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Jude's first day of school . .

1K views 9 replies 6 participants last post by  krandall 
#1 ·
Here goes the bragging Humom again! First day at class - so well behaved! Wanted to play with a few of the dogs, but they weren't as social as my boy Jude! The commands for the first week are "look" to get your dog to pay attention to you, and "sit" - the trainer believes in the clicker/treat method of re-enforcement. My home work is to practice with him at least 3 x a day for 10 - 15 minutes. Well, the minute he sees the clicker in my hand, he sits and looks at me LOL! I'm going to expand his lessons to "off" and "come" - why not - he's smart enough!! J
 
#2 ·
"Off" is a good one. Be very, very careful with "come" at this point. You need to be 90% sure that you will get the correct response before using you cue word. Otherwise two things will happen. You'll teach him that "come" means "only when I feel like it" and you will "poison" your cue word and have to come up with a new word to start over with later.

Here is a REALLY useful thing to start working on with your puppy. It is often called "Doggy Zen", and it teaches your dog self control. It also teaches the dog to "leave it" on command, which can be life saving in some situations.

This first video shows how to introduce it... A little different from the way I do it (I never feed from the hand that is originally holding the food) but it will give you the idea. There are 4 videos in the series, so look for the others too.



And here is an example of how MUCH you can Do with this, if you want to put the time and effort into it!

 
#5 ·
#6 ·
good for you.
 
#8 ·
Thanks for the great videos!! So much to learn - like I told the trainer, I only want you to teach me how to teach him. I'm the one that can fail - not Jude.

Karen, I took your words seriously about the "come" command. So far it's worked pretty good. He'll hesitate, but then here he comes. It's only from the back yard through the sliding glass doors, but it's a start.

I was loving him (I'm loving, he's playing) in my lap tonight and tried to get him to focus on the word "look" - he couldn't quite do that while in my lap, but as soon as I put him on the floor, he will sit and look at me for, oh, I'd say, 45-60 seconds. I haven't tried him longer yet, a little at a time, make it stick.
 
#10 ·
Sounds good! Keep it fun. And remember to never EVER call him to do something he won't like. In those instances, you go get him instead. You want him to CONSISTENTLY associate a recall with a pleasant ending. The best at this stage is to call him to you, reward and release, so he doesn't start to associate coming to you as the end of fun.
 
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