A lot of us have no choice but to do our training out and about on walks. Those of us with young (or mad in my case) Labs will do a lot of training as part of our walks. From stop whistle, recall, fetch....to 'please don't leg it to that X, Y, Z, other dog.....". So, I thought for the people who spend a great deal of time on training walks, which I find are not 'interesting' in a 'my walk' kind of way, might like to share them here. I'll kick us off....it would be better if this vid were shorter...but my editing skills need polishing! I'll try to do better. And also try to video stuff deliberately rather than what I've done here, which is just stitch together clips from my go pro - but at least as you'll see it's realistic...with dangerous (in Charlie's opinion!) small white dogs, silly dogs, persistent spaniels, and nerdy Viszlas getting in the way! That's training on Wimbledon Common for you though.....
I beg to differ "Watch this video on YouTube. Playback on other websites has been disabled by the video owner."
Still, I watched it on YouTube. Lovely video. How you deal with that amount of distraction every day is beyond me!!! Great idea. I shall endeavour to join in later today.
I can watch it as long as I right click and open in a new tab from the drop down menu. Really interesting Julie and Charlie was such a good boy. The "dummy" reference made me laugh and Juno got quite excited with the whistles......
I thought of your video this evening on our walk, Julie. We've had quite a lot of snow, so I gave the training walk a miss in favour of just messing around in the snow. Setting off, we had the dogs on their leads, walking to the end of the road. We came upon a woman standing there, in the middle of the road, texting on her phone. She called out that her dog was "around" somewhere and I recognised her as a woman I have met twice over the last couple of weeks. The first time, she was walking towards me on a narrow path, her dog (a little brown pug-cross-type-thing) was off lead, as were mine. I didn't know if it was male or female, so I clipped Shadow onto his lead and scrambled up the steep bank to allow her to pass. She made no attempt to keep her dog away from Shadow in the slightest, even though it was obvious I had put him on lead to keep him away, not knowing how he'd react. I had to keep adjusting myself to keep between them. Shadow was actually very good and not that interested. The second time we met her, W&S were in full play mode, jumping all over each other, barking and growling. This dog took exception to it (which is fine, I can understand other dogs not understanding the dynamic between my two, because it does sound pretty ferocious sometimes!), and hurled himself into the mix, ending up in a scuffle between him and Shadow, who pinned this dog on his back, making it squeal. No harm done, and the woman didn't seem concerned, but it was an unpleasant encounter. So, when I recognised her and she said her dog was around, I said to J to hang back with Shadow until the woman had got her dog back on a lead. Except, there was no sign of this dog ("Luca", it turns out). And the woman made NO attempt to locate it, other than calling it a couple of times. She didn't move from her place in the road, and carried on texting! J was clearly stood waiting for the coast to be clear, being the responsible dog owner, and this woman had no idea where her flipping dog was! I carried on with Willow, and up the hill which enabled me to see all the terrain for at least 300m in every direction. No sign of the dog. The woman continued to stand there, doing nothing. So, I called to J to come up with Shadow and let him off the lead when he got to the end of the road; if we did come across the dog and Shadow had a go at him, she could hardly complain that our dog wasn't under control when she had no fricking idea where her own one even was! Anyway, we didn't see little Luca. We carried on walking up the hill and even ten minutes later, when we were back directly above her, she still didn't have her dog and had started searching for him. I guess that's her idea of "walking the dog".
Sorry about the vid, Stacia, it's my first try out of youtube...I'll try to sort it. I meet loads of those people! I think people walking their dogs on the Common either appear to want to be elsewhere, or - to be fair much more often - have taken their dogs to the Common to play with other dogs (as they don't seem to be able to interact and play with their dog themselves ). So people just do not appreciate that I'm doing something with my dog, and I don't want their dog around us, and Charlie is (mostly! spaniels excepted) is more interested in playing with me than playing with their dog too. That's why Fido's owner was just stood watching. Just a completely different mindset about what walking a dog involves....
Yes it does. Blimey what a lot of dogs, we don't see that many in a week. I suppose there isn't a quiet time on the Common so every man and his dog is there all the time. Still lots and lots of training opportunities, I wish we had that many, we grab what we can when we can out here in the country! What about one of those bright collars that says "TRAINING" on it? Might help.
