We are all aware of the old adage that compares the stick and the carrot and I have no doubt in my mind that Pippa and everyone on this forum are all in favour of the carrot. I certainly was, BUT yesterday, I stumbled on new evidence to the contrary: I was enjoying a lovely walk in the park with my environmentally conscious puppy who 2 minutes in had already alerted my to an empty plastic bottle and a discarded flip flop (In November!!) that needed clearing from the newly mown grass. We ran around a little, she played with other dogs, and occasionally came back to me when I called her. It was a lovely November day. As we were approaching the end of our walk, my little puppy decided it was time to find a large stick. ‘No bother’ I thought - ‘she can carry it home while she is on the lead - its not far’. It was not until we were out of the park and my shins had taken quite a beating that I decided it was time to remove the stick from my puppy’s mouth and carry it myself (well, I wasn’t going to leave it on the pavement was I?). Now, like many puppy owners walking home from the park, I have been working on walking to heel a fair bit recently and so the other advantage to my taking the stick was now I could give her a treat when I called her back to heel. However, in a very strange turn of events, I found my pup stuck to my heel from the moment I held the stick. Stuck like glue. No treats needed, just a happy puppy bounding along by my side looking up at me, and presumably the stick. So there we have it, the stick became the carrot.
Great stuff. All you have to do is market it and make your fortune. LOL I thought the story was going to end with somebody seeing you with the stick and giving you a verbal bashing about training a puppy with a stick. Sue
Excellent deployment of the 'stick' approach. A guy in my puppy class used the stick approach to similar good effect last week. We were doing recalls and he wasn't getting a fast response, so he found a stick, had a little tug of war game with it, and then had the pup flying to him in the recall for a stick game.
We have squeeky bear he's a hero in our house. He is the most desirable thing as far a Rory is concerned and has hypnotic powers.
