I had another aha moment on our walk yesterday.
The last few weeks I have been focusing on improving our off leash walks. Lately Iggy's range is increasing, his recall is decreasing and he is hunting more. What I want shorter range, more checking in with me and responding to his name.
What I have done
1. Carry a toy or food with me and throw it whenever he stops and looks back. With the food I am cueing search when I throw it.
2. Stopped calling him I was just getting the paw => build some value and working towards calling and me running away.
3. A lot of walks in fields where I can change direction whenever his range is too long.
4. Rewarding when he is sniffing and lets me approach, just throwing the food in front of him working towards collar grabs.
Overall I have been pleased with the results, we are both enjoying our walks more.
Back to my epiphany. I have watched hours of Susan working Swagger and had seen this but not realized what I was seeing. The other day in the Shaping course she said if your dog gets stuck make it harder, in that case she moved the object further away. At the time I understood and saw the value in shaping. After it had percolated through I realized the same concept should be used throughout training. Not surprising because we are really always shaping. Make it harder just goes so against the grain because I so want Iggy to succeed. On our walk yesterday he got too far away from me at one point and I was in an open field so couldn't hide easily, I just started backing up. It worked he came flying back :). Such an easy solution, now to find more ways to put this into play. I had already been doing it when I ask for RZ I had started backing up until he got into position instead of make it easier. Another gem from Susan.
The last few weeks I have been focusing on improving our off leash walks. Lately Iggy's range is increasing, his recall is decreasing and he is hunting more. What I want shorter range, more checking in with me and responding to his name.
What I have done
1. Carry a toy or food with me and throw it whenever he stops and looks back. With the food I am cueing search when I throw it.
2. Stopped calling him I was just getting the paw => build some value and working towards calling and me running away.
3. A lot of walks in fields where I can change direction whenever his range is too long.
4. Rewarding when he is sniffing and lets me approach, just throwing the food in front of him working towards collar grabs.
Overall I have been pleased with the results, we are both enjoying our walks more.
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