My dog Hexe's Protection Routine at the 2021 Working Dog Championship in St. Louis. 88 Points

My dog Hexe's Obedience Routine at the 2021 Working Dog Championship in St. Louis. 87 Points.

Crate Games are a very effective way to (re)introduce a dog to its crate (after we have stayed at home for months in a pandemic, for example). Crate Game are also an excellent means to finesse obedience skills, practice impulse and boundary control, and sending dogs to a "Place".

Luna is a 5 months old Pitbull puppy doing an amazing job working on basics while visiting for a short board and train! Her food drive is over the top, making it super easy to work with her! How can you not love this cutie... #pitbullsareawesome

Hexe's first training session at 11 weeks old. She learns to follow food, stays attentive to me, discovers how her body can move, works on lateral movements, experiences continuous engagement and basic skills in a playful fashion. I encourage all owners with young puppies to do a similar immersion to obedience training.

Rufus in action about 5 days after arrival in my in kennel training program. He came to me on Prozac, biting at free will when his mood struck him so. At first, he refused all interactions with me including the taking of food from my hand for about 4-5 days until we made some break through progress. In this session, Rufus is blossoming and getting very excited with the skills I am asking him to do for me. He was fully weaned of Prozac in this video.

Sir "Carrot Tail" Rufus reloaded! This video marks 24 days post arrival. 20 of these days Prozac free. The transformation is A-MAZING!!! Showing off his off leash confidence (which was a big hurdle), some novelty bravery and some magic 3s, as I call them...3 repetitions before you get paid. If you fail mid-chain, we start from rep1. I insist on fast sits and downs. I want effort and commitment. He's GOT it. Enjoy!

I am teaching Rufus, the Westy, to circle backwards around my body. This behavior can become a trick later on!

Kinzig learns to pivot his body on a perch. He needs to move his legs laterally to be able to do so. The video is very dark but it hopefully still gives you an idea how you can teach a dog to move rear legs laterally on a perch.

Dogs love tricks. We can leverage the dog's desire to do tricks in obedience training as a motivator to do behaviors quickly and correctly, which then can lead to doing a trick as a reward. Tricks may have to be taught first before they can be incorporated into obedience training. Hexe shows the tricks she knows.

Training by yourself can be a challenge. Teaching your dog to jump and return to you without an assistant can be accomplished through the use of a box. Box training has many benefits. Hexe demonstrates (a week shy of 12 months).

Thick dowel hold with my GSD Hexe, 17 mts old. The “hold” is an important piece to any retrieve. Once the “hold” is great and proofed, you can continue to back chain the rest of the retrieve, ie pickup, running out, coming back fast etc. The taking and dropping of the dowel on command is very important. So is the calm grip without chewing while holding the object. Object Retrieval is a beast of a behavior chain to teach. There are many small pieces to it and some of it is easy to miss.

Teach your dog to do an obedience chain before they get their reward. Doing this for their meal is an excellent idea. My dog Pitu shows a lengthy obedience chain before he gets paid with his meal.

Tracking is a rewarding exercise which may be a great alternative or addition to any pet's training. Tracking is very hard physical work for a dog. Crew shows a beginner puppy track. It is a 2 meter diameter circle, wherein I layed a single file track (heel to toe) with my footprints. There is a piece of kibble in every footprint. Assuming my boot length is about 7", this means there is a piece of kibble every 7" along this track. Crew finds every piece of food and thus learns to discriminate and become rewarded for the scent of disturbed grass (which I stepped on), and undisturbed grass (which should remain uninteresting to the dog). Every piece of food needs to get found to teach the dog early that missing (the next) important scent cue could lead you on the wrong path. You notice Crew wanting to pull ahead at times to get the food ahead of him when he hasn't found the one right under him yet. I block him via leash to promote the correct response of taking EVERY piece of food. Dogs who are not as carefully detecting every footprint will later miss path changes (turns) and important cues along the way (articles). Hence, the urgency to take every piece of food is taught early.

Using keep away with food (teasing), and throwing food to build fast recall behavior. This Husky is 6 months old.

Adak is a 6 months old Husky who was with me for basic training and especially manners. Adak showed a spectacular amount of dominance when he first came and tried to be in charge about everything. It is amazing how quickly dogs learn to be top notch manipulators to stay in control. The really clever ones make it look like it’s cute or something WE wanted anyway. He would sit in front of me, but with his butt to me, on my feet. He’d lean into me so forcefully, I had to watch my footing. He obviously jumped on me and pawed me to get his way especially when the leash first came on. If he was not pulling on leash, he just laid down- mid walk. He, the extremely food oriented dog that he is, also turned his head away from the reward treats I tried to give him. “If I don’t take this food, this person will quit working with me and leave me alone”. He, ultimately, tried to pee on me outside. He determined through various tricks when to stop working and how to stay in control of me or the interaction. I had 11 days to turn this around. The clip here is lose leash walking, Sit, down, stay. He is on a flat collar, working for his dinner kibble.

"Heel" is often thought of as the motion of walking mannerly next to us, but in reality, it is a position and gets taught as such. The dog's chest should be aligned with the left (or right) knee. If taught as a position in a stationary fashion first, the dog should find the correct position regardless where you are as the handler. Young Hexe practices finding Heel position from different angles. She performs a trick after she correctly finds heel.

Instant response to position changes. Grand prize (ball) is in front of the dog and serves as a boundary. In order to practice no forward creeping in positions (point deduction in sports), the dog is not allowed to get beyond the ball until released to it. Of course, I’m also practicing speaking the command softly and not offering any body cues to test the dog’s listening skills.

Dogs nipping at fingers when we try to give them a treat is a very relevant and frustrating topic for many of us. I address here how you can work against your dog hurting your fingers when they get too nippy and eager in taking treats!

You must share with your younger sister, we say...Dogs can learn early to share so possession and guarding does not become a problem later. Hexe (5 months) learning to share with a very simple trading game. Note that I move very little and let her do all the work. I pair the letting go of one ball with my Out command before she gets the other ball. It's a simple way to work on sharing. No conflict, no chase, no yelling, no bribery. Just back and forth. Dogs need a few sessions for this but they will learn conflict-free.