When your pups are romping in the yard together do you try to moderate their play? Sometimes my two 9 month girls are running around so crazy they are bowling each other over, body slamming each other into the fence or a tree, etc. I worry they are going to hurt each other. But I don't know how I'd control that anyway. It's easy to stop them when they are just wrestling too rough. But I don't know what to do when they run across the yard full speed and slam into each other. I'm not fast enough to intervene there. But sometimes one will run full speed into the other so hard she gets knocked down and rolled over at high speed and I just cringe. I worry about broken bones and spinal injuries. But I guess dogs do this all the time and are just fine? Hopefully they are like kids and pretty resilient. I, as an old fart, would be dead on the first hit!
I have a "scatter!" cue which means I've thrown a handful of treats on the floor by my feet. We've practiced this in lots of different environments and it's strong enough to break up play that is inappropriate - like the zoomies next to a cliff, or around the trench that J has spent hours digging
I’m not allowed to feed my pups on the floor at all so we have practiced a shouted “ENOUGH”. with very high value treats. Practiced when they are in the garden but not playing for a week or so. Then when they are just wrestling for a week or so, the when they are full on zooming. It works When I had two of similar age I divided the room so they couldn’t always be together and play none stop, or they would have .
Red is always keen to play with Sky. I feel a bit sorry for her as Sky most of the time just doesn’t want to (old age, arthritis, just not interested). Yesterday, we observed the most gentle interactions between the two of them on the lawn - Red was trying to initiate play but ended up licking Sky’s ears and face in the most loving way. I felt quite emotional watching them. Sky took a long long time to accept Red when we got her and she has but she still puts up barriers. That’s Ok - I can live with that. They do some rough play first thing in the morning - I find if I move into the kitchen and start weighing out their food for the day/preparing their kongs - they both stop and come and join me.
I was thinking about you the other day when I was listening to a podcast interviewing Michele Pouilot, who has been credited with bringing reinforcement-based training to the Guide Dogs association in the USA. If you've not heard it, it's really worth a listen, especially the part about how they transitioned from using corrections to prevent the dogs taking food in the environment, which was doomed to failure because when they went to the blind handlers, the dogs learnt pretty quickly that there would be no correction because - duh - the handler can't see Oh, and this part: We’re in 1973 now, and I write all three schools. One of the schools never responded. Another one, I still have the letter framed on my wall today. The letter reads, “I’m sorry, but women are not emotionally or physically capable of training guide dogs.” The podcast is available for free to listen to or to read the transcript at http://fenzidogsports.libsyn.com/e61-michele-pouliot-being-a-changemaker
Yes, in dog training, as well as other things. A friend of mine in her mid sixties now, was a refused a mortgage 42 yrs ago -- the building society didn't give mortgages to women!
