Distraction and Drills

Since I don't participate in any classes for obedience, I have to actively work to create training environments that will mimic the amount of distraction the dogs will deal with in a real trial/show environment.  Yesterday we had a great session!

James took Tibbs for a little daddy-doggy bonding hike, so I walked Shiner and Guinness to the elementary school near our house to run around in the field and do some training.  With only two dogs, I decided to up the ante by doing what I call tandem training.

See, at home I only work with a single dog at a time about once a day or so - the rest of the time the dogs are expected to more or less work as a pack.  For fun I've started doing what my nerd friends and I call "Dog-bending".  This is where using voice commands and exaggerated hand movements I do obedience with all three dogs at the same time.  Normally, it's just cycling through sit-down-stand-stays in the living room, but no one is rewarded until they're all in position - I want them to work as a team.  It also adds distractions (which training in the house, are hard to come by).

So, back to the elementary school.  After a free play period where we run around and act like crazy people, I brought them in.  First we drilled sit-stays with large circles walked around them (it was wet and I have trouble getting thin-furred Shiner to down when it's cold and wet).  We drilled sit-stays for a while, then recalls - Shiner beat Guinness across a field in a flat out sprint!  They both ended with a beautiful finish for their cookies.

Then we did what I considered to be our hardest drills of the day.  I down-stayed Guinness, then off-leash heeled Shiner in a big circle around him.  We came up beside Guinness, I finished Shiner into a sit - and we got it!  Cookies all around.  Finally, I sit-stayed Shiner and Guinness, then called Guinness to sit in front, then come around behind me to my left and sit.  Poor little Shiner could barely hold his little self in place, but he did it!

I feel like these tandem drills add a level of difficulty to our exercises.  As we move into the later part of the month I'm going to TRY to train the "Honor" into Guinness and Shiner - meaning I can down-stay one dog, and he'll stay there while I go through multiple drills with another dog.  I suspect at first this will require tying the dog in place.  But when I train out of the house I like to take more than one dog, and it's just sort of  hard to know where to put one when you're working with the other.  Hence....tandem obedience.

I'm also going to be moving from clicking/rewarding each individual drill, to stringing together multiple drills and clicking for the complete set, eventually moving to clicking once for a whole trial, then removing the clicks altogether for actual trial-ready training.  Slow and steady wins the dog-training race!