Reflections from a Working Dog Seminar
Last weekend I attended Shade Whitesel’s Seminar: Play Your Way to Powerful Obedience in Missouri hosted by Riverfront Working Dog Club. Shade has achieved some of the highest titles in Schutzhund with her dogs. “Shade has been involved in the sport of Schutzhund for the last 15 years. Shade and her current competition dog, Reiki vom Aegis,…
Always Leave Your Dog Wanting More
The other day I was working with my dog, Loker, on a heel exercise. It was the back-end awareness exercise I have already mentioned. It was a short session because this exercise is proving to be a bit of a challenge for him. Learning how to move their backend independently of their front end does not come…
Use Your Neighborhood Park!
People often walk or jog through their local park but rarely do they take advantage of the man-made obstacles provided. Kids playgrounds or picnic tables are great tools to expand your dog’s mental and physical challenges during a walk. Including obstacles during a walk will help drain excess energy much more quickly than simply walking…
Successful Training in Distractions
When dog training, just like learning a new language or skill, you want to start easy and then gradually work up to harder exercises. Training your dog should be a progressive program that increases in difficulty depending on how the dog performs. People often overestimate the capabilities of a dog and make challenges too hard…
Unexpected Mistakes in Dog Training
During our last training session, I was having Loker work for his evening meal He kept getting commands wrong and was being more of a “spaz” than usual. It was so frustrating that I had to remove myself from the situation and return after a small break. I could not understand why he was being…
Treating Reactivity
Won’t feeding my dog treats when he acts aggressive or barks only reward that behavior? I wondered about this question when I first began positive association training with my dog, Loker. I was starting the “Click the Trigger” (CTT) method to try to get him to quit being so reactive when he saw other dogs or…
Teach Your Dog to Go to His Mat!
Teaching your dog to go to the mat is easy. Although I have always taught obedience with some positive reinforcement techniques, I was not very familiar with the variety of techniques that can be used. I would have to say that my favorite that I have learned so far is high frequency reinforcement. Although it looks like I’m just…
Forming the Perfect Heel
You can teach a dog how to heel many different ways. One of the tricks I have read about is having a dog rotate it’s behind around while standing on an object. This exercise is great to raise awareness to a dog’s back end so that it learns how to rotate it around to a…