Training / Off

I worked through a series of 'up ups' and 'offs' in the living room on the sofa. This was advised by Jean Donaldson in her book 'Mine!' as a way of getting them off objects like beds, cars, whatever without them becoming collar shy by having to be pulled off. Grey does have a tendency to mouth, not hard, but mouth if I went to pull him off something by the collar. So I always end up having to push him off.

I'd already been using 'up up' to get into the car and onto the bed or sofa, but I haven't really trained a proper 'off' to get down from somewhere. Jean uses a simple hand target to get the dog up and then off. Grey already knows a simple hand target, my open palm with the cue 'touch'. It's always a fun and fast warm up behaviour to get him in the game of a training session. We had a nice five minutes of quite fast up and off the sofa. He seemed to get it, so we'll run through it again over the next few days.