Jet did great on his 15-ft long arc track. I was a bit nervous in the beginning as Jet's foundation was on an uncontrolled, unleash circular track. I knew that Sean and Kasia do not like this method of training dogs in tracking and would like to have more control. I was worried that if Jet does not do well in this arc track, they would again point out how bad the circular track was... blah, blah, blah! Fortunately, Jet excelled, and even did really well when Kasia distracted him for a moment when she talked too loud during our tracking exercise. During the debrief, again, Kasia and Sean wanted me to have more control and tighten the leash. I, assertively, said that wasn't my goal now for Jet and would like him to have more confidence in the track. Next goal is to have a longer track, and then followed by lighter footsteps...control would come in last!.... My training method is slow, methodical and as little ambiguity as possible.. only changing one variable at a time.
Sean respect my wish, and he is happy to see that I have my goals, and I achieve it every session in my training. I think this is important as we have different training methods, but we respect each other, and offer our advises if we see issues arising. With different training methods and opinions, it also makes the club more interesting and diverse.
I got a video of Kasia working on with Anka. She is working on her obedience with distraction. The one distracting them is Theresa (she is the secretary of NZ Schutzhund), visitor from Hastings. A few personal questions I have (not answered, just questions in my head... as I may face the same issues in the future with Jet):
- why the need to move away to encourage the dog to come to you for reward (after the click)?
- why correct the dog without a verbal cue such as "no"?
- why there is no verbal cue to tell the dog what is not expected and what is expected? such as "no" (when dog looks away), "watch" (gets the dog to look at you) and "good" when dog looks at you)?
No comments:
Post a Comment