Tomorrow I have a day of foundation training, I am very excited about that topic, a proper foundation is so important to the overall agility ability of every dog. It is not that foundation training has become more important than it was 5 years ago it is just getting a lot more attention these days which is definitely a step in the right direction :-)
So, Vandal is having a blast in Portland although I am not sure he had a blast getting here. He has already out grown his sturdi bag so he got to join Wally in the hold on our flight over, he handled it just great as did Wally. I suppose it was nice for them to have the company of each other.
Wally, has been training everyday and is loving it, we have been able to spend a significant amount of time on weave pole entries, broad jump work and perfecting that pesky dog walk. I am sure we will be working on the dog walk for the duration of his agility career but hey we need to have something to work on.
I have definitely decided to stick with the running dog walk with Wally as he seems to really get it, and, being the very sensitive soft being that my sweet Wally is, it would be in my best interest to work with him not against him. Trust me the running dog walk is a lot of work but if Wally gets it then I am happy to put the work into it!
I keep Wallys training sessions fairly short to guarantee quality work with a maximum of success, dog's fatigue mentally quite quickly and as a result I am a huge believer in quality over quantity of training.
Vandal had the opportunity to see sheep for the first time earlier in the week, he reacted to them pretty much the way he reacts to everything, thoughtfully and without care, he was not even remotely bothered by the sheep he was quite disinterested actually. My friend Marilyn who owns the sheep commented that she was glad he is supposed to be an agility dog :-) Of course she was saying this with a smile as he is really way too young to decide his sheep herding potential, although between you and me I couldn't care less as there is very little liklihood that we will ever work sheep again.
Vandal has been wonderful here, he has once again met all sorts of people and dogs and has even had the opportunity to play with a sheltie puppy who is the same age as he is, what fun!
As I wrote the other day, oh yea no one got to read the blog earlier in the week, we have definitely started to put together the to do list for Vandals foray into the world of agility.
So far we have been working on hand touches, eye contact, sit and down, a verbal release cue, name recognition, restrained recalls, and, attention.
Attention work is of course ongoing and forever in nature, however, starting now will make the overall process not only easier but will help to create a situation that allows Vandal to learn to choose to pay attention without ever realizing that he has to.
Vandal is a bit on the independent side so it is imperative that I always have high value rewards on my person at all times when we are together so that I can be sure to reinforce all overtures that Vandal makes in my direction.
There is an even more important component to our foundation training that I have purposely mentioned last and that is PLAY!!!! I cannot stress enough how important play is to the overall end result of all of the training that you do with your dog.
Play is a stress reliever, play is interactive, play is a non rules restrictive free for all with your dog.
It is crucial in my training program that my dogs are both food and toy motivated, it never seems to be a problem to create and maintain food motivation in the majority of dogs but people seem to have a huge problem creating and maintaining toy drive.
I have a theory on this and I truly believe that because we begin our dogs training career using food to reward approximations we forget to play with our dogs. It is true that food is a reward but you need to introduce toys into your training program as well.
If your dog is used to food as the primary motivator as well as reward and reinforcement it is very possible that when you reintroduce toys at a later date the dog has literally forgotten how to play with them, and they have certainly forgotten how to play with them, with YOU.
Every training session should begin with play, play should happen several times during a training session, and, play should end every training session.
You should also play with your dog as various times when you are not training as well. Remember the definition of play is not tugging, if your dog will not tug then try wrestling, just let loose and interact.
On that note, I am off to play with my dogs! Until next time...
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