Reply To: Killing drives with obedience?

[Matt Milligan Milligan]

This is something I just started having come up with my pup.  She would lose interest and just look at me even though I KNOW she knows sit, down, climb, etc..  Like you said Dave more play, but disguise your work as play and if your dogs are like mine they really start to get interested again.  Sometimes I don’t even have treats and just use affection as the reward and my girl is SO happy when I free her and she can come over for some love.  What I did was just to be REALLY enthusiastic.  Even my wife asked me why I sounded so weird because I was leading on like what Maya (my pup) was doing was the absolute greatest thing in the world.  After a while I truly was that excited that she kept going through her commands with so much enthusiasm herself and eagerness to keep going.  I just wanted to add this since it was something that recently happened to me with my 4 and half month old puppy.