Dog Training

Helle and I met in a dog training hall after work today. We trained all 6 dogs and had fun doing it :-).

I left for work at 6 am and came home from training at 7.30 pm. It has been a long day, but I have 3 tired dogs now, which is really nice.

This is Helle and Jazz. Jazz is learning a new heelwork position. She is meant to go backwards on Helle's right side facing opposite Helle, but it is not easy for her to keep the parallel position next to Helle and she often ends up in front of her, which means that Helle cannot move forward. We put up a barrier, which stopped Jazz before she ended in the wrong position. It worked really well and gave us a chance to reward Jazz for being right rather than correcting her all of the time. Much more fun for Jazz as she got lots of praise and treats and much more fun for Helle as she was not tripping over a dog all of the time. Helle will train like this for a couple of day and then she will gradually remove the barrier, until Jazz can do it without help.

This is how we train our dogs - we set them up for success, which means that we put them in situations, where they cannot make mistakes and then we reward for getting things right. We always reward wanted behaviours and ignore unwanted behaviours. Dogs will always try to gain reward, so if something does not pay, the dog will stop doing it, which means that we will get more of the behaviours we reward and the behaviours that we ignore will soon fade away.

Happy weekend, Blippers!
Emmy and the Hazyland Boys