We were back at the trainer’s this past Saturday to work, yet again, on Freighter’s heeling and steadiness.  After his pitiful performance at the last Senior test, we are going to have to up his training.

Back To The Drawing Board
Back To The Drawing Board

One of the big issues Freighter had at the test was that he paid zero attention to his handler coming to the line.  It was like he never had an obedience lesson in his life.

One exercise to work on keeping his attention while heeling is to move around turning periodically and if Freighter doesn’t move you just walk right into him and nudge him with a knee.

Heeling Turn
Heeling And
Turn
Turn

He learned pretty quick to pay attention or get stepped on.

I tried this on our morning walks and in no time he was pivoting on a dime.  🙂

He is also going to held to a very high standard coming to the line and while he is at the line.  This means no whining, no toe-tapping, no shifting from foot to foot and absolutely no spinning around.  He needs to understand that the only correct position is to sit still.

Shifting His Feet
Shifting His Feet
That Is Right Pay Attention To Your Handler
That Is Right Pay Attention To Your Handler
More Solid Sit
Sit Still

He also sat and watched other dogs work.  Again he must sit still.  No spinning, shifting or whining.

The Marks Are Falling Right In Front Of Him, Working Dog Is In The Foreground
The Marks Are Falling Right In Front Of Him With The Working Dog In The Foreground
More Honoring
More Sitting

He will be practice, practice, practicing these things to see if we can get a grip on his line manners and breaking issue.

A BIG THANK YOU

The brown dawgs want to send a BIG THANK YOU to Chewy.com for the giant box of goodies they received this week.  What a surprise to receive a bunch of treats, some fun summer items, and a very nice note thanking us for being a part of their program.

I was able to get them to sit still for a couple of pictures, but just barely.  They were already eying the treats.  One of the items was a blow up beach ball.  I did not dare blow that up or there would have been no pictures at all.  🙂

Thanks again to Chewy.com!  It is our pleasure to be a part of your program.

Thank You Chewy.comThis is the Thursday Bark And Bytes Blog Hop hosted by 2 Brown Dawgs and Heart Like A Dog.

The Barks And Bytes hop is for anything at all and all bloggers are welcome.  You don’t have to be a dog blog to join.  Why not try it out!

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34 thoughts on “Thursday Barks And Bytes–More Heeling And Steady

  1. Yay Freighter, you can do this!! 😀 If all things go as planned, Donna will go to obedience classes soon too heehee 😀

    1. Can’t wait to hear about them. I bet she will be good at it.

  2. To sit still is not easy…. butt I’m sure you can do that, Freighter. I have too much ants in my pants to sit still. Maybe that wonderful treats you got from Chewy will land in your mouth when you are good in training?

    1. When he is retrieving ducks he doesn’t even care about treats. Can you imagine. 🙂

  3. We agree the simplest things are usually the hardest and sitting still is no easy thing to do. Lordy we humans have enough problem doing that. Onwards and upwards. Have a tremendous Thursday.
    Best wishes Molly

  4. That was a awesome summer package. I trained with a pro trainer from Texas on Monday and he has a dog that isn’t steady and when he was at the line if he so much as shifted or picked up a foot he was whipped stocked and the birds were picked up and redone. He did finally sit there but not sure if he learned for all times or needs more reinforcing.

    1. It is a balance. If you pick up the birds then sometimes the first chance they get they dash out for them. But we will be doing more of taking him off line and making him sit for longer periods before sending. He sits for his dinner. Is it so different from birds? lol

      1. Birds are way more fun than dinner, unless you feed raw. Luna is beyond motivated to work for her raw meals lol.

        The sitting still is always hard for those who really love the game. I have to pull out the firm card with wyatt when hunting and retrieving is involved as he lives for it. Making Wyatt wait also helps Luna as sometimes I throw things for her (when she is feeling inclined to actually fetch) and I will make Wyatt sit nicely through it and wait as she brings it in. She rather not get run into by the Wyatt tank, so it’s a win win. Didn’t take too long before he got the idea, still need to work on him honoring whoever gets it first but we hardly have situations for that anyway.

