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Hi Mike,
thanks for your reply. I’ll have to figure out which word I can use 🙂 Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I thought you’d like to read a progress update.
First an amusing story. I was sick for the past week with a bad cold. I tried to skip a couple days of training but the dogs were onto me. My female came up to me the one night while I was resting, at around the time we normally do our exercises. She acted like she had to go to the bathroom (which I knew was not the case because she never has to go to the bathroom!) or like she expected something to happen. I was puzzled for a while until she led me to the area where we practise and danced around. I was surprised and didn’t realize how much my dogs were enjoying the training!
We have been focusing on sit, down, and stand which the dogs mostly already know. I’m practising phasing out any body language on those commands, which I have already done with my youngest (and most aggressive) male as he was originally supposed to be a competition dog.
I’m introducing stay and heel. At first the dogs were very grabby with the heel and always trying to take the treat out of my hand. My fingers were raw by the end. I think I have found a good system though and we are all catching on.
Soon I would like to introduce “climb” and the “come” command. they have all had brief introductions to “come” during their lives with me (they have all taken obedience classes) but I haven’t kept it up.
We are doing about 5 minutes of commands per dog per day. I hope that’s enough. If I go longer the dogs start getting too focused on the treats and stop listening. 😉
I guess we’re still firmly entrenched in phase 1, and have yet to work on the climb due to lack of space at the moment. We have had another aggression incident with my youngest, and fence aggression remains a problem.
I will be curious when it’s time to phase out the treats!
