Dogwalk woes.

[aardogs]

Panic's dogwalk is wonderful. Panic's dogwalk is horrible. Panic's dogwalk is creepy and slow. Panic's dogwalk is fast and confident. Panic understands my criteria. Panic has no idea what the hell I want from him and stresses out when he is wrong.

What happened to his dogwalk? I have no idea. It goes back and forth so often and I don't know what to do about it. It goes from being awesome to being terrible every single time he does it. It is my training? Of course it must be, but I don't know where I went wrong and I certainly don't know how to go about mending it. I know a quick fix is not going to work, but does that mean that I have to go back to the very beginning and retrain it from scratch? Every time I actually seem to go out and work on it, it just seems to get worse and worse, and by the end of the session it's like he has no idea what he is doing and he is completely stressed out. I don't want the dogwalk to be stressful for him, so my main method has just been to ignore whatever he gives me. But that is certainly going to backfire, or already is, because he misses a lot of dogwalks. What do I do? I refuse to go back to a 2o2o, but this is stressing me out, and I hate it. I just really don't know where my training went wrong. Maybe I am just not good enough to train a succesful running dogwalk.

Comments

[purpledogs.livejournal.com]

"Maybe I am just not good enough to train a succesful running dogwalk."

False. But I am sorry. :( And wish I could help. I have faith in you two!

[borderpap.livejournal.com]

How did you train the running dog walk?

[aardogs.livejournal.com]

Silvia Trkman's method

[borderpap.livejournal.com]

Ok, go back to the beginning. Plank on a table, and work back up. When ever I run into a issue with my dogs completely losing some training, I go back to the very start. Usually doesn't take too long.

When Meri went through her first heat cycle, I was starting to do teeter work with her and she developed a motion sensitivity to which she wouldn't go NEAR the teeter. She wouldn't even get on a baby teeter or a wobble board. So I went back to the first step, paw on wobble board, treat. Did that for a few days and then upped the ante and within the week she was back playing on the wobble board and I introduced the teeter back in.

Anyway, that's my 2cents.

[brisbeethewhite.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain, perhaps having to do with the sensitive, thoughtful dog. I'm thinking of putting in a foot target, considering with a more clear cut criteria Haku might be happier. Haven't decided yet though ...

[ophidiophile.livejournal.com]

Maybe give him a break from the dogwalk altogether for a while. As you well know, BCs are clever and finely tuned to body language--its in their blood! ...and I'm sure he is sensitive to your frustration/anticipation and mirrors those emotions. Maybe you both just need a break from it for a while to focus on some other things. Then you can try coming back, starting from scratch, and treating it like an entirely new piece of equipment....

I've had to do this on occasion...completely step away from an issue. It was good for the peace of mind of both myself and my dogs. They only wanted to please, and they would just get worked up and "over-try" what I was asking of them. So we would abandon that task for a week or so and then approach it anew.

[aardogs.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I get a little obsessed with trying to train something (especially like this) so I work on it more than I should. We just had a couple week break from all agility, which I think helped him (and me!) in lots of respects. I'm just worried now because we have a trial next weekend, our first in two months. But instead of obviously working on it everyday until then, I'm just going to leave it alone and work on it a bit in class on Monday. I know that's a much better way to go about it, especially for a dog like him that overthinks everything, I just get SO obsessed!