Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 3:05 pm Post subject: Training at 7mths
Tilly is just over 7mths now and I was wondering what training you do or did when your furbaby was or is this age?
We still regularly do the sit, lie down, lie flat, come, stay, off (like she listens to that....!!), leave it, high 5 (my personal favourite!) and also recall when in the field
Touch - get her to look at your left hand - if she does give her a treat with your right hand. If she as much as looks, give a treat. Then build in a command "touch". You can build it into a command you can use for hellwork - touch = touch left hand - hold left hand by hip/thigh then you get to work on the beautiful competition style heelwork you see on the telly!
Its now all about stretching it out, or maybe chaining one exercise into another. So sit her up, do a nice recall, stop her half way to you with a sit command and a raised hand signal, then maybe a down from that sit, then completing the recall.
Maybe start a little light retrieving. With steadiness being the key by YOU picking 99% of the items thrown out ad her sitting up quietly in a calm sit stay.
Test those rock solid commands around other dogs. Go out and have her sit up whilst other dogs mill about, just for a short time, then let her play, then call her back, treat her, and repeat....
And work on that iffy 'off' command making it solid not 'iffy'
Going on from Di's post, start doing stays out of sight.
The way I do it is to set my puppy up in a sit stay in the wood, leave her and just walk round a tree and back. I never completely disappear because my front is appearing around the tree before my back end has disappeared. After a few days of doing that I'll use a small bush instead of a tree. This time there is a split second where I disappear, but I'm back again before stress has time to build up. Gradually I use bigger bushes so I'm gone slightly longer. Now, being gone 6 to 8 minutes whilst checking a release pen for Badger damage is no problem for Amy. It's all small beginnings and building on it.
Kara is also 7 months old. The main problem is I just cannot get her attention. She's not overly food motivated so treats don't really catch her attention. We are trying to get her used to a halti to see if that will improve her walking (which is an absolute nightmare). She will sit but not for very long (and by that I mean about 5 seconds) and she can't get the down command. Any suggestions?
In common with most working gundog people I never use food when training my dogs. My voice and my hands are the reward. Food, wrongly use, can so easily be counter productive by encouraging the dog to break stay or drop the retrieve in order to get to the food.
Try training stays on the lead. Make use of the fact that a dog's head when sitting it higher than when standing so a little upward and backward movement of the lead will help to keep he dog in the sit.
Build up the stay slowly. Never try to do longer than the dog can easily manage. Never EVER call a dog out of the stay, always return to the dog and praise it whilst it's still doing what you want.
At training classes the command we are told to give is always 'stay'. This is both for sit and down stay purposes as well as for recall. Obviously we've trained Penny in this way for a couple of years. Do you think that I should teach Kara a 'wait' command for recall work, as well as a 'stay' command for sit and down stays? Also should I try to introduce a 'wait' command to Penny?
A bit of a waffle I know but I hope you get what I mean.
I like in the early stages to make the stay and the recall as different as possible.
Commands:-
Stay, "Stay": Recall, "Wait"
Hand Signals:-
Stay, "Flat of hand in front of face": Recall, "One finger in front of face"
Body Posture:-
Stay, "Arms folded": Recall "Arms at sides"
Everything I do in these initial stages is aimed at conveying to the pup what's coming next. But as things start to come together I try to make use of the training. Indoors I use it whilst sweeping the floor, outdoors it's used whilst I put dummies out for retrieves. Now Amy is doing sit stays whilst I'm feeding the Pheasants and the stay is probably going on for 15 to 20 minutes at each of 4 pens, with me coming and going, sometimes in full view, sometimes out of sight. What I'm saying is, use the training, dogs are quite capable of reasoning out that you have put them in the stay while you sweep the floor. It would seem quite logical to them and give them a reason for staying.
Does anyone know of a good book please, to work through step by step? Because, like Tracey, I have this uncertainty that I might be missing something vital, or that I could be doing more. Thanks
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