Training Diary Day 68-74

Day 68

Did some more work on tug and release and cold game retrieves

Day 69

Erik was demo dog at another crate games session today. It was a new group of dogs and people and he managed to stay in the crate for most of the session with the door open.  He came out twice but looking back it may have been because he needed a drink.  I just put him back and shut the door.  So I need to remember to put a drink in the crate when he is waiting for long periods after working and having lots of food, running about and tugging, he gets very thirsty.

We also did some more work on the cold game retrieve. I think I can see some small steps forward.  He is starting not to re grip as much.

Day 70

We did some more work on Stop whistle.

Day 71

No training

Day 72

I have been thinking about making things a bit clearer to Erik regarding thrown articles. Currently he runs as soon as he thinks I am going to throw something.  This is handy if I want to practice stop whistle as he gets to a good distance and I can then ask for a stop.  However, I am also trying to teach a default not chase until I have said ‘get it’.  I also use ‘ready’ as a cue that I am going to throw the ball.

So having had a good think about this problem I think I need to work on only throwing the ball after I have said ‘ready’ in order to get rid of the anticipatory running. If ‘ready’ then means run and ‘get it’ means that he can have it, hopefully this should clarify it a bit for the poor dog!  So if the ball is thrown with no ‘ready’ or ‘get it’ cue he should not run after it and also if I blow a stop whistle he should stop.

I need to get the rules sorted out in my own mind so that I can give him consistent input so that when he is hunting and something is thrown/flushes he should automatically stop.

Day 73

We did some work on cue discrimination with the ‘ready’, ‘get it’ and stop. I bit of a mixed bag, quite a lot of anticipatory running initially which died away as I didn’t throw the ball unless I had said ‘ready’.

Day 74

We did some more work on cue discrimination with the ‘ready’, ‘get it’ and stop. All seems to be working better today.