Re: Charlie's June Training Phew- glad he's ok! Those seconds must have been an emotional roller-coaster for you!! Must be so good to see him able to do that again though
Re: Charlie's June Training I'm afraid he will be a total hooligan until he is able to run off all the pent up energy and then he will settle down after a week or two
Re: Charlie's June Training [quote author=Stacia link=topic=6284.msg86389#msg86389 date=1402258487] I'm afraid he will be a total hooligan until he is able to run off all the pent up energy and then he will settle down after a week or two [/quote] Yes, I think that is exactly right. Well, he didn't leave us, anyway, and did come back to his recall - just didn't stop! And he'll do that no matter how small the space he is in I guess. So I suppose we'll have to bite the bullet and let him have these little runs, gradually building it up. We spotted a very flat looking field tonight that looked pretty perfect for our next experiment!
Re: Charlie's June Training Oh Charlie! Bet that was fun, but you just about gave your mum a coronary ;D I can just picture him spending all that pent up energy.
Re: Charlie's June Training Oh Julie.....I've nearly died just reading this......but I have to say that if I didn't know background I would have laughed because I can just see him doing it,I bet you were both like this .......that boy!Hope you are dusting your trainers off,your gonna have to be fast to keep up,with the chocolate blur! ;D imagine how amazing that must have felt to him
Re: Charlie's June Training ;D ;D ;D Angela, it was scary - not too bad, as he showed no signs of legging it over the horizon. He was just a mad silly puppy butt tucking! It was good to see, really.
Re: Charlie's June Training I know it wasn't what you were hoping for but the lovely boy had a lovely time. Imagine how fantastic it must've been for him and he never left you which was brilliant. Butt tucks are the best. ;D ;D ;D
Re: Charlie's June Training [quote author=Jen link=topic=6284.msg86609#msg86609 date=1402327214] he never left you which was brilliant. [/quote] Yeah, really cheered me up. He could, very easily, have legged it into the super interesting wood. He was playing one of the games we used to keep him close, but still, I reckon if stayed in his allowed distance, even when bolting around out of his mind with excitement, at least some of his training is still there.
Re: Charlie's June Training A good evening, training wise. I've decided my ambition for the summer is for us to be able to go to a gundog group class and not embarrass ourselves. Ok, I'll qualify that. We will always embarrass ourselves because I like sparkly bits on my trousers, and don't own any green clothes, and Charlie is a nutty chocolate show line boy - so I mean not embarrass ourselves in a way we give a hoot about. We do give a hoot about being a lunging mess when another dog walks by. So we've been working super hard on an "automatic look at me" when another dog arrives. So hard, that tonight I was brave. My cue is "get the treat!", as the exercise started by dancing round like a clown, showering treats round Charlie's head, whenever another dog came by. Tonight, I walked round the busy, busy dog exercise area of Wimbledon Common. We dealt with 12 sets of on and off lead dogs - in groups of one to five. About 25 dogs in all. And we did ok. We had a little tugging "I really want to go play mum!" and a couple of "I'm not walking forward until I say hello!" but, on the whole, my "get the treat, Charlie!" pretty much worked. And at the end, I got my automatic look at me. Ok, only about 3 times, but still... And, in other exciting news, 2 gundog trainers that I can get to in the summer emailed me back to say they can help me with 121 lessons with other dogs around. Tempted to book with them both, so I can have two sessions a week, but have to check that's ok with them (and is a sensible idea :-\ ).
Re: Charlie's June Training Sounds fab about tonight's session And very promising about the gundog training plans!
Re: Charlie's June Training [quote author=bbrown link=topic=6284.msg86785#msg86785 date=1402350774] Bring on the dummies [/quote] We'd never stay calm around dummies or balls. Much harder than other dogs. Being deprived of fetch all these months has made it all much, much worse. We have to stay away from the tennis courts and football pitch. :-[ He can't cope at all. Hoping the trainers can help with that though. I need to get my thinking straight on when we pick back up the steadiness to thrown things training. Letting him run in after a moving ball or dummy would be the surest way to keep him under control or get him back to me no matter what, and his biggest reward. So I'm not keen to lose that right now.
Re: Charlie's June Training Running in after the ball or dummy will not necessarily keep him under control to come back to you! The best way is for you to have a ball and when he comes back, sits and presents the ball, you then reward him with the ball you have. It has worked wonders for recall on my youngest Lab, didn't know about it with my 8 year old.
Re: Charlie's June Training [quote author=Stacia link=topic=6284.msg86840#msg86840 date=1402389106] Running in after the ball or dummy will not necessarily keep him under control to come back to you! The best way is for you to have a ball and when he comes back, sits and presents the ball, you then reward him with the ball you have. It has worked wonders for recall on my youngest Lab, didn't know about it with my 8 year old. [/quote] Hi Stacia, what I described works best for my dog - it is much more effective as a reward than asking him to wait. For example, a ball held up is a fantastic way to get him to obey a stop whistle at a distance even with distractions, with the reward allowing him to run in to the thrown ball, so I think there are definitely some uses for it in terms of control. It is the surest way to get him to stop, return his attention to me, and re-engage with me when he'd rather dash off.
Re: Charlie's June Training Totally naive thought here ,but once he's had some gallops,gallops and more gallops around and realises that off lead is here to stay do you think you might get a modicum of less hooligan....I was tempted to write calm there ;D
Re: Charlie's June Training I agree, it is a great way of teaching the stop whistle, but does he return that ball to you?
Re: Charlie's June Training That's basically how John Rogerson (author of the Dog Vinci code and a well known dog trainer) begins training a stop We did this on the recall training course and there was no problem with Riley returning the ball to me.
