Lazy but never boring - that's a rule!

I'm now a self confessed lazy dog trainer. I'm short on time, hate stress (as discussed yesterday), and generally have come to the conclusion that the best thing for me and my dogs is to find ways to hang out together and be happy. When we're home we don't play games. No ball chucking stuff. I've noticed how much harder work and demanding the dogs are if they have been under exercised, but not just in the physical sense, mentally. I know a lot of Slovaks are gundog trained. Seeing as I don't want to do that, I've found a happy medium of our own. What is more important is how they've been using their brain. In particular, in what mode. The picture above is a small snapshot of the large country area where I regularly walk.

By this I mean there is a difference in seeking and chasing. Especially important for a dog like Grey. I want to switch off the reactive side of him and switch on the seeking. Chasing of objects isn't really a natural state for dogs anyway and not one that I want to encourage. So no toys on walks, no thrown objects falling from the sky with all the associated injury risks. When Grey was an only dog I would hide objects for him to find. Basically, when Grey starts charging around looking for falling things whizzing through the air it's just mental and not in a good way. Not an ideal state to meet other dogs in if we bump into some on our travels.

The other aspect of my daily routine is I do one full stimulating walk rather than two or three separate trips to a more stressful environment. By stimulating I mean, thinking not just mad running. So I head out to the countryside to an environment where they are encouraged to use their noses in a good way, rather than multiple trips to a local park where they would focus on undesirable stimuli and I would have to work much harder to distract them and to avoid undesirable behaviours such as lunging, barking, pulling, chasing, possessiveness.

Here are Grey and Polka checking out hedgerows and ditches. Polka, despite her thin fur is of hardy working stock and thinks nothing of crawling through brambles. They have miles of open country to run in. And run they do. But when there is terrain to investigate like this, running is put to one side and the noses are put to use. I've found they will literally sleep the rest of the day and evening from this.

Sometimes you don't do the right thing

Argh... Well inexperience shows sometimes. I felt really bad today when I had a think after being advised by friends that perhaps my big trip up north in the car to pick up the new car wasn't good for Grey. When I did it, I thought I was doing the right thing. That it would be an opportunity to work on spending time in the car and it not being a journey to go offlead running on the beach. That was really silly of me and I won't do it again. It's not a good idea to raise the bar high and force him to get used to something. Where is the positive in that? So I put myself in a time out to think about it!

On the plus side I think he's going to be so much better in the new car. He happily gets in and sits in the back while it's parked. So later we can work on little trips out. But for now, we'll carry on with no car journeys while working on calm behaviour outside.

Another great piece of advice today was to try and LLW train when the traffic is quiet. Today was ideal because Sunday traffic round here is really low. During the week, we'll get up extra early. We went out across the road to an empty driveway/entrance to a carpark. No idea why I didn't think of this before. I think I'm slow sometimes. He was much much better. No lunging and barking. Stress levels were lower and was able to focus.

Other than that we've worked on sits and downs at home. I put his down on a long whistle so now he's got sit and down on a whistle, which hopefully will come in useful when he gets back off lead.

Also worked on watch at home.

Big changes in Grey's world

Something clearly wasn't working with Grey's training on walks and on the gencon. After much consultation with my dog guardian angels (thanks guys!) it was decided to make some radical changes for the next week or two. So Grey is now on day 2 of no off lead walks. And further that we don't go anywhere and he pulls. I'm not taking him out in the car either. I don't go anywhere unless he's calm. If he's not calm in the house, the lead doesn't go on and we don't go through the door. Yesterday we passed the day by doing the following:

Getting him used to the gencon by CT him for touching, looking, approaching the headcollar on the floor and in my hands. I left it around (supervised) so it's not just seen as the instrument of torture!

We sat out on the top of the front door steps on his blanket and CT for calm for each passing lorry, van, motorbike, people with push bikes, prams, kids, disabled people in wheelchairs. We live on one busy corner! We did 4 sessions like this of a couple of minutes. A couple of people came up and asked if they could stroke him. Grey obliged by wriggling lots!

We ventured out onto the pavement a couple of times and just worked up and down in front of the house. he had one barking freak out where we retreated to the safety zone of the steps and then CT for calm again.

Inside we passed the day with training on downs and started work on distance by going round the waste paper bin. I also got the crate back out because I'm going to get a new car soon and want him to be crate trained for that. Also it will be useful if he is able to be self controlled enough and calm if confined ever at the vets. He surprised me and got straight into the crate and lay down. I had thought he hated it as he had to be confined in it last month at a friend's flat and he didn't like it.

Other stuff I've done is stash kibble in the living room and I've generally been more proactive in getting him off the sofa and looking out the window at passersby. He's been generally very into training. So over this week or so his training is much more intensive. I had thought he would be really different if he didn't get his big run of the day, but he's been just as tired from the training and thinking about things. One huge difference I think will be is his focus on me. Everything good comes through me. I'm hand feeding him. I've portioned up his food and it's all used as training. Walks are no longer a means to an end. i.e. a free ride to the beach! So he will get used to the walk itself not as it being a route to being let off for a run.

I'm keeping sessions really short. I can see he can't cope with much and he starts to lose focus after a few minutes.

Today we've done some outside the house walking. Some round the bin distance work, and lots of downs where I've aso started to walk around and away from him while he's in the down.

On top of this we've got games and stuffed toys in his open crate.