Training To Focus

[DobieMum]

My obedience training at the moment is only trick training, we only spend about 5 mins doing each thing. It's not the old school, where we're walking up and down the paddock doing heels with some obedience thrown in. The time she's awake, she's bouncing around keen for what's next and starting to offer me things to try to pre-empt me. Our club does things a little differently ????

[Kajirin]

It's been about a month since I first posted and thanks to everyone's help, I've had a really good results with Sarge. Just by changing a few things I do [marking the correct behaviour I want at the right time with a yes] and mixing in treat rewards with tug rewards [he gets a good game of tug on completion of the class]. He's got to the point now where he'll ignore dogs barking [we're usually next to a very vocal GSD], dogs being close to him and even magpies on the oval during training - his focus stays on me [and it's easy to get back his attention if it does lapse].

Also worked out that with Sarge, he wasn't totally proofed with some mixed verbal/hand commands. So I went back to basics and retrained by removing verbal commands and reverted back to hand signals as he understands them better [also helps keep his attention on me]. Mainly there's been dramatic improvement in his down and down/stay [which he wouldn't do before], he downs on almost all surfaces now [concrete, tiles, grass, dirt]. He's almost there with constant loose leash heeling too.

I've only been in beginners this month and I had a chat to my trainer after class last Wednesday. She said Sarge will be about the only one graduating into Grade 1 this week

So proud of the little squirt.

Thanks again everyone

[JulesP]

Well done Noishe and Scout!

[Nekhbet]

Congratulations!