Serious obedience question - Page 1

How do you guys get yourselves to enjoy it?  Serious question I hate it.  I find it dull and can't maintain enthusiasm when working my dog because it's fake.  Walk, walk, walk, about turn, walk, halt, walk, run, run, about turn....

I appreciate every day obedience, and my dog heels, and gives me attention, but I'm not a nitpicker...and I HATE it that I have to walk with my arm out at my side to avoid hitting my dog's head because the schutzhund rules don't allow me to rest a hand on my belly (why is that anyway?), I find that to be extremely uncomfortable.

People show me schutzhund obedience routines, and I can't sit and watch the whole video because I get so bored...and it's not the people or the dogs, I just don't care for obedience.  It's walking (and sometimes jogging), and it just doesn't appeal to me.  I enjoy tracking because my dogs enjoy tracking, but of course, I find protection to be the most enjoyable out of all three.

I do the obedience because it's required of me, otherwise I probably wouldn't bother near as much.  I don't care if my dog sits perfectly straight in front, nor do I care if he's cocked out a little bit in heel position.  I do not care for having his head wrapped around me because it interferes with my arm, and I feel unbalanced.

I enjoy training new exercises as I like to watch my dog learn, and see what he offers me in terms of behaviors, but I don't get all bent out of shape if his dumbbell pick up is not the cleanest, or if he's a little chewy on it.

Right now my dog and I are working on scent articles, and he's catching on quickly.  I'm finding this part a lot of fun, and I find hand signals relatively fun, but the heeling patterns?  I feel like I'm chewing on tinfoil x.x

Xeph,

Why do you do it if you don't like it?

Moons.

Because eventually I want to breed, and while I may not be able to feasibly do schutzhund for awhile, training through other degrees is a necessity.  I don't want to be the person who throws two random dogs together.

And I mean more than just a CD by the way.  I'm looking at UD's (I won't do the UDX as admittedly I'm just too lazy and don't care enough about crooked sits to meet all the requirements for a UDX).  I'm really big into agility, and that does test the agility and trainability of a dog under the pressure of needing to maintain control of it's drives, but it doesn't tell me as much about the dog's biddability as things like training for scent discrimination does.

Training through agility does not yield the same knowledge as training into higher levels of obedience.  My dog has incredibly high drive in agility, his drive is not consistent in obedience, and I've no doubt that is partially my fault.

I KNOW I'll have a MACH dog...don't know if I'll make it to UD with the dog I currently have, not because of him, but because of me.

I HATE TRACKING!!!! I think the set up is so tedious and long, 20 min. to set said track.... Wait, wait, wait..... then a quick 2 minute track.... SOOOOOO BORING!!!! So I am doing PSA, possibly Ring Sport....  My point is Xeph, that Moons is right, you have options. Don't do it if you don't like it.

ROFL!  Guru, I have that issue with tracking in terms of waiting for the track to age.  WTH am I supposed to do while it ages!?  Age myself!?  LOL!

I considered other venues, but I can't even find a schutzhund club I can go to often enough for it to be worthwhile right now.  It's been over a year since my dog has hit a sleeve, and I miss it, but I just can't afford the expense right now :-(

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't mind doing the work in terms of having a dog that has good obedience...but I'm not the person that's aiming for the 200....not even close.  I'm happy with a 180.  I'm just not into getting them so spit and polished they only lose 2.5 points.  On top of that, lots of the heeling looks incredibly unnatural to me.

I have videos of my dog and I doing heelwork (after 16 months of not xD) but it'd make people here cringe because it's not uber pretty, lol.

Xeph,

I think that one of the problems with the way alot of people train OB is that it is to redundent (sp?) In regards to heeling I teach my dog to follow me any way or direction i go backwards, forewards, left, right, around in a circle, anything or way I can keep myself interested and in drive along with my dog. :) We also have a great training director who is constently coming up with in approaches to things which also helps alot.  If I do retrieves I'll teach him to do over/onto anything while mantaining his grip and drive and for our go out it's "run way the he** down there until you see that tiny orange cone and keep going because your ball is there. Just my thoughts. Hope you find something that works for you guys.

regards,

emily  

NO SH*T!!! LOL

My dog & I LOVE bite work. I love focus work, and I cant wait until I can polish my boys obedience. We are very very happy WITHOUT that ridicules track.  GARD is doing a GREAT job showing me the ropes, and is a  clear & understanding trainer. We will go far with him.

During your training, my suggestion would be to make yourself look silly and be animated with your dog and he will feed off of your energy {even if its fake}. Thus, you should feel better about it. Might help if someone is watching so they can poke fun!!!

Xeph,

Your serious obedience question is what then?

If your dog is not obedient and you know it's because of you, and you need the titles so you aren't just throwing together random dogs, but you don't like the rules and structure of the training and don't understand why you have to do it their way to get these titles.  

Now you have me rambling.

How do you get yourself to enjoy it, you don't, not at first.    It's not all fun and can be a lot of hard work.

I don't do it for some of the same reasons you describe.  (schutzhund)   I have other interests.

When I first start working a young dog it's boring too, but then things start to happen.  Things begin to fall into place.

It makes a difference what kind of dog you have also.

If these titles are that important to you, and you can't do the work, get help.   Or change your way of looking at it.

Brent.

For the most part, it's not HIS drive that's the issue.

Note:

I love this picture just because of the look on the judge's face (I got MANY compliments on my dog when we finished)

Good dog, bad mom xD

I do have video if anybody is brave enough to actually want to watch it *ROFL*

If your dog is not obedient and you know it's because of you

It's not that he's not obedient.  He is...he does everything I ask of him.  It's that I don't demand perfection because I don't care about perfection.  Do I care about perfection in protection?  Yes.  Tracking?  I care that the dog does his best, but I'm not going to freak because he didn't corner perfectly.  I just like to pass....it's more fun for me that way, no stressing about points and who I must beat.

Has my dog one ribbons?  Yes.  Have they been first place ribbons?  No.  Do I care?  No.

And it drives my trainers insane.  Ribbons are nice, but that's not why I title my dogs.  First and foremost I do it because I enjoy working with my dogs.  The thought of breeding is secondary to that...fun with the dogs.

Xeph, the point is not that YOU care about the details, its that YOUR DOG cares about the details, so much so that he/she wants to get them all correct to make YOU happy. Therein lies the joy of obedience, witnessing the love of your dog for you as they give you every ounce of their focus, respect,  and willingness and ask for nothing in return but your approval. I don't understand how anyone can NOT love obedience. And I hate to break it to you..tracking, bitework, retreival, jumping...it's ALL obedience.