Dog's training means a lot of playing

       Jumping in playing

       

       How to teach a dog to jump? There are various methods to do it: to start with a very low barrier, to help a dog to jump over a barrier, to jump with a dog. 

      

                            

         Or you can try to teach playing with your dog, and playing a lot. Being involved on an active game a dog jumps easily,  enjoying it.

Let's think: why we need dogs?

      Why we have dogs? They cause a lot of complications and troubles in our life, need a lot of care and consume enormous part of our time and money.  However, we have them, we love them, we need them. 

What for?

To raise ego

For oudoors

For support

For sport

To take care of

For inspiration

For fun

For security

 What does your dog add to your life? 

 What is your story? 

Make training of your dog effective and enjoyable

           Most of dog owners do not go with their dogs to any training ground, and their dogs do not get any lessons at all. Why? The list of answers is impressive: I’d like to, but have no time; I’m busy; it’s too late /early; my dog knows everything without any lessons; this breed is not for training; too cold/ hot, etc. The list can be continued.

However, all these answers are only partially true. In many cases the answer is quite of another nature and - so to say - rooted in our schooldays.  Do many people remember their schooldays with pleasure and delight? I mean CLASSES - not games and tricks in the school playing ground. I doubt it. It’s quite understandable as in most cases the school lessons are long, unenjoyable, dull, and of no obvious practical use.  The result is that a lot of people deep in their minds treat any lessons - including regular training with their dogs - as their school ones. REGULAR training or CLASSES or LESSONS are the key words that trigged the sense of hopeless inevitability that most school kids feel in the morning five or six days a week.

This attitude can be changed dramatically! Let’s make the process of education  enjoyable for both: the dog and the owner.

The first key point – use dog’s favorable toy or tips or something  else - but FAVORABLE. It can be used in a lot of exercises and help to achieve good results enjoyably and comparatively quickly. They can be used even in complicated exercises, such as heeling without leash, coming,  keeping positions,  even stopping biting of a decoy in attack.

The second key point – start each lesson with playing, so every time your dog knows that something interesting and enjoyable is waiting for him/her and + can drop extra energy. It helps a lot to  focus dog’s attention and to tune both - the dog and the owner – to a MUTUAL DYNAMIC CONTACT.

         The third key points – play A LOT when your dog fulfills the exercise in a proper way and between different exercises. Free movements, dynamic games always bring something new. It is so important in working with difficult exercises that should be repeated many times.

          Enjoy your training with your dog! 

          I’ll appreciate if you tell about your successes and share your new experience!

About humanity and inhumanity of human beings

        This is a dramatic story with a happy end. A starving dog was thrown out from a car... The dying creature could crawl to the entrance of a nearby house where he was found.

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     How cruel one should be to torture a dog and then throw him from the car! It's simply impossible to understand...
     I'm impressed by the great kindness of those people who took care of a dying dog and helped him to return to life!

Alpha & Alpha

     A year and half ago our family got a new member – a two months old malinois. This remarkable event was, of course, highlighted in a post. It was so nice to get a puppy! However, I foresaw some possible troubles as my elder male – strong Alpha Canaan   dog – is very intolerant to any rivals.

    To our great surprise and relief he fully accepted the newcomer. I only slightly taught them how I’d prefer they treat each other. There are some well known methods how to make two male dogs to live together in peace, as it is a big problem for a lot of dog masters. Frankly speaking, we tried to avoid these popular methodic and made an accent on the other side of the “Alphaness” – the strong will of my elder dog to be a leader of a pack means for him to be responsible for his pack.

      He played with the puppy like a loving father, defended him and now even shares with him his favourable mattress!

Jumping - team training

      I fully share the opinion that dog team training can be very effective and much more enjoyable for dogs as well as for men. Particularly it can be useful in exercises where  a dog needs to be brave and sure in his forces. As - for example - in jump training.  

      A lot of young dogs fail to jump over a fence because it is something new for them, however they quite able to jump over the fence physically. In these cases “team jumping” can be a successful method for developing this skill, which is necessary in mondioring, agility and other types of cynological sports. 

Retrieve training of a young malinois. Using positive stimuls

Teaching a dog to take an object.

        

        

        Retrieve or Rapport d’objet lance – this is how the exercise is called in the FCI Rules of Mondioring. However, this skill is considered as necessary in many dogs competitions, tests and exams.  Usually  dog masters, trying to teach a dog this exercise, meet with three main difficulties:  the dog rushes  to catch object the same moment the object is thrown; the dog runs to the object but doesn’t take it; and the dog takes the object and happily runs with him far from the master.

        There are many methodics  how to teach a dog to fulfill the command “apport” and to bring back the thrown object. The most wildly spread mistake is to try to teach a dog to carry out the whole exercise from the very beginning.  It rarely gives fruitful results.

       It seems more effective to divide the exercise into several parts and to help your dog learn it step by step.

      How to teach a dog to take the object? Why he or she will do it?  The dog doesn’t see any  obvious reason for taking it and doesn’t understand why he/she should do it. Many dog owners begin with pushing the object into dog’s mouth and holding the mouth for some time. But usually the dog lets the object fall down the moment his/her owner takes hands away from the mouth as well as the object. Some instructors even fix the dog for not letting him/her run away or turn the head. To my mind the only obvious result is that the dog gets a stress and loses any wish to carry out the exercise.

       It seems much more effective to use positive motivation and increase dog’s interest in the exercise through something that he/she enjoys – tips, playing with a ball, biting a toy, etc. For each dog different stimuls should be chosen.

The key figure of the video is young malinois of working line who likes to bite the toy. So it helped easily to  teach him to take the object. Even showing the toy was a stimul for him to take the object as he knew that he would be awarded and enjoyed the exercise. Do not forget to give command “apport” the moment you suggest your dog to take the object J