I've been looking at the courses available on the FDSA and seeing if there's anything of interest for next term, which starts in August. I looked at one titled "Finding Five - Training for a Busy World". Most of the courses have a sample lecture so you can see the content, and this one is brilliant!! It's called "Proofing madness" and you can see it here: https://fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/courses/13803#sample-lecture Basically, it's about cue discrimination - making sure your dog understands that it's the spoken word that's the cue and not your body position. The concept is, you print out a "game board" which has various suggestions on it and then you progress through as if you were playing a game, by rolling a die and moving your playing piece to the next thing you have to do. So, you might choose "sit" as your behaviour, you roll the die and it lands on "lie on the floor on your belly". You have to see if your dog can respond to the cue when you're in that position. If he can, you roll again; if not, you work on it until he can. Then you might get "do jumping jacks" etc etc etc. Even better, it offers ways to turn this into a drinking game! GENIUS! I am definitely trying this out this weekend
Yeah, I try to do this myself - just this morning, I was asking Squidge for sits and downs with my hands on my head and doing jumping jacks. I like the idea of the board game because it takes off some of the thought process - for bears of little brain like myself! Decision fatigue is a real issue in my world Add in some shots and, woohoo! I think I might even get J on board. This could get messy!
"So, what did you do last night?" "oh, just trained the dog. While drinking my body weight in alcohol"
As Philippa Williams says "by the end of the night, you'll either have a dog with a solid hold, or you'll be too pissed to care!"
