Next Dog Guarding and Sport Work - Page 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-89hAPhldU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFjcaSVhPfE

This is my daughters dog.  First time I have worked him in a month.  You might get to hear some of my comments to her!  :)

Second video has the "lift" in it.  First and only time I will be doing a lift.

I also learned from this that at the angle you put the dog's head in relationship to his neck and body, there is no way to increase grip strength or fullness.  You crank his head to almost a 90 degree angle to his body by doing the lift.  It would be akin to trying to lift a heavy load with your hand at 90 deg angle to your arm (wrist bent 90).  Good luck with that.  As my 7 year old is fond of saying "myth busted" (guess what he likes to watch).  Sorry about the poor videoing, same 7 year old is running the camera.

Get that thing some taco bell and stop working your family's dogs. I would rather play with them in targeting, etc all in prey and go once a month to a good helper.

BZCZ, I appreciate that you are taking the time and effort to video your training sessions and put them on here for display and critique.   I hope that you are learning something from some of the comments.    I would like to see a video of you working the dogs in prey, to illustrate the difference in the performance of the dogs, as I expect will be quite dramatic.       

It would be nice to see some other vids posted of the "lift off", as I had a slightly different impression of how it is executed.    Perhaps some of that will depend on the physical strength of the handler?  

I remember a training technique that was used to help the dog with the "out", and that was to have a long-line on the dog, held by a person who was standing behind the helper, and the line attached to the prong.    When the dog was settled enough to do an "out", the handler would give the command, and the person standing behind the helper would correct the dog INTO the helper/sleeve.    

I have a similar problem with not having anyone to train with, the closest club with a skilled helper is 3 hrs away in Spokane.      Therefore, I will train my dog in all the obedience aspects of the exercises, and when he is mentally mature enough to be worked in defence I will take him somewhere for skilled helper work.     I did flirt pole and targeting work with him as a pup, laying the foundation, but since then have only used a tug in obedience.      As my dog is showing a more civil side than most other dogs I've had, I would not consider doing the bitework myself even in prey - I even stopped using the flirt pole once he was targeting well.     Hopefully we'll be able to work at some club with skilled helpers in the future.

 

Koots, thanks for your comments.

Lycan had been outing very nicely until he spent the month training with other helpers.that's one of the things I didn't like when I worked him that night. He uses electric for the out as part of his repertoire. The other technique we use is he only gets one chance to do it right.if he bumps our doesn't out then we put him up. If he can't follow the rules he can't be out.  It's worked wonders for him and when I talked to my daughter, over the last month, she hasn't reinforced that because the other helpers told her it wasn't needed and they could fix it.for the first time in his career she had to use two outs to out him in the trial.

Lots of work to do to fix him back where he was.

I think you said the other dog had problems outing on other helpers too. Maybe I'm wrong, but why do you think that is? Why do you think the dog is great when you're the helper and when they finally get on a strange helper, they want to hold on? Outside, of course, the fact that you believe they're not good training helpers, which may be totally true.

Bzcz, like I said In the other thread, IPO is 90+% prey. You can work the dogs in most of the routine, play, make it fun, work on obedience in protection, targeting, etc, but I think the rest has to be done by someone else. And your dogs don't need a huge amount of it. If you can spare one day a month to drive to an excellent helper, your dog will benefit.

Another perspective outside of the questions I asked, when I take my kids to dinner, they behave. When Grandma takes them, it's a different story.

Quite simply when I do the helper work he scores better. He's been in three trials and this is by far his lowest score.  I do have her work him on other helpers, in fact at the start of this month long project we traveled to a regional get together and worked him on a USCA national level helper.I called the shots in the training, the helper did what I asked and Lycan worked well. It's the following week's on her own with the other helpers that this unwanted behavior showed up.  Remember, his last trial he was high protection at our regional championship and the trial before that he was 90 points. This latest 82 it's by far his lowest score.

I agree with your last perspective but with a twist.when I tell a helper what I want there is no argument or improv.  If we see something well talk about it and come up with a plan we both agree on.  When my daughter travels by herself, that doesn't happen.

bz,

So it sounds more like the problem stems, not from the dog being worked on other helpers but more from the fact your daughter doesn't stick to the training plan you have been doing(when you're not present). Correct?

I travel quite often with my dogs & each time I meet a new helper/clinician they want to change things & try this or that. It took some time before I figured out to stand up for my training program(that is working) & say thanks, but no thanks. Maybe your daughter just needs to be firm with the helpers when training without you there. Just a suggestion :)

To me, part of training is proofing, part of proofing is the consistency of the dog's performance in executing given commands under different situations. If I am teaching an out, part of the process as I progress is to see the out done by the dog on any type of helper ( good or bad), or any type of equipment. My finished dog should be able to work on any decoy or helper regardless of there competency level. I SAID out!, and if the dog has been trained correctly I expect compliance from dog just as if I said down or sit. One of the evolutions of the breed in past 40 years, IMO, is that a majority of sport dogs go from birth to retirement never having worked anything but a sleeve with perfect decoys. When you have to train dogs under different type decoys, equipment, surfaces, and locations, then cracks surfaces in execution/performance that sometimes can be fixed and sometimes cannot be fixed.....this is important information for choosing breeding stock, IMO. If my dog won't execute the command I give under new conditions whether it is people, equipment or location, I have more training to do to fix that and if it can't , the dog should not be bred.