Dog Training

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional dog trainer; what you will find in this blog is the methods I have tried with my own dog(s) and I am happy to tell you the ones that have worked. That is, they have worked for me; your dog might not respond the same way as mine and so a different method might be helpful.

INTRODUCTION

Sienna in the garden just chillin'

It's all very well to acquire a dog that's already trained, but that is not the end of the story. You can't just bring home a 'ready made' obedient dog and leave it at that. There is still work to be done.

Sienna is generally well behaved and has been trained in agility. However, there are a few things we need to work on.

A sprinter can run 100, 200, 400 meters in a pretty short space of time, but they cannot generally run marathons, or long distance trails, without additional training. The training for each discipline is different - one is trained for speed, the other for endurance. The sprinter would tire very quickly if trying to do a marathon on the training they had already received for sprinting. Dog agility is like being able to sprint 200 meters, but it isn't very helpful for the 'marathon' - ie, Sienna hasn't the stamina for long runs or long hikes. Which means she needs to be conditioned for these things. I will explain as we go along how I did this.

Secondly, there is not much fun walking 8 or 10 miles with a dog trying to yank your shoulder out of its socket the whole time. In other words, her lead manners need some work! Then she does like to barge through gates ahead of me, which is not only bad manners, it could be dangerous, if the other side of the gate is, for example, a busy road. Dangerous for her, heading into fast moving traffic - and dangerous for me should she pull me with her into the path of a passing lorry. And so there is little point going on longer hikes until the lead work is under control.

Having said that, it is possible to combine the two. We happen to have a couple of disused railway tracks near us that are great paths for walking - and she can be off lead. So we start with a short session of lead work, let her off to run about and be a dog, doing doggy things like sniffing, then back on the lead for another short session. It is also useful for recall training.

Our local railway track - one of three nearby, on a wet and very muddy day

She happens to be very good at recall, but unless the skill is practised, she might easily 'forget' to come back when I call her, so we practice recall several times while we're out. And all the while, she is building stamina for the longer hikes we plan to do. Unfortunately, where we hike is sheep and ground nesting bird country, so she must be on a lead from March 1st to September 30th - hence needing to get the walking on a loose lead issue conquered. She will also have the basics of sit, stay, down, stand, wit etc reinforced on a daily basis. 

None of this means she won't be doing any more agility - we are building a small agility course in a part of our garden so she can continue that, but as a fun exercise rather than competitively.

As she and I progress, I will write up what we did, what worked (and what didn't), you will see how long it took to achieve what we were aiming for, and I will upload  photos and videos of our progress, and links to websites or videos that have been helpful.