Aw, so proud of my boy. I took the three dogs out individually this morning, with hubs, in order to do some training with a helper. Lots of little bits that are so much easier with a second body. The girls had their turns first, then Shadow was last. First up, working on directional sending away to dummies thrown on a clock face. I popped him in a sit, threw all the dummies out, and then.... the neighbour's dog arrived. She is lovely, a gorgeous black and white GSP, young and very bouncy. Shadow adores her, and hasn't seen her in ages. She bounced right into his face and he ... turned his face to the side and kept sitting. I was She kept bouncing, he kept turning his head away. I knew there was no way he'd be able to collect dummies with her bouncing over him, so I told him to go play, which he did, and he had to pee on every tree in the field, but he kept on coming back to try to re-engage to work. I sent him for an easy dummy, just to see, since he was so desperate to work. He picked it up, carried it back and spat it out by my feet. OK, I'll give him the spitting - he was being jumped on at the time! At that point, she ran off to a corner of the field to have a mooch, so I sent him for the other dummies. I didn't push on to the next level of complexity I had planned (bringing the angles closer) because of the other dog. We then did some Premack recall which went really, really well. He was so focussed, and every time she bounced on him, he just turned his head away. What a superstar my boy is. Once I put all the dummies and balls away, he decided training was over and he got to have a good run around with her, which made both of them very happy
Wow what a good boy Shadow! For me it's about choice. When something hugely distracting comes along, and one of my dogs chooses to stay engaged with me...I am over the moon...unfortunately this is still very much a rare occurrence
Well done Shadow It's great when they choose to interact with you rather than run and play everytime they see another dog.
Standing ovation for Shadow! I can only dream of that level of concentration on me when there's another dog around.
That is excellent, well done Shadow and whoever trains him, obviously found his 'work' buttons. I'm still trying to find Molly's, also her basic sit and stay buttons
We are the very distracting thing that comes along and bounces on people and dogs... Well done Shadow...what a boy!
