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Aug 2017
9:41am, 23 Aug 2017
10,033 posts
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D2
there are so many things I haven't taught Indi yet.... hopefully as I have more time now its not too late! Below is why he has not done any of the Kennel Club awards as yet.
At the moment we go to two different training venues;
The one which we have attended since he was a pup is the one where he was attacked so we only go on the days when "that" dog is not present. It is a traditional straight obedience class. Indi loves going; its familiar, he knows most of the other dogs and is quite patriarchal to any new dogs.  There is a club house where handlers have a drink after class and the dogs mingle. They have only just started doing the Kennel Club Awards but we cant do the award there as "that" dog is doing it.
The training we are attending to do the Kennel Club Awards is nearby the first one. (I have only just discovered the owners of both training clubs are related and recently fell out!) They call their sessions Companion Dog training... its very similar but they do offer other things like the scent training which we are doing this coming weekend.
There are people doing all three awards in the Kennel Club class we are attending so we have started to learn Stop the Dog emergency stop which is part of gold and I think as mentioned above that the Power Cue is an aspect of the silver test.
Up until now I have purposely not taught Indi to play with a tuggie toy as I did not want to encourage that kind of behaviour but our relationship is now well enough established for it to be safe. However, he has no idea what it expected, its going to be really interesting trying to explain! He just thinks that if he is patient enough I will eventually throw it for him!
So (ss) things I still need to teach him
to be tied up
to go to his bed during the day not just at bedtime
to play tug
Things he still needs to do better
"Down" he is frustratingly inconsistent - or having read that article; I am frustratingly inconsistent
"Wait" when I have my back to him
"Close" - still slightly too far away in off lead heel work
Most other things I'm putting down to the exuberance of youth or a phase.
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Aug 2017
9:46am, 23 Aug 2017
6,761 posts
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BaronessBL
Yes settle is a good one. We learned it slightly differently to how Helegant describes but to the same end - we did it as a kind of extension of the send to bed exercise. The dog would be sent to their bed (in a formal training class situation) and then asked to settle as opposed to sit/down etc and we get a much more relaxed down. If we do a down stay Wanda is 'down' but alert waiting for the next 'thing' - with settle she will relax and curl up a little bit as if she's going to go to sleep (still working on the going to sleep bit!!!)
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Aug 2017
9:59am, 23 Aug 2017
3,484 posts
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Mazlin
We've done the 'stand on the lead' settle thing in class too, and the 'rewarding doing nothing'. We (I) aren't great at it because he's not great at send to bed in the first place - in class we use a towel because any kind of actual bed becomes a toy. With the towel it's about 50:50 that he'll either lie down sort-of on it, or grab it and try to kill it. He's actually pretty good at 'down', because he doesn't sit so he does it a lot (that isn't just me, his walker and 2 trainers have tried!) but changing 'down but hyper alert' to 'down and relaxed' is difficult.
I do feel for him - he's had to assimilate so much in such a short time & it's so hard for him to switch off.
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Aug 2017
10:06am, 23 Aug 2017
10,034 posts
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D2
He is clearly really intelligent and keen to please Maz and I suppose has to have an outlet for all that pend up emotion. You must be so proud of him! it will be interesting to read this back over the coming months
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Aug 2017
10:12am, 23 Aug 2017
6,762 posts
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BaronessBL
That still all sounds very promising D2. With the going to bed we used a different bed (a kind of big flat cushion that we keep in the car boot for Wanda to travel on save taking her proper bed everywhere) She still knew that she had to go to the bed but that it wasn't the bed she would sleep in at night (now we have a variety of beds in different rooms in the house but only one that is for 'bedtime' if that makes sense!)
We encouraged Wanda to play with tuggers rather than squeaky or stuffed toys like a teddy because we thought the games with those things were rather too close to killing small animals!! However 'killing' something still seems to be a favourite thing - she would much rather rip a ball into pieces than go and get it for us to throw for her again (even the so called indestructible balls eventually get reduced to a million tiny pieces of rubber!)
As for the being tied up - I guess that is for the 'relaxed isolation' where you go out of sight for a couple of minutes in the Gold Test? The rules for that test have been updated now (because it was designed to imitate being tied up outside a shop which a lot of people wouldn't do now) and instead you can leave your dog in a crate while you go out of sight - we did that for Wanda's Gold - you have to take your own crate. The advantage of that also is that you can have a blanket on the floor of the crate but if you are tying up the dog for the exercise you are not allowed to use a blanket or anything for them to sit on.
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Aug 2017
5:40pm, 23 Aug 2017
5,200 posts
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Helegant
We had to do the 'relaxed isolation' without crating or tying the dog - just tell them to sit and walk away. I suspect that eight months after stopping the classes we will have taken a few steps backwards.
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Aug 2017
10:08pm, 23 Aug 2017
6,763 posts
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BaronessBL
The crate 'allowance' had only just come in when we took Gold - so it's only been allowed for about the last 18 months I think
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Aug 2017
10:14pm, 23 Aug 2017
3,486 posts
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Mazlin
No way would Rory do 'relaxed isolation'. He can't even 'stay' if I turn my back on him. He is being much less annoying this evening though; I rearranged the living room furniture and took him for a 2 hour walk. He certainly knows how to use cues on me...
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Aug 2017
11:18pm, 23 Aug 2017
5,201 posts
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Helegant
We had littles'un in our home for 7 hours today. Jet was over-excited for most of that time. As soon as the child went home Jet lay down and has barely moved since. I think he may be tired
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Aug 2017
7:33am, 24 Aug 2017
19,472 posts
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LazyDaisy
We had huge trouble with 'send to bed' with Flossie, mainly because we couldn't lug the kitchen sofa into the field ;-). I think it would be much easier now as she's not allowed on the sofas in Sidmouth and recognises the dogbed in the kitchen, and the cushion in the living room, as 'bed'.
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