Upped The Training

[piper]

If you want them to lie quietly while you watch TV...either teach them to lay on a mat or totally ignore them.

Dogs will only keep trying what works. Once you stop responding, they will give up.

Great post Vickie. I agree - we have 3 dogs in the house and a large amount of the time you would not know they are there.

We have had an awful afternoon/night due to a few family things so that dogs have had hardly anytime spent with them and yet when I said go and settle down, that is it - they do. Right now there is 1 dog laying behind my chair and 2 on the lounge, all relaxed as they know nothing is going to happen and hassling me will not work.

[Mas1981]

If you want them to lie quietly while you watch TV...either teach them to lay on a mat or totally ignore them.

Dogs will only keep trying what works. Once you stop responding, they will give up.

Great post Vickie. I agree - we have 3 dogs in the house and a large amount of the time you would not know they are there.

We have had an awful afternoon/night due to a few family things so that dogs have had hardly anytime spent with them and yet when I said go and settle down, that is it - they do. Right now there is 1 dog laying behind my chair and 2 on the lounge, all relaxed as they know nothing is going to happen and hassling me will not work.

My lab is a bit like that, he has times when he is very switched on and very energetic which works well for training but then a lot of the time he sleeps and does his own thing, being an only dog he has learnt to entertain himself quite a bit, saying that though I only work part time so he is only left to his own devices about 5hrs of the day.

[kiesha09]

If you want them to lie quietly while you watch TV...either teach them to lay on a mat or totally ignore them.

Just on this point. I agree that if this continues I will absolutely be training them to go to their mat. I am currently using this with Kiesha and she is generally very good (but then she is a good girl in general). Chip on the other hand is very demanding and pushy so he is the main instigator of this pushy behaviour.

The thing is though, his arousal levels go through the roof as soon as any kind of training is involved, especially with the clicker and food. So whilst I can cue him to go to his mat, which he will. He is 100% not relaxed but completely tensed, legs tucked under and ready to spring off the mat in a second. This is actually the exact opposite of what I'm looking for. I want him to be completely relaxed and chilling out instead. But not sure how to go about 'training' this per se. (Hope that makes sense to you all)

[corvus]

Kiesha, Erik is like that. Train him to be calm? No way. He knows we're training even if I'm using low value rewards, and then he gets all tense and excited. I started Karen Overall's relaxation protocol with him when he was still quite young and it was a disaster. He just got gradually more worked up instead of calmer. So massage, Kongs, and cow hooves are the way we go. I've been thinking of giving the relaxation protocol another go, or get him on his mat and just reward for sleepy eyes and tail down and that kind of thing. I was doing that for a while and we were getting somewhere, just not fast enough for me. :D

Thankfully I've got Kivi. The pair are currently lying on the ground playing a gentle game of tug with a piece of vine they found. I quite like the Nina Ottoson toy we have as well. It requires some thinking, so Erik has to calm down a bit to work it out. At the moment. I'm sure it will all fall apart when he perfects his technique.

[Vickie]

BTW... was just joking about the BC's and Aussies I still want one, just going to make sure I develop the off switch (although won't be for many years yet - 2 dogs is plenty!)

You may find you don't have to develop it, many BC's just come with it (I don't know much about Aussies).

My girls would literally keel over & die in exhaustion if I kept asking them to perform for too long. But if I am not asking them, they are not doing. They came with an off switch, it is how they are bred. I could have created monsters by giving them attention when they demanded it, but maintaining the way they already came has kept the on/off switch they were bred with.

[Kavik]

Kaos is pretty good with an off switch. If they try to push you to do more when you are done, I usually find ignoring them works and they give up and relax when they realise no more working. Zoe has the worst off switch of my dogs, she is also the worst barker.

[caffy]

My girls would literally keel over & die in exhaustion if I kept asking them to perform for too long. But if I am not asking them, they are not doing. They came with an off switch, it is how they are bred. I could have created monsters by giving them attention when they demanded it, but maintaining the way they already came has kept the on/off switch they were bred with.

Well put Vickie.