[bradleysmum]

Hi,


We all know how important it is to teach our labradors commands, as a well trained dog makes life easier for the dog itself and for it's owner & infact for everyone.


We have taught Bradley many commands, and have found the most difficult to get him to obey has been the 'come' command. Probably one of the most, if not - the most important commands of all! I think it's important you keep on top of commands, we have been taking treats on every single walk, and practising the 'come' command 7 or 8 times every time. Patience and consistancy pay of though, this morning's walk he scored a perfect 8 /8 with the 'come' command, even when he was quite a distance ahead.


How do you get on with training?



What command or commands have you found the most difficult to maintain or teach your lab?



For those of you who took your lab to puppy/adult classes, do you think it made a big difference?



I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.


Thx



Julie

 

[GrecianExile]

Shadow's biggest problems were 'Stay' and 'Leave' Still has temporary deafness with 'leave' :lol:

Puppy Classes that we went to definitely helped his socialising skills - money well spent.

 

[Karen_theArtist]

'Off'! Corbie still puts his paws on the work surfaces in the kitchen and won't get off straightaway :roll:

Oh, and 'Leave'.... although it's slowly getting through to him after all the leaflets he's been pinching out of the bookshelf over the last few days!

Selective deafness plays a big part :lol:

 

[frodosmom]

Hi julie...

For me its the "COME" command....it just falls on deaf ears :? ...i know somewhere i'm to be blamed as i just lose my patience.... i better learn quick & then teach him....

 

[Fay]

Hi Julie,

We have trouble with 'off' like Karen has with Corbie, also 'drop', once it's in his mouth, we have to get it out :roll:

'Come' sometimes works - but not always.

 

[thrupence]

Hi Julie

The recall was the most difficult for me to teach,and still they have selective deafness at times.

I think puppy classes are great for the dogs to get used to meeting other people aswell as other dogs.

Margaret

 

[thehound]

I found that taking Ollie to puppy classes was the best socialisation ever for him. The classes moved on as he grew and his buddies moved on with him and we gained new members and lost old ones as the years went on.
Ollie attended training all his life learning new commands and reinforcing the old ones.
The hardest one of all was stop drooling! No seriously not to pull on the lead was Ol's only bad habit no matter how much training we had he insisted on still doing it.

Easy peesie ones were sit, stay, down, up, come, drop, leave, no, come around, finish, left paw, right paw.
More tricky ones I found were fetch washing, fetch papers, fetch letters, roll over, find the .....whatever, but with persistence he learnt. Unsurprisingly fetch lead was an easy one.
Heelwork off the lead was excellent, slap a lead on him and he was back to pulling.
Ollie learnt new words and commands right up to the end. No dog is ever too old to learn anything.

 

[clairiscrazy]

hi julie

brandy is great on all commands... but rosze the hardest command for me is the *COME* she has to go have her lil doggy sniff before she will return to me..so im still working on that one..lol.

i didnt take brandy or rosze to training classes i did with tessa though and took all that on board and taught brandy and rosze myself they socialse well with other dogs almost every other day so that wasnt a problem ..


infact i have just started to train my freinds dog which im pretty pleased with as its also good for training rosze the come command aswell since they both run off and play (thats when rex isnt trying to hump rosze...lol)

 

[Cristina]

Mine is still the "come" command too, it seems to fall on deaf ears...grrr
We can't do training classes at the moment because of bens leg but hopefully we will be able to soon. I will just have to keep working on him at home and in the park.

 

[Kev]

Hi

I took Buster to training class when he was 14 weeks old,the socialising aspect was very good but I wasn't happy with the training class itself for various reasons,so after 5 sessions I stopped taking him.However,I still trained him on a daily basis in the garden for 10/15 minutes(weather permitting) until I could find a suitable class.

I eventually found a good training club and have been taking him there for the last 3 weeks. It's an 8 weeks Beginners Course(back to basics) leading to KC Bronze Good Citizen Award.After which we will be joining the weekly ongoing classes and work through the various stages.

Buster's recall is good,he comes back everytime and I have taught him to finish(not part of the beginners course) i.e. walk round me and sit on the left hand side. I do all his training using treats and lots of praise but on the course we will be subsituting treats for an object and eventually getting him to do it with just praise as a reward.Well thats the theory,we will see lol.

If you have a problem with recall try this:

Have your dog on lead let him/her walk a few steps ahead of you then call 'come' and hold a treat in your hand,give the treat immediately and praise your dog. Do this often when walking your dog as well as in training sessions.This teaches the dog the word 'come',once the word 'come' is learnt progress to doing it offlead.

HTH

Kev

 

[Maddie]

Gawd! We've been training for what seems like years! Her hardest command was stay (she just does not want to leave her Mummy) but she is all of a sudden getting the hang of it. The second hardest is a recall - I used to use come but now I use "here" and that seems to be working more. Still tricky though. She used to be terrible at "leave it". We did an exercise at the end of each class where someone threw treats (pigs ears, croissants etc)at the dogs and they had to ignore it. Coco ate the lot on her first try now she does not bat an eyelid. I even make her wait for her dinner while it's on the floor and can leave the room and it's still there - bless! :lol: :lol:

 

[JohnW]

Stopping to whistle at a distance to redirect is usually the hardest in gundog circles.

Possibly the most important word of advice I can give is this. Try at all times possible, to never give a command if you are not in a position to enforce it. If a command is not obeyed then all you are teaching the dog is that you can make a noise.

Obviously sometimes that is impossible and you have to try, but where at all possible the above is so vary important.

Regards, John

 

[Maddie]

Stopping to whistle at a distance to redirect is usually the hardest in gundog circles.

