HELP! I swear Cirberus has ADHD - Page 1

I swear Cirberus is going to drive me crazy.   She is distracted by a leaf blowing in the air.  Now that she has gone through her fist heat, her food drive is minimal at best; so keeping her attention for even a 5 minute training session goes out the window.  Her toy drive is good, but not enough to over come the attention issue.

We are almost at a stand still again for training.  Everything, even the stuff she knows, is back to 60% or less.  Forget about learning something new. 

Any hints to get past this?

Max is so much easier......

Welcome to one of the challenges of working with an intact bitch, hormones!

In all seriousness this is one of the main reasons why, once I decided my female was not what I considered breed worthy I went ahead and spayed her so we could focus on the training/trialing field.   She would be just as 'moody' and distracted around her heat cycles and it felt like a constant 2 steps forward, 3 steps back in training.

If you're not pushing for a deadline trial I would stop trying to force focus and risk frustrating yourself and your bitch.   Instead work on something low key, fun yet still progressive like maybe build her toy drive with a lot of teasing and play.   Don't make it so much about obedience as about play and keep away and just games to help reestablish that the toy and most importantly YOU are the most fun thing in her world.

Lol, so threating to stuff her in a fax machine and faxing her to Siberia probably is not a good approach.      

Thanks, I will try that for awhile.

That's why I have boys!! Girls are so good at manipulating us all.

  Chrissie !! Females are so damn good at the whole.. "oh look at me I am so cute and such a vixen I should get away with everything"  and bring such a coy attitude !!
   I spay and neuter too.. even the police dogs that go out of here are spayed/neutered.. No reason not to.. I had a female that I "waited" (smacked myself in the head for that one)   for her first heat to pass.. and "viola"... she came down with pyometra.. boom... she had to be euthanized.. it was heartbreaking. I wanst even going to breed her!
  My boy Diesel has ADD too... he is so worried about 'where I am.. what am I doing' that he wont even go potty sometimes, like he is going to miss out on something !! crazy (shaking my head)  .. they think they are smarter than us... (I guess they are to a point)  :)   sherry

Many months ago (I will try to get time to find the link today), someone sent me a link that had excellent updated medical information on spay/neuter risks, pros, and cons.  It was very technical in nature and I do not remember all the terms.  After reading it, I got that it was better to wait until the physical growth has fully stopped; the risk between what a bitch can get by being spayed as a puppy was greater than the risk if waiting until they are 18 months or more.  It is due to this article, that I decided to wait on fixing both the puppies.

It is a very interesting article and opens a few eyes.   I will put it in a thread by itself for easy identification.

My bitch was 21 months old when I spayed her.   I didn't spay her until after I had gotten her BH on her and was working her towards her IPO 1.   

That is it Barsa.  Thank you so much.  I will put it on the other thread too.

In the UK I do despair of a lot of the vets, that get pups in for 6 month checks, and advise neutering then. Definitely, to my mind, should be left until their growth plates have closed down, which is triggered by the hormones.Especially with the bigger breeds, they need to get to full size.
I don't do bitches because of the hormones, and a lot will look at you as if to say 'please don't make me do that!!' and what they are really doing is sticking 2 fingers up.
The boys are a normally different, in that they say 'I don't want to do that' but if you persist, they will do anything for a quiet life. ( Bit like the husband really) and after a while find they quite enjoy it. Lol.