Wednesday, April 3, 2013

So Simple

I was sitting at an agility seminar yesterday with my wonderful boy and I had a realization.  Sometimes it doesn't take very much effort to get a noticeable improvement but it does take some effort.

I am hoping to have a fast Border Collie and I am realistic in the fact that I won't be that fast.  Therefore there are certain skills that I will need.  One is the ability to send my dog to an obstacle far away with speed and confidence.  At a previous seminar I learned how to teach your dog to drive forward when I do a hard step in that directions.  I now teach this to all my students.  I have worked this with my dog but not to death by any means.  This comes out of my toolbox every few weeks and I send him around something.  Sometimes a tree or a car, whatever is around.  Yesterday I saw the results, he was great on his sends.  He had confidence and speed, mission accomplished.

This brought to my attention that the same thing can be accomplished with general everyday obedience with huge improvements for very little effort.  Pick one thing you would like to change.  For example jumping on company.  The spend 3 minutes a day working on this for a week.  In this case it would be sitting as they approach people.  You can practice on family members, or be really good and find some strangers on the street or a neighbour.  If nobody is around you could do this to a food bowl.  Step, sit, step sit, step, sit, etc.  Rewarding the sit every time.

Have fun with your huge results.

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