Small Black Dog was faced with wall-to-wall blackand white killer bullocks this morning. Got her into the field with them and sent her off down the hedge to skirt round them. Off she slinks making herself as low and small as possible. The bullocks are quite grown up now, well used to dogs and walkers and really couldn't care less, but of course she doesn't know that. Well a gap had openned up through the middle off them with clear access to the bridge over the river to safety. Blew the stop, she looks back and I giver her the "hunt left" hand signal. As good as gold she goes for it through the gap. Another stop and send her left again and she's on the bridge. Woohoo! What a team! ;D Missing her a bit now as she's just gone into kennels until Tuesday as we've got an event at Castle Combe on Monday.
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows Now that is very good Lady, well done both of you. One day, one day ;D Helen x
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows I'm impressed.....that kind of control sounds such a long way away for me.I take comfort in the fact that Lady is 3.....that means Dexter might be about 5 ( at least) when we are heading in that direction!great to hear what these clever doggies ( and their owners ;D) can do......owning a lab will never be boring! Sorry you are missing her,its awful when they aren't there....Dex is going to be sad tonight ,he's had 3 nights sleeping next to me to get this tail fixed.....tonight it's back in his room.....alone ......however much it hurst Dexter...it will hurt me more! X
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows Gosh that's good David, getting her to follow your signals through the dreaded cows, I am deeply impressed!
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows Actually I think she's just quite bright. She's always stopped on walks where the path divides and looked back at me to see which way to go, so I've been using that as an opportunity to teach her hand signals since she was a very young pup and she now seems to follow them pretty well. "Back" was more of a challenge than left and right where you can put your whole body into the action, and still needs a voice command as well, but most of the time she gets it as long as she isn't too excited to look at me. She's not up to any kind of competition standard at all, but we do seem to work reasonably well together now. She's never delivered to the hand so I'm working on that now as well. It's all a lot harder now that she's 4 (on 3 Sept), but she still will pick up on new stuff. I've found that turning my back on her so she has to come around me on a retrieve puts her in the right position to take the dummy out of her mouth before she drops it. She seems to be getting the idea now with that too. It's fun getting them to do different things I find even now that she's older and getting set in her ways.
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows I think you sound like you have a great partnership going, she clearly trusts you Interesting about left/right vs back...I find the same Riley gets L/R but pushing him back is much harder. More practice required! I found lifting my hands right up out of the way has helped Rileys hold on delivery and we also walk along together with him carrying different dummies as he was being a bit funny about what he liked to retrieve.
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows Lol he's quite good at going back for lizzies socks when she chucks them out of the buggy 8)
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows Flip flop and sock retrieving amazing, Pippa could write a whole new book and you could all save yourselves a fortune on dummies. Helen xx ;D
Re: Stop Whistle, Hand Signals and Killer Cows Well flip flops and socks that's amazing. I'm going to rethink this whole retrieving thing. ;D
