is. If you ignore those times, whenever he is afraid he's afraid of not knowing what is going to happen next. The way I see it, if I do it with a hare and do it with a dog and get more or less the same results, then by my reasoning, given hares are not social and don't have hierarchies, and hares and dogs are way different but still both mammals, then it's probably pretty close to universal. This is why I'm always going on about my hare. When there are similarities, I know I've hit on something that's more about animals being animals than dogs being dogs. Does that make any sense?

Anyway, it's a bit off topic. No doubt dogs being the social animals they are and tending to look for guidance, any exercise that makes things predictable is probably going to be doubly useful for a dog, being the two-edged sword of both making life more predictable and easy to understand and creating a view in the dog that you take care of things for him and have all the answers.

Hey Luke, maybe you could just do some free shaping with Barkly? Keep him learning but not practising. Play 101 things to do with a box. Try to get him to lift a paw but not take it off the ground. Little, useless stuff. You can toss in some obedience here and there if he gets frustrated about clicker training and needs something he knows how to do.

[Luke W]

Hey Luke, maybe you could just do some free shaping with Barkly? Keep him learning but not practising. Play 101 things to do with a box. Try to get him to lift a paw but not take it off the ground. Little, useless stuff. You can toss in some obedience here and there if he gets frustrated about clicker training and needs something he knows how to do.

I suck at free shaping. He gets frustrated when I try to change the criteria.

[corvus]

Yeah, I feel your pain. Kivi gets frustrated easily as well. I tend to click him for something tiny and inevitably he exaggerates it when he starts to catch on so he does the work for me. I just kinda let him come up with things and change what I'm clicking a lot. If he does something cute or useful I put it on cue, but we never pracitise so he usually forgets it. I just do it when he's climbing the walls and needs something to occupy his brain.