Hi John
I'm working on this one at the moment - any tips? She will stop on command if shes coming towards me and I am only about 10 metres away but any further and she keeps on coming until she's about 3 metres away from me! I'm not doing it for gundog training but it's because it's a useful command to have up your sleeve anyway. :lol:

 

[SirHalo]

I have had Halo in classes since he was 12 weeks. He'll be 7 mths this week.

I have found that "Come" is the most difficult and more so when we are out and in very distractive areas.

We are currently working with the clicker and he's doing well. But he's having some health issues, unfortunately, and we may have to stop.

But don't give up!! AND if it takes you 15 minutes to get your dog to do that one command (while training) make him/her do it. Or like John said, you're teaching your dog you make noise...and...they know they can get away without listening.

 

[JohnW]

Hi Nicola.

The trouble with training dogs is in that just because we are training one thing does not mean that the dog is not learning something totally different.

Take stopping at a distance for example. The usual command is a single “Pip” on the stop whistle and a hand raised, palm towards the dog. Usually this it taught with the dog in front of us in a position where we can guide it into position. Think about this. Dog standing in front. We give the command and guide dog into position. What does the dog learn? To take up a position in front of us! In fact what we SHOULD be teaching is to take up the position some way away from us. Something the dog sees as totally different.

Most pet and obedience people want their dogs to stop in the down but gundog people never want their dogs in the down. With their head buried in the long grass they are not in a position to mark the fall of a dummy, so we insist on the dog stopping in the sit.

As in most things in training we use a technique called “Back Chaining”. We start with what we want and continue from there. Whist doing a sit stay I blow the stop whistle and give the visual stop hand signal then I immediately return to the dog and praise it. I want the dog to understand that I am praising it for sitting at a distance (even though that was exactly what it was doing)

The next stage is giving the reward without going to the dog. After a few of the stay training exercises above I’ll take the dog out for a walk in an area where it is not too interesting. Well mown grass of the park is nowhere near as interesting as a rough field! I want the interest of the dog on me, not on the rabbit droppings!!!!! When the dog has just finished sniffing some grass and has not yet found anything else of interest I blow the stop whistle and as it looks at me give the hand signal. Because the dog has never heard it close up it is not tempted to come back to me and will normally, if the above lesson has been well learned, go into the sit. At this point I will throw a dummy out to one side and direct the dog onto it with a sweeping hand signal. Because gundogs love retrieving to the dog the retrieve is a reward! After a few of these the dog will stop and sit to await the reward, the retrieve. There is no reason to start to return to the handler because he will not know which direction the reward is going to be thrown!

Be very careful about stopping the dog when it is returning to you. That’s a good way of building apprehension into the recall. It’s fine occasionally but only occasionally. Far better to stop whilst the dog is going away. For a pet dog you can always substitute a tennis ball for a dummy. Never ever call the dog too you after stopping it on the whistle, at least until the lesson is well learned. That will only teach exactly what we are trying to avoid! Occasionally, instead quietly return to your dog and praise it whilst it is doing what you want.

This should give you an idea on how we train. Think about anything which goes wrong. Dogs are very literal creatures and do exactly what THEY think we want so where are we going wrong? The reason is always there in our training if we look far enough.

Regards, John

 

[Maddie]

Thanks John!

Lots of stuff to think about there! She is not (ever!!) going to be a working dog ( :lol: ) but I think she had the potential, is an excellent retriever (she does not "mouth") and will observe arm signals at a distance and follow them if she's trying to locate an object I've thrown but can't quite find it.

Really I only want an effective stop command in order to prevent an accident and to use in agility etc. We won't be doing competition obedience so a "stop and drop" is fine for us.

Thanks once more

 

[JohnW]

It dosen't matter whether a dog is going to work or not. Somehow, the more you teach the more a dog's brain seems to develop and the tighter the bond between dog and human. Just enjoy training and working with your dog. it's so worth it. My dogs work, but they are my friends and companions first.

Regards, John

 

[Trina]

As with most others, our main problem with Penny is recall when we're out. In training class she does a lovely recall and finish (comes to sit at heel on left side) but outside, if she's got her nose in something, forget it.

She's has just recently failed her road safety test at the class, perfect score on heelwork, 9.5 out of 10 for recall, 16 out of 20 for down stay, but would not sit. The examiner was great and gave her three chances but she blew it. Never mind.

The only problem we have is that for a variety of reasons we can't put her into the intermediate class (I think the club would let us even through she hasn't passed the basics) but the class isn't convenient for us. We could keep taking her to beginners but quite honestly I think she's bored. She does beautiful heelwork (in the class not always outside), a great recall (again inside) and is perfectly capable of doing a sit and down stay. I really think she can't be bothered. The club also has an agility night which we plan to keep going to, so she'll still have her chance to meet and play with her pals.

So, what to do next? Obviously I'd like to keep up with her training and move her on to something more advanced. One obvious problem will be working off the lead without a safe environment to do that in (and one where I can't catch her). Does anyone have any suggestions? Good books? Videos? Alternatives?

Any help/advice would be gratefully received.

Trina

 

[anna]

if she does heelwork well inside its likely to be a distaction and context issue, does she do it just in the hall or does she do it other indoor places? Once she's reliably doing it anywhere inside try when shes had her walk and a good run and try somewhere quiet like the garden progressing to more busy places.
Anna

 

[Trina]

Thanks Anna

She can do nice heelwork, on lead, when we're outside until something catches her attention. Then, as with all the others, selective deafness sets in, together with her determination to do what she wants.

Trina