Well where to start.... Four days of John Rogerson on Recall down in Devon is quite tiring but in a good way. John is interesting and clearly very experienced. There is plenty of humour and anecdotes throughout the course. John is clearly in demand and in particular he is involved in many court cases involving dogs. In the early part of the course we looked at two things, breed characteristics and owner relationship. We were encouraged to think about how our individual dogs tick, a lot of which is based on their breed characteristics. We also looked at the number of different ways we can reward our dogs, there was a concern that we've become food dispensers and so we played a game to see if we could make our dogs tails wag for 15 seconds 6 times in a row with just our voice and hands. I think Riley and I have quite a good bond but actually this was quite hard when competing with smells, Alpaca poo(a delicacy for many dogs it turns out!) and other new dogs around.....more work required!!!! John showed us how much our facial expressions influence our dogs by showing (using Riley) that he could get a dog to take food by smiling at the dog or leave food by having a slightly stern, disapproving look on his face. We did a lot of recall practice as you would expect.....quite a bit of it where I was out of sight of Riley including being locked to a fence!! With the key on Riley's collar!!!! Talk about incentive ;D We also did some work on both a stop and a stay. I learnt a new way to start teaching a stop command by having someone hold the dog, as the dog comes towards you you throw a ball to them which stops them. Then after you've done that a couple of times you give your stop command and pretend to throw the ball. The dog stops anticipating the ball at which point you reward them for stopping. The recall exercises included a sitting recall to get a nice straight sit between your feet and recalls past food and away from a moving object. Timing was everything!! And it really helped having people to help you get that timing right and make suggestions if something wasn't working. I was lucky to be in a team with a dog trainer from Wales with a gorgeous chocolate lab that he uses for picking up! Yes choccies can be gundogs There were quite a few quotable comments but I think the one that's stuck with me is "we spend too much time testing our dogs and not enough time training and proofing them" I could have written war and peace but that's the brief version. Was the course a magic bullet to fix a poor recall - no. Was it a good insight into how to motivate my dog and myself and the detail needed to build up distance and distraction - yes! Could you get that information elsewhere - well I think Total Recall has almost all the same info and it showed me what a high standard of advice and guidance we get from some of the people on this forum however having someone so experienced, observant and with such excellent timing themselves to help you was absolutely great and I certainly don't regret going
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course That sounds a really interesting course. I was especially interested to read about a dog responding to facial expression and finding alternatives to food as motivation. I'm sure Molly picks up on my feelings - but perhaps it's facial expression and body posture? - because if I'm relaxed when calling her (in situations where it doesn't really matter if she doesn't come) she comes much more readily than if I'm urgent / worried. And it made me think of my dear old Rolo (died 2012) who only had to see me to wag.
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Wow, sounds like a worthwhile course, especially having someone on demand to help explain. I find books are brilliant, but sometimes having someone pick up something in either your facial expression/voice tone is invaluable I love the fact that you were chained up......did Riley come promptly? Or were you stuck chained up for a while? Thanks for sharing this with us Barbara x
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course The dogs were about 180 metres away from us when we were locked up. We won this exercise, It took us 31 seconds from calling Riley to having him under control(on lead) and myself unlocked ;D very proud!
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Barbara,thanks for writing about how you got on.love the Stop whistle game...I will have a go at the weekend when I have Chris with me.bet the 2 of you are wiped out thou with all the concentration you will have been doing.Go 'Team Riley' winning the padlock challenge ,good boy x
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Thanks Angela, if you're going to give the stop game a try you want to do an exaggerated underarm throw. Then when you've done a few throws and he's catching them you should introduce your command 'stop' (or whatever) about half a second before you do the first part of the throw. When the ball (or toy) is at face height stop and Dex should stop, looking at your hand. If he continues to travel towards you throw over his head to your assistant - he should turn round to get the ball. If he stops then reward him with the ball or a treat (as well as lots of praise). As he gets better you do less of the throw after each command until he's stopping on command alone. Let me know how you get on or if you have any problems ;D
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course It sounds like a great experience Barbara. Thank you for taking the time to tells about it. Wish I could do something similar with Scott and Scout . Unfortunately it would require them to like people so not any time soon.
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Very interesting! Would love to do that. Although, will take a lock picking kit, I think.... ;D ;D ;D Good boy Riley!
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Sounds like you had a lovely time Barbara and well done for winning the game Riley x [quote author=bbrown link=topic=5652.msg71686#msg71686 date=1398709186] Thanks Angela, if you're going to give the stop game a try you want to do an exaggerated underarm throw. Then when you've done a few throws and he's catching them you should introduce your command 'stop' (or whatever) about half a second before you do the first part of the throw. When the ball (or toy) is at face height stop and Dex should stop, looking at your hand. If he continues to travel towards you throw over his head to your assistant - he should turn round to get the ball. If he stops then reward him with the ball or a treat (as well as lots of praise). As he gets better you do less of the throw after each command until he's stopping on command alone. Let me know how you get on or if you have any problems ;D [/quote] I think this is similar to what Jen advised me to do with Charlie, so I pretend to throw the ball Charlie belts after it and I blow my stop whistle, he stops, turns and looks at me and Charlie gets an immediate retrieve for it, you know the 18 meter one ;D
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course It's similar Helen but it's slightly more controlled. I've done the same thing Jen recommended in the past too. In this case the dog is travelling towards you from the person holding it. The throw is slow and exaggerated and you should be able to get the dog to stop where you want. I also thought if you and Charlie when one of the distractions was a fluffy toy being pulled along the ground on a string. He'd ordered a bolting rabbit but it hadn't arrived so John had to improvise. I wondered if a bolting rabbit might offer you a chance to proof against game? You could get a pheasant skin/scent to put on the dummy instead of rabbit if that would be better http://www.sportingsaint.co.uk/product/816/category/151
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course The trouble is with those, the dog soon gets wise and some of them hate the elastic so much they won't go near them! But could be worth a go ;D
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course [quote author=Stacia link=topic=5652.msg71756#msg71756 date=1398716808] The trouble is with those, the dog soon gets wise and some of them hate the elastic so much they won't go near them! But could be worth a go ;D [/quote] True! Our instructors open standard dog can't stand them, won't go near them. It was just a thought for Charlie as proofing against game is proving so tricky :
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Oh that sounds like a great idea Barbara, thanks for thinking about us, I could try attaching Orange Snake which is still a firm favourite to a piece of string first to see how he goes and then buy the dummy/scent to further his training against game Excellent xx
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Or I could attach string to the rabbit dummy I have after snake practise ;D
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course Sounds a fascinating course challenging but not too scary. Timing is something I've been working on with Bess, it is so helpful when others can point out where you aren't getting it quite right. Alice
Re: John Rogerson Ultimate Recall Course [quote author=bbrown link=topic=5652.msg71686#msg71686 date=1398709186] Thanks Angela, if you're going to give the stop game a try you want to do an exaggerated underarm throw. Then when you've done a few throws and he's catching them you should introduce your command 'stop' (or whatever) about half a second before you do the first part of the throw. When the ball (or toy) is at face height stop and Dex should stop, looking at your hand. If he continues to travel towards you throw over his head to your assistant - he should turn round to get the ball. If he stops then reward him with the ball or a treat (as well as lots of praise). As he gets better you do less of the throw after each command until he's stopping on command alone. Let me know how you get on or if you have any problems ;D [/quote] Lovely thankyou for the info,well have a go at the weekend for sure x