It was a normal day on the Common, although in one of the busier parts close to convenient parking (the windmill) but the video shows only a fraction of the dogs we met....we met many more in addition just as we were walking. I should think Charlie easily meets 80 - 100 dogs a week. Yes, for sure, there is no shortage of training opportunities around dogs here! The flip side is that not all the dogs are nice, although the vast majority are. Charlie hates it if a dog growls at him and the large packs of dogs with dog walkers can be a bit intimidating (I let him go in one of these packs himself, once a week, because it boosts his confidence to be part of the pack time to time).
We did a walk round pets at home today - slowly because I couldn't find the Lavender scented poo bags! He was quite good, although did make a fuss at the beginning (before I started the vid) to say hello to a small dog. And he pulled towards the rice bone chews! pets at home by julieandcharlie julieandcharlie, on Flickr We had a near miss in that he nearly had a pee on a sign, and I was a bit "Oh, Charlie, no, here, don't pee on that, Charlie..." in panic, but he turned round, phew! Why didn't I just use my trained attention getting noise!
I set off tonight to do some stop whistle training..... Ever seen "The Birds"? Spooky. The crows of Wimbledon Common have attitude. Not that Charlie is even really remotely interested in chasing them, but we don't have pheasants. I was glad to leave them behind, to be honest. Creepy....it was getting dark, and we weren't too far from where the ghost of The Laughing Highwayman, Jerry Abershaw (I guess he wasn't laughing after they killed him for being a highway man though....) supposedly still gallops.... the birds by Julie T, on Flickr
I had nightmares about "The Birds" after watching it as a teenager. There is just something so menacing about them. Is it a "murder of crows"? *shudder*
We had them roosting un the trees in the garden in France. Crows are very intelligent and learn quickly. We have lots of pheasants in and out of the garden all day. Juno just sits and watches them. She's more interested in chasing after things like blackbirds
They are creepy birds but I use them to my advantage too in training my stop whistle, works a treat for when the pheasants appear x
Yesterday, I went out with the intention of filming a bit of a training walk. Of course, it didn't go entirely to plan. It never does when the camera is on I wanted to start transferring my "give it" training to outside. We did a little bit of that; only the initial steps. They did pretty well on the grass. Later, I tried on the snow, but gave up immediately, because that was too exciting for them - they just wanted to bury the article, whatever it was. The biggest challenge was that there were a couple of bangs, which scared Willow. Not sure what they were, because it wasn't the right time for avalanche blasting. I thought I'd still post the parts of the video that show her body language. It's very subtle and times she looks quite happy, but her tail wags are those of uncertainly, not happiness. She's not terrified, but certainly nervous and her attention was on the direction of the noise, rather than me. So, I asked her for very little. Another thing I'm working on is arousal for toys (other than a ball) when we're out and about. At first, they had no interest in the toy I use here, but you can see that we're getting there. At the end, I did a bit of hunting work with it, but the video was at completely the wrong angle so didn't capture it. Similarly, having a bimble back along the path, but you can't see the dogs for much of the video! I'll try the wrist strap next time and see how I get on. We're having such a strange season for weather. We had quite a lot of snow fall this week, probably about half a metre in total, but because it's been so mild until now (not this week, we had temps below -20C this week), the ground hasn't frozen deep on the south-facing side of the valley, so, as soon as the sun comes out, the snow all disappears. The ski slopes and off-piste are still in great condition, although you wouldn't know from this video. It was about -10C whilst I was filming.
Wow ,Shadow has a real energy about him ,he's lovely,they both are......I recognise Willow's lie down after she's heard the 2 bangs.....Dexter is very similar ....takes him a while to come down from high alert too. Shadow's stop....brilliant ! I've just had a bit of a nightmare on a walk and it was totally my fault..............the last couple of months I've been stopping and training around cats if we've seen them on a lead walk ,rather than the goal to be just marching on by.... A big confident ( I thought) ginger cat followed us tonight along a wall and then jumped down to our level .....so we practised our heel work and focus on me for a good while,a car parked up at the house opposite and a man came barrelling out shouting at me 'what the hell did I think I was doing?' Of course with him charging over,the cat jumped back on the wall ,my concentration was gone and Dexter did a massive lunge after it making all my defence that he was 'under control' totally questionable........he said I deserved reporting to Security.....I don't think I do as I tried to assure him that I'm an animal lover,an ex cat owner and would never see harm come to his cat.......but I've got to see it from his point of view,I have no right to use his pet cat as a training aid for my dog,I hadn't thought of how it looks from a cat owners point of view ......I had a little cry when I got in...he didn't half yell at me!