        Good luck, sometimes it just takes time a maturity.

        1. We do some honoring with Storm, Thunder and Freighter, and he is good with that. I think we need to have him watch dogs he doesn’t know.

  5. Good job sweet Freighter, we love that 5th picture!! What a nice package you got from Mr. Chewy, enjoy! Hugs and nose kisses

    1. We need more looking at his handler at tests so hopefully there will be more pictures like that one…lol.

  6. Sometimes my sisters and I have phases where we just ignore everything Mom wants us to do, maybe Freighter has been in such a phase. He will get it down. We got the Chewy package too, what a fun surprise!

  7. Hi Y’all!

    Great heeling exercises. My Human always does that sort of stuff with me to mix it up and keep it interesting. She still loves to try to throw me off by making a sudden “about face”. However, it served to amaze the trainer when I first started rally obedience and we did a perfect loose lead full turn. Everyone watched us do our first time through the course. I’d just finished basic obedience and this was an advanced rally class. My Human got a correction for giving me a late reward on one exercise. Otherwise, I made everyone happy!

    Good luck to you Freighter! I know that you’ll amaze your handler the next test!

    Y’all come by now,
    Hawk aka BrownDog

    1. I’d like to try some obedience with Freighter. Maybe over the winter. With no ducks in the picture his obedience is really very good.

  8. Freighter is most definitely a very smart pup. i’m sure he’ll learn these things very quickly. If he’s anything like Daisy, though, he’ll decide exactly *when* he wants to do things his own way! 😉 I know the point of training is to get rid of that tendency, and I think he’ll quickly learn when to exhibit championship behavior and when he can just be Freighter. 😀 Looking good in those pics, dear friend!

    1. Hopefully he will decide to do things our way sooner rather than later…lol.

  9. Oh Freighter, I know you can do this! Keep practicing and you will get it right! Wasn’t the box from Chewy.com great? There was even stuff for the humans in our box…how about yours?
    Happy Thursday,
    Oz

    1. Oh yes we got human stuff too. It was really fabulous!

  10. What a nice surprise from Chewy, looks like a lot of goodies in there!
    Freighter sounds like a big puppy sometimes….things that Luke does are similar. Luke did so well in obedience school but now he just seems to have bratty phases where he’s forgotten everything he learned. It looks like Freighter is doing much better now though, so all that practice must be paying off.

    1. Freighter will be 3 in November, hopefully puppy phase is almost over…lol.

  11. Hi 2 Brown Dawgs. I have never heard of the Chewy.com program. What is it and how do you get involved in the program? Are there other programs like this that you recommend and how do you get involved in any other programs that you recommend?

    1. About a year or so ago Chewy.com approached me about doing some product reviews for them. If you are interested in doing product reviews on your site, shoot me an email and the next time they offer a review, I will send the info.

  12. I’m no trainer, but I really think a lot of it has to do with maturity. Just like people, some dogs take longer than others. I’m positive he will be an amazing test dog once those maturity cells kick in. 🙂

  13. I came from an Obedience background but since showing in Conformation, I’ve not done any competitive Obedience and I miss it. Since Cairo is out of my breeding program, I will be working her in Obedience and I can’t wait for that. Love the pictures! Thanks for sharing!

  14. I think that sometimes training needs to be broken down so that one or two specific things can be focused on, sometimes going all the way back to the basics. I’ve occasionally had to do refresher training on obedience and steadiness when they’ve forgotten or become sloppy on certain techniques.

    1. The thing is that his obedience while training is good, but at the test he looses his mind. But he did retrieve and come straight back so we hope that by drilling the obedience routine in his head he will be mostly obedient at the line.

  15. I’ve got to try that moving and turning trick with Pierson. I’ve been doing it a little bit, but not consistently.

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