I have been concentrating on increasing Charlie's distance to the stop whistle, we have now upgraded from the mat to a flat ish cushion to prepare him for the day David EVER gets round to making me a bloomin' place board so I just will have to make do which is fine Charlie has being doing brilliantly inside when the weather is rotten and outside in our yard, bum firmly planted on the cushion as soon as he hears my whistle, no problems at all until yesterday, he would whine when I sent him and look at me as if to say "what do you want?". This hasn't happened before as he knows what to do and does it 100% of the time, I upped his treats and brought the cushion nearer which made no difference. Any ideas please and is the cushion a silly idea? Thank you as always xx
Did you send him to the cushion from a different angle? Mine would go on their bed easily, but when I changed to another part of the room, (bed still in same place) they said "we have no idea what you mean"!
If everything was exactly the same, and decreasing distance made no difference, I'd say for some reason a bit of 'baggage' might have crept into the exercise. This can happen for all sorts of reasons that are quite surprising! I had something similar with Charlie going to a place board but in his case what happened was obvious - I'd confused him (I didn't mean to!) and then he had a bit of negative association with the board. It wore off. Betsy currently has a negative association with going to her mat when it's in a certain part of the kitchen. Goodness knows why. Someone might have dropped a pan or something and it startled her - it's hard to know how their minds work, at times. I'd try somewhere else and see what happens. In a different part of your garden etc. Swap the cushion for a different one. Just see whether anything like that makes a difference.
Maybe something happened without me even realising. Thanks Julie I will give it a go and hopefully things will get back on track
When I was at training last, a tiny, sweet Spanish Water Dog picked up an enormous fake goose (we were working on bringing back different things). Smashing little dog carried it bravely back to her handler, but tripped over the end of it before she got there. She didn't blame the goose, she blamed the ground where she had tripped! She avoided that bit of ground for the rest of the day and was miserable if she had to run close to it. Nasty, tricksy, bit of ground that, she thought! So, yep, they can get some funny ideas...
