By Hexen –
While I am away visiting friends this Christmas I always take the oppertunity to go and train with the mixed breed club that I belong to.
This Saturday was very quiet there as expected. Many people on vacation or getting ready to travel to family. But the most important person was out at the club and he is the master trainer. I worked Hella very lightly in Obedience and I did no bring work with her as I did not have “my” new ovel shaped barbell with. Instead I decided to work her more on blind searches. This was a tad bit difficult as they have short chain link fences on one side of the blinds (I am guessing that it forces the dog to enter then exit and not just charge to the next place(blind) to look for the bad guy, at first she would not circle the blind to exit out the side with the chain link fence. Not a problem instead of putting the toy directly into the blind I circled a little further around and dropped the toy more outside the blind to forcce her to enter the chain link and circle around back to me. Now to start to teach this the dog learns the toy is hindden behind you send the dog “revier” and it birings the toy to you for tug.
The problem that arrises is the dog gets use to looking for the toy to bring. The next step is to place the toy in the blind send the dog revier then to teach the dog that you have another toy waiting for the reward. This is the step we have been working on with Hella.
At the mixed club I had put all toys away as we were prepairing to do the protection work and why have my pockets stuffed with toys when bitting the bad guy is the reward.
The master trainer says to me I have to watch yoour dog search the blind to see if you have made progress. “I have no toys” I tell him, “I do not think she is up to the step to search with out toys” “Try ” says the master trainer. So I send Hella “Revier”! Wow she did it but came to me looking for the reward, “Do 1 more time” he tells me, I send her again and the same happends!
I was in Shock! She did it! He then tells me “to send her revier” with him hiding in the last blind but she knew he was on the field and she could go and bite….. and we flopped. She was so excited to go and bite him! “Make sure you have a long line on her next time so you can correct for not going around the blind first”, he says to me.
Next exercise was the stellen and gebellen (bark and hold for bite work) This I did not thnk she was ready to be sent to the helper with out a long line on to stop her from just running to him and bitting the arm stright away and she was not, until when she did he popped her hard on the nose to get her to back off and just bark. Wow did she scream, as yes it is painfull to be cracked on the nose with a whip.
The first thing she did while screaming in pain was look to me but I had no time to react (and this goes along with the do not coddle your dog when it runs to you crying from getting corrected by another dog as a pup), because I did not react she quickly stopped screaming went back to the task at hand barking at the bad guy. The one problem which I see had quickly come about is now she will not go into the blind stright, she stays more off to one side now so if she is to get another crack on the nose she can get out of the way faster. This is something we have been working at with the boxer club, teaching her to enter the blind stright. So I do not know how this will effect her once back home and training at the boxer club.
Also Boxer club updated their members link….Not a bad picture of me…
http://www.boxer-klub-bergstrasse.de/
Click on the Hunde button and I am the next to last picture.