I have a question on Obedience... a friend was talking to me about training my dog Addie. She was saying she does Obedience teaching the motion exercise first. Then the Static. This is to preserve animation. I was womdering if anyone had any suggesitons how to go about this.
Does your friend mean she teaches the motion exercises before she teaches duration (the stay part) or does she mean she teaches sit down and stand out of the heeling first and then "positions" ring style second?
As soon as I have a rough approximation of the position and a fairly reliable way to prompt it (taught in front of me initially with a food lure, spatial pressure and leash pressure), I begin teaching the motion exercises. By practicing postions early in training in a variety of places (relative to the handler)...static in front, moving in front (handler moving backwards), static in heel, moving in heel, at a distance moving away from handler, at a distance moving towards handler etc. I hope to teach them stimulus control early on (avoiding the habit of moving toward me or only being fluent in front of the handler) and to help them generalize.
I start duration quite early on but try to emphasize speed over steadiness (the majority of my rewards come as soon as they hit the position but some require the position to be held longer). I teach them FR style positions as well as SchH style motion exercises. Traditionally, the SchH style moving stand is really a moving stay. The dog is not required to change positions just freeze in place. The shortcoming with this technique is that if the dog reflexively begins to assume another position, he does not know how to fix it. By teaching the mechanics of stand from a sit and stand from a down as well as the moving stand to a SchH dog you give it the information it needs to fix its own mistake.
One of the best ways to start motion exercises is by moving backwards with the dog following in front of you. You are in a better position to help the dog if it should hesitate or make a mistake. When the dog is fluent in front you can move it over to heel position. This also helps to avoid making your dog dependent on handler help as most of your problems are sorted out before you practice the motion exercises in the place they will actually happen (heel position).
All of my dogs have nice motion exercises (even my Border Terrier). My five month old BT has a pretty good down out of motion and we are working on the sit. I have had an eight month old Golden for 10 days of in board training and he is already nailing the sit out of motion (with a very nice sit). I do believe in starting it early. With pet dogs I move it over to heeling fairly early. With competition prospects, I wait until the are fairly fluent in the heeling. Lokking over your shoulder and cuing them to fall out of heeling (to assume a position) can be stressful if the dog is not fairly confident of where heel position is and the behaviors required in it to earn the reward.
Good luck. Are you going to the Roland Siebold smeinar at all this weekend? I think I am auditing Sunday. I remember some of the stories Danny shared many years ago after he worked with Roland so I thought it would make for an entertaining weekend.
Will you and Addy be trying for you BH at your upcoming trial?
Author
Logged
