I"ve been having problems with my Lab during out of sight stays. We are going into trial #18 with only one leg during trial #5. She stresses out when I leave her and she gets up. I've tried a lot of things for her recommended to me by some top trainers and nothing has help. Any suggestions?
Hi there and welcome to the forum. What do you mean by CDX? And trial #18 and trial #5? I'm not familiar with what you mean. When we did out of sight stays at our training class we built it up slowly. Started with leaving a dog in a sit or settle/down and walked a few feet, built it up to 10 yards or so, then did a settle in a big circle, walking around the outside of the circle back to the dog. The dog could see you sometimes but not all the time. To start with, one dog and owner at a time, then 2, then 3. Then we moved on to short walk to go behind a tent, built up the time, built up the distance, built up number of dogs and owners. Does that help at all? Its all about small steps and proofing each step. jac
Hi and welcome CDX is the title you get at the Open obedience trialling level - it stands for Companion Dog Excellent. What have you tried so far?
Hi Oberon and Jacqui, I have been in the Open training class now for 2 1/2 years started showing her a year and a half ago. I've tried me going back to her at different times and treating her, then had someone else who was playing judge or stewart treating her so she would think maybe this person will treat me. I've even have had people standing outside the ring that she knew and she still got up and tried to leave. You can see as soon as I go into the ring she starts to yawn and during the sit stays she doesn't sit up straight, her shoulders and head are lowered. I know it's all stress but don't know what to do about it, besides quit, but she likes utility work. I've tried going to match shows with toys and great treats to no success.
Try training this in a different spot. Usually the dogs are in the ring and the handler exits the ring and goes to hide behind some object. Try having your dog outside the ring next to an object (a shed or building or fence or something) that you can move around so you're blocked from her view. That way you can practise the out of sight element without being gone for more than a few seconds. You can build up 'out of sight time' without being far away and without the stressful experience of seeing you walk away all the way across the ring and through the gate. She's also probably linked the anxiety to being in the ring, so taking the exercise to a new spot may help there. The idea would be that you'd go back to teaching this in the ring once she's comfortable with the exercise elsewhere. If she's really finding it too stressful then maybe doing something else might be best. She may enjoy Rally-O, which is fun and fast paced
Hi, Does she become instantly stressed or is it after a couple of seconds, 30 seconds, a minute? Have you, perhaps, gone for too long too quickly? I think all dogs find this quite tricky. We started really slowly; in the house I would put Harv in a down while I stood by a doorway, I would then step out of sight and immediately step back again. Then I would step out of sight put pop my head back into view after a second or two. Then I went out of sight completely but hummed (my rationale being that Harv would know that I hadn't gone far away - not sure if he took any notice or not!). And so we went on very gradually building up the duration. Last week at a training session we had a group of dogs (8 I think it was) and we put all of the dogs in a down and then all left the room leaving just the instructor in the room with them - who then proceeded to walk among them and then started bouncing a tennis ball as he went (the fiend!) - this lasted for well over 5 minutes. Like Jacqui says, it's all about building up gradually. Good luck. Let us know how you get on.
