On our evening walk-dash-training session, I had both dogs with me. I'm alternating one on lead and one off lead at the moment. I was doing work on attention, some stop whistle stuff and impulse control - throwing a ball to the off-lead dog whilst the one on-lead stayed in a sit or a down next to me. All very nice work. Then, as we were walking along a path, a deer ran out from some long grass and up the hill to our side. It's an area I've seen a deer in before, so I made sure Shadow was on the lead, because he has by far the stronger chase instinct. However, conversely, he also has the stronger stop. I've stopped him a couple of times from chasing marmots by using the stop whistle, then recalling him, but have never had the circumstance to do this with Willow. Well, this was that time. The deer obviously got her juices flowing far more than a marmot or a cat, so she ran after it. I blasted my stop and she stopped. She then did another 180 and continued running again. I blew another stop, and she stopped again. I quickly followed up with a recall and she came back. I kept blowing my recall whistle all the way back and she got a veritable mountain of dried liver, frankfurter and cheese. Shadow, meanwhile, was going nutty. Tomorrow, I'm going to take them back there individually and do loads and loads of really basic focus work. JulieT (and anyone else who uses "look at that"), what would your view be on adapting it to "smell that!"? As in, if they catch a whiff of an animal and perk their ears/nose, I click and treat, eventually building to them looking at me when they get the smell. I can't think of any reason off the top of my head why it wouldn't work, except that I will have to have super interesting treats. Any thoughts?
I use Look at That but not for that situation. What we do is encourage on birds, which we are not going to get in nearly as much trouble from if the dog chases. So I guess I do use Smell that, but it's Hunt 'Em Up Birds, or just BIRDS and since grouse don't fly very far dog is safe from irate observers. People have been know to deliberately hit dogs chasing deer with their cars, to stop them. Where you live and Game and Fish laws will play a role in how this is handled, I think. Oban does have a very strong recall and I can call him off deer, though he might give a short chase before I can get my tweet, tweet, tweet in. And if I do recall him off deer or wild turkey he gets the mega reward which is a throw of the ball. Food pales in comparison to a chase in reward for aborting a chase, for him. So you have to know your dog too. For me what you intend would not work. The critter, deer or turkey often bolts out ahead of us down the trail before there's any chance of a sniff. If he did catch a sniff, since I have already encouraged Hunt 'Em UP on birds I think it would be confusing but for a dog that is just learning maybe not. It does sound just as logical as telling a dog to look at what excites, threatens, worries him in another situation but in that other situation is the object running away and setting off the chase/prey instinct? I am curious to see how others answer too,
hhmmm....I'm just not sure you could have enough opportunities to do it, it takes a LOT of repetition to achieve a reliable outcome. I have several hundred tame-ish deer available in the London deer parks, and they are totally predicatable in where they are going to be, and even how they move. I doubt it could be done if only the occasional wild deer is available. And he does not respond in the same way to the smell of sheep compared to deer..... I think it's back to the good old NO CHASE - anything, ever.....
I agree on the no chase anything, ever - I thought maybe the "smell that" could be a good interruptor of the behaviour, though? He seems to always stop and sniff the air in areas he's seen something interesting in the past, so I could capture that - but I suppose if he's just sniffing for the chance of a smell, that's very different to him actually smelling the smell. Still, proofing them focussing on me despite other distractions is still ongoing (and will be for a long time, I think!). Luckily, they have zero interest in sheep or goats. And at the weekend, we came across some cows with their young on our path. It was thick woods on either side, with an electric fence running along each edge. Cows scare the bejeebers out of me when I'm with the dogs, because I've heard too many horrible stories, so we ducked under the fence and fought our way through the undergrowth as far as we could, but had to pop back onto the path before we were past the last cow. Obviously all dogs were on leads, but I was happy to see that Willow was jittery and wanting to get away from them and Shadow was absolutely ambivalent. So, livestock seem to be safe.
Good girl Willow! Cows - shiver. Scare me silly with a dog, too. My summer holiday on Exmoor was partially blighted by having to dodge them all the time! Give me wild boar any day. Poppy is trained to flush pheasants, yet she completely blanks free range chickens. She knows to retrieve shot duck, but will walk to heel through a flock of ducks in the park (is it called a flock??) without batting an eyelid. They are clever creatures, our dogs, and can easily differentiate between what they are 'allowed' to chase/flush/retrieve, and what is off limits.
